Chapter Text
I. Ottawa – Rink
Luca loves being a Centaur. He loves coming to the rink and pouring his all into the drills, letting the cold air and the rhythm of skates on fresh ice take over his brain. He loves the gentle rhythms of practice and the boisterous energy of the Ottawa locker room.
And he loves being teammates with Shane Hollander.
Luca still hasn’t adjusted to that part.
He’d grown up with a Hollander poster over his bed and watching late-night broadcasts of the Voyageurs, volume low so he wouldn’t wake his parents. He’d obsessed over the way he cut through defenders like they were suggestions and wouldn’t shut up to his coach about his hockey IQ.
Now Shane stands ten feet away from him, a dorky look on his face as he scans the ice like he’s counting something invisible.
“Reset,” Delaney calls from the boards and they run the breakout drill again.
Luca is admittedly distracted. Just over the blue line he loses control over his stick and the puck starts to get away from him.
He feels it immediately, it’s small and dumb but definitely his fault. Hayes will probably tease him later for fanboying too hard. Before the coach can call it though, Shane shifts.
He skates hard into the lane, intercepts the puck cleanly, and transitions the drill so smoothly it looks intentional.
“Good,” Shane calls, loud enough to carry. “That’s the read.”
Luca blinks. That had definitely not been the read.
Delaney is nodding from the boards though and everyone else seems to have accepted it and moved on.
“Better,” Delaney says, “If that feels good, let's start to speed it up.”
Luca glances at Shane.
Shane doesn’t look at him but instead repositions himself to be slightly between Luca and the coaches’ line of sight.
It happens again two days later (Luca misses an assignment on the forecheck; Shane angles his body, absorbs the correction, and calls out the adjustment himself).
And then the day after that (Luca drifts out of his lane; “My gap,” Shane calls out. “That’s on me.”)
And when the coaches call something out, Shane answers quickly.
“Yes, Coach.”
“Right.”
“Got it.”
Sometimes—
“Yes, sir.”
The first time Luca hears it, he thinks it’s a joke. It’s not. And it pops up everywhere.
Delaney and Wiebe will redirect:
“Coach.”
“Right. Coach.”
But Shane’s shoulders stay tight for the rest of those drills and he never stops watching. Lucas starts noticing the pattern after that.
Mistakes disappear around Shane.
If a rookie stumbles, he fixes it before anyone else can comment. If someone drifts out of position, he fills the gap and calls the adjustment himself.
He never criticizes them and he never raises his voice.
But when Shane moves, it’s quietly, like he’s racing something invisible.
By week three, the youngest members of the team gravitate toward Shane instinctively. It’s hard not to. Shane is attentive and kind to them in a way that most of the veterans can’t be bothered to.
He’ll run them through reps after practice, talk over game footage before they go into video review, and demonstrate coordination exercises in the locker room. He’s always available, never yells, and never chirps them.
Shane is however precise and he notices everything.
“You can’t float high there,” he tells Luca quietly one morning before the others arrive. “If you do that in a game, they’ll notice.”
“Who?” Lucas asks, genuinely confused.
Shane pauses.
“Everyone,” he says.
They run the sequence again and when Lucas gets it right, Shane nods once.
“Good.”
There’s relief in his voice when he says it.
It’s the same but somehow wildly different during group practice. When the whole roster is on the ice and Wiebe’s voice carries clean and authoritative across the rink, Shane changes.
He’s still always there, still offers unwavering support, but it’s sharper, more anxious.
Luca misses a seam during a scrimmage.
Before anyone can react, Shane snaps into the space, takes the puck, and finishes the play.
Then he circles back during the reset.
“Earlier read,” he says under his breath. “Don’t let that hang.” His voice tight.
Luca nods quickly. He doesn’t understand why it feels urgent. It wasn’t a catastrophic mistake or even particularly unusual, but Shane skates the next shift like he’s waiting for something.
Luca sees it in the way his gaze flicks to the bench between plays. Shane always knows where the coaches are standing.
It’s the way his dad will constantly glance out the window in winter, always a little bit on the watch for snow.
The rookies talk about it in fragments.
“My buddies from juniors are jealous.” One of them says in the locker room one day while they’re waiting for the rest of the team. “But god Hollander makes me nervous,” laughing slightly.
“Yeah,” Hayes replies. “Same.”
Luca frowns.
