Work Text:
The Pressure to Be Perfect
The rink was always cold, but the stares were colder. From the moment Shane first stepped onto the ice, he knew he was different—and not in a way people let him forget. Hockey was a white-dominated sport, and he was reminded of that every day he showed up with his gear slung over his shoulder and his helmet tucked under his arm.
At least his name didn’t give him away. His parents had been deliberate about that. Even though he was half-Japanese, they had given him a plain, generic English name—Shane—hoping it might remove one obstacle before it ever appeared. A name that wouldn’t pause a coach’s tongue or draw extra attention on a roster sheet.
But a name could only do so much.
Once he stepped onto the ice, his face filled in the gaps. Coaches still looked twice. Teammates still asked where he was from—where he was really from. His name might have passed, but he hadn’t. And so every mistake felt heavier. One bad shift stuck longer to him than it ever did to anyone else.
At home, the pressure took a different shape.
His mom was practical. Sharp. Direct in a way that left little room for misunderstanding. She believed in preparation, in discipline, in being twice as good so no one could question his place. Success, to her, wasn’t a dream—it was a requirement. Something you worked toward with your head down and your emotions tucked neatly away. When she talked about hockey, it was about scholarships, futures, and making smart choices. Shane heard expectation in every word, even when it wasn’t spoken aloud.
His dad was different.
Gentle. Reassuring. Always quick to soothe after a rough game, always reminding him that one loss didn’t define him. He never raised his voice, never pushed, never dictated who Shane had to become. If anything, he made it easy to breathe.
And maybe that was why it was harder.
Because even though his dad never said it—never hinted, never acted on it—Shane felt it anyway. In the way his dad lingered by the rink glass. In the way his eyes followed Shane’s every stride. In the quiet pride after a good game that felt deeper than words. Shane knew his dad had once wanted this life for himself. Had come close. Had fallen just short.
That unfinished dream hung between them—an invisible weight. Not as pressure from his father—but as pressure Shane placed on himself.
He wanted to succeed for his mom, to meet her expectations, to become something solid and undeniable. But for his dad, it was different. More fragile. He wanted to carry that dream gently. To fulfill it without ever being asked to.
So he skated with it all inside him—the sharp edge of expectation, the quiet weight of hope, and the fear that if he slowed down, if he faltered, he’d be the one to finally let it slip away.
And that pressure followed him everywhere, even when no one was saying a word.
It first showed up in the kitchen.
His mom monitored his diet the same way she monitored everything else: precisely, efficiently, without emotion. Protein counts, portion sizes, supplements lined up neatly on the counter. Food wasn’t comfort—it was fuel. Something to be measured and optimized, another variable to control in a world that already felt stacked against him.
She meant well. Shane knew that. In her mind, this was protection. If his body was perfect, no one could criticize it. If he ate clean, ate right, stayed disciplined, then that was one less thing the world could use against him. She framed it as care, as preparation, as responsibility. Elite players don’t eat like everyone else, she’d say, sharp and matter-of-fact.
So Shane learned to be hungry quietly.
He learned to ignore the way his stomach twisted late at night, how food started to feel like something he had to earn. He learned that being full meant being lazy, and that wanting more meant lacking discipline. The scale became another silent judge. The mirror, another checkpoint.
His mom never noticed the damage because on paper, everything looked right. He was lean. Strong. Controlled. That was success, wasn’t it?
His dad noticed—but he didn’t know how to stop it.
Sometimes he would hover in the doorway, watching Shane push food around his plate, watching the way his shoulders tensed when his mom corrected a portion or swapped something out. Later, when it was just the two of them, his dad offered small rebellions disguised as kindness. An extra snack slipped into Shane’s hockey bag. A quiet, You trained hard today—you need to eat, said softly, like a secret.
Even then, he never pushed back directly.
His dad hated conflict. Hated rocking the boat. He’d spent too long learning how to be grateful, how to accept near-misses and quiet disappointments. So instead of confronting the pressure, he tried to cushion it. Instead of challenging the rules, he tried to soften the edges.
And Shane felt that too.
Because now the pressure had layers. His mom’s sharp expectations. His dad’s gentle concern. And Shane, stuck in the middle, tried to be disciplined enough to satisfy one and strong enough to reassure the other.
He told himself it was temporary. That this was just what sacrifice looked like. That once he made it—once he proved himself—it would all ease up.
But late at night, lying in bed with hunger buzzing under his skin, Shane wondered when food had stopped being food. When it had turned into another test he was terrified of failing.
And still, the next morning, he ate exactly what was placed in front of him.
Because disappointing himself felt unbearable.
Disappointing them felt impossible.
As Shane got older, the pressure didn’t disappear. It just changed.
