Chapter Text
NOW - June 2018
“I know I already said this, but I still can’t believe they got you to agree to this.”
“I can’t believe it either.” Shane lets out an awkward chuckle before stopping in front of the stage manager. She gives them both a perfunctory and professional smile, but Shane can tell that she agrees this is dumb and performative. “This feels really dumb.”
“Tell me about it,” Scott Hunter says with a small shake of the head and a smile. He gives Shane a friendly pat on the back that he seems to regret right away.
Shane remembers the indignation at first. How dumbfounded and offended he must have looked in that meeting with the MLH Awards organizers. He remembers his agent quickly jumping in to smooth things over and add words like ‘this could be an interesting angle’ and ‘reclaiming the narrative’. The realization that this is what the rest of his life will look like from now on.
Yeah no way. Fuck that.
But then his mother managed to get under his skin. Something about “think about the little kids watching this” and “Two of the best players in the league. That would send a message to all the assholes out there. Wouldn’t it, Shane?”
It never fully went away, that burning shame and indignation. Shane Hollander, once dubbed the best player in the league, now reduced to being the other gay player in the MLH.
At least Scott Hunter got to hoist the Stanley Cup the day he became the token homosexual of the league. At least it was his own goddamn choice, at least-
Fuck.
The thing is Shane is mostly over this.
He’s spent the past year working on all of this. All the lawyers and all the therapists the Metros reluctantly threw his way—at his mother’s request, of course. Shane is mostly over it. He’s gay and he’s okay with it. His parents are okay with it. The Montreal Metros are okay with it. His teammates are okay with it. The MLH is okay with it. He’s fine. He still has the brand deals. Even newer ones. He’s kept most of his fans (he thinks. he hopes. He burned himself to the ground this year to keep their respect. Record after record. Strain after strain. “Show them, Hollander. Fucking show them.”) He even has newer fans. He no longer needs to hide who he is or pretend he likes women or kiss Rose Landry for the cameras—Rose, a beam of light in all the darkness of the past year. This is fine. Everything is fine.
Shane is about to go on stage and present an award about perseverance and making a difference in the community or something something with Scott fucking Hunter for the “little kids watching this”, and he’s fucking fine.
He has to be.
.
He wasn’t always fine.
For a while, Shane was frothing at the mouth. Nothing but fear and anger and shame fueling him. A little more jagged and rough around the edges. He was no longer “righteous” as ESPN and other media outlets liked to jab. He no longer complained to refs or waited for his linemates to check the big guys who kept coming after him on the ice. No, Shane barked. And he bit. And he pushed and he shoved and he got well acquainted with the penalty refs and got into fights he never would have before.
“You can’t fight for shit, cap.” Banter back in the changing rooms. “Leave the fighting to us, yeah?” Still, he fought. Despite the arms holding him back. He fought.
Because “you need to fight, Hollander.” That damn hand around the back of his neck. That forehead against his own. The hot breath on his cheek. The broad arms caging him. The chest crowding him, immovable. A mountain. A stupidly attractive mountain. Shielding him in the safety of its looming shadow. Giving him nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. His voice and his smell. The feel of him. Shane remembers wanting to melt into him. To drop to his knees and beg and beg to forget. But he couldn’t. Because “you need to fight back, Hollander.”
And so he fought.
He fought and he fought and he fought until he realized that he maybe no longer needed to.
It didn’t happen overnight, but it happened. Maybe time did heal all wounds after all. Slowly but surely, Shane felt himself unfurl and unwind, the tight coils suddenly loosening, giving way.
“You’re good. You’re okay. You did good.”
Those words, again and again as of late. Ilya giving him permission to stand down. Ilya holding him through it whenever and wherever they managed to meet or call or text. Like this was normal and they did this for each other. And maybe part of him ought to feel embarrassed by how Ilya got him ready for war, rearing for a fight, frothing at the mouth, and then got him to stand down just as easily. Like a well trained dog on a tight leash.
But Shane was long past denying himself the scraps Ilya threw his way. He was hollowed out and could no longer afford shame or embarrassment. He’d had his fill of shame. Enough of it for a lifetime.
Besides, they were friends now. As stupid as that sounds. Secret friends, sure. Friends who used to kiss each other’s inner thighs and foreheads and crevices Shane didn’t even know could be kissed. But friends nonetheless.
And yes, the man broke his heart and shattered it beyond use in a stuffy Tampa hotel room. But Shane couldn’t do without them, the scraps.
To Shane, it was a lifeline. Ilya’s friendship.
And sure, Ilya sometimes held him in ways friends never would, and probably never should. But it was fine. They were friends. Friends who spoke in real life maybe twice a year. Sometimes more, like when Shane managed to get himself outed by the first hookup he met on a whim on a dating app on a particularly lonely night in Nashville. (Because Shane wasn’t Rozanov-sexual, for fuck’s sake, he could find himself someone to get off with. Thank you very much. Because Shane couldn’t possibly spend the rest of his life pining after his supposed arch-rival who made it very clear that they could never be anything beyond a fuck).
“This is just a fuck, Hollander.”
Yeah, screw that. They were friends now. Shane and Ilya. Friends who didn’t fuck. Friends who didn’t kiss. (No matter how much Shane wanted to).
