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Shane remembers, vividly, his first time on the ice. He was only four, he knows he’s not supposed to remember it really. His ankles wobbled in his skates, but he stayed on his feet. He’d stuttered across the ice, his dad following right behind, his mom taking pictures from the edge of the frozen lake. One of them is still on the fridge in their house. He doesn’t remember learning to walk, obviously, but he can’t imagine it came as naturally to him as skating did.
It was another year or two before anyone beyond his parents noticed, before random dads at the rink where they’d go to open skates started making comments about getting him on a team, as if Yuna Hollander couldn’t see with her own two eyes and decades of rabid hockey fandom that she was raising something of a prodigy.
Shane knew he was good, even then, but so few things came easily to him. Hockey was his reward for how hard everything else was. And just when it was starting to feel too easy, when he was losing the joy of it by being so much better than anyone he played with, when he was starting to wonder if he should fill out college applications instead of continuing to take the pro scouts’ calls, hockey gave him Ilya.
Ilya: snoring next to him and definitely drooling although he’ll deny it if Shane tells him so. He’s about to prod Ilya awake, to see if they might be able to sneak into the shower for some quiet morning sex when their bedroom door creaks open and any hope of that goes out the window. At first he thinks it’s just Sofa, because she’s been doing this since she outgrew her crib and started (ostensibly) sleeping in a big girl bed but most nights ends up falling asleep between the two of them and coming in here to wake them up on the mornings she doesn’t, but it turns out Leo is behind her, thumb in his mouth, trailing the blanket Rose knit for him between takes on yet another movie where she was kidnapped.
Sofa grins when she sees he’s awake and Ilya isn’t yet, and he sees the wicked gleam in her eye (genetic, absolutely) before she takes a running leap and launches herself onto Ilya’s chest.
“Oof,” Ilya groans, but he hauls her closer with one arm and kisses her face until she shrieks and squirms away. Leo climbs up onto the bed rather than launching like a cannon ball, and Ilya pulls him in close too, and Shane’s not at all surprised when he starts hearing Tasha babbling on the baby monitor. He’s always been a morning person, but it’s been four years since they’ve slept past seven and sometimes Shane misses what it was like to at least wake up slowly. (“You will say different when they are teenagers and all sleeping until noon, Jackie swears this,” Ilya reminds him often.)
“Breakfast,” Ilya says, pointing at Shane, and then points at himself, “baby.”
“Deal,” Shane says. “Who’s hungry?”
“Me! Leo too.”
Shane gets a twin under each arm, carrying them down the stairs like sacks of flour (squirmy, giggling ones), and lets them watch Bluey while he scrambles eggs and cuts up fruit. Ilya comes down carrying Tasha in a pink onesie that was Sofa’s first, but she reaches for Shane when she sees him so they swap, Ilya taking over breakfast while Shane makes a bottle for Tasha. She’s big enough now to hold her own bottle, at least, so Shane eats breakfast with Tasha in his lap while the twins mostly push their eggs around their plates but inhale their fruit.
“Are you sure you want to bring all three of them tonight?” Shane asks. “You’re going to have your hands full. It’s not too late to ask Kate if she can watch Tasha.”
“Is important day for whole family,” Ilya says, simply, and Shane’s heart flops in his chest. “Besides, everyone must know our babies are the cutest in the league. Probably in the world.”
“Seems a little narcissistic, since they all look exactly like you,” Shane says, grinning.
“Exactly why they are the cutest. I don’t think you will be able to disagree with me about this.”
He’s right, obviously.
“It will be easy,” Ilya says. “We have suite. Everyone will want to hold Tasha. I will give Arthur thirty dollars to play with Sofa and Leo. Plus your parents will be there.”
Shane’s actually overwhelmed by how many people will be there. Ilya had splurged on one of the bigger suites, and Shane had tried to insist they didn’t need it, but then Hayden confirmed all six Pikes would make the drive from Montreal, and JJ is flying in from Vancouver, and a handful of retired Centaurs who still live in Ottawa will be there (although some already have their own seats, luckily), and—most annoyingly to Ilya, although he’d also been the one to invite them so Shane’s not sure what Ilya expected—Scott and Kip RSVP’d yes, and Shane imagines they’ll have their kids in tow too.