By fifteen, there were new expectations layered on top of the old ones. His teammates started talking differently—about girls, about bodies, about things Shane couldn’t always follow. Jokes flew around the locker room that made everyone else laugh immediately, while Shane stood there a second too long, replaying the words in his head, trying to understand what exactly was funny.
When he did respond, it came out wrong. Too literal. Too stiff. Like he was answering a question instead of participating in a conversation. Someone would say something crude, and Shane would shrug or explain it factually, killing the mood. The guys just laughed and shook their heads. That’s just Shane. Quiet. Awkward. A little robotic.
For a while, that explanation worked.
But as his friends started getting girlfriends, sneaking looks at girls in the stands, whispering names under their breath, Shane noticed the gap. He didn’t feel what they felt. Not really. He could recognize when someone was objectively attractive—he wasn’t blind—but it stopped there. No pull. No spark. No urgency.
He told himself he was a late bloomer.
To prove it, he tried to do what he thought he was supposed to do. He asked girls out awkwardly, carefully, like following instructions he didn’t fully understand. Conversations felt like drills. He focused too hard on saying the right thing, mirroring what he had seen, and still it never landed.
The girls were polite. Sometimes kind. Sometimes confused. Nothing stuck.
And every time it didn’t work, Shane found a safer reason than the truth. He blamed his personality. His stiffness. His way of analyzing instead of feeling. He told himself that once he loosened up, everything else would fall into place.
It was easier than admitting the alternative.
So he pushed the thought away—the quiet, unsettling realization that maybe it wasn’t just how he was talking to girls, but why he didn’t want to in the first place. He buried it under training schedules and meal plans and expectations that already filled every corner of his mind.
Hockey gave him structure. Rules. Clear objectives. It didn’t ask him questions he wasn’t ready to answer.
Shane was good at controlling what he could—especially when it meant ignoring something far more dangerous than failing a game.
When Shane was sixteen, the question he’d been avoiding began to answer itself.
Practices blurred together—ice time, drills, exhaustion—and so did the routines afterward. Locker room. Showers. Steam hanging thick in the air. Voices echoing.
At first, Shane treated it like everything else: something to endure, something not to think too hard about.
But one day, without meaning to, his eyes lingered.
Just for a second. Barely enough to register before his stomach tightened and he snapped his gaze away. He told himself it was nothing. An accident. His brain misfiring.
Except it happened again.
Not constantly. Not dramatically. Just enough that he noticed—and once he noticed, he couldn’t un-notice it. The way his attention drifted before he dragged it back. The way his chest felt tight, not with disgust, but with something quieter. Something unsettling.
Then came the reminder.
It wasn’t even directed at him. Not really.
Someone cracked a joke in the locker room—too loud, too casual—and another guy tossed a word back, laughing as if harmless. The slur hit the air like it belonged there, like it had always been allowed. A few guys laughed. No one corrected it. No one hesitated.
Shane froze.
It felt like the sound echoed inside him longer than it should. His stomach dropped, heat crawling up his neck as his mind raced ahead, connecting dots he hadn’t wanted to see connected. That single word told him exactly what this space was. What it would do to someone who didn’t fit.
From then on, he became deliberate.
He became hyper-aware of where he looked, how long his eyes lingered anywhere. He stared at the floor. At the lockers. At nothing. He showered faster, positioned himself carefully, left early when he could. He learned to fold his body inward, to make himself smaller in ways no one could quite point out.
Because hockey wasn’t just physical—it was unforgiving. The jokes. The language. The way difference became weakness instantly. Shane already stood out enough. Already skated on thin ice simply by existing.
Whatever this was—whatever he was beginning to understand—it felt dangerous.
So he shut it down the only way he knew how.
He told himself it didn’t mean anything. That his brain was misreading signals, overanalyzing, fixating on the wrong details. He buried the feeling under fear and logic, convinced that acknowledging it, even privately, would make things worse.
He focused harder on hockey. On routines. On control.
Because by then, Shane understood something very clearly: in a world that already questioned his place, giving it another reason to turn on him felt unthinkable.
By the time Shane was seventeen, his life felt like it was moving faster than he could grasp. He had his first girlfriend, almost by accident—a dare, a joke that somehow became a date, and then a string of small, awkward moments that became a relationship. He told himself it was real. That he liked her. Maybe even that he was in love. He liked the comfort of it, the sense that he was doing what everyone expected, that he could fit in somewhere outside hockey, that there was a safe space he could occupy.
It lasted until draft season, a whirlwind of ice time, showcases, weight training, and the relentless scrutiny of scouts. Shane was exhausted in a way that didn’t allow clarity. Then came Ilya.
Ilya was the first pick, Shane second. Shane had worked his whole life for this moment, for the dream of being drafted to a team like Montreal. And yet, even with that achievement, he couldn’t shake a subtle ache: maybe it wasn’t enough.