Because friends don’t kiss each other. And Shane Ilya are friends now.
Friends who are about to meet again for the first time after months of silence and unanswered texts at the MLH Awards.
Friends.
.
“You guys are on in 30 seconds,” the stage manager informs them, snapping him back into reality. MLH Awards 2018.
But Shane can’t really breathe. He’s sweating through his suit, his heart thumping in his ears.
“Hey, you’re gonna be fine,” Hunter offers tentatively, looking visibly concerned. “Just read the words on the prompter thing like in the rehearsals. It’ll be over before you know it.”
Hunter, unaware that Shane couldn’t care less about the stage and the MLH awards and his peers in the crowd and the cameras and the lights and the stupid words they’re about to read off that teleprompter.
No, Shane is panicking because Ilya Rozanov just exited stage left. But not before boring his eyes into Shane’s.
.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” Ilya says the moment Shane enters the stuffy bathroom.
How many times has it been now? Three, four times in this stupid bathroom? Did Ilya wait for him here after leaving the stage? How did he know Shane would come? Lucky guess? Why did Shane come? Why is he here?
Ilya is smiling while leaning on the paper towel dispenser. He looks so goddamn handsome in his freshly pressed suit. Of course. This asshole. Shane’s legs shake. A deep want simmers in his veins. He looks away.
‘Sorry I haven’t been answering any of your texts.’ He rehearsed the words on the drive to the venue, but he finds that he can’t speak them because something sharp has just lodged itself in his throat.
He realizes that he expected Ilya to smile less. To look less smug, to maybe look a bit more upset, more angry for being left on read for this long. That was Ilya’s thing after all, not Shane’s. Ilya never apologized to him either after ghosting him for six months. Maybe he could keep his apology to himself.
“You look good,” Ilya says instead, and Shane turns toward the mirror, fists on the dirty counter, head hanging low. “You look lighter.”
“Everyone does after the playoffs.”
“I know. Didn’t mean like that.”
Like what then? Like what?
But Shane can’t speak, because he’s too afraid of what he might say, because he’s veering off script already. Because his eyes are burning, and he suddenly feels empty and depleted and exhausted. He leans on the sink and closes his eyes, fingers now spread wide, shoulders hunched, tension oozing in and out of him. Mostly in. His breath sputtering out of him in staccato. He drifts.
Touch me. Hold me. Please.
I’m sorry I didn’t text you back.
Hold me.
Please.
So when Ilya reaches for him, a hand around the back of his neck, an arm around his back, chest hard and unyielding against his own and whispers, “You did good, Shane. You’re good. You did good-” Shane lets himself crumble in his arms.
Just a fuck, Shane repeats to himself. Just a fuck. Just a fuck. Just a fuck.
.
THEN.
January 2017
“Just a fuck.” The words were innocuous at first. It wasn’t the first time Ilya had reduced them to that. Besides, it was true for Shane too. At least at first.
But this time felt different.
“Just a fuck.” The words now seared into his brain, branded behind his eyelids. “Just a fuck.” Word for word. Nothing more and nothing less. “Just a fuck” after Shane spilled all but spilled his guts out to him. After Shane all but told him that he lov-.
“Just a fuck.”
“Bullshit, Rozanov!” Shane spat out despite his heart ripping in his chest, the last of the fire in him. “What was that at the beach earlier? Why even let me into your hotel room?”
“Because I wanna fuck. Is a crime now, Hollander? To want to fuck?”
Bullshit. You made me a tuna melt. You held me in your bed. You called me Shane.
Bullshit.
“It’s just a fuck, Hollander.”
The last name adding salt to injury. Shane feeling like a fucking idiot in that stupid Tampa hotel, and Ilya’s jaw clicking and clenching like he was biting his tongue, his eyes fixed on the corners of the room, like maybe he didn’t mean it, like maybe he’ll take it back and take Shane into his arms. But Shane couldn’t continue reading into Ilya’s facial expressions, and blaming his crudeness and unspoken words on the language barrier, and convincing himself that maybe, maybe, there was indeed something there.
Because when your arch-rival fuckbuddy told you that this was nothing but a fuck, at some point, you had to let it go. At some point, you just had to accept it and move on.
Just a fuck.
“Well, not to me,” Shane breathed out at last, his voice cracking, his vision clouding. Fuck. A confession. An admission. He lost. Whatever game they’d been playing. Shane had lost. “Not anymore.”
And then, “Maybe we shouldn’t do this anymore.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Cool. Yeah.
That was the end of that.
Just a fuck.
Shane had no fight left in him. That was the end of that.
Ilya didn’t hold him back. Didn’t try. He let him go. He even had the decency to step out of the hotel room to smoke his stupid cigarettes and let Shane pick up the pieces he broke into in peace.
He was speaking Russian on the phone when Shane walked past him. Probably with close-to-perfect Svetlana. He didn’t even look at him.
Not even once.
“Just a fuck.”
Cool. Great even.
.
October 2017
‘Liar.’ That was Shane’s first thought when Ilya’s stupid flashy car pulled into his driveway in Montreal a few days after he got outed on the internet by some asshole whose face he could barely recall. A few days after his world came crashing down.
