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Shane, 12 years old.
When Shane first started playing hockey as a tiny child, he was too young to manage the logistics of a shower by himself. His parents would load him into their sensible sedan after practice, still drenched in sweat, and they bundled him immediately into the bath as soon as they got home, where Shane would chatter endlessly at Yuna about what he had learned at practice and the games that they would watch together on TV. He had a little Ottawa Centaurs-branded rubber duck holding a hockey stick and wearing a helmet that he got to play with once he let his mom wash his hair. Bathtime became one of their favorite bonding rituals.
Once he grew older enough, however, it was expected that he would shower at the rink. Communal showers were a fact of life for every hockey player.
He remembered how hesitant he had been the first time, how wrong it had felt to stand in front of his rusted blue locker in the rink locker room as all the older boys stripped down around him, then grabbed their 2-in-1 body wash/shampoo from their bags and nonchalantly walked to the showers, naked as the day they were born.
Clearly it wasn’t a big deal. Everyone else was naked too, and obviously no one would be looking at him. That would be gay, and even at the age of 12, Shane already knew that was an insult. It wasn’t like he was much to look at anyway, he didn’t think. He hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet, and his cheeks were still round with baby fat. He was starting to think it might never happen for him, that he would be the short, chubby one on the team forever. Sometimes players on the opposing team would call him baby face when they were chirping him, and he tried not to hate it. It was better than when they chirped him about his eyes and asked whether he could even see the puck. But he was fine. He wasn’t a baby, even if he still looked young.
He knew his mom worried about him whenever he was quiet on the drive home, on days when the chirping had been particularly vicious. “You know they’re only going after you because they’re threatened by you,” she said. “You’re good, Shane. The best.” He would nod, and his mom would let it drop.
Shane took a deep breath and listened as the sound of laughing and chatting echoed through the locker room from the showers, over the sound of running water. His parents would be waiting for him, and they would expect him to be showered already because he was playing in a bigger arena now, and it was a longer drive home. He had graduated from baths with mom to showers by himself at home a few years ago. This shouldn’t be any different. Except here he had to wear shower shoes, because his mom was worried about him picking up weird toe fungus. Given how gross the locker room seemed, Shane thought that was probably a good idea.
Slowly, he stripped himself out of his sweaty underlayers, carefully folding them and laying them on top of his hockey bag in his locker, so that they could air out a little bit before he got them home to put in the laundry bin. He paused a moment before pulling down his briefs, and then he was naked. Okay. Well. That was that. The world didn’t seem to be ending.
He looked around out of the corners of his eyes. No one was looking at him. No one was even near him, because they were all in the showers. Where Shane needed to go wash himself, while everyone else was also washing themselves, and they were all naked. Right.
Shane put on his brand-new shower shoes, walked squeakily to the showers, and mercifully found an empty showerhead. He twisted the creaky handle, wincing at the terrible water pressure and the lukewarm temperature. He kept his eyes firmly fixed on the grody chipped tile in front of him and began soaping up.
“Hey, Holly!” said a friendly voice from next to him. He glanced out of the corner of his eye and recognized Brody, another center who was a year or two older than Shane. Brody was also a few inches taller and starting to fill out with muscle. Since Shane’s gaze had been fixed on the showerheads and only on the showerheads when he walked into the room, he had no idea who was next to him.
“Hey,” Shane answered, and then his gaze accidentally dropped down to the other boy’s dick. Oh god. Nope. He turned back to face the wall and hoped that Brody hadn’t noticed. He hadn’t been… he wasn’t trying to make it weird! It was just that he wasn’t used to hanging out with other naked people, and it was objectively kind of weird for another dude’s penis to be right there.
“That was a sick goal today,” Brody continued as if he hadn’t noticed anything. Thank god.
“Thanks,” Shane said to the wall. Brody had pubic hair. Shane didn’t have that yet, really. Okay, nope. Not following that line of thought, Hollander. Be normal. That didn’t happen.
Mercifully, that seemed to be the end of their conversation. Since he had been one of the last ones into the shower, he was also one of the last ones out of the shower, as all of the players grabbed the shitty rough free towels from the shelf, dried off, and slung the towels around their necks. Some of the boys were playfully swatting at each other with the towels. Shane wasn’t really sure where to look, mostly trying to keep his gaze on the floor. Except sometimes he had to look up to navigate around a corner and make sure that he wasn’t going to run into anybody, and whenever that happened, he found his gaze caught on other boys’ asses. God, he hoped he wasn’t blushing. If anyone noticed, he’d never hear the end of it.
Afterwards, most of the boys drenched themselves with spray Axe deodorant, to the point that Shane started coughing a little bit in the locker room. Between the fog from the showers and the fog of deodorant, the whole room looked a little bit hazy. He managed to dress himself without any more accidental penis glimpses, and by the time he piled into the back seat of his parents’ car, clean and comfortable in fresh sweats, he was feeling fine about the whole thing. He had been normal, he was pretty sure.
“How was practice?” David asked from the driver’s seat as they pulled out of the parking lot. “Everything go okay?”
“Yeah, Dad,” he answered, and slumped back in his seat, chewing on his hoodie string.
He would get used to it. It was part of hockey, and since hockey would always be part of his life, there was no other choice.
Ilya, 12 years old.
When Ilya was twelve years old, his mother committed suicide and his whole world collapsed around him. He could hardly think of anything else as he dragged himself through school and hockey practice like the ghost of the boisterous child he used to be. He missed her all the time, but especially because things that had previously been easy suddenly seemed so impossible. Of course he had known that his mother packed his hockey bag for him and always made sure that his laundry was clean, but he hadn’t really appreciated everything she had done for him until he was standing in front of the washing machine with the dirty hockey uniform that he needed in about an hour, staring in bewilderment at the names of the different functions.
How long did a washer and dryer take to finish? Would “quick wash” be fast enough? Was there a “quick dry”? Was he even supposed to put his hockey sweater in the dryer? He had no idea. Maybe he would have enough time to wash the uniform if his father was driving him to practice, but he didn’t think his father was home from work yet, so he would have to take the bus to the rink. He gave up and wore the uniform dirty, even though it smelled like sweat, which his mother would have hated – not that it mattered what she would have wanted, because she wasn’t fucking there.
