1 – 1 of 1 Work in Post- Season/Series 01

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  1. The Blue Pillow by

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

    2025-12-28

    When they pulled into the garage of their house in Ottawa, Ilya gently prodded Shane to, “shower, get yourself ready.” Of course, that could mean just about anything, and that was why Ilya phrased it that way. If Shane wanted quiet, wanted to cuddle in the quiet, he could pull on his most ridiculous flannel pajamas and curl in close. But if Shane wanted him, wanted the one language that never failed between them anymore, then Shane knew what he had to do. And Ilya had a sense that he already knew what Shane would choose. They had no match that day, just training with the Centaurs, but Ilya knew Shane had woken on the wrong side of the bed. One of those mornings where the light coming between the cracks in their window blinds felt abrasive. Where none of his clothes were right. Where he’d shower before leaving for the rink and then again once he got there, the first not having counted because he’d already ruined it by existing in the world. Lunch would be an ordeal that Ilya watched for the sole purpose of ensuring that Shane ate something. Anything too warm or too textured would be left untouched, until he inevitably defaulted to a bowl of chickpeas and spinach because at least those two foods behaved predictably and did exactly what Shane expected them to do. The buzzer made him flinch every time it went off when they got ready for some drills in the afternoon, sharp and unavoidable, and on the drive home Shane picked at the skin around his fingernails until it lifted in long, thin pieces. Ilya had learned the signs long before he understood them. Back when they’d first started this, so many years ago now, he’d thought Shane was perhaps slightly difficult. Different. That was what everyone said. They were never cruel enough to say anything more than that then, though Ilya would later learn how quickly that restraint would wear thin once winning stopped making up for inconvenience. When he was particular to the point of peculiarity, or quiet to the point of unease, Ilya would watch those big brown eyes tracking everything and everyone on the ice. There were times when Shane didn’t speak at all. Not out of sulking or stubbornness, not as some calculated refusal, but because the words simply never arrived. His mouth would open and close again, the thought intact but unreachable, and he’d turn his head slightly away from Ilya, his gaze fixing on something neutral like a lamp or a building out the window. Ilya knew now that Shane could and would go nonverbal, though at the time he didn’t have the English for it, didn’t have any language beyond the uneasy certainty that pushing would only make it worse. What Shane did have language for were systems. Rules. Things that behaved if you treated them correctly. Folding his clothes with precise, almost reverent care. Lacing his skates the same way every time. Eating the same meals, parking in the same spot, walking the same routes through the increasingly familiar away cities as if repetition might smooth out their edges. Ilya knew that people mistook Shane’s steadiness for control, for leadership even, and Ilya knew that Shane let them. That it was easier than admitting how much effort it took to appear normal to the world that wouldn’t see him that way. At the time, Ilya hadn’t known why the rituals mattered so much, why deviation hit Shane like a personal failure instead of a minor inconvenience. No one ever called it anything because the league loved men like Shane. Players who were disciplined, controlled, and relentlessly prepared. What Ilya had known, back then, was that sex was simpler, even if it was riskier. He had gambled. All those years ago, he’d noticed that the only time Shane ever truly came alive, ever seemed able to meet Ilya where he was, was on the ice. Skates carving into the rink, their shoulders colliding. Physicality seemed to give Shane something that his words never quite managed to do. It was the way through to him, Ilya had realized, a way out. So if Ilya wanted more, if he wanted anything, it would have to start there. It would have to be physical, Ilya knew almost right away. After that first, sharp “fuck off” chirp from Shane in the showers after the CCM commercial before their rookie year, even though Shane’s voice had been rough and startled, Ilya knew he was onto something. Not because Shane had said “not here” to him after he’d turned to face Shane front-on, but because he’d said anything at all. Because he’d stayed. Because he’d opened his hotel room door. Because as soon as Ilya had gotten his hands on him, had gotten his mouth on Shane’s, it was like Ilya had cracked the code and had found a way to get through to Shane like he’d only otherwise been able to on the ice. Shane might not have been able to speak it, might not have been able to admit it even to himself, but Ilya knew he’d found the way in much better than he had in the hotel gym. They didn’t have to talk. They never did. Sex, touch, pressure, heat, it all seemed to cut through that weird noise he could see crossing Shane’s features in a way that made Ilya realize that was more immediate to focus on than anything else. They were good at it. They always had been. And for a long time, Ilya mistook that relief for resolution, believing that whatever was breaking Shane down during the day could be burned off at night, leaving nothing behind that would ever need to be named. Eventually, Shane tried to explain. Not all at once, and not easily. He put a name to what he'd had been dealing with since he was a kid, and said it like it was something fragile, easily mishandled, as though he weren’t entirely sure Ilya would know the word, or what to do with it if he did. He did. David had mentioned it to him before. It had been the first time they’d talked properly, out at the cottage a few days after they’d accidentally outed themselves to Shane’s parents. David had taken Ilya aside, not unkindly, but with a careful seriousness that felt earned. He’d told him that Shane’s mother had been… less understanding. That as both his mother and his manager, she struggled with anything that might make Shane less than his best. Less marketable. Less predictable. Anything that threatened the version of him the league found easiest to celebrate. David hadn’t spoken badly of her, but instead, he’d just looked tired. He said that all he’d ever wanted for Shane was for him to be happy, and that only part of that happiness could be hockey, no matter how much it had come to define him. He wanted Shane to be loved, for who he was, not for what he could produce, and he wanted Ilya to be able to love him too. Regardless of hockey. Regardless of autism. Not in spite of it, but without fear of it. So when Shane finally said it himself - "I'm autistic, Ilya" - sitting beside him with his hands folded tight in his lap, eyes fixed somewhere just past the horizon, Ilya understood what it had cost him. This wasn’t new information, not exactly, but it was Shane offering up something that had so often been treated as liability, asking without quite asking to be held there without being diminished. Shane admitted that hockey was the first language he’d ever known, quite literally. Ever since the first game his father took him to when he was four, perched high in the stands with the cold seeping through his boots, the arena roaring loudly around him, Shane had chewed

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