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It started, as so many things do, with a tweet.
“Hey, Hollzy! Look at this! It’s so you and Roz,” Evan Dykstra said, shoving his phone in Shane’s face. Shane squinted at the slightly blurry screen, willing his eyes to focus on the small font. He never brought his glasses to practice (much to Ilya’s chagrin), but he also never anticipated reading whatever stupid meme the Centaurs decided was vital for his desolate knowledge of pop culture.
Me and the bad bitch I pulled by being autistic, it read, followed by a photo pulled from Centaurs socials of Ilya and Shane smiling at each other like idiots at a team event.
Shane read it a second time, then looked up at Dykstra, who looked incredibly proud of himself. Clearly, Ilya was supposed to be the ‘bad bitch,’ because no one had ever put those two words in the same sentence as Shane Hollander.
“Funny, D,” Shane began, “but I’m not autistic.”
Dykstra’s face went through a rapid series of emotions that Shane wouldn’t have been able to read even with his glasses, then laughed lightly.
“For sure, man. Just thought it was funny.”
Shane nodded, then returned to packing up his gear. The familiar feeling of invisible plexiglass dividing him and the rest of the world fell into place, like he could press his hands against it but never quite touch anyone else. He mulled over the tweet as he slid each item into their spots, which had been the same since Shane was in Juniors. It was second nature now, and every time Ilya tried to pack Shane’s stuff as a surprise, Shane could feel his skin itching until he could do it again. It wasn’t that Ilya did it badly, necessarily, but there was always a small swap or a piece in the wrong pocket that made Shane feel like he’d bitten down on aluminum foil.
He knew that his public persona revolved around his clean-cut, nice guy image. He was the classic boy next door, the straight man to Ilya’s chaos. It was why their rivalry worked so well, and why he and Ilya clicked. They balanced each other out, even if it meant that Shane seemed… well, boring in comparison. Every team he’d ever captained had known that he was kind and encouraging, but not the kind of teammate who would go out to party after games or help them break curfew. He was more likely to be the one on the other end of the phone, getting into his sensible SUV when a rookie calls to ask for a sober drive home. He didn’t mind in the slightest, but maybe his buttoned-up ways had given the wrong impression to his fans. He was awkward, a little shy sometimes, but autistic? Of course not.
Shane racked his brain, trying to recall what he knew about autism. Not much, admittedly. There were commercials he caught during games that had kids quietly playing with blocks and television actors discussing statistics. The kids he’d met at NHL charity events had all seemed off somehow in a way he couldn’t describe. He had polished media answers about their initiatives, hockey is for everyone, regardless of ability and I’m always excited to meet fans who love this sport as much as I do. Frankly, it had always just been part of his job. Players picked their causes, and his was mental health initiatives.
Albert Einstein was autistic, right? Shane had always been known for having a high hockey I.Q., and he was pretty smart compared to a lot of other hockey players, but not a genius by any means.
He dimly remembered a kid back in elementary school, who talked too loud and got in Shane’s space and could bring every conversation back to World War II artillery. He had an aide who sat next to him and took him out of class for a few hours a week to the room next to the cafetorium where there were tiny trampolines and a costume trunk. When he got upset—and it only happened a few times, about seemingly little things—he would throw himself into the desks and scream until he was hoarse and then keep screaming while adults rushed in to cart him out of the room until he calmed down. Their teacher had kept sitting Shane next to him, even when the other kids switched, and it took an email from Yuna to ask her to treat Shane as any other student, and not the kid’s assigned friend. Shane couldn’t remember his name now, just that he hadn’t seen him once they all moved up to middle school.
As a player, he’d definitely done outreach stuff with the Voyageurs. They’d done something during his first playoff run that raised money for a cure, and a few times the team had gone out to play street hockey with special needs kids. He vaguely recalled meeting kids who wore large, over-ear headphones to games and wouldn’t speak to him or look in his eye when he spoke to them and signed their merch. Shane couldn’t blame them, really—who wants to stare at some random stranger for five minutes? And the headphones were a good idea too, considering how loud the arena got. He was half-sure he’d have hearing damage by the end of his career, if he didn’t already.