“What the fuck are you doing here? Are you here to gloat? Aren’t you glad we ended things before this happened? What the fuck do you want from me, Rozanov? It must be nice to like both, isn’t it? You can just walk up to a woman if you want to get off and feel something, anything. Must be fucking nice.”
But Shane said none of that. He just melted into him the moment Ilya reached him across the hallway in three big strides. Shoes at the door because he knew. Shane crumbling in his arms, his legs giving out like they’d been holding him up in the hope that Ilya would get to him.
“You’re here.” His chest burned. He couldn’t breathe.
He’d been doing so well. Holding himself together the entire time since the news broke and the phone started to ring and ring and ring. Had only cried once when his mother told him that she was proud of him, always, her warm hands on his face. But he’d pinched the tears from his lashes before they could spill. So it didn’t count. Right?
Shane had been doing so well. Hadn’t come apart. Had just withdrawn and ignored every phone call, Hayden’s and Jackie’s and Rose’s included, until all that was left was rage. Hot blinding rage. A dam about to burst.
He’d been doing so well. Until now. Shane crying in Ilya Rozanov’s arms.
“This is so fucking unfair!”
“I know. I know, Shane.”
Shane. He called him Shane.
Ilya who never teased him or gave him one of his signature quips. “You’re having panic attack, Hollander.” “Yeah no shit.” Maybe because he really was this time. Ilya who looked worried and distraught and rattled sprawled on Shane’s herringbone floors. Who was sweet and kind and tender while he ran his hands over Shane’s back, soothing. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Breathe with me, Shane.”
.
“1919? You haven’t changed that? Getting outed wasn’t enough. You want to get robbed too?” Ilya had let himself in. The jerk. Shane couldn’t even remember when he gave him the code to his front door.
“Fuck off.”
Shane slept for the first time in three days that night. On Ilya’s lap, on his chest, over his thighs, his stomach. Whatever he was willing to lend him. Ilya who for some reason had taken it upon himself to drive to him all the way from Boston and to hold him while he came apart. Ilya who stayed. Ilya who mumbled “you scared me, Hollander” while stroking his hair while Shane’s thoughts were finally starting to quiet in his head. Ilya who muttered “I will kill them” while rocking Shane to sleep. Ilya who was there when Shane woke up confused to see him in his house, in his bed.
Right.
Because he was living out his worst nightmare.
“Maybe it’s time to wake up now?” Ilya said when Shane told him as much, looking earnest while he brushed the hair out of his face.
Just a fuck. Shane had to keep reminding himself. Just a fuck.
“They’re gonna bench me.”
“Why? Pike can be a sex addict, but you can’t like a little dick?”
“Shut up. I’m serious. They’re gonna fucking bench me.”
“Impossible. Your mom would- what’s the word? Bankrupt them.”
“I’m gonna lose everything.” Shane couldn’t believe he was admitting his worst fears and worries to his arch-rival and former fuckbuddy, hunched over his kitchen island while said arch-rival and former fuckbuddy forced food down his throat. He couldn’t believe it.
“Stop that. You lose nothing. Da?” Ilya’s hand found the back of his neck. His other hand holding him by the chin, forcing him to look up. It felt so good. It always did. “You need to fight, Hollander. You’re the second best player in the league. You don’t go down without a fight.”
Shane shoved him, smiling for the first time in days. “You wish, asshole.”
“Yes. More like this. There you are.”
Maybe not everything.
“You will sue, yes?” Ilya asked while Shane busied himself trying to ignore the way their knees were bumping on these high-top chairs.
“I just want this to go away,” Shane sighed. His mother was adamant that they needed to use all means necessary to apprehend the person who outed him and make sure no one else would ever dare do this to another person. But Shane didn’t have it in him.
“So, what, you hide like coward? Accept loss? What’s next? You need help taking that C off your jersey, maybe?”
“I’m not fucking hiding. Fuck you!” Shane nearly panting now, his chest now rising and falling, the prospect of no longer being captain of the team sending him reeling. Because it felt increasingly real. Increasingly very real.
“You’re angry. Good,” Ilya said after a beat, his hands coming up to hold his face, like he’d riled him up on purpose. “Use it. Your anger.”
Their foreheads touched and Shane closed his eyes. A pathetic sound escaped the base of his throat. Ilya’s fingers were now playing with his hair.
“Show them they can’t fuck with the second best player in the league.”
“Shut up.” A gentle shove, his eyes still closed.
“I’m serious. Imagine if someone did this to Pike when he finally moves to men after having a million kids? 600th best player in the league. You would do it for gay Pike. Wouldn’t you?”
“I’m gonna kill you.”
But Ilya was right. Shane would do it for Pike. He would do it for Ilya, too. Ilya for whom stakes were higher, so much higher. His teeth now gritting at the thought of anyone inflicting this type of pain and anguish on him. Ilya.
Then as if Ilya had read his mind, his thumb tender on his cheek, “Then why wouldn’t you do it for yourself?”
Shane finally responded to the emails he’d been ignoring for days.
.
The pathetic thought crossed his mind later while the credits rolled on whatever movie had been on and Ilya slept soundly under him. That this was nice. That if he hadn’t gotten outed, Ilya wouldn’t be on his couch right now, with his fingers in his hair. His eyes so kind and concerned, his touch so tender, forcing him to eat and to shower.
