Archive of Our Own

All Rose had thought about since Shane’s injury was the sound it had made when he hit the ice.

The simultaneous crack thud of a body breaking and the terrible stillness that had followed. An arena holding its breath, waiting for a sign of life as first responders poured onto the ice.

Ilya Rozanov of all people, standing like a sentinel over him, pushed back by the medics but staying as close as he could. He seemed to be talking, asking questions. Rose hadn’t been able to make out his expression from the TV. Distress? Shock? Confusion?

Rozanov had nothing to do with the accident, although it would be revealed in the slowed down footage later that the reason Shane had been hit so badly was because he was looking behind him at Rozanov.

She can hear her father crying ‘Keep your head up in the neutral zone, son!’

Rozanov hadn’t seemed to be trying to distract him though, he just seemed to be smiling.

Rose had come to the hospital to visit Shane the first moment she could, which had fortunately been the day after now that filming was wrapping up. Out of all of her gay exes Shane was comfortably her favourite, and as she was the only one who knew his secret (besides the guy he had been with) she felt a responsibility to support him.

When she had arrived at the hospital and asked for him, the usual starstruck stares were mixed with a few confused glances. She had a terrible habit of keeping up with what people were saying about her on gossip sites, so she knows that rumours are already circulating about their breakup. Some think she cheated; some think he did. Some cited that their schedules were too complicated, and it was purely logistical.

One comment had stuck with her, though.

@lilyonthinice 12.21pm

think she might have been his beard. my cousin’s girlfriend’s sister was working as a medic that game and supposedly he was asking for Rozanov when he was barely conscious. called him ‘Ilya’ and everything

Much to her relief, the comment had been mostly ignored and debunked, because while people weren’t confident to disprove anything about Shane, they seemed to draw the line at Ilya Rozanov being gay.

It was a middle-aged blonde nurse who finally came to her aid. She either didn’t know who Rose was, or more likely didn’t care.

“I’m looking for Shane Hollander.”

“He’s having some tests run now so it’ll be a little while. Take a seat in the waiting room, and someone will come find you.”

That’s where Rose was now, playing on her phone and giving small smiles to people who were looking at her for too long.

“We’ve only got a babysitter for another hour, Hayden, I don’t want to be late again.”

“It’ll be fine babe, he won’t be in the mood for talking that much anyway.”

A young couple walks into the waiting room. Rose immediately recognises the man to be Hayden Pike, Shane’s best friend, and assumes the tired-looking, dark-haired woman to be his wife. They sit down across from Rose, and don’t seem to notice her.

“I still can’t believe this happened. I- the way he fell, I can’t- if that happens to you I-”

“Hey, hey, Jackie, it’s alright come here.”

Hayden wraps Jackie in a sideways hug and kisses her cheek. “He’s doing good anyway. Lily came to see him this morning, so he’s talking.”

Rose is now certain ‘Lily’ was ‘Liam.’ This meant the guy he had been seeing before her was back in his life. She had no way of knowing if this was a good thing or not, if anything the majority of first boyfriends her exes had were horror stories.

There had been the standard 'young gay in a big city' blunders. Being robbed by a one-night stand, sleeping with an ex's ex who was still obsessed with them. Unknowingly dating married men and being caught by their wives, or worse their children.

Her second favourite gay ex-boyfriend (who would be devastated to find out his number one spot that he had held for years had been usurped), had not once, not twice, but three times hooked up with a guy who tried to convert him to Christianity afterwards. One Quaker, one Baptist, and one Methodist. As a born and raised Catholic he had been more offended by the Protestantism than the evangelising.

Her least favourite gay ex-boyfriend (so called for trying to convince her that sleeping with men didn't count as cheating, spreading a rumour around their company of A Midsummer Night's Dream that she had given him chlamydia, and then deciding he was going to 'method act' for his role as understudy Demetrius for the play's run, which was nothing more than an excuse to be mean to her in front of other people as she was cast as Helena), had the best story, from Rose's point of view at least.

After she had convinced him they had broken up, he had immediately started dating a freshman from London, Alexandra 'Sandy' McGregor. Her father was a prominent director in the West End and had recently transferred his revival of City of Angels to Broadway which was receiving fantastic reviews. It was easy to guess why he was interested in her. Rose had tried to warn her of this, and also that he was going to cheat on her and was a generally repulsive person, and she had responded by open-mouthed chewing her gum, shrugging, and twirling a finger through her bleach blonde ponytail.