He felt like he should know more, but the Irina Foundation focused on mental health issues and suicide prevention, not special needs. Was that the right way to say it? He’d have to ask Yuna what their exact messaging was, but he was fairly certain that autism wasn’t involved.
Not that they discriminated, or anything. A few summers back, there had been a kid at the Montreal summer clinic whose mom had written in careful letters on his medical form: Autism/Asperger's, speech delay. Please call me with any questions. Yuna had handled that, and clearly it had worked out, because Gabriel had shown up on the first day with a stuffed creature of some kind in his arms and his game face on. Shane hadn’t gotten to know him because he was a goalie, but Wyatt and Leah seemed to find him cute. Goalies were weird anyway, so maybe Gabriel fit right in. His stuffed whatever sat in the stands when he was on the ice, and then he carted it around with him during breaks. It wasn’t like he was the best player on the ice, but he wasn’t the worst either. The only hard part was that he was a francophone quebeçois, and with his speech delay it was difficult to understand him in one language, let alone when he was switching between the two. JJ had done the translating when he could, which allowed Shane to wrangle the rest of the kids. Still, Gabriel had a good time as far as Shane could tell. He’d waved his toy’s hand goodbye at Shane and Ilya when he got picked up on the last day.
“Hollander,” Ilya’s voice came from behind. “Ready to go? I think your tape will survive the trip home.”
Shane looked down at his hands, which were fiddling with his roll of tape. He gingerly put it back in its designated spot and straightened his back, grabbing his bag as he turned around.
“Yeah, sorry. Got distracted by how long it takes you to shower,” he said, rolling his eyes at Ilya’s mock-outrage.
Ilya’s mouth curled into the smirk that Shane loved-hated-loved and he leaned close to Shane’s ear. “From what I remember, my long showers are why we’re here.”
Shane shoved down the glint of desire that dared to show its face, willing the blush to fade from his cheeks as quickly as possible.
“Whatever, Rozanov. Let’s go.” He bumped Ilya with his shoulder, then started walking out of the locker room. It was a lame response, but he hadn’t fallen in love with Shane for clever comebacks anyway.
In the cold air of the parking lot, Shane’s thoughts drifted back.
“Did Dykstra show you that tweet?” he asked, as nonchalantly as possible.
“Which one? The one about me being a bad bitch? Yes, this I knew already,” Ilya said easily, his voice smooth in a way Shane had no idea how to replicate.
“Oh, fuck off,” Shane laughed, shoving Ilya again.
“Is okay if you are not bad bitch, Hollander. You are still very sexy, in nerd way. Is why I like your glasses so much. Very nerd sexy. Maybe you can wear them to your next underwear model shoot.” Ilya’s eyebrows danced with the suggestion, and Shane pushed his stupid, handsome face away with one gloved hand.
“Why did I marry you?” he asked helplessly, but the smile on his face gave him away.
“Because I am also very sexy. And smart. And best hockey player ever in history.”
“And humble,” Shane hummed, easing open the driver’s side door.
“Yes, this too. I have many amazing qualities.”
Shane bit back a retort, instead reaching over to hold Ilya’s hand on the center console. Ilya had put on some god-awful Euro-rap music that sounded German, maybe? Ilya didn’t know German, but the sounds coming out of his mouth weren’t Russian, and they certainly weren’t French.
“Do you even know what you’re saying?” he sighed, turning around so he could back out of the parking spot. He knew he could use the camera, but it freaked him out. And Ilya liked the way he looked with his arm wrapped around the back of the passenger headrest.
“Of course I do. You think I do not look up lyrics before I sing along? They could be saying slurs, Hollander,” Ilya said, as if this was obvious. “She is singing about taking money from men who think she is hot. I also take money from man who thinks I am hot. Ikkimel understands me.”