Scraps.
Just a fuck. He had to remind himself.
Maybe something of a friend too.
Ilya was there out of sympathy. Pity maybe. Because of their shared experience. Sure, Ilya liked women, but he was a professional hockey player who liked men too.
Ilya was there because he knew Shane had no one else who could possibly understand what he was going through. (Or maybe he couldn’t stand Scott Hunter beating him to it).
Would Shane have done the same thing for Ilya if he’d been the one to get outed by a stranger from an app? Would he have driven to Boston to lend him his chest to cry on? Shane couldn’t tell for sure.
Probably not. He would have been too scared of the consequences. He would have overthought it. Ilya wouldn’t even want him there. Not like Shane did. No, he wouldn’t have done the same for Ilya.
Lies.
I’d burn the world to the ground for you. The embarrassing and over-the-top thought assaulted him out of nowhere. The past few days had clearly dialed up the dramatics in his head. Or maybe it was all these stupid romance movies he’d been binging since he locked himself in his apartment.
Maybe not burn the world. But I’d come look for you again in the stands at Sochi. I’d look for you on rooftops in Vegas. I’d freestyle and improvise in front of thousands of people at the MLH Awards for you. I’d hold you too.
He’d done that once. Ilya was probably here to repay that debt. MLH Awards 2016. Before Boston and the Tuna melt and Shane's bolting out of his house. The night all color drained from Ilya’s face five minutes before they were supposed to go on stage to present that stupid Sportsmanship award for a second time—with even worse jokes than 2014.
The night Shane watched their producer frantically whisper-shout into her headset to her executive producers if they should pull Shane and Ilya’s segment and skip to the next one given “one of the speakers appeared to be incapacitated”.
“Rozanov, what’s wrong? Are you okay? Talk to me.” Shane’s voice had been shaky. He was crouching in front of his co-host after he found him in one of the stalls gripping his phone, knuckles white, eyes empty.
He was still just Rozanov back then. And Shane had never seen him like this. Rozanov and all of his swagger and magnetism looking so small and shell-shocked in the same stupid bathroom where he’d once unzipped his pants and asked Shane to suck him off before reducing him to putty in his hands.
“Rozanov, talk to me. Hey, breathe with me. Yeah?”
The night Shane hugged him for the first time because he didn’t know what else to do. Because Rozanov had gone into some type of shock after receiving some strange phone call in Russian, and Shane didn’t know what to fucking do about it.
The night Shane seemingly talked his arch-rival (and fuckbuddy at the time) down from what looked like a panic attack right after improvising a segment that was very clearly meant to have them both, if the voice of God asking the audience to “Please welcome to the stage Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov” was any indication.
But Shane had managed to play it off nicely. Turned Ilya’s absence into a joke that landed perfectly according to their very stressed out producer, especially with the season they’d just played against each other. Shane couldn’t really remember what he’d said. It was all a blur and all he’d wanted at the time was to run back to Ilya who was still coming apart in the bathroom. Ilya who hugged him back. Ilya who pulled him onto his lap in that filthy bathroom stall and held onto him for dear life while a single rogue tear rolled down his cheek.
(Was it then that Shane realized that it was no longer ‘just a fuck’ to him? Was that why he completely unraveled and ran out of Ilya’s house and got himself a girlfriend the moment Ilya finally called him “Shane”? Because he’d felt it again, the terrible realization that he was in far too deep. That this meant so much more to him than it could ever mean to Ilya.)
Hollander holding Rozanov in a stuffy bathroom backstage in Vegas after receiving the worst news a son could receive from back home. Ilya holding Shane in his apartment in Montreal after he got outed.
Maybe that was the debt Ilya was sleeping off on his couch right now.
.
“So are we like friends now?”
“I’m sorry Shane, but I can’t have friend in common with Hayden fucking Pike.”
“Shut up.”
.
November 2017
His first hangout with Scott Hunter was as painfully awkward as he’d expected. It was stilted at first, both of them unsure of what to say or do. Shane’s mother all but forced him into it. He wondered if Hunter had a Yuna Hollander on his team too. He couldn’t really tell if he reached out because of his new token ‘league homesexual’ status, or because he genuinely cared.
He almost felt bad for the man. He wondered if he’d also need to talk to every player who happened to be gay moving forward.
Will there be more? Are there more? I hope they don’t get outed. I hope Ilya never does.
“No one deserves that,” said Hunter once they got past the mindless small talk. “You know, that was my worst nightmare for a very long time.”
“Geez. Thanks. I guess.”
“I mean. It just really fucking sucks. You didn’t deserve that. To have that taken from you. No one does.”
“Yeah. Thank you.”
And then.
“For what it’s worth, I think it would have been a lot worse if it weren’t for you,” said Shane. “For what you did. I mean before all this you know. It was really, uhm, brave.”
Shane was surprised by how true his own words were, by how tight his chest felt.
“Thanks,” said Hunter, sounding just as rattled by Shane’s words. “As always, you couldn’t let me have the spotlight for too long. You just had to go and steal my thunder.”