Six months later they were still going strong, even though there had been multiple sightings of him taking home random guys from the club and plenty of gossip about how openly he said that he was only dating her because of her father. When Sandy was cast in the lead role of the spring musical, Follies, which he was directing, there was little doubt as to his influence on her casting. Freshmen never got leads, even when they were as talented as Sandy was.

In April she brought him to the Tony awards to meet her father, where City of Angels was up for five awards. He had finished the manuscript for his own play, and hadn't missed an opportunity to mention his plan on showing it to him that night.

Rose had watched the Tony's broadcast alongside her friends, clapping politely when City of Angels swept the awards it was up for and booing when her ex showed up on camera when panning to Sandy's father, which had helped with the sensation that iron ingots were being dropped onto her chest from a great height.

The next day in class it was announced that the assistant director would be taking over for the last week of rehearsals before the show opened. Every type of rumour spread. He had gotten his big break with Sandy's father and didn't need to graduate. He had been arrested. He had gonorrhoea. He had gotten engaged to Sandy, who also hadn't shown up.

A fabulously entertaining twelve hours passed, and she was wine drunk in her dorm with her friends when there was a knock on the door which was opened to a dishevelled (her hair was slightly mussed, and one roll of her designer jeans was slightly higher than the other) Sandy. A silent signal ricocheted around the room and everyone dispersed to leave Sandy and Rose alone.

Rose led her to sit down on her bed.

"You were right," Sandy said, with no discernible emotion.

"I'm sorry."

"It's fine. I got him back for both of us."

Rose didn't reply. She hadn't drunk enough wine to know how to talk to a vengeful ex-in-law she had been fighting with for roles all year.

"You don't want to know how?" Sandy asked, facing Rose, a thin ring of shiny green around her pupils. Her breath stunk of vodka which Rose could barely stand the sight of after a fateful night in sophomore year, but she also couldn't recoil.

"If you want to tell me I do."

"You're too nice, Rose Landry," Sandy slurred, drawing circles on the back of Rose's hand with her forefinger.

"If you say so."

Sandy laughed and Rose swore she could see it bounce around the room like a ball of light which settled in her throat and spread through her, raising the hair on her arms.

She rested her head on Rose's shoulder and Rose shivered. The window had been opened when all her friends had been crammed in, but now that they were gone and it must be cold, though her back seemed to be sweating.

"I found him in my bed with two other guys."

"What the fuck?" At least with Rose he had kept his affairs to public places and his own room, or so she hoped.

"I don't really care about that. I knew he was cheating and I change my sheets every night anyway." Rose had raised an eyebrow at that but decided it was an English thing, or more likely a Sandy thing. "But they were watching rehearsal videos and he was being so cruel about me. Saying how much he hated my voice, and that he had started bringing earplugs to campus so he wouldn't have to listen to me. Saying that I was too wooden for the stage, and that my only hope was Hollywood, but that I'd need plastic surgery if I didn't want people to puke during close-up shots.

"So I swapped out the manuscript he was going to show my father tonight for a slightly edited version of Caligula. He showed him at the after party, and my father humiliated him. He tried to say there was a mistake, but he didn't believe him. Called over all his theatre friends to tell them 'some kid' thought he could pass off Albert Camus as his own work. I timed it perfectly, waited until he was right on the come down from his outburst and stormed into the room, in tears and screaming about how I 'just found out' he was cheating on me. Accused him of using me to get to my father like I didn't know that already and I wasn’t using him too. Anyway, he'll never work in theatre. And he can't call that acting performance wooden."

Rose had only gawped. The girl was insane. She had thought they were enemies of a sort, but it was clear that if they had been Rose would have experienced more than catching a few snide glances in class.

Sensing Sandy didn't want to leave, and unwilling to ask her to go, they finished the rest of the wine and went through their ex's real manuscript, which turned out to be a terrible and thinly veiled Macbeth rewrite set in The White House. Rose had never laughed so hard and never told anyone about it. She alluded to Sandy's revenge when asked, but kept the details to herself.