“You make more than I do! We have joint accounts!” Shane shot back.
“Yes, but I use the credit card with your name on it.”
“Of course you do.”
By the time they got home, Shane had almost forgotten about it. Ilya had kept calling him a sugar daddy for the rest of the ride, and then played even more music that Shane would never choose to listen to. Some of it was Russian, but even after five years of seriously being with Ilya, he couldn’t decipher what they were saying when they talked that fast.
Almost forgotten.
“Do you think I’m autistic?” he asked while Ilya was bumbling through the kitchen, pulling out ingredients for dinner. Shane had learned that asking him while he was distracted was the best way to get a straight answer from him.
“What?” Well, that didn’t work. Ilya looked at him through narrowed eyes, his head tilted like he was studying Shane for the first time.
“No,” he finally said. “I do not think you are like Shelton from Big Bang Theory. Though you do have ‘your’ spot on the couch…”
Shane dropped his head in his hands. “Forget I asked.”
That night, while Ilya snored beside him, Shane put his glasses back on and opened his web browser. Autism symptoms, he typed, then flinched at the number of links that popped up. He clicked on the page from the Canadian government, then scrolled past the symptoms in children. That ship sailed a long time ago.
Little eye contact. Well, that was out. Shane made plenty of eye contact, especially when someone asked him to. He’d even figured out how to make it look like he was doing it without wondering about which eye he was supposed to be looking at. Now he looked at the bridge of their nose instead, which was like looking into both eyes at the same time. So eye contact wasn’t an issue.
Distinct reactions to sensory input, then a list of examples. No, again. His reactions were perfectly normal, or at least normal-ish. He had preferences, sure, but so did everyone.
Very specific interests. Was hockey ‘very specific?’ Every Canadian watched hockey, or at least most did. He wasn’t even the biggest hockey fan in his high school, let alone the entire country. No again.
Repeating words or phrases. He paused. When he was younger, he would repeat phrases, turning them over and over again in his mouth to feel the shape of them. People had asked if he was mimicking them or making fun of them, and he’d scrambled over himself to explain. It was probably because he was still learning French back then, and had been trying to differentiate between the English he used at home and the French immersion at school. He didn’t do it anymore, so that was fine.
Repetitive behaviors, such as spinning. He never spun around. He had routines, sure, but so did every hockey player. Next question.
Nonverbal communication or delayed language development. How would he know? He’d have to ask Yuna, but didn’t most bilingual kids have a language delay anyway? And the only nonverbal communication he knew was body language, which he was infamously bad at with anyone except Ilya.
Intense reactions to changes in routine or surroundings. He changed surroundings all the time. Sure, he was strict with his routines, but again so were most hockey players. It was one of those superstitions that was an innate part of hockey. Either all hockey players were autistic, or Shane wasn’t.
Not autistic, according to the Canadian government. Shane let himself breathe out the tension he had been holding, then closed the tab. He cleared his history too, just in case. Ilya didn’t need to know he’d been worried about this.
He managed to forget about it for another month, until he talked to Hayden for one of their regular check-in calls. They’d started when Shane moved to Ottawa, and now Shane got to hear about his godkids in between the trips they alternated to see the Pikes. He missed being more present in their lives, but the Centaurs were a much better fit culture-wise. Every now and then he suggested that Hayden look around at the end of his contract, but it was still in the air. Montreal was only two hours away. If Hayden got traded to another team, who knew where he could end up? It was better safe than sorry.
“... and we have to take Arthur for his neuropsych eval next week—” Shane tuned back in to catch the middle of Hayden’s sentence.
“A psych eval? He’s seven!” Shane knew mental health was complex, but seven seemed a little young to have serious issues.
“A neuropsych evaluation,” Hayden said. “They’re testing him for autism and ADHD.”
“Autism?” Shane frowned, even though Hayden couldn’t see him. “He’s just a shy, quiet kid. He’s not autistic. I was the same way growing up, and I’m fine.”