They both laughed at Hunter’s attempt at a joke. Shane’s first real laugh in a while. He wondered if Hunter practiced this one at home. Maybe he ran it by his boyfriend. Maybe his boyfriend suggested it.
It must be nice to have a boyfriend to go through this with. It must be really nice.
His phone vibrated in his pocket.
Lily: How is it going with the dinosaur?
Lily: Did you ask him why his boyfriend walks so slowly?
Shane smiled at his phone before shoving it back in his pocket. When he looked up, Hunter was eyeing him curiously.
.
“Do you regret it?” Shane eventually asked.
“Not even a little bit.”
Shane smiled. Good.
“Give it some time.” Hunter told him before heading out. “Your teammates. They’ll come around.”
.
December 2017
Shane’s eyes never made it above the boards during his first game on Boston ice since the media circus started. Not that he really paid attention to the Boston stands before all this. But he knew they didn’t exactly like him down here. And he wasn’t confident he could handle a disheartening fan sign or some suggestive hand gestures in the crowd.
So he kept his eyes forward, trying his best to ignore the other problem that threatened to send him reeling.
Ilya looked godly on the ice. (When didn’t he?). His blue eyes trained on Shane in ways they hadn’t since that dumb All-Star Game in Tampa. His gaze was unrelenting, flagrant, shocking even.
“The fuck you looking at?” Hayden was quick to snarl at Ilya who checked him almost immediately.
“Wah wah. So scary, Pike. You’re starting to sound like those million babies you have at home.”
“Fuck off, Rozanov.”
‘If you go easy on me, I’ll never forgive you.’ Shane had typed out before the game. They texted fairly regularly after Ilya’s absurd trip to Montreal. A new arrangement. Friends or something.
Lily: WTF??
Lily: Don’t worry. I know you like it hard.
Jane: Fuck you.
Lily: Really? I thought we didn’t do that anymore.
Jane: Shut up!
.
“Oh you still play hockey, Hollander?” At the opening face-off. Loud enough for the ref to hear. The crowds deafening. Ilya smirking, taunting. But Shane knew what he was doing.
Still, it was electrifying. Instant. Like a fuse being lit in his gut. Shane wanted to wipe that grin off his face and send Boston crying into their lockers.
He smiled right back. “Watch me, asshole.”
“Yeah, show me, Hollander.”
Shane won the face-off, but Ilya didn’t let him get far.
He kept his word. He didn’t go easy on him. Shane felt dumb for even suggesting it. He could only imagine the indignation on Ilya’s face reading his text. The ice was all they had now. They would both sooner die before going easy on each other. Shane knew this. He knew it and he loved it and he loved it.
Ilya pushed him harder than he had in a very long time. He taunted him and infuriated him and skated circles around him and blocked him and drove him mad, and Shane enjoyed every damn second.
He hadn’t felt this alive in so long. Not even when he dropped his gloves against that douchebag from Tampa who took his chirps too far after cross-checking him one too many last week.
To anyone watching, it must have looked like Ilya was harassing him and trying to throw him off his game by exploiting his newfound vulnerability.
But no. Ilya was doing this for him. Ilya was bringing the petty competitiveness out of him. Shane, the relentless athlete. Ilya was reminding him why he loved hockey so damn much. The thrill of it, the speed, the precision, the violence, the spectacle, the madness of it. The magic when the two of them faced off on the ice.
By the second period, Shane was foaming at the mouth on the bench waiting to jump over the boards to go again and again and again.
“Come on, Hollander. Come the fuck on. You gotta fight, Hollander. Show them, Hollander. Fucking show them.”
The blood rushed in his veins. The adrenaline fueling him. The fans screaming and cheering. His head empty for the first time in months. His heart thumping and thumping and thumping. Just him and Ilya and the ice and the puck and the net. The best hockey he’d played in months, maybe years.
The happiest he’d been in recent memory.
.
The Metros ended up losing, but no one could fault Shane’s performance on the ice. Now do the same thing, but as captain, a small voice urged him in his head.
And when Ilya skated over to him to shake his hand with a stupid grin on his face, skin glistening from the insane spectacle they just put on, Shane nearly fucking swooned.
This asshole.
“Good game.” Ilya’s fingers clasped around his own, still smiling while Shane was likely going into tachycardia.
“You too.” As the cameras flashed and the fans clapped.
A show of sportsmanship. A statement. But it was so much more to Shane. It meant so much more. His eyes were starting to burn, his chest tight, his heart full.
And he would have cracked if it weren’t for the other Raiders making their way over to him to shake his hand too, Marleau included. Marleau who had coincidentally played the cleanest hockey in recent memory during the first period. As if he’d been worried he’d face some dire repercussions if he so much as grazed Shane. Marleau who didn’t start checking him until Shane slammed him into the boards himself. “I’m not contagious, you know,” Shane had spat out.
“My sister is gay, you know,” Marleau told him as he shook his hand, as though seriously offended by Shane’s earlier chirp.
“No, I didn’t know. But happy for her, I guess.”
Marleau laughed. “He’s right. You are funny.”
.
The uncharacteristic sportsmanship didn’t last very long, however, as a brawl started somewhere around the boards before the stands started emptying out. J.J. and Ilya were at each other’s throats, with Comeau snarling too. The gloves were off. Why? Shane didn’t know. It was too loud. The teams piled up and Shane was quick to squeeze his way between J.J. and Ilya and push both of them back. Captain and all.