There was something about Ilya—his style, his attention, the ease of being noticed—that made Shane restless. It wasn’t admiration, exactly. Not envy in the way coaches would define it. It was a flicker of something he didn’t understand. He couldn’t tell if it was interest, fascination, or just the first inescapable measure of his own worth. Ilya had been chosen first. Shane second. And though Shane was on the team of his dreams, the comparison lingered.
Their first real meeting after the draft came in the gym. Both were pushing themselves to exhaustion on the bikes, collapsing on the floor afterward, gasping for air. Shane’s chest heaved, muscles trembling, sweat slicking his forehead. His gaze drifted unconsciously to Ilya, calm, composed, moving with effortless grace even in fatigue.
Ilya lifted a water bottle to his lips, tilting it back with precision. Shane watched, mesmerized. Then Ilya offered the bottle toward him. Shane hesitated, then accepted it. A small gesture—but it carried a weight Shane couldn’t define.
A whisper followed. Quiet. Almost lost under the hum of the gym, yet Shane heard it clearly. Without thinking, without questioning, he obeyed.
It shouldn’t have been significant. It shouldn’t have mattered. And yet, sitting there on the floor, legs sprawled and chest pounding, Shane realized he couldn’t ignore the effect Ilya had on him. Rivalry, yes. But fascination, too.
Years passed. Practices blurred into games, games blurred into seasons, and Shane tried to follow the script he had built: perfection, discipline, measured meals, controlled routines.
He tried dating again. Rose Landy, a famous actress, seemed glamorous, admired, everything the world deemed desirable. But Shane realized quickly he wasn’t interested—not in the way the world expected him to be. That clarity brought relief, yes—but discomfort, too. The perfection he had been chasing externally was never fully attainable.
The truth about himself waited. The fascination, the pull, the obsession he had tried to frame as rivalry with Ilya—years of stolen moments, whispered conversations, clandestine encounters—was something deeper than competition. Admiration. Love. Something terrifying and exhilarating.
Their relationship became secret, careful, hidden. Dark hotel rooms, whispered conversations under code names—Jane for Shane, Lily for Ilya—each stolen moment carried the weight of a world they had to hide from.
Shane didn’t understand how Ilya did it. How he, bisexual and able to take the easier path, chose Shane instead. That knowledge humbled and terrified him. Every sacrifice Ilya made—leaving a strong Boston team to play for an Ottawa team that lost often, giving up stability and ease—pressed down on Shane like another responsibility he could not shed.
He loved Ilya. But he also felt perpetually inadequate. Every misstep, every fear of exposure, every secret weighed on him. The secrecy amplified the old compulsions: perfection, control, the relentless drive to maintain the Golden Boy image, untarnished, untouchable.
Even in private, Shane carried the weight. Every glance, every laugh, every whispered moment with Ilya tangled with fear, longing, and guilt. He wanted to give Ilya everything he deserved—but he couldn’t. Not fully. Not yet. Not while the shadow of public expectation hovered over every choice.
The breaking point came one night after a small team party. Ilya had asked Shane to come. Shane hesitated the moment the invitation left his lips.
“I… I can’t,” he said finally, voice tight, hands twisting in his lap. “I don’t know what people would think. Even if they know we’re friends… I—I can’t risk it.”
Ilya’s brow furrowed. “You’re afraid?” His voice low, almost dangerous. “Afraid what? That they’ll see us? That they’ll see me choosing you?”
Shane wanted to explain, justify, but words failed. He was too aware of every eye, every expectation, every judgment. The Golden Boy image—flawless, untarnished—it was still a weight he couldn’t let go.
“Ilya… it’s not safe,” he murmured. “I just… I can’t.”
Ilya’s jaw tightened. “So would you choose me over hockey?” His tone sharper this time, testing, demanding.
Shane opened his mouth but couldn’t answer with certainty. Only hesitations and half-answers.
“That’s not an answer,” Ilya said, voice low but firm, eyes piercing. Shane could see the hurt, the frustration simmering.
Ilya stepped back. “Then leave,” he said. And Shane, knowing he had no choice, obeyed. He didn’t argue. He didn’t hesitate. He left, keeping his gaze low, swallowing the guilt flooding him.
Driving through Ottawa, city lights stretching past, Shane replayed the fight over and over. Ilya’s eyes flashing with hurt, the push, the words: Leave.
And then his mind went elsewhere. To the rink. To locker rooms that had been both sanctuary and battlefield. The echo of slurs, jokes, whispered comments targeting him. The hours spent training. The sacrifices his parents had made: his mother’s sharp guidance, shaping every meal, every step; his father’s quiet encouragement, love beneath expectation. Every medal, every award, every perfect game—it had all been for them, for their dreams, as much as his own. And yet here he was, failing in the one place that mattered most: with Ilya.
Ilya had played hockey to escape. Shane had played to achieve. Every achievement, every goal, every drilled routine had been deliberate, proof of devotion. And still, he felt he had come up short.