A beat of silence rang through the phone.
“You know, I thought the same thing,” Hayden began carefully, “but his teacher and pediatrician both agree that he should get tested. It’ll give us some answers, even if the answer is just that he’s shy. Maybe it’s anxiety or something. But right now he barely speaks to the other kids in class, and everyone’s worried about his social development. Jackie’s more in the loop, of course, but I managed to work my schedule so that I can go to the appointment with them.”
“Yeah, for sure.” Shane said, though he couldn’t remember choosing the words. “Let me know what happens, okay?”
“Of course,” Hayden said. “You know… if he does get diagnosed, maybe you’ll want to see someone too? You did say that you were the same way growing up. Just an idea.”
“Maybe.” Shane pressed his lips together. “Just keep me posted.”
Mercifully, a clatter and a yell came from the other side of the phone.
“Sorry, man, Amber just decided to elbow drop Jade. I’ll call you back later, okay? Amber, what were you thinking—”
Shane barely had time to say goodbye before Hayden hung up. He sighed, low and deep, throwing his phone to the side and slumping into the couch. Anya jumped up, blanketing him. He dragged his hand across her silky back, smiling to himself. At least she didn’t care if he was maybe—maybe—autistic.
The day had started out bad and only got worse. Shane had woken up with a crick in his neck from sleeping on Ilya’s arm, and no amount of stretching and massage eased the twinge. He’d caught an edge during morning skate and went sprawling on the ice, clipping Luca so they both went down. Afterward, he and Ilya had run errands, and Ilya had spent too long in the grocery store so they couldn’t stop by the post office like they planned. By the time Shane walked into the locker room, he felt seasick.
He tugged on his socks and skates, going through the motions of his pre-game ritual. Left sock, right sock, left skate, right skate. Adjust the pads so they sit on his shoulders without chafing. Do a breathing exercise.
That step was interrupted by the typical shouting of the locker room, with Dykstra and Bood fighting over the aux cord and changing the song every ten seconds. The switch between hip-hop and country twang felt like a cheese grater on his ears, even for someone who didn’t really listen to music in the first place.
He swallowed hard, finishing the last repetition of his breathing exercise and heading to the lounge area. Since starting in Ottawa, he’d adopted a new part of his routine—a red Gatorade from the vending machine. Back in Montreal, he’d always drank blue, but that loyalty hadn’t been rewarded. The red reminded him where he was, who was his new family.
He stepped up to the vending machine, ready to punch in the D3 that was now muscle memory, but a flash of color caught his eye. D3 had orange Gatorade, not red.
“Where’s the red Gatorade?” he asked, trying to keep the shrillness of panic from his voice.
“I think they’re out,” Harris said from the couch. “There was an issue with supply lines last week.”
“Okay,” Shane gritted out. Fine, he would drink water instead. That was fine. He could get his electrolytes after the game, back at the house.
He walked back to his stall, trying not to land too hard on the bench as he sat down. Last step of the routine. He would tape his stick and get on the ice and everything would fall away.
Shane reached into his bag for his tape, and let out a sigh of relief as his hand wrapped around the roll. He let himself get pulled into the methodical rhythm of wrapping his stick, round and round and—the roll ended. Half of the stick was bare.
He sighed and leaned back into the bag to get his backup tape, but his hand closed around nothing. Fuck. He hadn’t replaced it after the last time his tape ran out. The spare roll was sitting in their mudroom, next to his extra mouthguards.
“Do we have white cloth Renfrew?” he asked their equipment manager as she passed by.
“We should! Let me check.”
She returned a few minutes later with a few rolls of white tape in her hands.
“We just ran out of Renfrew, but I have Howie’s, Comp-o-stick, and Sportstape. Would any of those work? I’ll have more Renfrew by tomorrow.”
Shane smiled, or at least he tried to.
“Howie’s will be great, thank you.”