“Fuck off, Rozanov!” J.J. spat out.
“I will when you do your fucking job, Dagenais!”
“Hey. What the hell was that?” Shane cornered a visibly chastened J.J. once they reached the changing rooms.
“Forget it.”
Shane turned to look at Hayden, who simply shrugged. “The fuck if I know.”
.
Lily: Did I go easy enough on you?
Jane: Shut up. You barely won.
Lily: :)
Jane: Also I’m gonna need you to stop attacking my linemates.
Lily: I will when they start acting like it.
Jane: ? Like what?
Lily: Nothing.
Lily: It was good to see you play like that again :)
Jane: Like what?
Lily: Like the second best player in the league.
Jane: Fuck off, “Lily”
Lily: Like Hollander. I mean. Like yourself.
Lily: Welcome back, Shane :)
.
Shane typed out ‘Thank you’ a few times before deleting it. ‘It feels good to be back’. His chest felt too tight, like that day in the elevator, except somehow worse. ‘Thank you for pushing me. Thank you for shaking my hand. Thank you for giving me hell. Thank you for reminding me how much I love this fucking game. Thank you for typing out my name when we never fucking do that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you’.
He threw his phone into the bed before he ended up sending out a fucking heart emoji or something just as mortifying.
.
Shane never got an answer about Ilya’s brawl with J.J. and Gilbert. But something shifted at the Metros after Boston. And by the time they played Detroit, the whole team was piling up on anyone who dared to breathe in Shane’s way.
The message was clear. “Don’t fucking touch our capitaine.”
Suddenly, Shane no longer minded ending up at the bottom of a pile-up in a stupid brawl. He no longer waited until everyone cleared out of the showers before going in. He no longer worried about patting his teammates on the back after a good play, or flinched and averted his gaze apologetically when one of them would start undressing in the changing room and pause when they remembered he was there. Suddenly, hockey wasn’t so lonely and hard anymore.
.
“That was nice of him the other day,” his mother mused over dinner the following weekend. His parents had made the trip to Montreal. “Rozanov. When he shook your hand at the end of the game.”
Shane’s breath stuttered. A pinch in his chest. “Yeah, he. Uh. I guess.”
“That couldn’t have been an easy decision.”
“What do you mean?” Shane frowned. “Sure the guy can be an asshole but I don’t think he’s a raging homophobe if that’s what you’re saying.”
“No honey. I mean with the situation in Russia.”
But Shane didn’t know. Ilya had mentioned this before too. In Tampa, right before Shane shot himself in the foot and asked him if he “felt this too”.
“What situation in Russia?”
“I think what your mother is trying to say,” his father chimed in, “is that Russia would probably not be very happy with one of their athletes showing you support in a public broadcast.”
Shane visibly tensed. “But he’s not playing for Russia.”
None of the MLH players were participating in the Winter Olympics this year.
“I know, honey,” said his mother. “But not everything is always about hockey. Russia is still his home.”
Right. His home.
Ilya went back home every summer. Sometimes more. He’d missed a game or two. Like in 2016 when he held him in the bathroom after the MLH Awards.
“What does that mean though? What would happen to him?” And then trying to sound a bit less rattled, “I mean I don’t really want anyone getting in trouble for shaking my hand, even if it’s Rozanov.”
His parents exchanged a quick look that Shane couldn’t really decipher.
“I’m not sure we want to find out. But don’t worry. It was just a handshake. Besides, many of his teammates did the same. They’ll probably chuck it off as something the Raiders made him do as Captain.”
.
Perusing Google that night probably wasn’t the best idea. Russian anti-LGBT Law. Large scale raids. Chechnya anti-gay purge. Concentration camps. Imprisonment. Torture. Shane couldn’t sleep. Deep anger and fear simmering in his blood.
But not for himself.
.
Jane: Are you okay?
Lily: ? What is this
Jane: Nothing. Just checking if everything’s okay.
Lily: Why wouldn’t it be okay?
Jane: Fuck me for asking I guess. Nevermind.
Lily: And you?
Jane: What about me?
Lily: Your shoulder okay after Detroit?
Jane: Why do I need to answer when you don’t
Lily: You don’t need to do anything Hollander
.
But then a few days later.
Jane: Merry Christmas :)
Jane: I mean if you celebrate it. I don’t know. Sorry.
Jane: I mean not sorry.
Jane: Just wanted to say I hope you’re having a nice break :)
Jane: And my shoulder’s fine.
Jane: How are your ribs?
.
Ilya had typed for a long time, keeping Shane glued to his phone in anticipation. The typing bubble appearing and then disappearing like he couldn’t make up his mind.
But Shane never got a response to his failed attempt at friendly conversation. A dumb idea all around. They didn’t do this. They didn’t wish each other happy holidays. They didn’t dissect each other’s injuries. They didn’t admit to watching each other’s games. Shane was taking this friendship thing too far.
Instead, Shane woke up to two missed calls placed around 2 in the morning. And when he called him back, his heart in his throat, Ilya never picked up.
.
