Chapter Text
Montreal is playing Detroit, and the game is rough. Ilya wouldn’t go as far as saying Detroit is playing dirty, exactly, most of the hits have been clean, but it’s a physical game, and Shane is spending a lot of time against the boards. At one point in the second period, the camera gets a shot of Shane telling Byrd, one of Detroit’s defensemen, to fuck off as he shoves away from him. There’s fury in Shane’s eyes and Ilya is a little surprised because Byrd is an asshole, but Shane is usually good at letting everything on the ice but the hockey roll off him. He never fights, rarely even chirps at anyone besides Ilya (and for years any chirping between them has really just been flirting), generally stays focused on playing over anything else. He has earned his reputation for being single-minded on the ice.
The second period ends, and Ilya mutes the TV, uninterested in the intermission commentary by Montreal’s usual home game guys, one of their former goaltenders who retired two years before Shane and Ilya’s rookie year and a French Canadian sports journalist who gets under Ilya’s skin for no reason other than the way he says Shane’s name always sounds…snide. He scratches Anya behind her ear in the spot that makes her back leg thump the floor, her tongue lolling happily out of her mouth. When she’s had her fill of attention and goes to flop in her bed in front of the fireplace (which of course Ilya has lit for her), he grabs his phone from the coffee table and texts Yuna.
Ilya
Very physical game
Yuna
Yes. Byrd is Shane’s shadow tonight.
Ilya
Montreal enforcers seem extra useless, too
Yuna
🫤
Yuna is having a bit of a reckoning in the wake of how shitty Montreal has been since he and Shane were outed. She can always root for Shane, of course, but Ilya can see that it is getting harder and harder to root for Montreal. It must be difficult, as a lifelong fan.
He gets himself ice cream from the freezer and a spoon from the drawer (it is silly to dirty a bowl when he is going to finish what is left in the pint) and is settling in on the couch again in time for the third period to start up.
He misses the hit, the first time, digging a chunk of cookie out of his ice cream. But he catches the slow-mo replay, which is probably worse. Byrd hooks his stick around Shane, gives it enough of a tug to unbalance him, and Shane takes Byrd’s knee to his face on his way down. It’s not a terrible hit, he’s not bleeding when the coverage switches back to the live feed, but he has dropped his gloves, his helmet has come off, and he swings his fist into Byrd’s face. Unfortunately, Byrd has four inches and probably fifty pounds on Shane and his returning swing is heavy enough to break Shane’s nose. Hayden joins the fray, but none of the other useless fucking Metros on the ice do, Boiziau included. Ilya’s pretty sure he sees some of them smirking on the bench when the camera pans to show the refs skating over to break things up.
The lower half of Shane’s face is covered in blood, now, and he skates to the Montreal bench and disappears into the tunnel to get checked out during his penalty for fighting. Ilya takes several deep breaths. It could be worse. He has seen so much worse, has been on the ice when Shane was down and didn’t get back up.
He texts David.
Ilya
Should I start driving?
Yuna would tell him no either way, because Yuna will be thinking about Ottawa, and the flight Ilya needs to be on in the morning to play in Raleigh, then Nashville, then Tampa, then Dallas. Ilya is not so worried about that; he can easily get to Montreal and back tonight before he needs to be on the plane tomorrow at seven, and he could just as easily fly commercial from Montreal to Raleigh. Wiebe would understand, if it needed to happen. David will be honest with him, because David will be worried about the same things Ilya is worried about. Not the broken nose, so much, but the fighting.
While waiting for David’s reply, Ilya pulls up the dog hotel’s app on his phone to see whether there is availability to bring Anya tonight if he needs to, instead of tomorrow morning. She doesn’t stay there very often anymore; Yuna and David like to watch her but they’re leaving from Montreal in the morning for a trip to Hawaii with friends from McGill.
His phone buzzes and Ilya taps into David’s message.
David
He texted. They’re going to reset his nose.
He’s done for tonight.
I think it’s okay to stay put.
Ilya switches off the TV, since he has no interest in watching Montreal lose (or win, but they’ll almost certainly lose without Shane; at least when they’re winning it means Shane is on the ice). He keeps his phone in his hand, because if Shane is texting David…
His phone buzzes again.
Jane
I’m fine.
Ilya snorts, shaking his head.
Ilya
Pics or it didn’t happen
Jane
That doesn’t even make sense.
