Chapter Text
January 2009, Saskatchewan
Silver doesn’t count.
They’ll hang it around his neck, toast to it in the evening, and add it to his Junior record, but for Shane it’s a loss that digs behind his sternum, incessant, as if determined to carve itself into the bone. At least it can’t be seen, there.
He skates to center ice. He doesn’t need to smile, not yet, but he does need to lift his arm and shake hand after hand after hand—
“See you at the draft.”
Rozanov disappears behind his teammate. The rough warmth of his palm is quickly replaced by another, but his voice replays in a muted loop.
It lasts through the ceremonies, the dinner, and well into the afterparty, echoing in the emptiness of his skull until the words have long lost their meaning.
By then, the digging has eased, a little.
His parents don’t seem to believe him when he begs off early, when he says that he’s tired and just wants to rest before their early flight, but it’s true.
It’s true even if his mom eyes his unfinished can of ginger ale and says, if you say so, Shane. It’s true even as he detours through the hotel lobby and down random hallways, ears peeled for sounds of raucous Russian. It’s true even as he shuffles up to the front desk in defeat, peering over his shoulder for any shadow of the Canadian team as if his mumbled question is an act of treason.
The receptionist is in the middle of apologizing about guest confidentiality when Rozanov finds him.
“Hollander,” he booms, unaware of the snipers Shane has imagined in the hidden corners. He smells of alcohol and cigarettes. “Good game, yes? You—”
“Shh!” he hisses, before he realizes the tournament is over; he’s allowed to talk to Rozanov in the open. It had been his goal, in fact, but he can’t recall why he’d thought he needed to prove he could be nice even in defeat. At least Rozanov is alone. “I’m sorry. You’re right, it was, uh, a good game.”
A beat of silence. He makes himself look up, like his mom always reminds him.
Rozanov is laughing at him. The quiet kind, with a sharp grin and his shoulders shaking, but still.
Shane can’t blame him. Rozanov probably doesn’t even remember what he’d said behind the rink a week ago, the first time they’d met. “Congratulations,” he says, and his stupid mission is complete.
“Hollander, wait, Hollander—”
He turns around, if only because it’s rude to walk off in the middle of a conversation.
Rozanov is still smiling, just a small lift at the corner of his mouth, but he’s not laughing anymore. “You were good,” he says. The lift stretches to the other side. “The rest of your team, ah,” he shrugs, “not so much.”
It’s rude to agree, but then Rozanov’s eyes crinkle, and the pressure behind his sternum loosens.
“Thanks,” he mumbles, as if saying it quietly will somehow smudge away the offense.
Rozanov offers his hand, then raises a brow when he’s too slow to catch on. “See you at the draft, Hollander,” he says again.
“Yeah.” Shane shakes his hand. “See you then, Rozanov.”
This time, it’s the warmth of his palm that lingers.
June 2009, Los Angeles
Second is like silver, and silver doesn’t count.
Still, Shane holds the jersey, holds the glass, holds his nerve. He needs to smile here. It helps that his parents are pleased, beaming, but beneath his suit jacket disappointment burns along his spine. The fact that he’d rather play for Montreal than Boston is irrelevant.
The fact that he can’t stop finding Rozanov’s eyes in the crowd is irrelevant, too.
The burn doesn’t go away.
Exercise doesn’t help.
Rozanov doesn’t, either.
Shane wakes up so disoriented that he’s ten minutes late for breakfast. His parents are already waiting for him at a table, their plates filled and three coffees poured, but they wave him off with a warning to hurry before the buffet lines get even longer; everyone’s flying out in the morning.
He almost doesn’t notice him, standing alone by the oatmeal station with a plate in each hand. His body bypasses his brain. “Need some help, there?”
Rozanov glances over. “Hollander,” he greets. “I am just, ah. For my father.” He sets down the fully laden plates and reaches for a bowl. He fills it with oatmeal, adds two scoops of raisins and one of chopped almonds, and tops it off with a bare sprinkle of brown sugar.
Shane doesn’t know why he’s still standing there, watching Rozanov make oatmeal like an idiot, but then Rozanov asks, “Do you know where is butter?”
By the bread, probably. He’s right, and he returns with two foil-wrapped pats of butter.
Rozanov cracks a smile, like he had last night. “Thank you.” Then, he proceeds to place one plate over the crook of his left elbow, the second in his hand, and tucks the butter pats into his right palm before pinching the edge of the oatmeal bowl with his remaining fingers.