It’s a surprising turnout for a game that is otherwise unremarkable. They missed the playoffs, just, and there’s a twinge of disappointment in his gut every time he thinks about it. At least Montreal isn’t still in. They’ve only made the playoffs a couple of times since Shane left for Ottawa almost ten years ago, and it’s probably petty but he can’t help finding it satisfying how thoroughly the organization fell apart after his departure.
He checks his watch. He needs to get ready to leave for morning skate. Ilya grins at him. “Can’t be late on your last day.”
God. His last day. Officially, he’s known it’s been coming for a year, had agreed with Ilya that after spending most of last season in pain from his hip and his shoulder that this season needed to be the last. He’s grateful, mostly, that he’s getting to go out on his own terms, didn’t find out like Ilya did, midseason, that his body had officially given up on him. Not to mention that the travel, the part of his job he’s always enjoyed least, got so much harder once he wasn’t traveling with Ilya anymore and became downright unbearable once they had kids. It’s time. It’s good.
He would’ve liked to win one more cup, but probably that’s just greedy. His name is on the cup six times, twice with Ilya.
“Do you remember learning to skate?” he asks Ilya.
Ilya shakes his head. “My mother started teaching me very young. As soon as I could walk, I think.”
Shane grins. “Show off. I was four. I can remember it.”
“Now who is show off?”
Shane laughs. Leo and Sofa laugh too, although he’s pretty sure they haven’t actually been paying attention, they just like to be part of the joke. “I’m trying to say…it’s going to be weird, isn’t it? Not…doing this anymore.”
“Yes,” Ilya says. “But you can still skate. You can still play hockey. Alumni events, with our friends, with the kids. Just for fun.”
Shane barely remembers when hockey was just fun. He was probably ten. Which isn’t to say he hasn’t loved playing hockey, but it’s come with more than its share of pressures over the years.
“Morning skate,” Ilya reminds him. Shane rolls his eyes. As if he forgot. He kisses the top of Tasha’s head and passes her to Ilya. Then, he gets up and kisses the tops of Sofa and Leo’s heads too.
“Bye Daddy,” Leo says, grinning up at him and looking so much like Ilya it makes Shane’s heart do a complicated sort of stutter in his chest. The kids have his name and Ilya’s genes and honestly Shane’s pretty sure that means he wins twice. Not that he’s complaining. Or that it’s a competition, really. It’s mostly just the way it worked out.
“Skate fast!” Sofa tells him, and Shane grins.
“I’ll be so fast,” he promises. “Be good for Papa.”
“See you this afternoon,” Ilya says, tipping his face up for Shane to kiss him too. “Family naptime.”
“Don’t jinx it,” Shane hisses. If all three kids actually take a nap, that means he might actually get to take one before the game too. And if Ilya joins him…even better.
“Bye Daddy.” Ilya winks at him. “Skate fast.”
The vibe at morning skate is weird. Shane probably should’ve expected it would be. Barrett and Haas are basically on the verge of tears the whole time. It’s going to make the game tonight especially rough if the entire first line is crying through it. The younger guys on the team are bummed about missing out on the playoffs and maybe not so invested in it being Shane’s last game. He can’t really expect them to be. Barrett and Haas are the last ones who were on the team when he joined. Everyone else has retired or been traded, and the younger guys really only know Shane as their captain. Most of them didn’t even play with Ilya.
“You guys gotta pull it together before tonight,” Shane says to Troy and Luca in the locker room after practice.
“Sorry,” Troy says. “I’m trying. It’s just…the end of an era.”
“Yeah.” Luca nods sadly.
“We still have a game to play. It’s not over yet. Also, I’m not dying and you both eat dinner at our house like once a month.”
“Yeah, but,” Troy whispers, casting a quick glance over his shoulder. “Lavoie is weird and I’m not looking forward to him moving up to first line.”
Lavoie is a bit weird, but Shane is still the captain for one more day so he isn’t going to agree. “He’s not weird,” he says instead. “He’s just from the middle of nowhere. You’ll get used to it.”
“Oh, I’m supposed to tell you Harris wants you to stop in his office before you leave,” Troy says. “Confirming details I guess?”
There’s a press release scheduled to go out after the game tonight. Shane already announced his retirement at a press conference last month, when the barrage of questions about why he hadn’t yet begun contract re-negotiations got a little too intense, but he’s also been working with Harris and Farah on a more formal statement to release tonight.
When he gets upstairs, the Communications office is surprisingly quiet. Maybe everyone takes a nap in the afternoon on game days.
“Hey!” Harris greets him when Shane knocks on his open office door. “Come on in. How was practice?”