Despite that night they never seemed to make it beyond supportive acquaintances and hadn't spoken since Rose had graduated. She had kept up with Sandy's career though. When she had won an Olivier award for Best Actress in a Play last year Rose had almost called her, but decided it had been too long. When she watched the broadcast she noticed Sandy had grown out her hair, no longer bleached blonde, instead her natural mousy brown. It suited her more than the blonde, framed her cheekbones and contrasted her deep green eyes such that it was hard to look away from her.

The memory is exchanged for how Shane had looked at Rozanov before the hit. If Lily was someone else, he had someone to worry about. She had hoped above all else that Lily was kind. Someone who was patient and listened and understood the pressure Shane was under. Everyone deserved someone like that, especially someone as hard on themselves as Shane.

Besides understanding the pressure, Ilya Rozanov did not appear to fulfil any of those boxes. Rose knew better than most the subtleties of creating a public persona and had always assumed that much of Rozanov's arrogance was put on. But there was a bite to it that belied it being a real part of him, and his commitment to provoking anyone within a mile radius was so consistent on and off the ice it had to come somewhat naturally.

As for him being queer in some way she agreed with the gossip board — she didn't see it at all. When Miles had asked about whether she knew if he had a chance with him she had shut him down and said there was no way. To which he had reminded her that if she was able to tell if men were queer her love life would be a lot less dramatic.

It is at this point Hayden spots Rose.

“Hi! Sorry I didn’t see you there.” He blushes slightly, as if embarrassed about mentioning Lily in front of her. Rose had heard her mentioned before, when she had met Hayden the first time and he had nudged Shane and loudly whispered, “Bet she’s hotter than whoever that Lily was, right?”

“Hey, how are you? Sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met,” Rose says, gesturing to Jackie.

Jackie starts to speak but Hayden interrupts. “Oh of course, Shane couldn’t keep you around long enough to come over to ours for dinner! This is my wife, Jackie.”

“It’s lovely to meet you.”

“You too.”

“I’m Rose by the way. Sorry, I shouldn’t assume.”

“If anyone can it’s you!” Jackie laughs. “Couldn’t watch a Montreal game without you popping up on the screen.”

There’s an awkward pause as the ex-girlfriend, the best friend, and the wife of the best friend of a man they are all waiting to visit in hospital try to figure out what it is they are supposed to talk about.

“You’ve come to visit Shane?” Jackie says eventually.

“Yeah, I was watching when it happened. I came as soon as I could.”

“So, the break-up couldn’t’ve been too bad, then?” Hayden asks, to which he receives a strong elbow in the ribs from Jackie.

“You can’t ask her that!”

“Come on, he never tells me anything.”

Rose snorts slightly too hard at that. “No, just weren’t as compatible as we thought,” she smiles, every inch of media training she’s ever had dripping from her voice.

“It’s a real shame, you guys were hot together.”

Another elbowing from Jackie.

“Thanks,” Rose says, not sure that ten years of media training could come up with a better response than that.

Hayden shuffles in his seat. He clearly has another personal question to ask and is calculating if satisfying his curiosity is worth another elbowing.

“Shane didn’t mention a girl called Lily when you were together, did he?”

“Hayden!” Jackie yells, and fortunately for Rose, who is unable to figure out a response, Cliff Marlow walks in.

For a split second, Jackie is happier to see Cliff Marlow than a parched man an oasis. Then she feels Hayden tense next to her, and she knows she’s in for another ride.

“Come to apologise?”

“Don’t embarrass yourself in front of your wife, Pike, you did enough of that yesterday.”

“I nearly had you.”

Cliff huffs a laugh. “Yeah, nearly.”

Jackie shoots a weary look at Rose, who returns a supportive smile. She’s sad that she never got to come over to their house, she thinks she would have been an excellent support against the boys and their incessant bickering about hockey and each other and each other playing hockey.

“I wish we could reach out to Lily somehow,” Hayden says to her as though they are continuing a conversation. “It’s not an easy thing to see someone,” he pauses, clearly not having thought about Shane and Lily’s relationship beyond teasing him enough to put words to it. “Someone you love laid out on the ice like that. Especially if she’s not into hockey.”

“What makes you think she’s not into hockey?” Jackie asks. Although she would much rather ask him “What makes you think it’s love?”.

“She’s never come to a game. If she was into hockey she’d want to meet us all.”