It doesn’t, but it still achieves Ilya’s goal of seeing Shane’s face, because his phone starts ringing with a FaceTime. He answers, and when the call connects and Shane’s face is on his screen, Ilya can’t help but wince.
“Sweetheart,” he says. There are already bruises blooming around Shane’s eyes and his nose is swollen.
“I’m fine,” he insists, his voice thick.
“What was Byrd’s problem?” Ilya asks. “I saw you tell him to fuck off.”
Shane sighs. “I was hoping that wasn’t on TV.”
“You also punched him in the face.”
“Knocked out one of his teeth. Bet that didn’t make it on TV.”
“It didn’t,” Ilya confirms.
“Byrd was…nothing new,” Shane says, and he looks so tired that Ilya is thirty seconds from getting in the car so he can drive to Montreal and just hold Shane. Make sure he sleeps. “I don’t wanna talk about it here. They’re all going to come off the ice soon.”
“Do you want me to come see you?” Ilya asks.
“Always,” Shane says, “but no. You wouldn’t get here until almost midnight and then you’d just have to leave again at like three.”
“Five,” Ilya insists.
“Either way,” Shane says. He frowns and then flinches because it hurts his swollen face. “Mom and Dad will come check on me.”
“Is not the same.”
“I know.”
“Will you call when you get home?”
“Yes.” Shane nods.
“I love you,” Ilya tells him.
“Ya tebya lyublyu,” Shane says back. “I’ll call you in a little bit.”
Ilya hangs up, and calls Anya to the door for her last walk of the night. They just do a short one, up to the corner of their street and back. She dances around his feet in the kitchen for her bedtime treat and leads the way up the stairs. When only one of them is home, she’s allowed to sleep in their bed and she settles comfortably in the exact middle while Ilya putters around, brushing his teeth and pulling on one of Shane’s hoodies to sleep in. (It’s too short in the sleeves, like all of Shane’s clothes on Ilya, and he likes to tease Shane about that but he won’t tonight. Probably.)
His phone rings as he is crawling into the bed next to Anya. Just a regular call, not a FaceTime, and he frowns, sliding his finger across the screen to answer.
“Are you hiding your broken nose from me? I have already seen it.”
“You wouldn’t be able to see me anyway, I’ve got a bag of frozen peas on my face,” Shane says, and his voice does sound a little muffled.
“Hurts?” Ilya asks.
“They gave me a painkiller,” Shane says. “I’m mostly just trying to get the swelling down.”
“Tell me what Byrd said to you.”
Shane sighs heavily. “What do you think, Ilya? He called me a fag. I hear it every game, it just pissed me off more than usual tonight.”
Every game. Ilya has these things said to him too, but not as often. He does not know if it is just because everyone knows he is more likely to throw a punch than Shane (or, most likely, goad them into punching him so they end up in the box) or if it’s more insidious than that, something about the intersection of Shane’s sexuality and his race or what people think they know about what happens between them behind closed doors.
“I’m so annoyed,” Shane says, and he sounds it. “I’m annoyed with myself for hitting him, because now he knows he got under my skin, and I’m annoyed for being annoyed, because why do I always have to be the bigger person in the name of fucking sportsmanlike conduct but he can say that shit to me and nobody bats an eye?”
“He deserved to get punched,” Ilya says. “I think you should hit whoever you want to. Every game.” Shane huffs a laugh. “I’m serious. Well, actually I think you should have team hitting people for you, but…”
“I can’t talk about that now,” Shane says, and his voice sounds thick for reasons beyond his swollen nose. Ilya regrets not getting in the car the second Shane threw that punch.
“Okay.”
“I’m just so tired.”
“Do you want to sleep?”
“No, not that kind of tired. I’m…” Shane pauses, and Ilya waits. “What was the point of hiding all those years, trying to be exactly who the league wanted me to be, if this is how it is now? This is how it was always going to be and I feel like we wasted so much time.”
“Sweetheart,” Ilya says. He’ll never get tired of Shane’s sharp little intake of breath every time he says it. “Was not wasted. A lot of it was necessary, for both of us.”
“I don’t know how to be anymore. On the ice. Maybe off it, too.”
Ilya’s not entirely sure he follows the grammar here, but he thinks he understands the sentiment. So much has changed for them, so many of the things they were trying to protect and control are now just out in the world, exposed. For better or worse. And there has been plenty of better, but there has also been so much worse.