“Wait, wait,” he says before Rozanov can attempt to acrobat his way through the jostling crowd. “You’re going to drop that—”
“No, I won’t,” Rozanov rolls his eyes, but he sets the bowl back down.
“Here,” he huffs, “why don’t I—” he rescues the plate teetering over Rozanov’s arm. It’s even heavier than it looks. “Take those first.”
Rozanov stares at him for a second, brow lifted, but then does as he’s told. Shane watches him move smoothly through the crowd until he pauses by a large table and sets both items down before a bald, straight-backed man who ignores him to continue speaking to the other men at the table. Boston management, Shane presumes.
He looks away when Rozanov turns around, just in time for a woman to ask if he’s getting oatmeal.
He shakes his head and steps back. He’s still holding the plate. He stares at the scrambled eggs, sausages, and pancakes until Rozanov takes it back.
Rozanov glances between him and the woman. “You’re not getting oatmeal?”
“Uh, no.”
“Hollander.” Something in Rozanov’s expression shifts. “You stand here all morning, but no oatmeal?”
Well, when said like that, it does sound ridiculous. “I mean, I was just—”
“Here.” Rozanov shoves his plate towards him. “You eat meat, yes? You take this, I’ll get another.”
“What? No—” But Rozanov is already walking towards the back of the buffet line. He scrambles to catch up. The sausage almost rolls off to its death. “This is yours, take it. It’s fine, I’ll get my own food.”
Rozanov crosses his arms. “I did not mean to make you wait.”
“No, really,” he tries, but Rozanov doesn’t budge.
He blinks down at the plate. “Well, I kind of wanted breakfast potatoes. And beans. And ham, instead of sausage.”
Rozanov snorts. He looks away for a moment, then takes the plate back. But he doesn’t leave the line. He must notice Shane staring at him. “What?”
“You’re, uh…” He doesn’t understand.
Rozanov shrugs. “Now I want potatoes too.”
He doesn’t know who cracks first, but suddenly they’re both cackling, and when Rozanov’s shoulder bumps into his, it doesn’t even matter that he’s actually kind of hungry, now.
The line inches forward.
Rozanov chews on a sausage and offers him a pancake.
He takes it, and the fork, and smiles back.
January 2010, Ottawa
Victory in his veins, ovation beneath his home arena’s lights.
Gold of the medal around his neck, gold of Rozanov’s hair and the lamplight in his eyes.
Shane smiled for the pictures, stayed for most of the afterparty, finished his can of ginger ale. His mom didn’t said a word when he asked to go. He found Rozanov outside the hotel by following the stink of cigarettes. Rozanov still has one between his fingers, dropping ash onto the concrete.
He’d won, so he says, “You shouldn’t be smoking here. Or at all, really. It’s bad for you.”
“Oh?” Rozanov takes a long drag. It’s so cold it’s hard to tell his breath from smoke.
He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, only that Rozanov hasn’t looked at him yet. “Yeah.”
He knows what it’s like to lose, though, so he waits. He watches the cut of yellow light through the snowfall, the occasional cars passing through the intersection, the pale glow of the moon through thick, hazy clouds.
“What,” Rozanov finally says. “Waiting for me to say congratulations?”
He frowns. “No? I just—”
“Well,” Rozanov stomps out the cigarette. “I’m not nice like you, Hollander.”
“No,” Shane agrees, temper flaring, “you’re not. You’re being kind of an—"
The trill of a cellphone interrupts. Rozanov swears something vicious in Russian, then fishes his phone out of his pocket. He answers right in front of him, and something even more venomous answers back.
Shane’s a bit glad he can’t understand it, but he also wishes he knew what was happening.
It goes on for a few minutes.
He’d forgotten to bring his gloves. He’d considered going back inside to get them, but for some reason he knows that if he does, Rozanov won’t be here by the time he comes back. He blows on his fingers, rubs them briefly together, then tucks them deep inside his pockets.
There’s a pause in the conversation that makes him turn, just in time to see Rozanov look away.
Rozanov says a few more lines, short and clipped, then hangs up.
Shane tries to fight it, but the sudden silence pulls his gaze. This time, Rozanov stares back, but he doesn’t say anything.
“That sounded…bad?”