Jackie wonders when she’ll have the heart to tell Hayden the reason he’s never met Lily is because she’s a man.

It isn’t her secret to tell, she knows that, but she doesn’t know how many of her friends she can set him up with to keep his cover before it becomes homophobic again. Not that she’s particularly proud of leading her friends into thinking they have a chance with a famous hockey player either.

She had her suspicions around the third failed date. In her experience, men were not picky enough about women to turn down three of them in a row after the first date. They were assuaged when she learned about Lily, this long-term, long distance ‘relationship’ he seemed to have going on with a girl from Boston that Hayden would not shut up about. But they were resumed when she had caught a glimpse of the messages Lily was sending him when he had been helping her wash up after a team dinner.

Lily 19:19
Don’t be so scandalised, you know I’m a gentleman

Lily 19:19
Anyway, you want this dick before or after next week’s game ;)

With that she was somewhat traumatised and pretty positive ‘Lily’ was probably ‘Luke’, although she was now confused about him living in Boston. Next week had been a home game. Although, they were playing Boston, so maybe he was a Boston fan and coming up to watch. She couldn’t imagine how a Boston fan so dedicated they were willing to travel to Canada for games had ended up sleeping with a Montreal player, but she supposed that was just one of the jokes life played sometimes.

If Lily had come by to see him this morning, their relationship had clearly resumed after the Rose break-up. A faster rebound than she would have pinned Shane for, but if it was a beard situation it had maybe never stopped. It also meant that Lily had once again travelled up to see Montreal play Boston, or he had travelled to visit Shane after the injury. A flight would be just over an hour, so it was entirely possible.

She often thought Hayden had met Lily and not noticed. Shane didn’t have any friends outside of hockey she was aware of, but there was high potential that Hayden had been introduced to a random man from Boston at one of their games and hadn’t put the pieces together.

Jackie worried about Shane. When she had thought that Lily was an escape from his life, of the pressures of the captaincy and strict diets and being so successful so young, she had been glad that he had managed to carve a place from himself away from all the noise of his day-to-day life. She had hoped Lily was a caring girl, who brought out another side of him that could spend time eating nice meals and watching bad movies, that reminded him that he was young and that he was loved. Now that she understood his secret, she understands that it isn’t privacy but secrecy, another cross for him to bear all on his own. It breaks her heart.

Seeing him in that hospital bad might undo her. To think of him sneaking his boyfriend in this morning before anyone else came to see him was soul-crushing. His season had been ripped away from him, his shot at a triple header of Stanley Cups crushed, and yet on top of all that professional grief, and the pain and distress of his injury, he still had to have the wherewithal to ensure no one saw him with his boyfriend.

Presumably his parents didn’t know either, but maybe Rose did. She seemed like a lovely girl, and if she was here they were on good terms, so he might not be completely alone.

A nurse appears with a furrowed brow and a smile that looks like a frown from far away.

“Alright you guys,” she says, gesturing to the four of them, where they are sat awkwardly distanced from one another. “You are all here to see Mr. Hollander, correct? He’s back from his tests now so you’ll be able to go in soon.”

Jackie nods but knows that the nurse isn’t looking for an answer. This is a woman who hasn’t not known something for a very long time.

"He's already had one guest today even though he really shouldn't have, but he snuck in,” she mutters, “so you can have ten minutes each, and he needs five minute break in between. That means one of you has to wait over thirty minutes. You can figure the order out amongst yourselves."

She leaves as quickly as she had arrived.

He snuck in. Jackie turns to Hayden to see if he’s heard it.

"Given that you put him in there, I vote Marlow," Hayden sneers.

Evidently not.

"I was going to offer anyway," Cliff replies, shortly. “And he should have been looking where he was going,” he adds under his breath.

“What was that?”

"Are you sure?" Rose asks loudly, clearly hoping to stop another squabble between Cliff and Hayden which Jackie wishes she could express more appreciation for. "I'm happy to wait. Sooner I leave, the sooner I have to go back to set."

"It's alright. We probably won't have ten minutes of conversation to have, better that he spends his energy on you guys."

"Thanks, Cliff," Jackie replies.

A pair of nurses walk past, carrying a selection of bloody instruments whose use Jackie can only imagine, and gossiping like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

"I mean Ilya Rozanov,” one of them says in Italian.