For some reason, he can’t help thinking about the season Shane started to grow out his hair, Ilya’s last in Boston. Ilya’s two weeks at the cottage bloomed into what was left of the summer, and both of them needed haircuts badly by the time they returned to their teams. Ilya had gone to the barber almost the moment he stepped off the plane, tired of the way his hair itched the back of his neck and the tops of his ears, dreading the idea of putting a helmet over it which surely would make his whole head feel itchy. But Shane had kept growing his until it was long enough to twist into a little bun and make Yuna complain he looked like a sheepdog when it was down, all shaggy and long around his face. He’d eventually gotten it cut by a real hairstylist, who made it look like a deliberate choice and not just like he’d somehow gone a year forgetting that hair grows and needs to be cut, but it’s still longer than it had ever been before that summer.
Ilya had asked about it, the next summer at the cottage, while they were in the bathroom one morning, brushing teeth and grinning toothpaste smiles at each other in the mirror, giddy with the weeks of summer stretching out ahead of them. Shane had shrugged when Ilya asked him, but later, drinking coffee on the dock, he’d said, “Everything feels so different since last summer. I think I wanted to feel different too.”
“And do you?”
“Yeah,” Shane had said, nodding.
“Did you fall asleep?” Shane asks him now, his voice low in Ilya’s ear.
“No,” Ilya says. “Just thinking.”
“Dangerous,” Shane says, and Ilya thinks there’s the hint of a smile behind his words now.
“You had to put up with so much bullshit when you couldn’t defend yourself because you were protecting our secret,” Ilya says. “But our secret is out. And you’re Shane fucking Hollander. Maybe is time to remind them.”
Shane laughs. “Only you could make fighting on the ice seem noble.”
“Doesn’t have to be just fighting.” Ilya shrugs. “Maybe it’s all the things we couldn’t do before.”
“Like what?” Shane asks.
“Like…I wanted to come to your game tonight. Sit with your parents, cheer for you.”
“Oh,” Shane says softly. “Yeah. Fuck, you should’ve told me. I would’ve gotten you a ticket. Can I come to your next one at home? Do the schedules work?”
“I’ll look later,” Ilya says, although he knows that they do, if Shane is willing to either drive late or wake up very early to get back to Montreal for an afternoon home game. “Harris gave me Pride tape. Leftover from Pride night. But I ordered my own, I wanted the bisexual colors.”
“Of course you do.”
“The colors are better,” Ilya insists, “Prettier.”
“Your stick will be very pretty,” Shane agrees. His voice is taking on some of the lightness Ilya remembers from the hospital after his concussion, so the painkillers from the Montreal team doctor must be strong. Ilya wishes again he were there and not here.
“Do you want the tape from Harris?” Ilya asks.
“Coach won’t like that,” Shane says sadly. “Most of the team won’t.”
“Would you?”
“I don’t know. It feels like I have to weigh every decision against whether the fallout will be worth it. I’m so stupid, because I thought at least that would get better when we were out. That I could stop being so careful.”
Ilya scowls. “You are not stupid.”
“It will get easier,” Shane says, although not with much confidence. “People will get used to it.”
“And until then, you can punch them.”
Shane sighs. “I can’t punch all of them.”
“No,” Ilya agrees, “you have to leave some for me.” He has plans for Byrd when Ottawa plays Detroit in a few weeks.
“What time is your flight tomorrow?”
“Seven.”
“You’ll text me?”
“Yes,” Ilya says, “of course.”
He never gets on the plane without texting Shane anymore. He doubts he’ll ever be able to again, for both their sakes.
“I think I should sleep,” Shane says. “I’m feeling loopy.”
“Yes, sleep, moy lyubimyy.”
“Love you,” Shane says.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Ilya promises. “I love you.”
Ilya hangs up the phone and sets it on his charger. Anya snuggles in closer to his side, a comforting warm weight in the bed. It will be nine more days before he can see Shane again, and Ilya feels every one of them like a weight on his chest. It’s ridiculous because they’ve spent more of their relationship apart than together and it should get easier but it just gets harder. They live in the negative space the other leaves behind, and Ilya can’t help thinking of the wish he has been holding onto for longer than he’d ever admit. If he and Shane were on the same team…
Maybe he should thank the useless fucking Metros for doing their best to push Shane out, because it’s clear that’s what they’re doing. It certainly makes his childish hope feel more realistic.
Ilya picks up his phone again, and takes a picture of Anya, her chin resting on his lap. He texts it to Shane, not entirely expecting a reply, but he gets one anyway.
Jane
Home soon. ❤️