She passed over the tape, and Shane stared at his stick. Should he take off the original tape and replace it with the new one? Or tape over it? The thought of removing the tape made him feel like throwing up, but if he layered over it then part of the tape would be thicker than the other. He could pick up where he left off, but that felt wrong too.
He gritted his teeth and removed the first layer of tape, letting it wind through his fingers and onto his lap. When the last of it fell off, he began the process again with the new tape, trying not to cringe at the slight difference in texture. At least his grip was fine. He’d replaced it after the last game, writing Yuna in tiny letters on the end. It felt like a rune, almost, like the word itself would protect him.
Across the room, Ilya called them in as he finished taping the last few inches. He let his eyes fall somewhere on his chest, on the stupid logo the Centaurs still hadn’t changed. Looking at his face felt like too much right now. Shane settled on the bop of Ilya’s adam’s apple at the top of his periphery.
Ilya gave a rousing speech that Shane barely heard, but clearly it encouraged everyone else. Shane let the team sweep him up as they headed toward the ice. In the back of his mind, he registered Ilya patting his shoulder.
The arena usually calmed Shane, but today it was too bright, too loud. The overhead lighting hurt his eyes, and he found himself squinting as he sleepwalked through warmups. He just had to get through this game. He could play hockey on autopilot, he’d done it before.
Those games had universally sucked, but he’d still played.
Weibe called the rest of the team to the bench while the first shift skated to their places for the faceoff. Chicago wasn’t in their conference, so Shane didn’t know the players very well. He vaguely remembered their starting center from All-Star games, but they’d never played together. He was Swedish or something. Finnish? Whatever.
He hopped the boards at the shift change, gliding up to the face-off circle. He’d never seen Chicago’s second-line center before, but he looked young. A rookie, maybe.
“What’s wrong, Hollander? Rozanov forgot to change your batteries?” he quipped, showing his chipped front tooth as he spoke.
Shane rolled his eyes, keeping his eye on the spot where the puck would drop. He’d been getting the comments his whole life, how he was a hockey robot or he’d been created in a lab to win Stanley Cups and nothing else. He didn’t know how to say that the hockey world would never accept a Shane Hollander—would never accept an Asian man—who got angry, who let emotion into his play. They could barely tolerate the Shane Hollander who showed up, scored goals, gave polite soundbites, and went home to his husband.
The Chicago center was still searching his face for a reaction when the puck dropped. Shane quickly sent it sailing to Luca and let the play take over his body. No thinking, just the instinct that had gotten him here.
Boyle scored off an assist from Shane, and he skated back to the bench before thinking of doing so. The third line took over and Shane squirted water into his mouth, trying to let the cold shake him back into his body. The plasticky taste of the water bottle spread across his tongue, just like it had since he was a kid.
The next time he faced off against the Chicago center, he clearly had a bone to pick with Shane.
“So, when Rozanov puts the batteries in, do you bend over? Or are you on your back?”
That didn’t even make sense. If he was trying to insinuate that Shane was a hockey robot, why was he bringing up sex positions? Wouldn’t that make Shane a sex robot instead? Or a combination sex-hockey robot? Either way, didn’t that negate the whole concept of Shane having no joy outside of hockey?
He tipped the puck backward when it fell, picking up a pass from Luca as the play started and dodging a Chicago defenseman who tried to pin him to the boards. He passed to Boyle, then circled behind the net, setting up for a goal. But Boyle passed to Luca, who made it approximately five feet before getting checked and losing the puck. Shane raced after, not even feeling the familiar burn of his thighs pumping.
The game progressed in the same way, full of strong starts by the Centaurs and an aggressive Chicago defense that dashed them against the proverbial rocks. By the time the end buzzer sounded, the score was 4-2, and the Ottawa fans were going home disappointed.