Jackie is surprised to hear Italian in the middle of Montreal, and even more surprised that she understood it. As a prize for being at the top of her class, she had spent a year of her astrophysics degree studying in Italy before she met Hayden, and while she had learned the language quickly at the time, she didn’t realise she had retained so much.

“He’s even hotter in person.”

“Sure, but the fact that he was here to see Shane Hollander? The way everyone talks I thought they were mortal enemies.”

“Mm. One of the girls said she walked in on them holding hands.”

“You’re joking.”

“Nope,” the other replies, and then they’re out of earshot.

Jackie can’t put the pieces together fast enough. Her heart is racing, and her face must look like she is trying to multiply five-digit numbers mentally.

Oh.

Oh no.

It is Galileo revealing the Earth revolved around the Sun and not the other way around. It was obviously true, but no one would be happy about it. The All-Star game, Rozanov’s reaction to Shane’s injury, the way Hayden complained about their little tiffs that always sounded more flirtatious than hostile.

And Hayden thought they were in love. Jackie played the clip in her mind's eye, every detail of Ilya's face as they panned from him to Shane. Not the look of a rival struck by someone he respected on the ground, but a lover in distress with nowhere to put it.

Now that she has thought it she can't imagine Shane with anyone else. He needed a partner of Ilya's calibre. Someone that successful, that talented, that attractive. That could meet him in every way at every level. Shane had a humble veneer, but he was a cutthroat competitor. That kind of drive was not to be tamed by a lover, it had to be encouraged, matched.

It was no wonder Hayden hadn't realised. They could make out in front of him and he would assume Rozanov was doing it as some cruel joke. He didn't understand that for all Rozanov and Shane had polar opposite public perceptions, Shane was the perfect sportsman in the same way that Rozanov was his audacious, foul-mouthed opponent. Their images protected them from scrutiny cutting too deep, allowed them to lose in front of thousands without bearing their hearts. It made everything less complicated because they knew exactly what the media expected of them, the Good Guy versus the Bad Guy, Courteous versus Imperious, Skill versus Strength.

Shane was gracious to his opponents, his insults passive and plausibly deniable. Always thankful, never a sore loser. Always redirecting the compliments he received to the rest of the team, never too pleased with himself. Underneath that, he was as bad of a loser as any professional athlete had to be. Jackie had seen him after rough games, quiet and surly. He could taunt as well as any of them, but he was careful to never let it on the same way she was sure Rozanov sometimes had to try to act like he thought he was the best thing to grace a pair of skates and wouldn't rather be liked than exacerbate everyone around him.

She could accept Shane and Ilya were in love. The thing that was bothering her was the timeline. She had seen those messages years ago. Had they been together that long? How did Rose factor into it? Was she a strategically planned beard and they had been together the whole time? But then why would they break up? She needed to talk to someone about this, but unless she befriended Rose within the next five minutes there was no one she could tell.

Maybe she could call one of her Italian friends about it. They didn't care about ice hockey. Their appal when she had told them she wasn't continuing her education to marry a man who played it for a living had made that clear.

Love led you to strange places. She had left her PhD track to marry Hayden and settle down. There were days when she resented it, but she held on to the promise that one day he would retire and the kids would grow up and she could finish what she had started. She wondered what Shane and Rozanov held on to. Were they going to hide until they retired? Were they waiting for the right moment to tell people? Each option would be uniquely painful. The amount of love there would have to be to soothe it, to let their careers become collateral if this ever got out, had to be insurmountable, impossible to bury.

She squeezes Hayden's hand and no one in the waiting room pays it any mind.

Cliff would rather be trapped in a pen with a hundred bulls and painted bright red than be in a hospital waiting room with Hayden Pike, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

He needed to apologise to Hollander in person, both because he was genuinely sorry, and because Rozanov had been grumpy with him since the accident, and he’s hoping this will fix that.

Fortunately, Rozanov had also gone to visit Jane this morning, and he was always in a better mood afterwards. He hadn’t explicitly said he was visiting Jane, but they were in Montreal and he had stolen out of breakfast with the usual ‘trying too hard to stay cool’ expression he always had when he visited her, so Cliff was sure.