A few days later, Ilya was all over the hockey forums with the most beautiful girl Shane had ever seen—he might have been gay, but that didn’t make him blind. Shane guessed the name before he read it.
Svetlana.
‘Close-to-perfect’ Svetlana. ‘Regular woman around’ Svetlana. ‘Friend from Russia who lives in Boston’ Svetlana. ‘Knows everything about hockey’ Svetlana. Maybe Ilya realized he didn’t want to find someone else after all. Maybe he realized that what he truly wanted was right under his nose, always had been.
Shane could feel himself cracking open, leaking out. The rest of the words in the stupidly long headline like quick stabs to the chest, ‘girlfriend’, ‘rumored fiancee’, ‘tied him down’.
Great.
Shane guessed that Ilya eventually got tired of screwing his way through North America. He probably got tired of pretending he didn’t want little kids to play silly games in the pool with. He’d been so good with those kids in Tampa. He would make a great father.
He really would.
Dammit.
Shane’s vision was getting blurry. He had to leave the Metros gym before he dropped a weight on his foot or worse, burst into fucking tears in front of his whole team.
At least their thing had ended a full year before Ilya made his decision to commit to Svetlana. At least they were still friends or whatever. Right?
‘Just a fuck’.
Ilya owed him nothing. Still, it hurt. Fuck, it hurt.
‘You’re angry. Good. Use it.’
Except Shane wasn’t angry. He was just sad. He was really fucking sad.
.
Maybe his father was right. There had to be some nice men in Montreal. Maybe he should accept Rose’s offer to introduce him to that nice guy who worked on one of her sets while she was shooting in Montreal.
Maybe it was time for him to get over his first attempt at meeting someone that wasn’t Ilya Rozanov. Men couldn’t be all that bad.
It was almost New Year's Eve. Maybe he’d go to that party J.J. told him about. Maybe he’d meet someone. Maybe he’d have a date to the next MLH Awards. Maybe he’d get a plus one like Scott Hunter. Maybe.
.
A missed phone call on New Year’s Eve from Ilya. And when Shane finally mustered up the courage to call back after stupidly agreeing to taking shots with Jackie because “this is my only night off”, it went straight to voicemail.
.
January 2018
The All-Star game felt like a consolation prize for sitting out the Olympics. A chance to play against Ilya without the pressure of the regular season. A chance to maybe let it all out on the ice.
But they both seemed out of it. Shane barely tried, feeling sick to his stomach at the idea of seeing Svetlana in the stands.
He never did.
And by the end of the night in that awful club in downtown L.A., Shane couldn’t take his eyes off of Ilya, and Ilya couldn’t take his eyes off of him. Just watching each other across the bar. Like that night in Montreal. But without the other people. Just Shane and Ilya. Looking at each other across the bar.
Then Shane bolted for the bathroom with his heart thumping hard against his ribcage. Knowing damn well that Ilya was close behind. Knowing damn well that he wouldn’t let him go too far. It all felt too raw. Too fucked. All of it. He should have stuck to ginger ale.
And then the hug in the stall. Ilya’s strong arms around him. Shane hating himself for initiating it. For allowing it. For needing it so bad.
Ilya smelling like cigarettes and vodka, holding him so tight, so damn tight.
“She’s hot. Svetlana,” Shane said stupidly into the crook of his neck, his eyes pressed closed because he was so dizzy, his lungs filling up with Ilya’s scent.
“She is. She thinks you’re hot too.” And he sounded almost as sad as Shane.
I miss you. The words hanging off the tip of his tongue. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. Their breathing hard and jagged like they were doing something entirely different in this stupid stall. Like the majority of the All-Star roster wasn’t with them in this damn club. Ilya mumbling something in Russian against his temple, over and over again, like some mantra, his fingers gentle yet firm in Shane’s hair. Shane about to drop to his knees and beg.
I miss you. I want you inside of me.
“I should go,” Shane breathed out when the impulse to sink into the floor became unmanageable. Ilya looking disheveled and rattled once he finally let him go, his eyes misty from all the theatrical smoke and fog of the club. Shane’s misty from all the hurt.
“Those cigarettes are bad for you, you know?”
Shane didn’t wait for Ilya’s answer.
.
Lily: Ready to be destroyed in Boston in like 4 days?
Shane typed out a dramatic ‘you already did’ before cringing to himself, deleting the message, and muting his chat with Ilya.
Instead, Shane focused on his diet, on his training, on his team, on the fans, on the ice, on the "little kids", on the "endorsements", on making it to the playoffs.
He ran himself to the ground, pushed his body beyond its limits. And yet, his mind never emptied. The pain in his chest never dulled.
.
Lily: I told you Reebok wasn't going to sell itself.
Lily: Ad was less boring this time. Did they hold you at gunpoint?
.
Shane racked up the wins, and the records, and the brand deals, but he felt just as empty, just as hollow. And by the time they got knocked off the playoffs, he had nothing left to give.
.
Lily: Great run this season.
Lily: Better luck next year :)
.
Next year.
Shane couldn’t believe he survived the season, let alone the year. This goddamned awful shitty year.
But he did. He survived it. He didn’t need to fight anymore. He could rest now before gearing up for next season. He could stand down.