Rozanov snorts. His eyes flick to the lamplight and back. “My father,” he explains, but it doesn’t make sense, because Shane can’t imagine his own father ever talking to him like that. Especially not after he’d lost a game.
“Is it because you lost?” he ventures.
Rozanov shrugs, scuffing the toe of his sneakers against the concrete.
“I’m sorry,” he offers, because he doesn’t know what else to say.
Rozanov smiles, then, a crooked little thing. “You’re such a bad liar, Hollander.”
Shane rolls his eyes. “I just meant, I’m sorry he yelled at you, okay? You’re right, I’m not sorry that I won, but it was a good game, right? You played really well. The rest of your team, though—”
“Not so much, ah?” Rozanov says, as if he, too, remembers their conversation from a year ago.
The thought scares him, somehow. “Yeah,” he says, too quickly. “Anyway, you—I’ll see you in October, Rozanov.”
“Will be a good game, yes?” Rozanov’s mouth curves. “Our first.”
“Um.” Something twists in his chest. “With the MLH, yeah.”
Rozanov steps towards him. His eyes are dark, and he smells of cigarettes.
He can’t help the way his nose wrinkles, but Rozanov only smirks, reaches close, and tugs on the open collar of his coat before zipping it all the way to the top. He doesn’t know what to do except stand there, and he feels like a well-wrapped burrito, afterwards, but warm. “What are you—”
Rozanov yanks his toque over his eyes.
“Hey!” It takes forever to wiggle his hands out of his pockets. “You’re an asshole, Rozanov!”
But Rozanov hasn’t gone far despite the head start, and they’re both laughing as he chases after him.
June 2010, Toronto
Shane wakes to a strand of gold on the cold pillow beside him, a dirty towel on the bathroom countertop, and a new name and number in his phone. He wakes with a new secret, and it itches in a way that has him dressed and packed an hour early for breakfast with his parents.
He spends the first few minutes sitting at the edge of the bed, blinking until he sees imagined shadows of themselves kissing just inside the doorway. He realizes his mistake too late: the shadows don’t stay in the room. Instead, they haunt him through the hallways, down the elevator, and halfway across the hotel lobby before they dispel at the sight of Rozanov in the morning light.
“Good morning,” Rozanov says, a bookend to last night. He’s wearing the same jacket, the same pants, and he’s sitting in the middle of the sofa with the same ease he’d had naked in Shane’s bed.
“Morning,” he says, already smiling, though it twists when Rozanov pats the spot beside him but doesn’t make room. He can’t help glancing around. His parents aren’t down yet, and there are no other recognizable faces, but the open sightlines make him nervous, as if someone might see them and know.
“What,” Rozanov teases, “we can’t sit together? We just filmed a whole commercial, Hollander.”
It’s not untrue, and it’s still early, so Shane ends up sitting as uncomfortably on the sofa as he’d been naked in his bed, pressed between Rozanov and the plush armrest. He nudges Rozanov’s suitcase away so his feet have room, at least. “You’re, um. Leaving soon? You had breakfast yet?”
“Yes,” he answers, nonchalant. “Car should be here soon. Breakfast was fine. Smaller, but not crowded. They don’t have the beans you liked.”
“Right.” Rozanov’s thigh is a distracting line of heat against his own, amplified by the quiet and the glowing daylight. “So, you’re all moved in, then? In Boston?”
Rozanov’s laughter is a low rumble that Shane feels more than he hears. The seat cushion dips when he shifts closer, like the mattress had last night.
“What.” Shane glares, mostly to warn him away but also to see the green of his eyes.
“You are so boring, Hollander,” he says, letting their shoulders brush. “Ask me something else. This is terrible interview.”
He rolls his eyes, but somehow the irritation makes it easier to relax into the cushions and nudge him back. “Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Rozanov heaves an extravagant sigh. “Like, maybe, how does it feel to be so sexy and irresistible, always—”
He coughs—scoffs. “Irresistible? Where’d you—”
“Good word, yes?” Rozanov leans back, his arm coming around to settle across the backrest. “Learned from a girl in Boston. She also—”
“Fuck off,” he says, caught between a jolt of anger and the ghost of heat behind his neck.
“No, no,” the heat comes alive as Rozanov’s hand slides through his hair and squeezes his nape. “Hollander, you’re being boring again—”
Something buzzes against his thigh.
