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Scott Hunter woke up to his phone buzzing incessantly. Next to him, Kip was also waking up, looking annoyed at the interruption to his sleep. Scott picked up his phone to see what the fuck was going on.
36 missed calls
74 texts
12 news notifications
102 emails
“Holy shit!”
Kip glanced at him in alarm, but Scott was scrolling through his notifications trying to figure out what the fuck had happened. As he was doing this, his phone buzzed again, with a facetime call from Eric, so Scott threw on some sweatpants and answered it, walking into the next room. He put his phone on speaker so he could make some coffee.
“Why haven’t you been picking up?” Eric grumbled at him “This is fucking huge, man.”
“I only just woke up, with like a thousand missed calls, what the fuck is going on?”
“You mean you haven’t seen it?”
At that moment, Kip came into the room holding his phone and looking like he’d seen a ghost. Here you need to see this,” he said and handed his phone to Scott.
It took Scott a second to realise what he was looking at. A video of Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander making out. Passionately.
“What in the ever-loving fuck?”
Scott felt a number of emotions go through him. The overwhelming one was shock, at the two of them being together. He stared at the video, unable to process a world where this was happening.
But after Scott’s brain had had a minute to digest that information, he felt a number of other things. He obviously had no idea how or when the two of them had happened, but they’d clearly never meant to be in a public relationship. Scott’s worst fear for so long had been that he would be outed and suddenly all he felt was intense sadness for both of them. He knew Shane was gay and had told his teammates, but he wasn’t out publicly, and he’d suspected Ilya wasn’t entirely straight, but he clearly hadn’t told many people, and he’d never outright said anything to Scott.
He looked at Kip in dismay “Where is this from?”
Kip shook his head and shrugged but Eric, still on the phone, said “It was in the background of some fan video Hayden Pike filmed and the guy posted it online.”
Scott felt even worse at that. The two of them had clearly been so careful with whatever relationship they had, if there had been no hint or rumour of it until then.
There was a moment of silence, and Scott knew that Kip and Eric were both thinking the same things as him. If anyone was going to feel for what Hollander and Rozanov were going through, it would be them. Scott knew there were a number of out players in the league now, and he was proud that his coming out had seemed to have changed things, but there had never been anything like this. To Scott’s knowledge, no player had ever been outed publicly, and much more than that, two players had never dated each other before, let alone two stars and rivals as big as Hollander and Rozanov.
Scott blew out a breath and sat down “Fuck.”
“What’s the reaction been, have you looked?” He asked Eric.
“Mixed, a lot of shock, I imagine a lot of it will get bad today.”
“I don’t have practice until this afternoon because of the game last night, do you want to come over?” he asked Eric. He felt uneasy and if anyone would understand it would be him.
“I’ll be there in 20.”
After they hung up, Scott scrolled through all his messages. Most of it was from other players and hockey people saying variations of “What the fuck”. There were a number of news outlets asking him for comment and a message from his coach and his agent to call them.
Scott looked at Kip, who looked sad and concerned. “I just feel terrible for them, I can’t imagine not only being outed, but having your relationship revealed like that.”
“I bet the league is super pissed too, especially Crowell, he never liked what I did.”
“Hockey sucks sometimes.”
Scott felt like that was an understatement.
20 Minutes Later
He let Eric in and they sat down at the kitchen table.
Before anyone could say anything, Eric started laughing. “Sorry I know it’s really serious and I feel bad for them but like come on. If anything was going to one up you kissing your boyfriend after winning the Stanley cup, it would be Hollander and Rozanov being caught kissing on camera.” He snorted “Trust Rozanov to be the one that had to one up you. Maybe he put this this whole thing together just to spite you.” His smile faded with that though. They both knew that this could potentially ruin both of their careers. Eric sighed. “They hid it so well. God, I would have sworn they hated each other. Even with the charity and all that.”
Scott thought about it. “Did they though? I mean obviously everyone thought they did, and clearly whatever relationship hasn’t interfered with them wanting to beat each other when playing, but aside from in media interviews have you actually ever heard them talk negatively about each other? Aside from shit talking you never actually hear of them fighting, either on the ice or not. Plenty of players end up actually fighting, I assumed it was just because Hollander isn’t like that but maybe they never actually hated each other.”
Eric thought about it. “No, I suppose not… Makes you wonder when it started doesn’t it. It must have been at least a bit true at some point; they can’t have been together since their rookie years.”