“Not like—bad nervous,” the rookie clarifies. “Just… like if I screw up, it matters more.”
Luca knows what he means. Shane doesn’t yell. He just looks at you instead with that intensity like the world might crack if you miss again.
And then he fixes it.
One evening Luca lingers late to clean out his stall.
The room is quiet. Most of the team has already filtered out for the night and there’s a meditative rhythm to wiping down his space after a week of home games.
He’s halfway through reorganizing his gear when he realizes voices are drifting down the hall.
The coaches’ office door is open.
“…he’s covering for them,” Delaney is saying.
“I know, I see it,” Wiebe replies.
“We need to talk about it. Hollander steps in before we can correct anything and then the rookies never actually fix the problem.”
A pause. Luca tries not to notice how much he’s straining to hear Delaney.
“It’s not leadership right now, it’s preemption, or something but it’s an issue.”
“It’s not my favorite,” Wiebe replies, “but they also are all learning. The whole crew has gotten better since Hollander stepped in.”
“Coach. I’m serious,” Delaney’s voice is quiet now, “He thinks we’re going to punish them.”
Luca freezes. He should not be listening to this. And yet as they’re talking he feels puzzle pieces fall into place.
Silence stretches out before Wiebe answers carefully, “We don’t know that,”
“We know enough.”
“Montreal runs an old-school room,” Wiebe says. “Pressure and hierarchy. We’ve seen players come out of environments like that before. It takes time.”
“I get that that but this is…” Delaney pauses, “Hollander is a good kid, I want us to do right by him.”
The energy has shifted.
“I hear it, but there is no forcing Hollander to feel safe. And I wouldn’t want to, I expect he’s had enough agency taken away over his career.”
“So we wait it out?” Delaney asks, resigned.
“We stay steady. No surprise benchings. Even tones. Positive corrections only.”
“And we wait.”
“Yes. We wait.”
Luca slips his jacket on and walks out quieter than normal to not give himself away.
But the words echo.
II. Ottawa – Bood’s House
That night the team gathers at Bood’s. It’s early enough in the season that everyone shows up. No one is injured yet, no one has retreated into their own routines or quiet nights off. The whole roster crowds onto the back porch, voices overlapping while Bood wrestles with the grill. It’s an easy vibe with guys leaning back in their chairs, trading lazy insults and laughing at stories Luca only half understands.
Without meaning too, Luca finds himself tuning out of the surrounding burble and instead watching Shane. He’s standing near the edge of the group, gently leaning into Ilya’s space.
Barrett says something Luca misses and Shane laughs.
For a second he looks almost relaxed. Luca can’t help but think that maybe the coaches are wrong. Maybe Shane really is just intense. Maybe the rest of them are reading too much into it.
Then someone drops a stack of metal trays in the kitchen. It’s a sharp crash. Shane flinches.
It’s small, gone almost immediately. But Luca sees it clearly — the way his shoulders snap up, the way the tension rushes back into his body before he smooths it away again and all the looseness disappears.
Suddenly Luca can see exactly what Wiebe and Delaney were talking about. Shane isn’t pushing the rookies because he wants perfection. He’s pushing because he thinks perfection is the only thing that keeps you safe.
Luca watches him take a slow breath and thinks about the poster that used to hang over his bed back home. About the player he’d imagined when he first stepped onto the ice with him.The two versions don’t quite line up anymore.
Later, when the firepit is burning low and people have started drifting toward the door, Luca sees Bood step closer to Ilya.
They’re not whispering exactly, but they’ve moved a few feet away from the others, their voices low.
“How are you?” Bood asks.
For a split second Ilya looks tired. Not physically — something heavier than that.
“I am fine,” he says.
Bood lets out a quiet huff of air.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s what he says too.”
They stand there for a moment, the fire crackling between them.
“He is not settling,” Ilya says finally.
Bood doesn’t argue. He just watches their Captain.
“He scans the room like he’s waiting,” Ilya says after a moment. “And it does not always stop at home.” His jaw is tight.
“We’re not running that kind of room,” Bood says finally.
Luca pretends not to hear them.
But the words settle in his mind anyway.
That kind of room.
He doesn’t know exactly what that means. He just knows that Shane seems convinced something bad is coming and everyone else seems determined to prove that it isn’t.
Across the yard, Shane is still talking to Barrett, nodding along with something he’s saying
Luca isn’t sure yet who will be proven right: Shane or everyone else.