Shane doesn’t need to know Russian to know that it’s vulgar, whatever Rozanov had muttered. His neck goes cold when Rozanov’s hand leaves to fish through his pocket.
Rozanov glances at the screen. “Car is here,” he says.
“Oh. Okay.” It’s hard to look at him in the soft light. “Bye, Rozanov.”
A pause. Then, the seat cushion tilts back as Rozanov shifts away. “Bye, Hollander.” The wheels of his suitcase roll smoothly along the rug then the vinyl flooring. The glass doors slide open and closed.
Shane is still sitting there, beside the shadows of themselves kissing on the sofa, when his phone buzzes.
And that’s where his parents find him, hair ruffled, staring down at a text from Lily: see you in october ;)
October 2010, Montreal
The arena is electric, the energy pulsating as the first game between Montreal and Boston unfurls across the ice. It’s loud, chaotic, enthralling; it’s everything Shane had imagined it would be.
Except there’s a wall of glass between him and the chatter and chirping from the bench, and he doesn’t have his helmet or pads or skates. He doesn’t have anything to defend himself against the way the crowd erupts when Rozanov scores the first goal of the night.
Shane is probably the only spot of quiet in the building. The bench is rowdy, booing. Hayden darts a quick glance over his shoulder, but it’s Rozanov who sees him.
It’s Rozanov who beats the buzzer with the winning goal, Rozanov who drawls no more than a single sentence to each question in his post-match interview, Rozanov who ambushes Shane in a darkened hallway, afterwards.
“You weren’t on the ice,” he says, the words cornering him despite their two meters of distance.
“Yeah, no shit,” Shane snaps. He’d tried so hard to keep it together—
“Why?” Rozanov pushes. “I heard you fainted at camp, that it was bad and you needed the hospital, but you never texted, and then they said it was just upper body injury—”
“So you do know.” His mom had shown him the press release. Upper body injury. It’s technically true.
“But you don’t look injured.” Rozanov’s eyes are narrowed like an official who’s spotted blood on the ice. He moves closer, one slow step at a time.
Shane’s back hits the wall.
Rozanov smells of sweat and locker room soap. “You don’t move injured. Not enough to keep you off the ice.”
The curl of his hair is longer than Shane remembers, almost blackened by the shadows and the water beading at the ends and dripping down his neck. He thinks back to the last time he saw Rozanov up close in the dark. “I’m sorry about the commercial,” it tumbles out. “I know they couldn’t use it because of me. I’m sorry I messed that up for—”
Rozanov’s mouth is as soft as he’d remembered.
The world stays quiet even as they pull apart. He stares at the hollow of Rozanov’s throat and swallows. He’ll miss him, too.
“It’s okay,” Rozanov says, and his voice rumbles just as he’d remembered. “It was fun, yes?”
“Yeah.” As if it’d ever been so simple.
Rough palms slip past his coat, under his sweatshirt, to his skin. “So it’s not serious then? Your upper body injury.”
Shane almost laughs. “I don’t know.” He almost cries.
A hand slides up towards his chest. “Hollander—”
“Stop.”
He holds on to Rozanov’s wrists even as they pull away. Rozanov’s thumb returns to trace tentative circles on his hip. “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” but the cardiac monitor would’ve been palpable under his skin.
Rozanov stares at him. He’s not smiling anymore, but his eyes are as beautiful as he’d remembered. “We will play one day, yes?”
Shane runs his fingers through dark, golden curls; Rozanov’s palm comes up to warm his cheek. “I don’t know,” he says. “I hope so.”
Both their hands come away wet.
And when they kiss, Shane imagines that he, too, is just as he’d remembered.
January 2011, Ottawa
The illusion ends with a prescription of blood thinners. The deconstruction of Shane’s life accelerates: the walls come down with each signature on paperwork he doesn’t read, the foundation crumbles with the release of a statement he doesn’t write, and the dust settles with the gentle placement of McGill’s admissions packet on his desk.
He doesn’t mind the look of it there as much as he does the medals and trophies displayed all around the house, but his mom had grown quiet when he’d asked if they could stow them, and he knows better than to ask about taking down his pictures, too.
In turn, they don’t ask about his plans when his car stays parked on their driveway for another week after the holidays, then two. They don’t ask whenever he turns the TV on for Montreal, and they don’t comment when it’s for Boston, sometimes. They don’t know that he stays up late with Rozanov’s interviews replaying on his phone; and his stats, his news, his gossip rags.