It would have been nice to be inconspicuous, to fade away into the back of the room, but his growth spurt was starting already. He was taller than most of the rest of the boys in his class, one of the first boys to catch up to the height of the girls. Height was an advantage for hockey, so he was glad he would be tall. But the additional height did not help the feeling of wrongness in his body. He felt a little bit like a giraffe, trying to coordinate limbs that suddenly seemed absurdly long in proportion to the rest of him. Plus he had started hitting his head on things, especially when he tried to get in and out of cars and misjudged his own height. Good thing he had a thick skull.
After practice, he stood in the communal shower and turned the shower spigot as cold as the water would go. His gangly limbs already felt like lead, and under the steady stream of freezing water, they started to go numb. He closed his eyes and turned his face directly into the water, wishing that it would wash his whole body away down the drain.
He could hear his teammates showering around him, chatting and laughing as usual. No one paid him any mind as he continued to stand under the freezing spray. The voices around him filtered out of the showers, and then out of the locker room. When everything was still and silent, Ilya shut the water off and sunk down to the floor of the shower, wrapping his arms around himself. He pressed his chin against his knee and held himself as tight as he could manage, trembling in the cold puddles left behind from his shower.
After an indeterminate amount of time, he heard movement, and then a surprised voice. “Rozanov, is that you?” said his coach. “Jesus. I almost turned the lights out on you. What are you still doing in here?”
Ilya didn’t answer, only wrapping his arms tighter around his legs.
“Rozanov,” his coach said, stepping a little closer. It sounded like he was hesitant to enter the room, perhaps because of the water pooling on the floor. “You can’t stay here.”
“Why not,” said Ilya into his knees.
“Because you have to go home, kid,” the coach said. “Now come on. Get dressed. I have to go home and the lights have to be off before I leave.”
Used to following his coach’s commands, Ilya felt his limbs unfolding before he even thought about it. Still trembling slightly, he walked over to his locker and pulled his clothes on with fingers that felt dumb and clumsy. His day clothes were also dirty, but at least they were less sweaty. He waited twenty minutes for the next bus with wet hair in the freezing wind, and spent the bus ride shivering with his head pressed against the window.
By the time he got home, his father was home from work. Andrei was nowhere to be seen, probably holed up in his room again. His father was sitting in the living room drinking vodka from a crystal tumbler as he reviewed a file sitting on the coffee table in front of him.
“Hello, father,” Ilya said as he walked in the door.
“Ilya,” his father said, glancing up at him. “Your hair is wet.”
“Yes. Hockey practice.”
“Ah.”
Ilya dropped his hockey bag to the floor and hung his jacket on the hook. “What is for dinner?” he asked.
“Dinner? I already ate,” his father said. He took another sip of vodka, still absorbed in his file.
Ilya stared at him blankly. It was bad enough that his father had refused to speak his mother’s name since her death. It was bad enough that he seemed to forget he had children, or at least forget they had needs that were difficult for them to fulfill on their own. Sometimes his mother had been unable to get out of bed, but there were certain things, especially for her children, that she never let slide. At this point, Ilya hardly expected his father to show an interest, except when he succeeded on the hockey rink and his father could parade him around in front of his friends from work. But this level of blatant disregard made Ilya’s lower lip wobble, just once. He could not cry in front of this man.
All of a sudden, he was incandescently angry. For a second, the cold in his limbs was replaced by the warm rush of fury, and his cheeks flushed with the sudden temperature shift. He kicked his shoes off with far more force than necessary. He imagined himself walking over and smashing the coffee table in front of his father, yelling, screaming, releasing this horrible thing in his chest and demanding attention until his father acknowledged that he existed and his mother had existed and that someone clearly had to do something. That they could not go on like this, pretending everything was fine.
As soon as it had come, the rage left him, and the bone-deep tiredness settled back into his limbs. He walked over to the fridge and opened it. There was very little to be found, only old condiments, expired milk, and a package of carrots slowly turning to sludge in the bottom of a produce drawer. He opened the cupboard and found a box of crackers, which he stuck under his arm as he turned to trudge his way to his room. The crackers were dry and a little bit stale, but they were better than nothing.
Ilya missed his mother all the time, but especially when the prolonged exposure to the cold made him come down with a fever, and he lay in bed, shivering and hungry and alone, while his father apathetically continued about his day as if nothing had changed and Andrei played video games and cursed on the other side of his bedroom wall.
Shane, 15 years old.
Puberty, and his long-awaited growth spurt, finally arrived when Shane was 15-years-old. It was honestly kind of horrendous. He grew 7 centimeters in the course of a year, which meant that he also grew out of two pairs of skates and pretty much all of his existing hockey gear. His parents never complained, but he could tell that his dad was stressed about the extra expenses. Working for the government meant a steady paycheck, but his parents weren’t, like, rich or anything.
Also he was ravenously hungry pretty much all the time, both because of the growth spurt and because of the intensifying physical activity that came as he advanced through the levels of junior hockey. When he went back for two rounds of seconds at dinner, even his mother got to the point where she stopped saying He’s a growing boy, David! and started looking at him with eyes that said Wow, really, Shane? Where can you possibly be keeping all of that? He didn’t know. The growth spurt meant that he was no longer the chubby kid in the locker room, but he still had some baby fat left in his cheeks. He ate and ate and tried not to feel disgusting about it.
Turning fifteen also made communal showers… well… a little bit trickier. During his initial years of showering with the team, he had been terrified enough of somebody looking at him – or, god forbid, accidentally looking at somebody – that accidentally popping a boner hadn’t really been much of a problem. Too scared. But now he was older, and his hormones were driving him up the wall, and the whole communal shower situation wasn’t as daunting anymore. Plus he usually masturbated in the shower at home, so there was probably some kind of Pavlov thing going on there. He’d learned about that in biology class last week.
It was a fact of life that sometimes other boys got hard in the shower. If it was noticed, how the situation was handled depended on who was unlucky enough to get hard, and their relationships with all of their teammates. He’d heard the refrain often enough. Between friends, it often went something like this:
“Ayy what the fuck man, were you looking at me? You a little cocksucker, huh?”
“Shut the fuck up, bro. I was just thinking about your mom.”
“I’m gonna tell your giiiiirlfrieeeeeeeeend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend! I don’t even like her like that! Fuck off, bro!”