And next year, he will get to hoist the Stanley cup again. He will reclaim his title of best player in the league. He will remind everyone that he’s Shane fucking Hollander. “Generational talent” or whatever they used to call him. Not just “the other gay player in the league”.
Yes. Next season.
Shane will start fresh. He will crumple his own heart and move past his stupid feelings for Ilya Rozanov. He will start responding to his texts again. He will stop burdening him with all this juvenile longing. He will congratulate him on his relationship and wish him the best. He will stop feeling the need to drop to his knees whenever he sees him. He will stop burning every time he thinks of him. He will stop picturing him in his head every time some corny love song starts to play, or every time he checks into a hotel they’d once met at. He will stop melting into his chest in dingy bathrooms every time Ilya offers him a bit of comfort because he feels so bad for him. He will stop.
Shane will stop.
He just needs to make it through the MLH Awards.
.
NOW - June 2018
Yeah okay.
“We have to stop meeting like this.”
Shane in Ilya’s arms again.
'Next season' hasn’t started yet after all.
Maybe Shane will allow himself one last pathetic encounter in this filthy bathroom before setting his plan in motion.
One last one. For the road.
“You did well. You did good, Shane.” Ilya running one hand over his back, while the other holds the back of his neck.
Do we always end up like this?
Remember when you kissed me here? I was so angry back then. And then I wasn’t.
Then, maybe sensing how Shane is drifting in his arms, Ilya jokes, “Nice segment. Very funny. Did you write the jokes yourself?”
“Fuck off.” Shane shoves him lightly and Ilya pulls him back in, whispers in his ears.
“So you and Scott Hunter are best friends now? Did his boyfriend finally break up with him? Did they figure out his slow walking problem?”
“I’m gonna kill you.”
A beat, a laugh, and then more seriously. “You do. Already.”
“I do what?” Shane asks, increasingly confused by Ilya’s English, but Ilya just laughs, dismissing him.
Shane groans. “I looked so fucking stupid on that stage.”
“No, you didn’t. You looked nice. You looked brave.”
“Shut up.” Shane tries not to shudder at the word.
Ilya pulls him out of the crook of his neck to look him in the eyes, and Shane folds.
“You did. All season, you were brave. All year.”
The tears immediately well up in his eyes. Shane’s vision goes hazy. He can feel them on his lashes, weighing them down. He wants to pinch them away, but his fingers are wound tight around Ilya’s tux sleeves. He tries to swallow the lump in his throat. But he can’t. He really can’t.
“Fuck-”
Shane loves him. He loves him so much, this beautiful and kind and infuriating man. This man who was here for him all year. Throughout this entire shitty year while Shane struggled to be “brave” or whatever. Shane fucking loves him.
“Shane…” Ilya’s voice is soft, his thumb stroking Shane’s cheek, his eyes glistening too. And Shane wants to kiss him.
Remember when we used to kiss?
And what are they doing here? What are they doing? Why are they meeting in this stupid bathroom again?
“You know, that was the worst year of my fucking life…” Shane’s voice cracks. He’s panting. He looks away, looks back at him. Looks away again.
“I know. I know.” Then Ilya’s pinching the tears out of Shane’s lashes.
“But you know what the worst part of this fucking year was?” He looks at him at last.
Ilya tenses, like he knows what Shane is about to say. Like he knows it and doesn’t want to hear it.
“Shane.”
“My whole world fell apart and yet what sucked the most wasn’t even..”
“Shane.”
“We didn’t even. All year, we didn’t even kis-”
Ilya kisses him and Shane comes apart. Completely unravels. A dam bursting.
It’s open mouthed and heady and messy, and sad, so sad. Shane’s hands pull at Ilya’s hair while Ilya’s lock around his throat, then the back of his neck, over his chest, then back around his neck.
Shane is dizzy. His heart leaps and leaps. His lungs burn. His lips bruise. But it feels so good.
Just a fuck. I don’t want to be just a fuck. I don’t want to be the guy you fuck on the side before you go home to her. I don’t want to. I don’t fucking want to.
But I would. For you, I would. For you, I’d smash my own fucking heart. For you, I would. Whatever you'd give me, I'd take. I would. I would.
And Shane is about to tell him. He’s about to break all the promises he made to himself, when suddenly, an urgent knock at the door. And then the door is flying open.
It all happens too fast. Shane shoves Ilya away almost immediately, and something splinters inside of him when he sees the tears on Ilya’s face. Actual tears. Like maybe this is more than just a fuck to him too. Like maybe this is killing him too.
“I-”
But he can’t even react.
Because Svetlana is at the door looking otherworldly in her gown. She’s at the door looking like she just ran here from the green room and Scott fucking Hunter is guarding it behind her like this is some sick fucking joke. Like Ashton Kutcher is about to come out of one of the stalls.
Shane’s first instinct is to shield Ilya, to make up some stupid excuse for their current predicament. Shane came onto him, he swears. Ilya is not like that. This isn’t what it looks like.
But he doesn’t really need to.
Because Svetlana isn’t asking. Because she doesn’t look angry or shocked or indignant. She just looks worried, and scared, and maybe a little sad.
Shane doesn’t understand a whole lot of Russian. But even he can make out her next words.
“Ilya, it’s your mom.”
.