Shane was one of the first players off the ice, ready to shed whatever the fuck had just happened on the ice. A shower would help wash off the feeling of his skin being covered in ants. He tried to tune out the voices of everyone else, jovial despite their loss. No one could say that the Centaurs weren’t good sports, but it worked its way between Shane’s ribs. The laughter was too grating, the teasing too sharp. He made sure to hustle to the showers and start his routine, each step with a product that smelled like home and not arena.
His teammates’ voices followed him into the showers, the sound bouncing off the walls in an echo that seemed to amplify rather than disperse. Shane pulled the inside of his cheek between his teeth, gnawing at the flesh. He was almost done with his shower, but the idea of staying for another two minutes was suddenly unbearable. Chewing harder on his cheek, he rushed through the end of his shower, promising to himself that he would have a second shower at home.
Dressed and packed, Shane waited for Ilya to get his ass in gear so they could go home. Shane needed to shower properly and drink a post-game smoothie and go the fuck to sleep, which couldn’t happen if Ilya took the rest of the night to tie his shoes.
“Are you ready?” he asked. It came out harsher than he meant.
Ilya glanced at him, clearly seeing something because he just nodded instead of chirping at him. The second Ilya straightened, Shane was walking toward the door, ready to be in the passenger seat the second he could. He could hear Ilya walking a few steps behind, and felt an edge inside him soften when Ilya unlocked the doors before Shane had to tug on the handle impatiently.
They left the parking lot and drove in silence. Shane watched as the leafbare trees passed on his right, mentally counting down the minutes until he could be home and whatever thing was tangling up inside his stomach and chest and head could begin to unravel.
“Shit,” Ilya said softly, more to himself than Shane. “We need gas.” Shane’s palms began to itch.
At the next gas station, Ilya pulled in and let the cold air in with the open car door. The smell of gasoline hung in the air, sharp and headache-inducing. Allegedly, some people liked that smell. Shane thought they needed to see an ENT.
The car must have been running on fumes, considering how long it took for Ilya to fill up the tank and settle himself back in the driver’s seat. He winked at Shane before putting the car back in drive, and Shane tried to smile back. It probably looked more like a grimace. Somewhere in the back of his throat he could feel both heat and cold, paralyzing his vocal cords and making him feel like he might throw up or burst into tears. He just needed to drink water, and it would go away. Then he could take his shower and let the itchiness leave his skin. He would be fine.
Another ten minutes, and they were finally, finally home. Shane shouldered the bags despite Ilya’s protests and punched in the code. The dark maw of their house didn’t ease the tension inside him, but it surely would in time. He deposited the bags in the mudroom and padded to the kitchen in sock feet, then stopped cold at the sight of their groceries on the counter.
“Ilya, why didn’t you put the groceries away?” he asked, voice rising.
“I thought you did it while I walked Anya,” was the reply from somewhere down the hallway.
Shit, he had been supposed to do that, before he got distracted by a new sponsorship proposal Farah had sent. Most of it would be fine in the insulated bags, but what if it wasn’t? What if they got food poisoning and missed a game? Fuck, he was so fucking stupid.
Something that tasted like panic but moved like dread rose up into his throat. He needed to be alone. He needed to sit down.
Shane staggered into one of their empty guest rooms and closed the door behind him before sinking to the carpet. He just needed to breathe, to calm down. This was just like a panic attack, with some strange dark edge to it.
He took a long, ragged breath, then another. His hands came up to his lap, the heel of his palms pushing down against the tops of his thighs and toward his knees before lifting and starting again by his hips. The rhythm of it helped, even if his breathing accelerated to match the push-pull of his hands. Tears pricked behind his eyes, and he bit down hard on his tongue to stop them from leaking. The iron tang of blood exploded in his mouth, but he held fast. The sharp pain felt good, in a way. Shane was distantly aware that he was rocking forward and back with every movement of his hands, that his tailbone was pressed up against the baseboard and his head was knocking against the wall. The whirling thoughts that usually defined his panic attacks were gone, replaced by a wall of feeling that he could not outrun. He wasn’t even sure if he could try.