And with a little more ribbing, and the words cocksucker and fag thrown around in a joking tone because obviously it couldn’t be true, the boys would move on. It was just another form of bonding, even if the thought of being on the other end of that particular brand of teasing made Shane want to shrivel up and die.
Usually, it wasn’t a big deal. Usually. But on one occasion that Shane would never forget, from that awful year when he was turning fifteen and his body seemed determined to betray him, the teasing slid over the line into something bigger and more ominous.
Shane was always the quiet dude on the team, but he would always make one or two close friends. There would always be another quiet, good Canadian boy that his mom liked, whom he could hang out with at his house as they played acceptable non-violent video games like Fifa or Mario Kart. Or there would be a goalie who was weird-as-fuck, but appreciated Shane’s quiet intensity and matched it with his own. They could sit on the bus together and enjoy each other’s silence. Having one or two close friends and playing well enough that he was always on the coach’s good side had always been enough to protect Shane from the worst kinds of teasing.
Those protections didn’t extend to everybody. He knew that. But he didn’t really understand it until that day in the locker room. He was in the middle of his shower, lost in thought about his powerplay performance and staring at the tiles as usual, when a commotion broke out on the other side of the room.
On the other end of the shower room were a group of the popular boys. They had all been showering and chatting already when Shane entered the shower, but now he saw that there was another person hidden over in the corner, a smaller boy named Santos. Shane forgot his first name, which would make him feel bad whenever he reflected on this memory.
Santos was a winger who had joined the team this year. He was fast on his skates, but he was weak on stick handling and extremely timid in the locker room. He also had the misfortune of being one of the smallest boys on the team and one of the only other Asian players in the league. Shane thought he might be Filipino, or maybe half-Filipino like Shane was half-Japanese, but he had never really talked to the kid. And now, apparently, Santos had gotten hard in the shower.
The words that the boys were using were not unlike the teasing words that were so familiar at this point, but Shane felt goosebumps break out down his arms at the change in tone. This was not the same kind of teasing that usually ensued when something like this happened. There was no gentle hint of amusement in the voices of the boys, no camaraderie. This was cruel.
“Oh, what the fuck? Were you looking at me? Are you a little cocksucker, huh?”
“No,” Santos said, although he looked like he was trying to fold in on himself, making himself as small a target as possible.
“Oh, but I think you are. Is that your problem, Santos? Are you a fucking faggot?”
“I’m not,” he said, but it was weak. The more Shane thought about it, the more he thought he knew why. Santos had always seemed a little… well… girly, compared to the rest of the team. Shane hadn’t thought that much of it. All that mattered was how he played, and based on that alone, Shane could tell that he and Santos were not going to be playing at the same level for very long.
At Santos’s weak response, the other boys seemed to scent blood in the water, and began to crowd Santos into the corner. There were three of them, and they were the tall, popular white boys who filled the locker room with raucous noise on every occasion. The confident ones.
Shane should intervene. He was the Team Captain now, for fuck’s sake, and he had a responsibility to make sure that hazing and bullying did not take place in the locker room when he was present. All the team captains sat through a yearly meeting about hazing, so he knew what it was and what his responsibilities were. It was just… now that he was actually confronted with a real-world situation, he couldn’t bring himself to move towards the group on the other side of the room. He shuffled on his feet, uncertain. What would he even say? Stop it? Like that was gonna work. What if they pushed him into a corner and accused him of being Santos’ boyfriend? What if they beat him up? Was that what was happening here?
He had to do something. One phrase from training came back to him: find a trusted adult. As quickly as he could, he snuck out of the shower and grabbed a towel to wrap around his waist as he headed for the door of the locker room. Hesitantly, he stepped out into the hallway. A few people gave him weird looks – his hair was still dripping wet, and it was strange for anyone to be so naked out in the communal hallway, where there were parents milling around and a few figure skaters stretching as they prepared for their next class. To his immense relief, his coach turned the corner, his brow furrowing at the sight of Shane standing in the hallway. Coach was a middle-aged white man with an impressive mustache who wasn’t Shane’s favorite, of all the coaches he’d ever had, but at least he was an adult.
“Hollander? What are you doing in the hallway?” Coach said. “You should probably get dressed first, buddy.”
“Something’s going on in the showers,” Shane said.
“What do you mean, something’s going on in the showers?” his coach asked. “Like someone snuck a girl in there?”
Shane didn’t know what to say. He stared up at his coach with panicked eyes and hoped it was enough. Apparently, Shane’s status as the team’s captain and best player was enough for coach to take him seriously, because the older man sighed and pushed open the swinging door to enter the locker room. Shane stood for a moment in the hallway, feeling kind of dizzy. He realized he wasn’t really breathing, and imagined he was out on the ice trying to catch his breath after a hard shift. In, out. Smooth. It would be okay now.
By the time he got back into the locker room, the situation had apparently been resolved. Coach seemed to be giving some kind of gruff speech about team spirit to the boys who had crowded Santos into the corner. Shane didn’t see Santos until he walked back to his own locker in the far back corner of the room, and found Santos standing there unmoving, half-dressed, staring at his own shirt in his hands with tears glistening in his eyes.
Shane walked back to his own locker, looking at Santos out of the corner of his eye. The other boy still didn’t move.
“Are you… okay?” he asked.
Santos gave a start, as if he hadn’t registered Shane’s presence at all. Santos quickly pulled his t-shirt over his head, then flashed a shaky smile at Shane. “Yeah,” he said. “Fine.”
Shane nodded, and that was that. But Santos never came back to the next practice, and at their next game, Coach announced that Santos had quit without any additional fanfare.
After that, in the showers, Shane stared even more determinedly at the tile than before. Sure, sometimes he was curious, but this incident had only reinforced what he already knew: those kinds of thoughts were not only unwelcome in a locker room, but they were also actively dangerous to himself and his career. So. He wouldn’t have those thoughts anymore. Those kinds of curiosities were out of the question, because he was headed to Juniors next year and then to the NHL draft, and that was all that really mattered.
Girls were awesome anyway, with their smooth skin and beautiful smiles and… hair. Lots of hair. And all that. He was still a virgin, but maybe that would be changing soon. He was thinking about asking Laura from French class to be his girlfriend, because she always helped him with his homework. That would be… fun. Right? Nice. He was excited. Of course he was.
Ilya, 17 years old.