It was odd that he had also come past the hospital this morning to see Hollander if he had understood those nurses correctly. He was a bit rusty on Italian these days much to his mother’s chagrin, but he had definitely heard them say ‘Rozanov.’

He was a bit lost on the ‘holding hands’ part. He probably misheard. Hockey players were known for being affectionate, but that seemed a bit far, especially for players who weren’t close off the ice.

Rose Landry is also here and is somehow more beautiful up close. Not for the first time he wonders how Shane Hollander of all people managed to date her. He was a handsome guy, but in Cliff’s conversations with him he always seemed to hit the wrong side of awkward. Some women liked that he supposed.

He thinks about asking Rose out. It is maybe a bit soon, but supposedly Shane has already moved on based on this Lily girl Hayden had been gracelessly asking her about when he had arrived.

His phone buzzes and he checks the message.

Steven ‘Sonny’ Patterson 12:15
[A picture of Rozanov in a conference room having a meeting with the coaches and the managers, clearly taken from a little glass window in the door. He looks miserable.]
need some help in there, sweetheart?

Cliff laughs to himself, yet another reason why he’s glad he isn’t the Captain. The amount of administration that goes into it cannot be worth the special jersey.

Strange that Rozanov has had time to visit Jane and Hollander and get back in time for his meeting, though. In fact, based on when Rozanov left this morning, and the time his meeting started, there was no way he could have possibly had the time to meet with them both.

Unless she worked at the hospital? Cliff had thought she was an athlete though, he remembered teasing Rozanov about looking up foods that were safe for a macrobiotic diet when she was coming over one time. Being an athlete had also explained why she seemed to travel a lot, because he always messaged her at weird times of day.

If he was visiting Hollander though, why not tell him? They could have gone together, and they could have shared the inevitable awkwardness of the apology. Besides, it was normal for captains to visit players from other teams when they were injured in their games. So why had he snuck out in that way in that way he always did when he was visiting Jane? Like he was getting away with something.

The pieces sink together like molasses through a sieve.

There was no fucking way.

None.

Unless?

Cliff sees it now. The way Rozanov had stood over Hollander’s body, powerless but resolute. The way he had hounded the medics about his condition, and then, when he was turned away, skated back to their bench like he had chains around his ankles.

Rozanov has played games that have hospitalised players before, but he had never been abnormally affected by it. Cliff had known this was different when it happened, but he only now understood why.

“Not surprised it’s just Marlow and not Rozanov here to see Shane,” Hayden says to Jackie as if Cliff can’t hear him. “The man wouldn’t know decorum if it kissed him with tongue. Asshole.”

The expression on Jackie's face is that of a parent who has been asked by a toddler where babies come from. She knows something.

"Rozanov will have reached out. Maybe he’ll come by later.”

“He’s been busy all morning,” Cliff interjects, feeling he should defend his Captain but slightly worried that in doing so he is going to give the game away. “But he’ll definitely visit. He isn’t heartless.”

Hayden scoffs. “Don’t think you can be the judge of that, buddy.”

“Have you even seen the footage? Roz was trying to check if he was okay and wouldn’t come back to the bench until he was off the ice! Meanwhile you tried to fight me and lost. I know what friend I would want.”

Hayden is speechless, and for a terrible second Cliff worries that he is about to join the dots and the fallout will be all his fault.

It wouldn't be the first time. Nine years old, sneaking into his brother's room to steal his Call of Duty game that Cliff wasn't allowed to play because their parents were gone and what they didn't know couldn't hurt them. Fishing with one arm under his bed and grabbing onto something rectangular with a hard cover and pulling it out. Not finding a video game, but instead a diary.

He had flipped through the pages for something interesting. There were a lot of things that seemed quite sad that he didn't want to keep reading. Eventually he found a page with a photo wedged inside it of his brother and another boy, with the scribbled caption on the white border, "Love you forever, Jude." They were standing side by side innocently enough, but looking at each other with something that made him uncomfortable in a way he didn't understand, so he had thrown it back under the bed and returned to his room without the game.

His brother had shown up late to dinner that night, which meant that the topic of conversation was badgering him about being responsible. "I don't want you seeing this Jude girl anymore," his mother said hotly as she gathered the plates, a sign that the debate was over and she could no longer be contested. "College applications are opening soon and you need to focus."