Tears slid down his cheeks as he gripped the wheel. The pressure, the secrecy, the stakes—all pressed on him like lead. And yet, beneath it all, stubborn and fragile, was a spark. Love. Admiration. The sense that perfection wasn’t everything—that some things were worth holding onto, even if terrifying, even if impossible.
Back in Montreal, Shane’s apartment was quiet. Bags unpacked, training gear laid out. Everything in its proper place, yet none of it calmed the storm inside. The fight with Ilya, the words, the push, the “leave”—they echoed louder than any crowd noise, louder than any commentator’s praise.
He sat on the edge of his bed, hands gripping the mattress. His stomach was tight, a coil of anxiety and hunger wrapped together. He had no appetite. The control of not eating became another ritual, another way to feel mastery over a world that often seemed uncontrollable.
Memories surfaced unbidden: locker rooms, whispered slurs, drills, sacrifices. His parents’ hopes. Every achievement for them and himself. And still, he had failed—here, with Ilya.
He pressed his hands to his face, shaking. Tears came freely now, hot and bitter, sliding down to soak his hoodie. The fear of exposure, the impossibility of perfection, the anxiety of letting anyone—including Ilya—see the cracks in his carefully constructed exterior pressed down like lead.
His thoughts looped relentlessly: every detail of the night, every syllable, every glance. Every step he could have taken differently. Even breathing felt like a task to execute properly. Every sensation, every thought, processed with exacting attention, leaving him exhausted.
And then he thought of Ilya—Lily, in their phones. All the sacrifices, the whispered moments, the careful precautions. Ilya had chosen him, despite the easier path. And Shane… he felt the unbearable pressure to measure up. And he knew he was failing in ways he couldn’t fix with workouts or diets.
The quiet of his apartment, the ticking clock, the distant hum of Montreal traffic offered no comfort. Only the tight coil of anxiety, the gnawing hunger he refused to feed, the guilt of not being perfect, not being enough, not being brave.
Yet, faint but stubborn, was a spark. Knowledge that he was alive. That he could endure. That he could survive the chaos he had spent years trying to control.
The day after the fight, Shane woke before his alarm, muscles tense, mind racing. Montreal’s early light filtered through the blinds, unnoticed. Every action had to be precise: breakfast measured, water intake calculated, gear in exact order. Training was the only place he could control everything—the ice, the drills, the repetitions, the speed.
At the rink, he pushed harder than anyone. Laps repeated until his legs burned, stickhandling drills executed with obsessive precision. Each pass, each stride, each movement cataloged, analyzed, replayed. But his thoughts refused to stay silent.
Ilya. The fight. The push. The words. Every sacrifice, every secret, every whispered moment. Anxiety coiled tight in his chest, mixing with relentless pursuit of perfection. Every lapse felt catastrophic.
Then, during a game, distraction struck. He didn’t see the wing approaching fast enough. His mind looping endlessly over Ilya, over perfection, over sacrifices.
Impact. Brutal. Shoved against the boards, pain radiating. The ice tilted beneath him. Vision blurred. Physical shock and mental exhaustion overwhelmed him. Darkness closed in.
When Shane came to, the world was a blur. Arena lights stabbed his eyes, voices layered over echoes of skates and boards. He didn’t know how long he had been out. Figures moved around him, urgent but indistinct. Hands lifted him, voices asking questions he couldn’t answer.
He was pushed into the ambulance. Lights flashing. Paramedics’ voices calm but firm. Every bump magnified dizziness and panic, pain radiating. His thoughts spiraled: Why can’t I do more? Why can’t I be perfect?
By the time they arrived at the hospital, fluorescent lights made him wince. Lifted through corridors, faces blurred, machines whirring. Exhaustion claimed him almost immediately.
When he woke again, someone held his hand. Blue eyes—bright, piercing, impossibly awake despite fatigue—looked back at him. Ilya. Head resting against Shane’s chest, hair mussed, eyes rimmed with dark fatigue. He had stayed. Watching. Waiting. Holding on.
Shane’s heart tightened. Fingers curled around Ilya’s, refusing to let go. Voice hoarse, shaky:
“I… I’m sorry. It’s my fault.”
Ilya stirred. Small, urgent, desperate: “I’m so sorry… I should have never—Shane, I was so scared this would be the last thing we said. Don’t scare me like that.”
Shane swallowed, the weight of everything pressing against him. “I… I’m sorry,” softer this time. “This shouldn’t be like this. I… I will do more. I’m not quite there yet, but… I want to give everything to you. And accept myself.”
Ilya’s fingers tightened, grounding him. Shane felt the tremor in his chest settle slightly. Words weren’t enough to carry all the fear, love, and devotion—but in this quiet room, holding each other, it was enough for now.