Ilya did not mind the communal showers. Showering with his teammates was far better than sitting with all of his father’s police friends in a sauna, which he had been forced to do on occasion for a very long time. The sauna was nice. His father’s friends were not. He shuddered at the thought of their old man potbellies, their knobby knees and weird, scraggly body hair. The raucous way they laughed and the bawdy jokes they told about women and politics, raspy with their smoker voices. Ilya knew that he would get old someday, but he would never look like that if he could help it.
So. Showers with his teenage teammates were fine. He was always one of the taller boys in the room, and he felt the gazes of the other boys follow him with envy. It was no wonder. He had a giant cock, a strong jawline, and a magnificent ass. What was not to like? He knew he was attractive, and he was beginning to sense all the ways that could be turned to his advantage, when he flirted and teased and pushed a little bit further at the boundaries.
He commanded the locker room with a roving gaze. He had been the captain of almost every hockey team he had ever been on, and he would be the captain of the Russian National Juniors team this year, before he went first in the NHL draft. He would laugh and tease with the other high-spirited boys, slinging his arm around their shoulders and making up dirty stories about the girl who worked at the snack kiosk at the local rink until they slapped at his shoulders and told him he was full of shit. He was full of shit, but that wasn’t the point of the stories anyway.
He knew that he intimidated his quieter teammates, who initially avoided his eyes and stayed out of his way. Some locker rooms were bad, and the quiet ones were quiet for a reason. This would not be so in his locker room. The quiet ones would soon learn that he might be loud, but he wasn’t cruel. He tried not to overwhelm them, but enough gentle teasing would pull even the toughest nuts out of their shell. It was part of his job as captain, to ensure team cohesion, and he took those responsibilities very seriously. It was also fun.
With that in mind, he walked up to the showerhead next to their team’s newest defenseman, a giant, awkward kid named Malkov. He turned the shower on, then caught the other boy’s eye and winked. Malkov looked away, staring at the ground.
“I know it’s hard to look at me, when I am simply so beautiful,” Ilya said.
Malkov looked back up at him, scrutinizing him with narrowed eyes. Ilya mimed flipping long hair over his shoulder, batting his eyelashes at the other boy before a crooked grin broke out over his face. The other boy still didn’t say anything, probably wondering whether his maniac captain had an angle. No matter. Ilya could carry on a one-sided conversation like no one else.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You are beautiful too. We are all beautiful people in this locker room.”
“Okay,” Malkov said, although Ilya saw a small smile as the other boy turned his face to the ground. Ilya thought it was probably involuntary, but he was glad to see it nonetheless. There was a sense of humor inside that hunk of muscle.
“You like the team? Having a good time?” he asked, switching tactics.
“Sure,” Malkov said.
“Good. Then you should come out with us tonight. Nothing too crazy, just a restaurant and then we walk along the river. Bessonov is 18, he will buy enough vodka for everyone.”
“I don’t – “
“Great. We meet by the river by the rink at 9 o’clock tonight. Don’t be late!”
And sure enough, Malkov was there that evening, still looking tentative and awkward in a jacket that was somehow oversized even on his massive frame, but he was there. Ilya grinned at him, then stretched to fling his arm around the other boy’s shoulders as he marched him towards the restaurant, chattering at him the whole way and letting Malkov gently bump his elbow into his ribs whenever he said something particularly ridiculous.
So Ilya did not mind all of the things that came with hockey: the communal showers, the close quarters, the endless travel, or the unavoidable teenage boy stink of the locker room. Hockey gave him the world, and freedom to be away from his family. He tried to be observant, to help his teammates open up.
Sometimes, though, being observant was starting to feel a little more dangerous. He sometimes found his gaze lingering. On a muscular back, pulling on a t-shirt. On the hair on another boy’s chest as they stood in their sweaty underlayers after the game, before they went to the showers together. On a round hockey ass in the shower.
To act on these impulses would be insane. Flirting as a joke was one thing, but anything more would be a clear violation of every rule he had ever learned for how to conduct himself in a hockey locker room. Not that he had ever paid much attention to the rules, but there were some lines that simply should not be crossed.
Still, his gaze lingered. Never too long, never too obvious. And he became more aware of the gazes that lingered on him, especially when Sasha began hanging around the rink more all of a sudden.
His coach’s son was, as Ilya knew, somewhat of a disappointment to his family. Although he was tall and not uncoordinated, Sasha had given up hockey as a child after only a year. Ilya did not know him particularly well, and he had never spent much time around the rink, preferring instead to hang out with avant-garde art and fashion enthusiasts who were always too cool and intelligent to have much interest in stupid hockey players.
Sasha was tall and slim, but he wore his lanky limbs with a kind of elegant grace. He had a mop of dark hair and lips that Ilya could not stop looking at whenever Sasha sat on the sidelines, watching the game as if he had any interest in hockey.
Ilya could not figure out this sudden change of heart, until one day Sasha walked into the locker room and stood at the door of the shower room. He paused in the doorway, staring at Ilya, who happened to be one of the last ones showering. No one else was paying any attention, and Ilya was closest to the door.
Ilya stared back for a moment, then raised his eyebrows. “Can I help you?” Ilya asked.
As Ilya watched, Sasha’s gaze dropped slowly from Ilya’s mouth – not his eyes, his mouth, Ilya was sure – to his chest, and then… lower. His eyes flicked back up to Ilya’s eyes, and there was something mischievous and sparkling that made Ilya want to walk up to him and pin him against the wall.
“Oh, I was just looking for my father,” Sasha said. What a strange lie. Why would his father, the coach, be in the shower room?
“He’s not here,” Ilya said simply.
“I can see that,” Sasha answered. “Well. Thank you anyway.”
Sasha made Ilya curious, even though it was a bad idea. So Ilya lingered in the showers, lingered in the locker room after practice, until sure enough, one day, Sasha came to find him. And Ilya learned something new about himself, something that he knew that he would never be able to share with the world, but something secret and exciting nonetheless.
He always had liked trouble.
Shane, 19 years old.
By the time Shane reached his rookie year in the NHL, communal showers were simply part of everyday life. In some strange way, he thought that they’d helped his confidence. It was hard to worry too much about how his body looked when he was naked around other people almost every day of his life, and thanks to the growth spurt, he was neither remarkably short nor tall in the locker room. Kinda average, really, in most regards, except when he stepped out onto the ice.