Tears slipped down his cheeks and onto his chest, staining his tee shirt. He chewed on his tongue, letting more blood fill his mouth. Each rock backward was rewarded by a dull thwunk of his head meeting the drywall. There was sound outside the door that Shane couldn’t understand, low then sharp and loud.
Light spilled into the room. He hadn’t been aware that he’d been sitting in the dark the whole time until the door opened.
“Shane? Sweetheart, what is wrong?” Ilya asked in a voice usually reserved for children, bending down somewhere next to him. The back of Shane’s head connected with something softer than the wall this time. “You’re going to give yourself a concussion. Let’s move.”
Ilya’s arms wrapped around him and something crashed over his senses.
“Don’t touch me!” he shrieked, shoving Ilya away jerkily.
Something changed in Ilya’s face, but he moved a foot away. His eyes stayed on Shane, who realized that there wasn’t anything against his back anymore. When he rocked back, he didn’t hit anything.
“I will not touch you. Can you tell me what is wrong? Are you having a panic attack?”
A sob burbled out of Shane, taking more tears with it. “I want to go home,” he gasped.
“We are home. You are in our guest bedroom. Do you want to move to our room?”
He shook his head wildly. “I want to go home.” Snot dripped into his mouth, mixing with the taste of blood.
“Your parents’ house? The cottage? I do not know if you can be in a car right now.”
He screamed in frustration, one hand coming up from his lap to rub at his face and tug at the roots of his hair.
Ilya shuffled next to him. Shane’s eyes were squeezed tight, but he could hear the way Ilya’s breath hitched and smoothed. His left hand loosened its grip on his hair and slid into his mouth. He bit down hard on the meat of his palm.
“Shit, is that blood?” Ilya tugged at Shane’s wrist, but he kicked out his legs, feeling his knees and feet connect with something hard and stable. His jaw tightened around his hand.
Something heavy landed across his thighs, and suddenly Shane was on his back with the rough texture of the carpet under his neck. Pressure on either side of his jaw, forcing his mouth open. Hands on both of his wrists, pinning them down. The static in Shane’s body quieted to a hazy fuzz. His tongue felt heavy. So did his jaw.
“I cannot let you hurt yourself. Breathe.”
Shane whimpered, straining against Ilya and trying to thrash. On any other day, he could probably do it, but not when everything felt too dull and too sharp all at the same time.
“On me,” he forced out with a mumble.
“I know, I am sorry. I need you to calm down before I can get off.” The note of panic in Ilya’s voice had begun to leech away.
Shane shook his head. “On me,” he tried again.
“Ah,” Ilya said. “Like this?” He slowly lowered himself onto Shane, blanketing his body. The pressure on his wrists and thighs equalized with the rest of his body, and for the first time since getting back to the house, Shane felt like he could breathe again.
They laid like that for a while, Shane listening to the sound of Ilya’s breathing and feeling Ilya’s heart thump against his chest.
“Sorry,” he finally croaked. His voice was hoarse and phlegmy.
“Are you okay?” Ilya asked. Shane nodded his head, wincing slightly at the tenderness of the back of his head against the carpet.
Ilya peeled himself off Shane slowly, like he didn’t trust that Shane wouldn’t immediately start hitting himself into walls again. He pulled Shane’s limp body up, letting his chest fall against his shoulder as Ilya probed the spot where Shane’s head connected with the wall. Each press of Ilya’s deft fingers made the spot throb, but otherwise it had lessened to a dull ache.
“I’ll get you an ice pack,” Ilya said, before lifting Shane’s hand up to see the damage. Out of the corner of his eye, Shane could see a purple-red ring on the pad of muscle under his thumb. No blood.
Ilya tilted Shane’s head back, pulling his mouth open with a thumb on his chin. Normally, this would be hot. Instead, Shane just felt numb.
“Fuck, where did all the blood come from?” Ilya’s fingers darted into his mouth, clinical instead of sexy.