Scott nodded. Now he’d had time to think about it, he knew they must be in a somewhat serious relationship. For them to be caught on that video they both had to be at Hayden Pike’s house - he and his family had to know about them, and that suggested a relationship that went beyond casual.
Eric said “I always thought maybe Ilya was queer, but I never would have guessed this. I can’t imagine how they possibly started dating, I mean I don’t know when they would have been talking enough to do so.”
“I think maybe they were together when I came out. Shane sent me an email after, and Ilya showed up at that club that night, and he seemed almost thankful.”
A thought hit Scott, “oh my god that’s why he moved to Ottawa, so they could be closer. If all that’s true, they’ve been together at least 3 years, but I bet it’s longer.” He just couldn’t fathom it. Ilya was just such an ass. Kind of a nice one but still an ass, and while he didn’t know Shane well, he was always so polite and quiet. “I wonder what on earth Hollander sees in him.”
“I hope the league isn’t awful to them, but I can’t imagine a scenario where that happens… God, I hope they’re okay. I wish there was something we could do, but I just can’t think of anything.” Eric replied.
Scott agreed – as much as they might want to, none of them could do anything in this situation.
Practice
There was only one topic of conversation at practice later. Most people were just expressing shock at the idea of the two of them together and throwing around guesses on how and when it had happened. An alarming number of people ask Scott if he knew though. After the third time he huffs “No! Why does everyone think that! It’s not like it’s an obligation for gay players to tell me.” Carter looked at him and then just replied “It’s not that, it’s because of your weird friendship with Rozanov.” Scott didn’t even know what to say to that, so he just skated away.
There were a few comments that Scott didn’t like though. More than once, someone speculated if they’d ever helped each other on the ice. Scott had no idea how they’d managed it, but it was clear to him that they’d kept their relationship separate from their careers. Having watched them play against each other for years, he knew they weren’t faking the competitiveness. He felt that he may be in the minority of thinking that though. He dreaded to think how both of their teams were taking the news. He didn’t know who had known about them – clearly at least one of Shane’s team – but he couldn’t imagine they would be very happy about it.
One Week Later
The next week, Scott felt even worse. He’d spent a lot of time scrolling online, until Kip had gently suggested it wasn’t the best thing to do and spent some time distracting him instead. The reaction online wasn’t good. There was the typical homophobic reaction that happened whenever anyone came out, but magnified by a thousand. There were lots of people saying that they had no problem with either of them being queer, but to date each other, not just because they were on separate teams but because of their rivalry, was unacceptable. Even some of the people that seemed supportive weren’t exactly going about it well. There was so much speculation about when the two of them had gotten together, and people were going back through every on-camera interaction the two of them had ever had, both on the ice and off. He saw plenty of “I wonder what Rozanov said here to make Hollander lose the face-off” or “I bet he wanted him so bad when he did that move” that Scott was sure probably had good intentions, but the result was the total reexamination of their careers, as if this news changed their achievements, which Scott felt was probably one of the things they had wanted to avoid.
On top of all that, today the news had come that neither of them would be playing their next game. Scott was sure that Crowell had given that instruction himself. It was so frustrating, and Scott felt powerless to help them.
He expressed all of this to Carter and Eric in the Kingfisher that night. It was a long rant about the issues within the hockey world, and he ended it with “It feels like every time a player tries to make a difference, they get ignores or shut down. Clearly not that much has changed since I came out. There’s still racists everywhere. Look at what happened with Troy – he tried to make a difference and Crowell shut him down.”
Carter looked thoughtful and then said “What if we could change that? Like maybe we could put together a group that could speak about these things and then it would be harder to ignore because you couldn’t target people into silence.”
Scott stared at him. It was an excellent idea. He thought it through – if they could get as many players as possible with the same values to band together, then maybe they could actually make a difference. “Holy shit, that’s a great idea, did you just come up with it?”
“Not really. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, like you said it feels so frustrating to be one person and to feel like nothing you do will make a difference. So, I’ve been thinking about the whole safety in numbers thing, and I thought that it might work better. I’m not sure how to go about it though.”
“Why don’t we start asking around and see who would be interested? We both know enough good guys to see if this would be possible. I think to work we’d need at least 20ish but hopefully we could get more.”
They spent most of the rest of the night alternating between tossing around ideas and names for their club; and tossing out increasingly unlikely dates and scenarios for how Rozanov and Hollander got together.
“Maybe they’ve been together their entire careers and everyone’s just oblivious,” Carter laughed on the way out.