He knew how to conduct himself in a communal shower. You didn’t want to make direct eye contact unless you were talking to someone directly, but you also couldn’t spend the entire time looking at the floor, or you would accidentally run into someone. And if you ran into someone, while you were both naked, there was the danger of accidental dick-to-dick contact. So he usually ended up staring at people’s chests. At this rate he could probably identify all of his teammates by their pecs, which wasn’t as weird as it sounded.
Even though they all played the same sport, the bodies in the locker room varied a lot. Some of the men were broader and more muscular, some skinnier and lithe. Some had brown nipples, some pink. He was getting to know the Voyageurs at training camp, and it was still a little strange to be on a team with men who were so much older than he was. There were some very hairy Eastern Europeans and one Greek guy whose entire back was covered with thick, dark hair. Shane was naturally mostly hairless, which he preferred. Over the years, he had accidentally caught a glimpse of most of his teammates’ penises at some point, but even that wasn’t particularly interesting anymore. Everybody in the locker room had one.
The point was, Shane was a consummate professional on the ice and in the locker room, even at 19 years old. So he had absolutely no fucking idea why he was staring at Ilya fucking Rozanov in the shower after the CCM shoot.
He really needed to get it together. He didn’t want Rozanov to get the wrong idea. Except that Rozanov was looking at him with a cocky lift of his eyebrow, and Shane had absolutely no idea what he was going to do about the indisputable fact that he wanted him, and it seemed like Rozanov might want him right back.
Ilya, 19 years old.
Hollander was very boring and exceedingly annoying, but he was hot. Shorter than Ilya and less muscular, smooth-skinned and dark-haired. Ilya liked his dark eyes, especially when they were bright with annoyance. Hollander was fun to tease. Ilya should have known that would be a dangerous combination, but when he’d suggested that Hollander be invited to join him in the CCM shoot, all he had been thinking about was that moment in the hotel gym when something electric had leapt between them. It would make for good television, if they could translate that chemistry into the commercial. Plus, who knew when he would have the opportunity to get Hollander alone again?
Ilya had expected to tease. To rile him up. He hadn’t expected to laugh so much while shooting the commercial. It wasn’t fair, trying to stare into Hollander’s face as he attempted to glare, which only made him look more adorable. When they held the face-off position, he could see every single freckle on Hollander’s cheeks. He looked like a disgruntled kitten. It was cute.
Still, given Hollander’s reputation as the perfect Canadian boy, he honestly hadn’t expected it when Hollander started staring at him in the showers. When the consequences of Hollander’s staring became…. physically obvious. Ilya didn’t think that Hollander had gotten hard on purpose, but it was still significantly bolder than he would have anticipated, even though the way that Hollander stared suggested that he simply could not help it. Ilya could not blame him. Again, he knew he was hot. Apparently not even good Canadian boys could resist. Plus, he liked knowing that Hollander liked him enough to overcome his boring stick-up-his-ass Canadian-ness and do something stupid.
Ilya had never been so glad to be alone in the locker room as when he walked towards Hollander, who had clearly been waiting to put his shoes on just so that he could attempt to lie to Ilya’s face about not being attracted to him. Hollander could have left the locker room already without worrying that word of this would get out -- Ilya certainly was not going to say anything, and he wouldn’t have chased after him if Hollander decided to run away. But there he was, sitting on the bench, still blushing furiously. Probably still turned on, since he’d decided not to let them have any fun while they were still in the locker room.
After their brief conversation, Ilya grinned to himself as he pulled his clothes out of his locker, watching Hollander leave the locker room with one nervous look back at Ilya over his shoulder. The tips of his ears were bright pink.
Ilya was definitely going to knock. This was going to be fun.
Shane, 23 years old.
While the Voyageurs stadium was old, the player facilities had been renovated to include every amenity, including in the locker room. The first time he had walked in the room and found his stall with his name on it, Shane had felt a little ridiculous at the level of luxury. He was more used to it now, but the amenities still sometimes took him by surprise. Almost everything Shane needed – a massage, a physiotherapist, an ice bath, an appointment with the team doctor, a smoothie, laundry – was right there on hand whenever he asked for it. He appreciated the thorough level of professionalism, from their equipment managers to their medical staff to the coaching staff, and always tried to make his gratitude clear.
The tone in the locker room was also different than the locker rooms Shane remembered from his teenage years. Sure, there was teasing, but they were all adult men. A significant portion of the team was older than Shane, even though he had been chosen to be their captain. Different groups formed in the locker room – the older guys who wanted to get home to their wives-and-girlfriends or gaggle of adorable kids, and the younger guys who wanted to go out and party with the puck bunnies. Shane inevitably found himself left stranded a little awkwardly between the two groups, but perhaps that was why he was qualified to lead both of them. He would go out with the guys and sit in the corner of the bar, nursing a single beer or ginger ale, but he could also go have a nice family dinner with Hayden and Jackie and have a perfectly lovely time.
He really did love his team. He only wished that they would stop worrying about him, and attempting to meddle in his love life. He knew that it was well-intentioned, that they thought he was lonely. What could he say? Please don’t be so worried about my sex life. By the way, do you all remember Ilya Rozanov?
They were all in a good mood after an early season 4-2 win against Buffalo at home. Shane had a goal and an assist, and was already starting to climb the leaderboard in the scoring race against Ilya. Boston already had a cup, but he thought this might be Montreal’s year. He couldn’t let that asshole be the only one with a cup forever. Winning might finally knock him down a peg or two, which would be far less than the checking that would be required to bring Rozanov’s ego back down to earth, but there was only so much he could do.
He was distracted by thoughts of the cup and of Rozanov as he massaged the shampoo into his scalp, when a friendly hand unexpectedly slapped his shoulder. He nearly shrieked, before a friendly, familiar voice boomed next to him.
“Notre capitaine!” said JJ. “Are you coming out tonight, man?”
Shane rinsed the shampoo out of his hair, then opened his eyes to look up at JJ, who loomed over him a little comically. “I don’t know,” he said. “With the road trip coming up…”
“Ah ah ah, don’t be like that,” JJ said. “We are even getting old married Hayden Pike to come out with us tonight. You cannot resist.”
“Is that so?”
“It is indeed,” called Hayden from the other side of the room.
Shane sighed. “Where are we going?
