Chapter Text
Shane gets off the ice as fast as he can after the handshake lineup, a heavy buzz filling the space between his ears and drowning out the ambient noise of the arena. He chews frustratedly on his mouth guard, clamping down hard enough with his teeth on each bite that everything starts to go numb. Good.
The game was complete and total fucking mess. A resounding loss to the Centaurs by the Metros: despite having home-ice advantage, they were only able to score a single point the entire time. They’d fumbled shot after shot, not passing well, and getting way too aggressive with the other players on the floor. More penalties were handed out to his guys than any other game so far this season. He’d even been checked into the boards by one of his own teammates in a move that had left Shane blindingly furious and humiliated, but unable to do anything about it during play besides ignore the downwards draw of Rozanov’s mouth from across the rink and keep skating until the burning in his legs reached a fever-pitch.
The loss of synergy amongst Shane’s team was more obvious than it had ever been, since he came out – no, was outed. He had expected the reaction of the guys to be catastrophic, sure, but he’d also always imagined that they’d be able to put everything aside when they went out on the ice. Why should anything but hockey matter during the game? Hayden being a dad didn’t make him better or worse at playing left wing. J.J. dating women didn’t suddenly change his defense abilities.
Shane flies through his dress down, pre-shower routine, folding his uniform faster than he’s ever done before and shoving everything haphazardly into his duffel bag. He wants to get the sweat and stress of this game off his skin, gone from his underarms, out from underneath his fingernails.
He breathes heavily through his nose all the way through his post-game shower, squeezing his eyes shut under the harsh spray of water and trying to keep his head screwed right on his shoulders. The press was going to eat him alive, later – Shane’s heartrate picks up and his frenzied scrubbing slows down as the thought percolates heavily in his brain.
What was he supposed to say?
What happened out there? Well, my team’s collapsing because I kissed my boyfriend without being super, extra careful and it ended up on TMZ. I’m pretty sure that family members I’ve never even met on the other side of the world have seen it. My coach looks at me every day like he wants to strangle me, and my teammates look at me like I’m the dirt on the bottom of their shoes. Or like I broke all their sticks, on purpose, right before a big game.
Shane shuts off the shower stream and wraps his towel around himself. The tighter he pulls it, the less he has to focus on the chaos rolling around inside his head. He wraps and rewraps it with stiff hands, doing it over until his hands stay white even after he releases his grip.
He walks back out into the main space of the locker room, and that’s when everything goes from really, really horrible, to what Shane might call rock bottom, in a moment of greater sanity and control.
Shane stares at his locker, and it’s like time has come to a crawling stop. His mouth is suddenly dry, like some kind of double-sided gritty sandpaper got taped to his tongue and gums. There’s ringing in his ears – it’s way louder than the buzzing was, earlier. He didn’t think he hit his head during the game, but he did get checked into the boards. Did he hit his head? He feels dizzy. He has to lock his knees to stay upright, because it feels like his joints have been liquefied.
There’s red paint everywhere. Bright, awful, red paint, all over his cubby space and the surface of his locker.
Va chier traitor fif!
Fuck off traitor fag!
There’s a crude drawing of a penis next to the words. Shane thinks it looks like a third grader drew it, but there’s no third graders in this room, or on his team.
His jersey’s pushed up against the corner of the cubby, sat up just enough for Shane to see FIF scrawled across the shoulders in the same still-drying red paint as the rest of the mess. It looks garish and jarring against the blue backing of the jersey. The colours are hurting Shane’s eyes.
His duffel bag sits next to the jersey. It’s been opened, the contents poured out messily onto the bench and the moist surface of the locker room floor. He spots pieces from his off-the-rink change of clothes – a black compression shirt, his favourite pair of Ilya’s sweatpants, even Shane’s socks – ripped, cut, torn to shreds. It occurs to Shane, distantly, that he’ll have to wear the defaced jersey and his sweaty uniform pants if he wants to leave the locker room. He really, really wants to leave the locker room.
His feet won’t move, though, like the bottom half of his body is suddenly made of lead, while the rest of him twists uncontrollably in the wind. His head feels like it’s floating off into outer space.
Traitor.
Shane brought the team, this team, these guys, to three cups, to countless wins. But now, he’s a traitor? Being gay, being out and in love with Ilya, makes Shane a traitor to the empire he built with his own hands, his own sacrifices, his blood, sweat and tears?