Gradually, it becomes easier to sit together with his parents, to have all the most familiar sounds of hockey surround him while going over letters from lawyers, ex-sponsors, and college recruiters. It becomes easier to cheer whenever Hayden scores, the only one from Montreal who still checks in, and to smirk at Rozanov in the penalty box, who hasn’t texted since October.
When All-Stars rolls around, it’s a welcome relief to have the attention diverted away from him and onto Rozanov vs. Hunter, Europe vs. North America. By then, he can clap for Hunter’s new shot accuracy record and boo at Rozanov’s instant rewrite, even as he wonders what would’ve happened if he’d been there, too. What stories they might’ve spun, instead.
Shane keep the TV on after the skills competitions have concluded and his parents have gone to bed; it might be delusion that makes him keep watching after Rozanov appears on the big screen, shirtless and sweaty and serious, with a microphone in his face.
“—of Shane Hollander’s cardiac event during summer training, with his medical retirement finally announced after months of speculation?”
“Yes, I saw. No more hockey for Shane Hollander.” The towel around Rozanov’s neck is useless in keeping his sweat from rolling down his chest. “Is a disappointment, yes?”
It takes a moment for the words to connect, for the sound of is a disappointment to collide with the sight of he’s a disappointment in the closed captions.
Even the interviewer looks taken aback. “Well, there’s some strong words from Rozanov, and also some strong shooting,” she says. “Congratulations on breaking the shot accuracy record, hot off the heels of Scott Hunter’s own—”
His reflection stares back from the black screen.
Delusion calms his breaths, soothes his heart, and pulls him to his feet. It sends him on autopilot into the bathroom, and then to his bed. It closes his eyes and pulls the covers to his chin, but even delusion can’t help him sleep.
At some point his phone starts flashing, which doesn’t help.
He watches the light flicker on his walls, again and again, until he caves and turns around, reaches out, and—
He sits up. “Rozanov?”
“Ah, so you are alive.” He sounds different through the phone than the TV.
“I was sleeping, asshole,” he lies. He glances at the clock and immediately lowers his voice. “It’s, like, 2AM.”
The quiet opens the door for club music and background chatter to seep through. The noise clashes with the monotony of his ceiling at night. Someone murmurs close to the mic, low and indistinct.
Shane almost hangs up. “Look, if you’re just drunk dialing, or whatever, that’s fine. Have fun, or don’t, but I’m going to—”
“No, wait.” A scuffle, a string of Russian. The music suddenly mutes. “Okay.” A pause. “Hollander, my English is not good. You know this.”
“It’s not that bad,” he says, more a reflex than a thought.
“There was an interview,” Rozanov barrels on, “and they asked about you. I didn’t—Hunter said that I—” another pause, longer. He clears his throat. “I did not mean what I said.”
Now Shane’s the one searching for words. “Is this the one where you called me a disappointment on live television?”
“Fuck,” and then a sound with the shape of a Russian expletive. “Of course you saw it. Hollander, I am asshole, yes, but not that kind of asshole. I did not mean to call you disappointment.”
“No, I understand.” His eyes catch on the glint of gold on his childhood walls. “It’s okay. I, uh. I mean, the only way I’d be an even bigger disappointment is if I’d actually died, I think, so at least I’ve got that going for me—”
“No, stop.” The phone must pull away for a moment, because even the sound of his breaths disappears. “Do not say that.”
He doesn’t know how to talk to Rozanov without seeing him, Shane realizes. He doesn’t know what to do with these words without the context of his eyes and his mouth, what it means when his voice tightens like that, how to comfort him without running his fingers through his hair. So he says, “I’m sorry.”
This time, there’s no music or chatter to trickle through the quiet.
“You are not disappointment,” Rozanov says, finally. “Never. I will say it again tomorrow, so they get it right. I wish we could have played, yes, but I wish you are alive more.”
At least Rozanov can’t see him, like this. “I wish we could’ve played, too.”
There’s something in the darkness that makes it easier to be honest, and perhaps there’s something in honesty that makes it easier to sleep.
They talk until Shane’s eyes grow half-lidded, a bit about nothing and a bit about everything. It could’ve been minutes or hours, for all he knows, and they talk until a voice pulls Rozanov away with a reminder of their early start tomorrow.