“That’s more like it!” JJ crowed, starting the showerhead next to Shane. He had to tilt the showerhead up so that it would reach the top of his head.
Shane turned off his water, grabbed a towel (always soft, unlike the shitty scratchy towels he had grown up with in countless rinks that were always somehow too small), and walked back to his stall. The team slowly began to filter back into the locker room, and the conversation continued as they began getting dressed.
“We were thinking pizza, and then probably a bar. I know, I know, it’ll mess with your diet, but I think they have a few salad options that might not suck,” Hayden said from his stall. “Hey, and, uh. You know Jackie’s friend Stephanie, from college? I’ve mentioned her a few times.”
“Sure,” Shane said, staring down at the socks he was pulling onto his feet and dreading the direction that this was heading.
“Well. Jackie will be there tonight, since it’s our last home game for a while and we got a sitter so that she could come. And we thought… maybe Stephanie could tag along?”
“Sure,” Shane said.
“Yeah? You want to meet her?”
Shane resisted the urge to sigh. “The more the merrier, I guess. But please don’t invite her specifically for me.”
Hayden and JJ exchanged a look over his head. Shane winced, and hoped they were too busy looking at each other to notice. He knew that they worried about him being alone and that they wondered why he hadn’t settled down with some girl already. Then he could be one of the old marrieds, instead of being a young, single dude who hated partying with the young, single dudes. The truth was that without a place in either of those groups, Shane would always be a slightly awkward fit in the social fabric of the team. They would vehemently deny it out of loyalty to their captain, but it was a plain fact. Shane was integral to the team, but he still didn’t fit.
Whatever tête-à-tête JJ and Hayden were having seemed to come to an end. “I know, I know,” JJ said. “It is so tragic. You try to get him laid, he always has some excuse.”
“I get laid plenty,” Shane retorted, but everyone ignored him. So much for respecting their captain.
Stephanie was blonde, and smiley, and pretty, and he actually didn’t mind talking to her, because she had good opinions on hockey, which Shane always appreciated as a quality in a conversation partner. By the time Shane made his excuses to head out around 10 pm, he got the impression that she would have come home with him, if he asked.
He didn’t ask.
Ilya, 25 years old.
The 2017 All-Stars Game was somehow the first opportunity they had in their careers to play on the same team, and Ilya had been unreasonably excited about the idea until all the paparazzi photos of Shane and Rose started emerging on the internet. Until he arrived in Florida, however, it hadn’t occurred to Ilya that they were also celebrating another milestone: they would be sharing a locker room for the first time since that fateful day after the CCM commercial, when an interest shown in the showers had turned into… whatever they were. Probably nothing, now, he had thought, moping in his stupid tropical shirt in this stupid tropical bar. Until Shane Hollander showed up and surprised him, as he always did.
Ilya liked the All-Stars Game. It was the only game of the year when the stakes of competition didn’t matter at all, and the atmosphere was always relaxed. It became acceptable to show off a little more, and Ilya always liked to try ridiculous spin-o-rama goals and improbable five-hole shots more than he would ever dare during the actual season. The dramatics didn’t always tip points in his favor, but no one cared, least of all the crowd. Everyone was here to have fun.
This year, perhaps he laid on the dramatics a bit thick. He couldn’t help it. He could feel his whole body thrumming with a constant refrain: Shane wasn’t dating Rose. They weren’t getting married. He still had a chance. A chance for what, he didn’t know, but as the final seconds of the game ticked down and he slid another blind pass to Shane, tape-to-tape, who stopped on a dime to receive the pass and then executed one of the cleanest dekes around a defenseman that Ilya had ever seen in his life before slapping a ridiculous goal to the three hole, he thought he wasn’t the only one who was feeling a little elated about this whole situation.
The goal also gave Ilya an excuse to skate over towards Shane on the ice and wrap his arms around his shoulders for the celly, grinning. He couldn’t help himself. He pressed an obnoxious, sloppy kiss to Shane’s cheek as the end-of-game buzzer blared and a roar went up from their team. Everyone would think he was being annoying, and Hollander played along by wiping Ilya’s spit off his face with an exaggerated look of disgust. Maybe not that exaggerated. Shane was a fastidious motherfucker. None of it mattered more than the rush of playing together.
He kept a friendly arm slung around Shane’s shoulders as they entered the locker room, even though he knew it would look a little suspicious. Sure enough, Shane shoved him off with an exaggerated sigh as soon as they entered the locker room. “Okay, Rozanov, the goal was good, but not that good,” he said. A few of their teammates chuckled.
Ilya didn’t care, didn’t care, didn’t care. He wanted to pick Hollander up and carry him off to the equipment room somewhere and suck his dick. He wanted to grab him around the shoulders again, around the waist, and never let go.
His heartrate finally settled down to a more acceptable tempo as they stood in the showers, separated by a few showerheads as they had been in that empty rink in Toronto once upon a time. Ilya tried not to ogle him too obviously this time. Shane, for his part, was keeping his eyes determinedly fixed on the tiles in front of him. Ilya tried to be good, because getting outed like this would destroy their careers, and besides, Shane would definitely kill him. He began soaping his arms, his torso, his upper back. As he washed himself, coming down from the adrenaline, feeling the bright joy of the game simmer down into a more melancholy mood, he snuck glances out of the corner of his eye at Shane.
It was strange to be showering in a hockey locker room with someone he had fucked, with that beautiful body that he knew almost better than his own. He knew he shouldn’t be looking, that it would be suspicious and weird for him to be looking at anyone in the locker room, let alone Hollander. Rozanov and Hollander were still supposed to hate each other, despite this begrudging display of camaraderie in the conditions of the All-Stars game.
He was struck, all of a sudden, by the urge to walk over to Hollander. Not to fuck him, not here. What they had done on the ice basically already counted as fucking, if you asked Ilya. What he wanted in that moment was far simpler. He felt a visceral yearning to walk over to Hollander and press a gentle kiss to the exposed nape of his neck. He wanted to wrap his arms around him from behind and sway under the steady spray of the showers together, lost in their own universe, teammates and support staff and the whole world be damned.
Shane would elbow him in the head if he tried, and be right to do so. It wasn’t his fault. This clearly was not the time or place for such thoughts. Ilya was a ravenous hunger, when it came to Shane Hollander. There was nothing else he could do.