Cliff supposed multiple people could be called Jude, even though he had never heard the name before today. He would never snitch, so he waited until dinner was over and followed his brother to his room, opening his slammed door undeterred, and asking in a loud whisper:

"Why does Ma think Jude is a girl?"

Cliff hadn't noticed their mother following him up the stairs and saw her reflection in the window too late. A fear that did not belong to him shot down his limbs. Then he guessed all hell had broken loose. He didn't know for sure. He had been sent to his room and there had been a lot of yelling and by the time he had woken up his brother was gone.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hayden says lowly, knocking Cliff into the present.

“I know a lot more than you do.”

Cliff glances at Jackie and the fear in her eyes that tells him that she knows he knows, and she doesn’t trust that Cliff isn’t about to say it all just to spite Hayden, which is fair enough for all she’s seen of him. He’s not that kind of guy, but he should probably start acting like it.

He takes a deep breath and tries to remember that Rose Landry is watching this entire interaction go down and his chances of successfully asking her out half every time he yells at a man two feet shorter than him in a hospital.

“Listen Pike, let’s drop this, yeah?”

“Yeah, whatever. I’m sorry. Last night was just scary, y’know?”

“Name of the game.”

“Too right.”

Cliff is glad when the nurse comes to take Jackie and Hayden through to Shane’s room. However, he has missed out on his chance to chat up Rose, who at some point during their argument had put her headphones on.

A second realisation takes opportunity of the quiet to hit him like a brick to the face.

Nice one geniuses. A rhyme scheme and an almost anagram. He would bet his favourite sports car that was Rozanov’s idea.

Cliff can't imagine how difficult it must be for them. Rozanov had returned to the hotel last night without so much as a word to anyone. He had been more talkative when his father died. This had destroyed him. Not just the pain of a lover on the ground, but the knowledge that you couldn't go to them. Rozanov, as impressive and brash as he was, rendered helpless.

Rozanov had a tough exterior, and while Cliff did believe they were friends, they weren’t close enough for him to think he had chipped past the surface of him. He knew that he would often get phone calls from Russia during travel or practice that would leave him looking haunted. He knew that he never took his necklace off, and that when someone made fun of him for it, he had nearly taken his eye out. He knew from an article he had read about his father once that his mother was dead, and guessed that was the reason for the necklace.

He knew that the arrogance was all an act for the media, and that in reality he worked harder than any of them.

Someone like Hollander, who was humble and friendly and diplomatic but still a beast on the ice, could be a nice balance for all of that. Cliff had witnessed them play each other first hand and they had a magnetism like nothing he had ever seen. He hadn’t thought it was possible to simultaneously play with and against someone, but they did it. Their All-Star game had been poetry in motion. By the last period he didn’t think they would have noticed if their teammates had disappeared, they were so engrossed in each other.

He hopes that they are happy together, that they can still find solace in each other despite the apocalyptic risk. He hopes they love each other enough to get through it if it all goes wrong.

The Pikes leave. Rose is taken to see Shane. The clock on the wall ticks louder with each second.

Cliff tried not to think about his brother. The last time he had seen him was Christmas when he was eleven. It had ended with a fight that had his brother leaving in such a haste he had left his jacket behind. Cliff had tried to go after him but was stopped by his father blocking the door and sending him to his room. He had watched from his window as his brother stood at the end of their street until a car came to pick him up.

Hours later he had cried when his mother walked down their driveway and threw away his jacket. At 3am he had snuck out the house and taken it out of the bin, hiding it in the back of his wardrobe. He never worn it, but it had moved with him to Boston.

Whenever the topic of family came up with his teammates, he only mentioned his brother when it couldn’t be avoided, and was well practiced at avoiding any follow-up questions.

The ticking of the clock cracks open an old guilt that drives his hand to pull out his phone and search his brother's name, hoping to find a social media profile or an amateur theatre cast list.

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Sawyer had always loved film and books and plays. He had once told Cliff that the reason they played ice hockey was because before he was born he had tried to join the local theatre group and his parents had been so disgusted at the notion they put him in hockey lessons instead. Cliff hadn't understood the implications then and was just glad he got to play ice hockey instead of memorising lines. He hated reading in school, he didn't understand how everyone did it so easily when the letters were jumping around the page.