“Weird.”
“Because Troy cried the whole time?” Harris guesses.
“And Luca.”
“Sorry,” Harris says, “I told Troy to be cool. Do you want to take one more look at your statement?”
“Sure,” Shane nods, and Harris hands a tablet to him. Shane reads through it, twice, and then hands the tablet back to Harris. “Looks good.”
“Great. I’ll find a couple photos from the archives, maybe one from tonight if we get anything good. Just to make it a little more dynamic for the socials and the website. Is everyone coming tonight?”
“Yeah. Ilya, the kids, my parents, the Pikes, JJ, Wyatt, Bood, freaking Scott Hunter…it’s like a family reunion.” It’s only as he’s saying it that Shane realizes how true it is. His family, once just him and his parents, has grown so much over the years.
“Are you okay with pictures of the kids on socials? They’re so cute in their Hollander jerseys.”
Shane nods. “Yeah, that’s okay with us. They’ll probably just be in the suite the whole time though.”
“Yeah,” Harris nods. “True. Do you want a preview of what we put together for the screens at the end of the game or—”
“Definitely not,” Shane says. He assumed there would be some highlight reels tonight. He doesn’t need to see them; he lived them.
The house is quiet when Shane gets home, but there’s a smoothie already blended for him on the counter, with a sticky note on it. Naptime :) it reads, in Ilya’s handwriting.
Shane drinks the smoothie while scrolling through his phone. He has a few messages from people who can’t be at the game tonight (Rose, filming in London; Svetlana, working since Boston made the playoffs; Ryan, on tour with Fabian), and his usual pre-game text from his parents now that they don’t do their pre-game lunches anymore. He doesn’t open Instagram; he’s not interested in the flood of DMs and comments and mentions about tonight.
He rinses out his smoothie cup and puts it in the dishwasher before moving as silently as he can upstairs, although he hears the hush of white noise playing on all the machines outside the kids’ doors once he gets there, so Ilya was serious about naptime today.
The door to their room is slightly ajar, and Shane slips through, closing the door quietly behind him, since there’s always a nonzero chance one or more of the kids is napping here instead. But it’s just Ilya sprawled across the bed, eyes closed and mouth open, phone in his hand like he fell asleep texting or scrolling. Shane crawls into bed next to him, trying not to wake him, but knows he’s not successful when Ilya’s hands find him, pulling him closer.
“Sorry,” Shane whispers. “Go back to sleep.”
Ilya shakes his head. “How was practice?”
Shane’s lower lip wobbles precariously, and he tucks his face into Ilya’s neck. “Weird. Sad. I hated it. How was your morning?”
“We need new rug for playroom,” Ilya says. “There was…incident.”
“Who drew blood?” Shane asks. It wouldn’t be the first time one of the twins played too rough.
“Nobody. Paint.”
“Where’d they find paint?”
“Do you remember Rose sending art supplies for Christmas? I had no memory of this, but Sofa insists.”
Shane groans, laughing. “Maybe we should just skip rugs in there for a few years.”
“Better paint on rug than on hardwood floor.”
“How are they so messy?”
“Easy. They are babies, one part tornado and three parts mess.”
“Sofa is at least two parts tornado.”
“Think of what an enforcer she’ll make,” Ilya says fondly, “our Sofyushka.”
“God, you must be tired. You only get this sappy when you’re sleep deprived,” Shane teases. If Ilya was planning on arguing with him, he's cut off by an enormous yawn.
“Naptime,” Shane says firmly.
“You sleep too,” Ilya says, shifting to lay on his back, Shane’s head on his chest.
“Do you have an alarm set?”
“Yes, your children. Sofia, Leonid, Natalia, do you remember them? They will sleep maybe one hour more, if we are lucky.”
The arena is already packed during warm ups, and Shane wonders if tonight would’ve been a sold out crowd if it weren’t his last game. Last game of the regular season, no playoff run for them this year. It’s maybe a hard game to show up for, under different circumstances
He’s stretching when there’s a roar from the crowd and Troy nudges him and points to the jumbotron. Shane looks up to see the camera focused on one of the suites, where Ilya is standing, holding Tasha and pointing down at the ice, Sofa and Leo on either side of him. Leo points suddenly, too, maybe spotting Shane. They’re all in their Hollander jerseys, Ilya included, and the kids have ear protectors on in Centaurs colors.