Shane, 29 years old.
Walking into the Montreal locker room before their first playoff game against Ottawa was one of the hardest things that Shane had ever done. He’d never been the most popular guy on any team, but he had always been accepted in his quiet and respected for his skill. Now he could feel the hostility radiating from nearly every corner of the room, except for Hayden. Even JJ, who Shane had at least talked to prior to the game and felt cautiously optimistic that things might be relatively okay with in the future, was uncharacteristically silent, staring into his own stall.
The game went well, all things considered. Face-offs with Ilya were strange now that everyone knew that they loved each other. Every time they squared up against each other, Shane was torn between wanting to talk to Ilya, check in with him, and the awareness that these face-offs would definitely end up as highlights on ESPN as they reviewed the game. He could already feel millions of eyes on the back of his neck. Montreal won 2-1, but there was little satisfaction in it for Shane.
Even in the showers after the game, the team was strangely silent. The playoffs were grueling, and no one wanted to celebrate too early. Winning the first game in the first series was hardly reason to go wild. But Shane had won three Stanley Cups with this team, and he knew how winning the first game of a playoff series usually made the locker room feel: upbeat. Satisfied. Confident. Hungry. There was none of that in the locker room now.
Shane walked into the showers, picking a random showerhead near Comeau since the room was nearly full. He turned the water on scalding hot, even though a voice in the back of his head objected that the warm water wasn’t good for his skin or hair, but he didn’t care. He needed the warmth of the water to leech the tension out of his muscles. Maybe he should have gone with an ice bath first. There was nothing quite like going directly from the numbness of an ice bath to the warmth of a hot shower.
Tentatively, he looked to his left at Comeau. He tossed around possible questions in his head, unsure of what would be best received. How did Comeau feel after the game? Any observations that could help them with the rest of the series? Have I lost your respect and friendship forever? Is it always going to be like this, from this point forward?
Before he could decide on acceptable question to ask, Comeau turned to him with an unfriendly glare. “What are you looking at me for?” he asked.
Shane shook his head, then “Nothing. Sorry. Just thinking about the game,”
“Yeah. Sure you were.” Comeau said, before shutting off his water and stalking out of the room. Other people had watched their little exchange, he was sure, and Shane was left standing frozen under the spray of water that suddenly felt uncomfortably warm. He turned the temperature down with hands that suddenly felt numb and clumsy.
For the first time in a very long time, Shane felt 15-years-old again, standing in the showers as the boys bore down on the unfortunate Santos, except this time, he was the one in that corner. Offering denials was impossible. He was a cocksucker, a faggot, every slur that he’d ever heard thrown around in a hockey locker room. He wasn’t ashamed of it anymore, or at least he was trying not to be. He wasn’t afraid of his own desires, at least. He wanted Ilya, loved him, was committed to him. To Comeau, it didn’t matter that he was an adult who had been trying to talk to someone he considered a friend. Shane was gay, and in love with Ilya Rozanov, so none of that mattered. Years of friendship and trust and respect, and it was always going to come down to this.
Shane stayed under the spray of the shower for a long, long time, wishing that his body could melt and flow down the drain with the rest of the shampoo suds.
Ilya, 30 years old.
Having Shane in the Centaurs locker room was still surreal for Ilya, even though they were weeks into the season. Their stalls had been set up next to each other without them having to specifically request it, which Ilya thought reflected well on the Centaurs organization. Bringing Shane to Ottawa was obviously the first and most significant demonstration of their acceptance, but it would have meant very little if the organization had not also paid attention to the little things that affected their day-to-day experience on the team.
Showering with the team and Shane was also novel. He had been showering with the team all his life, of course, and trust him, he took every opportunity to shower with Shane. With the exception of the 2017 All-Stars Game, those activities had never been combined, and Florida happened before they had managed to admit how they felt to each other.
The week before the first game of the season, Shane had sat Ilya down for a very serious conversation. They were sitting on their couch at their now-shared home in Ottawa, having recently returned from their honeymoon. They had been having a good day. They had taken Anya on a long walk once Shane got back from his morning run, they had worked out together based on instructions from their trainers, and they were going to cook dinner together. Soon they would be playing together, and they were going to be unstoppable.
When he sat them down for his very serious conversation, Shane was perched much further away from him than he usually would be, probably to emphasize that he was very serious. Unfortunately for him, Ilya found his captain-face both a little hilarious and entirely adorable, so they weren’t off to a good start. Ilya tried not to pout at him and pay attention to what he was saying.
“We need to talk about PDA, before the season starts.”
“PDA?” Ilya asked. Was this some kind of new hockey acronym? Shane wanted to talk about hockey all the time, but this would be a little dramatic even for him.
“No. Public Displays of Affection. PDA.”
“Ah. And? We got married. I think that is a pretty big public display of affection.”
At the mention of their marriage, Shane reflexively began twisting his wedding ring. He was still wearing the ring on his finger, for now, although he would transfer it back to the gold chain around his neck before the season started.
“I know,” Shane said, still worrying at his ring. “I know we’re married. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to be professional in the locker room.”
“Okay. You are always professional. I am always professional.”
Shane gave him a skeptical look at that, then sighed. “I just want to set some boundaries.”
Ilya nodded, pretending to consider the idea very carefully. “Okay. I promise not to fuck you until everyone else leaves the showers.”
Shane swatted his chest. “I’m serious, Ilya.”
“I’m serious too! I’m respectful guy. I understand boundaries.”
Shane rolled his eyes.
“Why? You don’t think? Always you underestimate me. I am not an asshole.”
Shane rolled his eyes at that, but he still scooted a little closer towards Ilya on the couch. “For the record, you’re such an asshole,” he said. “But. Can we just… agree on a little distance, in the locker room and on the ice? “
“Distance?” He didn’t like the sound of that.
“I don’t mean, like, stay away from me. I meant more, like, no kissing.”
Ilya considered this proposal. “Not even a peck?” He had learned this word from David, and he liked using it.
Shane considered this counterproposal. “Okay, maybe a peck from time to time, in the locker room, if they are no cameras. But no making out. I don’t want to make the team uncomfortable, not when it’s already going to be weird.”
Ilya shook his head. “Is not Montreal. Most of team was at our wedding, anyway. They know that we kiss.”
“I know.”
“Team is very gay.”