A Few Days Later
“Hey Scott! Come here!” Kip yelled at him from the next room. “They posted a statement,” Scott grabbed Kit’s phone to read it.
“Although having the decision to disclose our relationship made for us isn’t ideal, we would like to announce, officially, that we are in a committed, romantic relationship, and have been for several years. We wish we could have told you in our own way, but we don’t hold this unfortunate accident against Hayden.
We know that our relationship will be difficult for a lot of people to accept and understand. We have never let our personal relationship interfere with our competitiveness on the ice, and we believe our career achievements show that very clearly. We’ve always kept personal and professional separate, and we hope our teams, our fans, and the league can do the same.”
It was accompanied by 4 photos of them, looking happy, and Scott has to concede, very in love. “Have they looked at each other like that the whole time? How did none of us notice?” he asked out loud.
It was a good statement, but Scott felt it was unlikely to do anything much to make the situation better. It did confirm that they were together though. There had been some speculation that it was a prank or a one-time thing. He noted the “several years”, and while he’d guessed that much by now, he was still curious to know exactly what that meant. He wanted to text them to say something encouraging, but he couldn’t quite find the right words, and he felt that he’d rather stay silent than say something silly.
Scott shook his head, whatever happened next, it wouldn’t be boring. Especially as it looked like they’d end up playing each other in the playoffs. Scott thought back to when he’d won the cup. He’d waited until after the come out, as to not be a distraction. You couldn’t get much more of a distraction than this.
Playoffs
Scott had spent the last few days using any minute of free time putting together a group of people for his and Carter’s group of players. He’d reached out to a number of people that he knew had already tried to make a difference, most of them members of Rozanov and Hollander’s camp, or members of his team that he knew well. He knew he would have to talk to Shane and Ilya at some point, but he didn’t feel like it was something that could be done over the phone really. He also still didn’t really know what to say beyond “Hey, what the fuck?”
It was the first match in the Montreal - Ottawa playoffs and they were watching it in the Kingfisher. Scott couldn’t begin to conceive how either men would be feeling. Rozanov and Hollander were bending for the first face off. Even through the tv, Scott could see how uncomfortable Hollander looked. He’d heard rumblings through the league’s gossip network that Montreal had handled the news much worse than Ottawa, and looking at them now, Scott believed it. Ilya won the first face off, but Montreal won the game. Shane had not played as well as he usually did (but still better than most the players in the league) and Scott hoped he was okay.
One week later
Game seven. Scott had half hoped that it wouldn’t come to this. Both Rozanov and Hollander looked miserable and neither were playing their best. They’d both been refusing to answer any non-hockey related questions in interviews, but that hadn’t stopped the press from asking them. The game was intense and Scott and the others watched intently. The Admirals would be playing their next playoff series against whoever won, so there was more than one reason to be invested in this game. Scott would bet a large amount of money on it being one of the most watched playoff series ever. And, of course, the game went to overtime. Both teams looked exhausted and annoyed.
Scott and everyone watched with held breath as Ilya stole the puck from the Montreal team, and Hollander skated after him. And then he tripped. The bar was almost completely silent as they watched Shane on the ice, watching Ilya score the winning goal for Ottawa. Scott knew he should be thinking about what this would mean for his team, but instead all he could think was about how Shane must be feeling. Losing a playoff game in the final minutes was frustrating. Losing a game because you tripped was frustrating. Losing a game against your boyfriend when everyone was speculating if you could be professional was frustrating. Having all three happen was unfathomable.
They watched the teams line up for the handshakes, and Scott felt something like dread. It had been bad enough for both of them already, but for it to end like this, with Shane tripping against Ilya, might have been the worst end. The line seemed to be inching along, and Scott knew that everyone was waiting for Ilya and Shane to get to each other. Even Ilya didn’t look his usual happy self after a win. He looked unsure, which was a jarring expression to see on the usually confident man’s face. They paused in front of each other for a moment and Scott wondered what they’d do. Shane stuck his hand out to Ilya, and they had a short conversation, that Scott was sure lip readers would be trying to unpick later. It was very professional of them, and despite everything, Scott smirked slightly, it seems dramatically kissing on the ice was something he’d reserved for himself.
The footage cut away and Scott knew he needed to leave – he now had playoff games against Ottawa to prepare for. And maybe he’d have a chance to speak to Ilya while he was there.