Shane gags like he might throw up, and the ringing in his ears lessens just enough to let him to hear the sound of cruel laughter taking over the room. The guys are practically howling at his reaction; they’ve made him a laughingstock – their own captain, and Shane still isn’t good enough to ever fit in. No matter how hard he works, no matter how good, how talented he is, he’ll never be more than what they see him as.
To the left of his locker, he sees Hayden, still in a towel from his own shower, looking nearly as horrified as Shane feels. Hayden snaps out of his – his trance, his shock – faster than Shane does, though, grabbing the ruined jersey, Shane’s uniform pants, and a pair of Hayden’s own slides in a white-knuckled fist and pushing them against Shane’s chest. Shane’s arms come up to cradle the items on instinct, but he can barely feel their textures rubbing on his skin, just another buzz adding to the cacophony of horror screaming between his ears.
“Go to Rozanov,” Hayden breathes out, too close to Shane’s ear, “I’ll handle this, Holly – just – go to him, he’ll take care of you,” Hayden finishes in a rush, gripping the sides of Shane’s arms and pushing him towards the door of the locker room.
Go to Rozanov. Go to Ilya.
Shane’s body moves on autopilot, barely flinching when the sound of Hayden yelling at the top of his lungs reaches Shane’s ears as he bustles down the hallway. He’s still in his towel, the tainted uniform held close in his arms. One of Hayden’s shoes falls on the floor. Shane doesn’t stop moving.
Right, left, right, right, down this hall, down the next – Shane relies on his ingrained knowledge of the arena’s layout to get him to the Centaurs’ locker room. Of course he knows where it is, this rink is practically his second home, where he grew up, where he was drafted, where he –
Traitor fag!
Shane stops thinking. He needs to find Ilya, that’s what matters right now; finding Ilya is what’s important. He needs to find Ilya.
His head is pounding, tears welling up along his lower eyelashes, his nose getting itchy as it starts to run. Shane breaks into a jog, compartmentalizing the terrible feeling of his bare feet against the much-travelled-upon ground of the rink’s hallways, because he can’t stop now. He has to get there – Hayden told him to go to Ilya, so he has to make it before his mind catches up with his feelings and lets his body completely collapse.
Shane turns the next corner and sees the door to the guest team locker room. It’s twenty paces away, and he runs the whole distance, one hand gripping onto his jersey and the other holding his towel together. He doesn’t know where his uniform pants or Hayden’s second shoe went – they probably fell when he was jogging, and won’t his team get a kick out of seeing them once they’re all finished changing in the home team locker room and are walking out to leave, together, as a team, without him, and –
Shane’s at the Centaurs’ door.
Should he knock? His mom would want him to knock, that would be the polite thing to do, but his hands are full. He can’t knock and hold his jersey and keep his towel up. Shane’s breathing picks up and takes an overwhelmed, trembling step backwards –
– just in time for the door to swing open anyway, and then he’s staring right into Scott Hunter’s wide eyes. Oh, no.
Shane likes Scott. Well, mostly, he’s still a little mad that Scott and Kip stole the moment Shane had been imagining for himself and Ilya for years, in a world where they were braver. But other than that, Shane likes Scott! He’s a nice guy.
Scott right now, though, looks…well, Shane doesn’t really know, he never knows, but he’s guessing…angry? Maybe sad? Everything feels like it’s happening underwater, like he’d been skating on the Rideau Canal in the dead of winter, and the ice had cracked and he’d fallen through. Shane pictures himself, trapped under the ice, body frozen completely and wholly solid. It’s almost too easy to imagine. Shane wants to throw up. Maybe just getting this feeling, this horror, out of his body, will make him better.
“Hollander?” Scott says the name like a question – right, that’s Shane’s name. He should say something.
He tries to respond, but then Scott steps towards him and Shane scrambles backwards so fast that he falls flat on his ass. The friction of the floor against his spine above the towel hurts. His tailbone hurts. His heart hurts.
Scott looks at him for a second longer, hands outstretched like he wants to grab Shane and shake him, or something. Shane doesn’t want to be touched – can’t be touched – by anyone right now. Well, maybe by Ilya, but even then Shane’s not sure because his brain and body and skin are on fire –
Scott turns his body halfway back into the locker room and shouts.
“Rozanov!”