Sawyer had used exams as an excuse to quit hockey as soon as he could, but Cliff had fought to stay on his team when his came around. Although his parents resented that Sawyer didn’t like hockey, they also seemed to hate how much Cliff enjoyed it. When he talked about doing it professionally they told him it wasn't realistic and he should study to get a proper job instead. They stopped coming to his games, and only his father came to see him get drafted. When Boston won the Cup he was congratulated by one of his cousins.

He finds Sawyer's personal website. There's a small bio on it that starts his life at eighteen when he moved to New York and makes no mention of where he grew up or his family. There's a page with a list of his accolades as well as past and future projects. Cliff doesn't know the first thing about theatre, but he can tell Sawyer is successful. While they are not the same thing, he hopes that means he is happy too.

There's an email address at the bottom of the site. Cliff clicks on it and starts to type.

"Hey Sawyer, it's Cliff, your brother // your brother, Cliff // Cliff.

I've been thinking about you // I'm sorry I haven't reached out sooner // Pa's health isn't doing great // I'm sorry about what happened // I saw you on the news // I saw you got married // I'm sorry I didn't help you // I won a Stanley Cup // I'm sorry about everything // Congratulations on the Tony // I'll be playing in New York in a few weeks. I'd love to talk. I travel a lot with work, so I don't see much of mom and dad either.

If you don't want to I understand, but I always want to. I'll meet you wherever you are.

I miss you. I love you. I'm sorry.

Cliff

He reads and edits the message a million times. No string of words seems enough to make up for so much time. He hoped his husband was nice and had a family with enough love for them both. He searches for an interview of them and watches it with a tight throat. Joshua is loud and charismatic, but whenever Sawyer speaks he gazes at him carefully, nodding along to his every word with an arm wrapped around his waist.

When the video finishes an interview of Hollander and Rozanov after the All-Star game begins. Hollander is discussing the details of one of his goals and Rozanov is staring at him with a quiet joy, bobbing his head along to Hollander's voice as if it's music no one else can hear.

The interviewer asks Rozanov a question about their next game against each other in an obvious bid for a cocky Rozanov quote, but he doesn't take his eyes from Hollander and responds that he just wants to enjoy being in Florida.

"Sir? Excuse me sir?"

A nurse jolts him out of his uneasy stupor, and in his shock he pushes the send button on his phone. There's no going back now.

"Hey Marlow," Shane says, as the nurse closes the door behind them. He does not appear to be surprised; he guesses Pike warned him about his presence.

Cliff can only guess the expression on his own face. It isn't often you learn your team captain is in love with the team captain of your rival team who you injured yesterday and reach out to your estranged brother. He's probably the only person who has ever done all of those things in the same life, let alone in the same hour.

"Hey," Cliff says quietly, pulling back the chair from his bedside before deciding he would rather stand.

Even lying on a hospital bed with broken bones and hospital bandages Hollander has a distant, inhuman air to him. Cliff had always written it off as a talent thing. When you were as good as Hollander was there had to be something a little hard to decipher about you. He supposed that the gay thing accounted for some of that, but not all of it.

While Cliff had to publicly say Rozanov was his favourite, anyone who really knew the game knew that Hollander was the better of the two. Ilya Rozanov was stupidly talented, but Shane Hollander was a freak of nature. If you engineered a perfect hockey player in a lab you would get Shane Hollander. The speed, the skill, the strength, the accuracy, the instinct.

Any team would trade three players for him, some of the worse ones would trade their whole roster. A one-man team of Shane Hollander would be better than whatever Ottawa or Buffalo had going on at the moment.

But if this got out Hollander’s talent wouldn't matter, let alone Rozanov’s. While Cliff liked to believe in a better world, hockey was always twenty years behind when it came to progress. The risk of it getting ugly and hockey turning its back on them was too high. Being gay was most of the problem, but the few who could accept that might not be able to overlook a romantic relationship between the Boston Captain and the Montreal Captain.

It was Romeo and Juliet. He prides himself in the reference. An ex had taken him to a production once. While Shakespeare had been a nightmare to read in high school, it was easier to follow when it was being performed, and he had enjoyed himself far more than he had let on. He liked to recite the lines sometimes, enjoyed how the rhythm made them easy to remember.

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;

"I'm so sorry, Hollander."