2 Weeks Later
Scott was at Ilya Rozanov’s front gate. He buzzed it, hoping Ilya would actually let him in. After a minute the gate opened. That was a good sign, Scott thought. Scott parked the car then walked to the front door. As he was doing so, Ilya opened it.
“Hunter. You are at my house.”
Scott didn’t know what to say to that other than yeah, obviously? He begrudgingly liked Ilya, but he really was a dick. “Yeah, I um. I got the address from Wyatt. He had to make sure my intentions were noble first.”
“You could have texted.”
Scott had thought about it, but he really didn’t know what to say. He’d written about 10 texts to both Rozanov and Hollander since the video, but none of them had seemed right. “You seem to enjoy showing up at things unannounced. Maybe I wanted to see what it was like.”
Ilya smiled at that, which Scott took as another good sign “Come in.”
And then Scott was in Ilya’s house.
As Scott entered the living room, Shane was there. “Hi, Scott.”
Scott was relieved at this, he really didn’t want to have this conversation with just Ilya, or have to have it twice. “Shane. Good. I was hoping you’d be here too.”
“He usually is,” Ilya said, a bit smugly.
Scott didn’t know what to say to that. He guessed that now they were able to talk about it, Ilya was going to be as annoying as possible. He decided to ignore the comment. He looked around for something else to say “Oh, were you guys watching the Madrid Open?”
“Uh, yeah,” Shane said.
“Kind of,” Ilya added.
Scott didn’t want to think about what that meant so he sat down and decided to dive right in. “I know it’s awkward because we’re in the middle of a playoff series, but I wanted to talk to you guys about...you know.” He waved a hand between Ilya and Shane, which possibly wasn’t the best way to get across what he meant, but he didn’t know what else to say.
“Uh-oh,” Ilya said. “Are we getting a lecture from Dad?”
Scott sighed internally, this wasn’t going to be the easiest conversation, and Ilya wasn’t making it any easier. Maybe it would be easier to direct the conversation to Hollander. “Is it possible for him to not be an asshole for five seconds?”
“No,” Shane said, but without any annoyance behind it. God, this was weird. How did they like each other? Hollander was so nice.
“So what did you want to talk about, exactly?”
Scott decided to start at the beginning, and be nice, despite Ilya’s comments. “Well, first of all, I’m sorry you guys got outed that way. That’s awful.”
“It wasn’t great,” Shane agreed.
“Ruined our plan to kiss on television,” Ilya said dryly.
Scott stuck to looking at Shane. “When I heard about what happened, I felt sick, honestly. Being outed was my biggest fear for years. That decision shouldn’t have been taken from you.”
Ilya joined Shane on the couch. “Is that the only reason you felt sick?”
Scott had to smile at that. He assumed they both understood how big of a shock this had been for everyone. “I was pretty shocked. Not gonna lie.”
“If you are here to tell us our relationship is okay or not okay, we don’t care,” Ilya said bluntly.
“Jesus, Ilya,” Shane muttered.
Scott felt slightly surprised that Ilya would think that, but he guessed the past month had held a lot for both the men, and they had probably heard from a lot of people who thought the opposite. He guessed that for them to have been together for years, they were both fiercely protective of their relationship, and some of Ilya’s reactions were rooted in defensiveness due to caring so deeply, rather than him just being a dick. Scott knew that if people were saying the kind of things about Kip that they were saying about Shane, he wouldn’t want to talk to anyone.
“I’m not,” Scott assured Ilya. “I have no idea how this thing with you has even been working, but you guys obviously have it figured out. It’s definitely never interfered with your hockey.”
He wanted them to understand that while he was confused and shocked, he knew that they were both professional. He’d watched them both play for years – there’s no way they had ever let their lives interfere. He can’t imagine what the past weeks had held for them – he would have hated for anyone to ever insinuate that he would throw a match, and this was much more emotionally charged than that. No one could understand still how they were together or how they managed to keep it a secret, but any rational person could see that somehow, they’d managed to be professional.
“Thank you for saying so.” Said Ilya, and Scott thought that maybe he’d gotten through to him a bit.
“How’d Crowell react to your relationship?” This was his opening to the rest of what he was here for.
Ilya snorted and Shane said, “You can probably guess. I think if he thought he could get away with it, we’d both be out of the league.”
Scott thought about how ridiculous it was – Ilya and Shane were the best players in the league. The idea that them being together would interfere with that made him angry on their behalf. He thought back to the aftermath of his own coming out. “I think he felt the same way about me when I came out.”
“And Troy Barrett,” Ilya added. “Troy got an email after that was like...what is the word? Nice but sounds angry?”