Shane sleeps, floating and dreamless.
He wakes to a new text from Lily: watch me beat your entire continent :D
And he does, despite his texts that wished otherwise, and he keeps the TV on through Team Europe’s celebrations, the ads, and the fluff pieces, until Rozanov speaks again into the microphone: “It is wrong, Shane Hollander is not a disappointment. The only disappointment is that I cannot beat him here, or on any other ice.”
March 2011, Ottawa
His mom prints and pins his McGill acceptance letter beside the silver and gold of his Junior IPC medals, and his dad drives them to a lovely restaurant for dinner that he enjoys until they ask about his plans for the weekend.
Shane blusters his way through an answer about watching the Ottawa vs. Boston game with friends, and perhaps swinging by the afterparty. He hopes that his face doesn’t betray him.
He's terrible at lying, and he’s terrible at wanting, but now there’s nothing left to stop him from trying.
His mom studies him as if searching for the lie, but his dad is surprisingly pleased. Our boy’s going to be okay, Yuna, he says. Only then does she relent, but not before reminding him to stay safe, to not drink, and to call a cab home regardless of the time.
That night, curled up in bed with the light of his phone rebellious against the dark, he types out good luck tomorrow. His phone buzzes almost immediately, and he hides his grin at Rozanov’s wow, against your hometown??
He doesn’t end up using the ticket Rozanov had bought for him, in the lower bowl at center ice, which he’d declined from the start. Instead, he buys his own for the very last row in the upper bowl, a lightyear away from the ice, and the stub wrinkles in his pocket as he watches the game with a bird’s eye.
It still feels wrong to be in the stands, but it feels right to breathe in the bite of the arena air, to pick apart the patterns shifting on the ice, to smile when Rozanov sinks another puck into the net.
Boston bullies their way to a 4-1 win. Shane can’t help but think that the scoreline would’ve been different, if he’d been on the other side.
He says as much to Rozanov, much later; after they steal kisses and escape into the cab like thieves, after they kiss again in the elevator and against the doorway, after Rozanov pulls off his toque and unzips his jacket in the reverse of another night, and after Rozanov returns from his shower, loose-limbed, wet-haired, and soft-eyed.
Even the weight of Rozanov’s head on his arm can’t derail that train of thought.
Instead of kicking him out, Rozanov just squawks and makes senseless noises of disagreement. Shane has no choice but to force him to pull up the videos on his laptop.
Rozanov remains delusional and blind, but he also listens and squints into the zoomed-in screen and eventually takes over the laptop to make his own rebuttal. Shane kisses him before launching into his counterargument.
“So this is what you’ll do?” asks Rozanov, after they’d called a truce and closed the laptop. “You’ll go to McGill and torture their hockey team with video reviews?”
“Yeah, I—” Something clicks. “Wait, how did you know about McGill?”
“Is a good college, yes?” Rozanov shifts away. “And they have a hockey team.”
“Yeah, it is, and they do,” Shane says, trying to read the angle of his brows and the downturn of his mouth. “But I meant more like, how did you know that I’ll be going to McGill? I just found out yesterday.”
Rozanov doesn’t look at him when he shrugs. “Yes, and they already have articles about it today.”
The picture comes together, then. Shane can’t help the grin that spreads across his face.
Rozanov catches it, of course. He scoffs, “I do not read about boring things like you, Hollander. Marleau told me.”
Shane’s not the only one who’s terrible at lying. “Of course.”
Rozanov rolls his eyes, but he leans back and asks again, “But coaching? That is what you’ll do?”
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s the plan, at least.”
“So you’ll stay with hockey?” Rozanov presses, gaze oddly intent.
Shane doesn’t understand his doubt; what else could he do? “I mean, I don’t really know anything else, and I still love hockey. I’ve talked it through with my parents, obviously, and I’ve had a few calls with the Redbirds, too. It just makes the most sense, you know?”
Despite these conversations over the past few months, there’s something different about saying it aloud now, with Rozanov’s eyes bright in the lamplight. It feels more definitive than any prescription or signature or announcement, more real in a way that doesn’t quite frighten him anymore. It still hurts, though, so he echoes his mom’s words: “I think I could be good at it. I think I could like it, too.”
“Of course you’d be good at it, if you wanted to,” Rozanov says, as if it’s the simple truth. “Still a golden boy, Hollander.”