Suddenly, Shane doesn’t mind so much that they didn’t make the playoffs. He gets to play his last game for a hometown crowd, in front of his kids and his husband. If they were in the playoffs, so many games had the potential to be his last, all over North America, and there was no way in hell Ilya would’ve been dragging two toddlers and a ten-month-old around after Shane.
“Shit, man,” Troy says, “if you start crying I’m going to start crying again too.”
“They’re my kids, I’m allowed to cry,” Shane says thickly. Luckily for him, the camera cuts to some other famous faces in the crowd and he can go back to stretching in peace. (Well, not peace, because’s thirty-eight and his right shoulder and his left hip are both fucked, but at least without the threat of crying for an emotional reason.)
They tromp down the tunnel back into the locker room, and Shane does some deep breathing.
“Let’s have some fun out there tonight,” Wiebe says. “For Hollander. Send the captain off in style, Centaurs.”
And they do. Shane scores two goals, and gives an assist each to Haas and Barrett. Winnipeg barely gets any shots on goal, and when the final buzzer rings it’s 4-0 Centaurs and the tears Shane’s been fighting all night (all day? All season?) are streaming down his face before he can even think about trying to stop them.
He cries through handshakes with Winnipeg, he cries through sending the rest of the Centaurs into the locker room, he skates out to center ice and rotates in a circle, waving to the roaring, clapping crowd and cries.
And then, when he makes his full rotation and is facing the Centaurs’ bench, Ilya is on the ice, and the kids are on the ice, and Shane drops his helmet and skates over to scoop the twins up and lets Ilya crush the three of them to his chest next to Tasha, who grabs a fistful of Shane’s sweaty hair.
Shane is dimly aware of music playing over the loud speakers. Harris’ highlight reel, probably.
“Oh,” Ilya says softly, maybe a little surprised. “Look.”
Shane looks up, and sees both of them, eighteen years old, facing off in that stupid CCM commercial. There are clips from Shane’s time as a Metro, hoisting the cup over his head in back-to-back years; him and Ilya at the All-Star game in 2017, skating joyfully beside one another; Shane’s first game as a Centaur, on the power play with Ilya; the All-Star game again in 2022, the last time either of them went, because the league had made them captains of opposing teams and they had made the league regret it; a shot of Ilya and Shane asleep on the team plane probably from Harris’ Instagram; the two cups they won as Centaurs, the C and A on their jerseys swapping back and forth each year; the cup the Centaurs won the year after Ilya retired; and then, like maybe Harris had sneakily had some help from Ilya, the video fades out to the live feed of Ilya and Shane on the ice, the twins looking rapt up at the screen and Tasha hiding her face against Ilya’s neck.
The crowd cheers—or hasn’t really stopped cheering, Shane supposes, but there’s a palpable increase in volume. Sofa, ever her father’s daughter, grins and waves. Shane realizes she’s ripped off her ear protectors and dropped them on the ice. Leo seems awestruck. Shane can see that it’s obvious to anyone watching how much he’s been crying, but there are tears running down Ilya’s face too.
“Jesus,” he says. Harris’ video comes back, a still frame of Shane and Ilya shot from behind, in the tunnel and facing the ice, except Ilya is wearing a Hollander jersey and Shane is wearing a Rozanov one, and he thinks it’s from his first season with Ottawa, some goofy video they’d done for the team socials.
Text floats onto the screen. Please join us at our first home game next season for a ceremony to retire Shane Hollander’s and Ilya Rozanov’s jerseys.
“Fuck,” Shane says, voice cracking, and is glad Sofa is too distracted by her adoring audience to have noticed. Leo’s ear protectors probably blocked it out for him. “Did you know…?”
“No,” Ilya says. He’s beaming. “Is like we get to retire together, yes?”
“Yes,” Shane says. “Exactly. It’s perfect.”
“Scrap the statement,” Shane says hastily into his phone when Harris answers. They’re in the locker room, and Ilya is entertaining the twins by pushing them around in one of the laundry bins. They should’ve been in bed hours ago. Tasha is asleep in her carseat on the bench in front of Shane’s locker.
“If you changed your mind about retiring, you’ve gotta take that up with the GM, not me,” Harris jokes.
“No,” Shane laughs. “Just post the video instead. I’ll text you a caption.”
He doesn’t even think too long about it, just texts Harris a couple sentences. I am so grateful to have spent my career playing against and with you, Ilya. It’s been true since we were seventeen: there is no Shane Hollander without Ilya Rozanov.