“Passive-aggressive,” Shane said.
“Yes. Okay. That.”
Scott decided to jump in with his idea now. He was nervous for it – he knew they’d be understanding of what he wanted to do, but he wouldn’t’ blame them if they didn’t want a part of it after everything they’d been through.
“Crowell’s a dinosaur,” Scott said. “He’s standing in the way of progress, which is part of why I wanted to talk to you. Carter Vaughan and I are trying to start a group of NHL players.” He paused. That wasn’t quite right. “No. Of hockey players—I’ve already reached out to Max Riley and Leah Campbell—who are interested in fighting back against toxic hockey culture. Not just homophobia, but all of it: racism, sexism, rape culture, transphobia, toxic masculinity. I know that sounds kind of huge and impossible, but it has to start somewhere.”
“Like a club?” Ilya asked. “Of nice hockey players?”
“Basically,” Scott said. “I thought when I came out that would make a difference for other queer hockey players.”
Scott felt so frustrated at how little had changed since he had come out. What he had done was supposed to have helped people, but it didn’t feel like it had made a difference at all.
Shane said, “I think it did,” and glanced, slightly embarrassed at Ilya, but with a soft look on his face. God, had they been looking at each other like that the whole time? How had no one noticed. “It did for us, anyway” he finished.
Ilya didn’t look delighted that Shane had said that, but he didn’t deny it either. Scott was surprised at that. He couldn’t imagine how what he’d done had had an impact on them, but he was touched that it had.
“Yeah?” Scott asked. “That’s nice to hear. But when I heard Troy’s story, it made me realize that queer NHL players still didn’t feel safe coming out. And that’s just one problem with hockey culture.” He thought through all the problems that people had brought up in the past weeks and sighed. “Sometimes it all seems so broken I don’t know if it can be fixed. But I want to try.”
“So,” Shane said slowly, “like, if someone in hockey says or does something awful, we would speak as a united front against it? Is that what you’re thinking?”
Scott was excited that they’d understood and seemed to be on board. “Exactly! Right now it’s scary, speaking out, when you’re just one person. But if we have an organized group who can release statements, it’s a lot less scary. It’s powerful.” He leaned forward. “I have over fifty hockey players interested in joining already. I think we can really do this.”
He’d wanted to wait to talk to them, because he wanted to make sure that it could actually happen, and also, he wasn’t sure exactly what to say to them.
Ilya said “I’m in.”
“Me too,” Shane said. “A hundred percent. I know J.J. and Hayden would be into it too.”
“My coach might join as well,” Ilya said thoughtfully. “He is a very good guy.”
Scott hadn’t thought about having people that weren’t just players, but it made sense.
“Yeah? That would be great. I’d love to get some people from that side of the bench.” He smiled.
Now that they were in, he was excited, but he felt that there wasn’t much left to say that he hadn’t already got across.
“Sorry I kind of jumped right into my pitch. I mostly came here to tell you that, y’know, I’ve got your back. And congratulations, I guess.” It felt a bit odd to say but Scott felt he should add it.
“You can congratulate us after we are married.”
Now that was something Scott hadn’t been expecting. God, how long had they been together? “And when will that be?”
“July,” Shane said, and then looked at Ilya “Makes sense, right? Maybe the week before camps start?”
“Sure,” Ilya said. “Whenever.”
Was he really watching Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander pick out a wedding date? Why would they have not already done that? Scott could not understand them.
Scott blew out a breath. “Jesus. This is really weird. Sorry.”
“Why?” Ilya asked. “Because we are both men?”
“What?” God, Rozanov was such a dick. Why would he say that? “No! Because...you know what? Fuck you, Rozanov.”
Ilya laughed, then stood and extended his hand to Scott. “You are a good guy, Hunter.”
Scot took Ilya’s hand and Ilya pulled him into a hug. He was almost as surprised as when he’d seen the video.
“Well,” Shane said. “There’s something I never thought I’d see.”
Scott laughed and stepped back. “Funny. I said the exact same thing when I saw you guys kissing in that video.”
“I want to be friends,” Ilya said to him. Scott was surprised at his admission but not at the sentiment. He sort of felt half friends with Ilya already. And he felt that both him and Shane could maybe use more friends.
“Me too,” Scott said. Then he grinned and couldn’t resist adding, “After this series ends, of course.”
Ilya smiled back. “I will be busy in the semifinals after that.”
“Dream on, Rozanov.”