A wave of fondness washes over him, so he closes his eyes like floodgates.
He leans towards him blindly, and Rozanov finds him.
June 2011, Ottawa
The summer eventually settles into some semblance of routine.
Some of it salvaged from his previous life: the early morning yoga, the smoothies, the dedicated clearing of his inbox, the afternoon weights, the scouring of hockey-related news. Some are entirely new: the pre-reading for the fall term, the online coaching modules, the video reviews for the Redbirds. The texts with Rozanov are like a bridge in between.
Shane is scrolling absently through his move-in checklist, the TV like white noise in the background, when his phone buzzes: watch me win roty :)
He’d roll his eyes, if Rozanov could see. 53 goals in his rookie season, Boston’s first playoffs in years. Of course you’re going to win.
but are you going to watch, Rozanov pesters as if he has nothing better to do, no one better to bother.
He’s happy for him, Shane reminds himself, so he indulges him and sends a photo of the TV screen, MLH Network’s logo captured in the corner.
looks as boring there as it is here, Rozanov complains. And then, because he’s apparently bored and has a one-track mind: what are you wearing?
Sweatpants and shirt, Shane replies. That question doesn’t deserve a photo.
And then, rapid-fire: no photo :(. at least a tuxedo in my honor. naked is fine too.
You haven’t actually won anything yet, he points out, though admittedly it’s not his strongest argument. I don’t even have a tuxedo probably isn’t much better.
He can imagine Rozanov’s grin as his texts come through: naked then ;). will frame it and put it next to the trophy.
Absolutely not. He feels like he’s scolding a child.
Boring :( He hears it in Rozanov’s voice.
Then, a dozen more sad faces.
Their nonsense continues until Rozanov falls into an abrupt silence. The show is probably starting soon, Shane figures. He scrolls up to amuse himself with their bickering, and—
It keeps going, on and on. For months, by now.
No, a year.
His eyes settle on the first see you in october ;), above a string of what happened and are you ok and still in the hospital? and injury reserve? and get better soon that he’d never replied to. The next message is his own back home now that he’d sent in December, after he’d picked up another refill of his blood thinners, after his panic attack in his car on his parents’ driveway.
He doesn’t know why he’d sent it, but—
The TV screen transitions to a colorful stage with flashing, fluorescent lights. He turns up the volume, then regrets it when the announcer’s voice booms through the introductions. He brings it down a few notches.
There are singers, a live band, and too many questionable skits, with the camera occasionally panning to the laughing and well-dressed audience. It’s an entire clown show, but then there’s Rozanov in a tuxedo with gel in his hair, shaking hands and lifting the glass trophy to the loudest cheers of the night: Rookie of the Year.
Rozanov is golden on the stage, his hair and his eyes gilded by the light refracted through the glass, and he stands there beaming in the place where Shane had once seen himself.
He’s happy for him, Shane reminds himself, but something still digs behind his sternum.
It’s another few moments before he can move. He leans back and props his feet up on the coffee table, framing Rozanov and the trophy between them. He’s still wearing the same socks from grade 8, with the cotton worn just right and its frayed edges hiding beneath the ends of his sweats, but it’s certainly better than not wearing any socks. He takes a picture.
It feels a bit ridiculous, and it is, so he plants his feet back on the ground and takes another one with just Rozanov’s face on the screen.
Shane doesn’t know what he’s doing, only that Rozanov would find it funny. His senses will surely come back to him if he thinks about it any longer, so he sends the first one, followed by congratulations.
He sits through the rest of the awards show without looking at his phone, but it never buzzes.
He climbs into bed in slow motion and sets his phone face-up on the bedside table, but it never flashes.
He stares at his ceiling.
He closes his eyes.
He sleeps, eventually.
He wakes to his morning alarm.
And two messages from Lily.
Shane recalls his ridiculous photo from last night just as he’s swiping to open his messages, and the morning-after embarrassment almost makes him backtrack. Almost, because their conversation is suddenly open, and there’s another photo below his own—
He almost drops his phone.
He looks away, heart racing.
He glances back: Rozanov in bed, wearing only a smirk, barely censored by the misted glass of his trophy.
It takes him an embarrassingly long time to notice that there’s another text beneath the picture: see you next season ;)
You’re an asshole, Shane sends first, because it’s important to lead with this. And then, because some things haven’t changed: See you next season.