“I know. I just… please, Ilya?”
As if there was anything in the world that Ilya would not give him, if he asked like that. “Okay,” he said. “I save the big make-out for when we win the Stanley Cup together. That is okay, yes?”
Shane beamed at him, and finally closed the distance between them on the couch, taking Ilya’s hand. “Definitely. Can’t let Scott Hunter outdo us.”
He’d pressed a gentle, grateful kiss to Ilya’s lips, and that had been that.
So. Ilya was on his best behavior. They walked to the showers together, and chatted politely while showering– that wasn’t against the rules. Ilya tried very hard to keep his eyes focused only on his husband’s eyes as they talked to each other, remembering their conversation and his promise. “I want to be with you all the time, but we have to show the organization that we can be separate, too,” Shane had said.
Ilya was the best husband, and he had been remarkably good all season. He knew it, Shane knew it. So he thought he deserved a little reward. With that in mind, Ilya lingered in the showers for a few extra moments after Shane shut off his water and turned to head back to the locker room. This gave Ilya plausible deniability to watch Shane leave the room, and stare at his husband’s ass at he went. Who could blame him? It was a spectacular view.
Ilya was disturbed from his reverie by another voice. “Oh my god,” Bood said from his place at a showerhead on the opposite side of the room. “Is this what actually you’ve been like? This whole time? Holy shit, man.”
“Of course he’s always been like this,” Hayes added from Ilya’s right. “You were at their wedding.”
“Been like what?” Ilya asked. He was not blushing.
“You’re looking at Hollander’s ass with heart-eyes, motherfucker,” Bood said.
“He’s a hopeless romantic,” Wyatt added, “It’s obvious to anyone with eyes.”
“Oh, you’re straight up blushing,” Bood continued.
For once, Ilya couldn’t find a clever retort within himself. For once, he also couldn’t bring himself to care. Sure, it was a little embarrassing to have it pointed out, but these men had attended his wedding, and they seemed gently exasperated rather than disgusted. Their teasing felt like acceptance, and Ilya almost wished that Shane was still here to hear it.
Of course, if he knew that Ilya was more-or-less openly staring at his ass in their team locker room, Ilya would be in a shallow grave, so. Perhaps for the best.
Shane, 31 years old.
Ilya usually knew better than to leave marks on Shane. It was habit from long years of hiding their relationship, but even after their marriage, Shane was still a very private person and would have been horrified to have a hickey in the locker room. So Ilya was careful, and Shane was grateful.
But, well. Shane had turned 31 in May of his second year with the Centaurs, and this year, they were in the middle of the playoffs. They were both exhausted all of the time, but had managed some celebratory birthday sex despite all of their aches and pains from playoff season, compounded by the years of hockey behind them. Getting older was brutal when playing a contact sport, but Shane didn’t mind as long as he could get older with Ilya.
Shane didn’t even notice the hickey on his right hipbone until he was standing in the showers after the first game of their third-round playoff matchup against Florida. He poked at the vivid bruise, then winced. He could probably pass it off as a hockey bruise, if his breezers didn’t have heavy padding in that area. He would just have to let it heal and hope that no one else noticed it.
“Damn, man,” came a quiet voice from beside him, as soon as that thought passed through his mind. It was Troy, who always still looked a little uncertain of his welcome with Shane.
Shane tried not to glare at him. Barrett didn’t deserve it. He just didn’t know what to say.
“No, sorry. I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable. I’m just impressed that you still have the energy, this late in the season. Harris and I haven’t managed to do anything but fall asleep on top of each other for, like, weeks.”
Shane nodded.
“Sorry. Forget I said anything.”
Shane considered. Here they were, two gay men in a locker room, casually talking about their sex lives with their respective male partners. He would have considered that a complete impossibility for most of his teenage years, and yet here they were, on their way to win the Stanley Cup. Everyone knew that he had sex with his husband.
He still held his private life close to his chest, and he was always going to be one of the quiet ones in the locker room. But really, at the end of the day, what was the worst that could happen? It wasn’t like they were going to get kicked off the team. Shane had no problem stating that the team would be nowhere near the third round of the playoffs without both of them, and as long as they were in the playoffs, the fans and management would be happy.
What was the worst that could happen?
“No, it’s okay,” Shane said, eventually, with a small smile. “I just. Had a good birthday.”
Troy offered him a small smile in return, and they left it at that.
Ilya, 38 years old.
Every time Ilya stepped into the shower after a Cens game, he felt more and more ancient. He could feel retirement nipping at his heels. He had accumulated his share of scars over the years: minor surgeries, missing teeth, accidental slashes that never healed quite right. Nothing made him feel more ancient, however, than comparing himself with the rookies.
For one thing, whatever crop of rookies they acquired from the draft always looked at Shane and Ilya with stars in their eyes. Some of them got over it quickly and got to work, but some of them stared at him outright, even in the showers, before they realized he could see them as well. He’d never been shy a day in his life, but it was still a little strange to be stared at like a zoo exhibit. He could still be the life of the party, when he wanted to be. But it was true that he now gravitated towards the old marrieds on the team, because. Well. He was an old married.
For another thing, whenever he creaked towards the showers on knees that absolutely did not want to be doing what they were doing anymore, he became aware of the physical contrasts between himself and the younger players. The rookies were still gangly and boyish, still settling into their bodies. Ilya had always one of the taller men in the room, but now his body was undeniably the body of a man who had spent years building muscle and playing a strenuous sport where maintaining weight was a legitimate challenge for players by the end of playoff season. There was nothing gangly or soft about his body.
Shane’s body had changed too. They were hockey players and both pushing 40, for fuck’s sake. His shoulder was bothering him, and he bore the scars from a surgery last summer that had given them another season or two, at least. But the end was near, at least of this phase of their life.
Shane was still private. He was still Shane. But at this point in their careers, he would occasionally let Ilya slap his ass in the locker room, and allowed more than the occasional peck. The best part was the way that no one paid attention to them, the way their love was allowed to fade into the ordinary background of the rink like the relationships with all of the other wives-and-girlfriends. That was still allowed. Despite all the jokes to the contrary, it was actually not a requirement to be gay if you wanted to play for the Ottawa Centaurs.
Ilya pictured their jerseys hanging together in the rafters, retired together as they were always meant to be.
He couldn’t wait.