“I bit my tongue,” Shane mumbled around them.
Ilya laughed, short but not mean. “You certainly did. I will have to look up tongue first aid.” Normally, he would follow up with an innuendo, but Ilya left it there as he guided Shane back to his shoulder and caressed his hair.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Shane opened his mouth, then closed it.
“I don’t know what happened,” he finally answered. It was the truth, but it still felt flat. “There was just a bunch of little shit and then it got to be too much. I guess I had a panic attack.” He left out the bit where it didn’t really feel like any other panic attack Shane had ever had.
“Okay.” Ilya rubbed circles into his back, like Shane’s mom had done when he was little. “We will sit here until you feel better.”
They sat curled together on the floor until Shane’s hips started to scream and his neck ached. Ilya had helped him to his feet and brought him to their bed, tugging off his post-game clothes and easing him into a shower while Ilya put the groceries in the fridge. Now, an hour later, Shane was in bed with Ilya’s arm wrapped over his waist.
It should have been enough to fall asleep. It wasn’t.
Shane fumbled for his glasses and phone, startling a little at the glow of the screen.
Rocking back and forth biting not panic attack, he typed.
The page populated with resources for ‘stimming.’ He clicked on a few, skimming the paragraphs and finding one suggestion over and over again. Autism.
Well, fuck.
By the time Shane’s eyes were burning and he finally turned off his phone, he had ingested hundreds of articles and posts about autism. That the episode could be a meltdown, which was a kind of system overload. That he’d been thinking of it all wrong, as some kind of social death knell. There was a difference between awareness and acceptance, and most autistic people advocated for the latter. That there was therapy and medications, but not a cure. That most autistic people didn’t want a cure anyway. That Canada was a pretty good place to be, all things considered. In some places, autistic people couldn’t adopt. There was a lot of stuff online about the merits of identifying as autistic before getting a diagnosis. The few posts he’d read had made his head swim with all of the arguments, and he swiped away quickly.
He tamped down the rising panic and rolled onto his side, letting himself relax into the feeling of Ilya’s arm on his waist and the sound of his gentle snoring. As he slipped into sleep, the edges of a plan began to form.
The next barbeque at Bood’s rolled around before Hayden and Jackie had heard back from the doctor, and Shane was getting itchy. The longer it took without an answer, the more Shane dwelled. Arthur’s the one getting diagnosed, not you, he insisted to himself, but it got harder and harder to believe. He hadn’t brought it back up with Ilya, but every now and again he would look up and find his husband studying him, like he was trying to solve a puzzle with half the pieces upside down.
Parties weren’t Shane’s thing at the best of times, but especially not when he wanted to crawl out of his own skin and put it on spin cycle. Still, it was good for the team to get to know him outside of being Ilya’s husband, so he dragged himself to every event. The guys were nice, if a little loud, and usually he could camp out by Troy or Luca and not commit social suicide. It seemed like a good plan for Troy too, while Harris flitted through the heart of the party. Shane liked Harris, but he couldn’t imagine being with someone who was always so… loud. At least Ilya had his quiet moments.
He’d been making his rounds, talking to the WAGs and his teammates before settling down in a corner to observe the rest of the evening. Finally, he caught sight of Troy, sitting by the fire with a cider in his hand. It looked tranquil, almost, compared to the shotgun contest Ilya and Dykstra were having on the other side of the porch. As he rounded the corner to join Troy, he realized that he was already occupied by Wyatt, who was gesturing wildly with a plastic fork from the jerk chicken earlier.
That was fine. Maybe Wyatt would be nice company, even if he did switch topics every ten seconds and talk way too much about superheroes. He eased his way through the crowd to hover next to an empty chair.
“This seat taken?” he asked, tightening his grip on the neck of his bottle. Bood had started getting fancy glass bottles of ginger ale for him last year, and it eased the discomfort of everyone else having a beer while Shane drank from a Canada Dry can.
Troy almost looked relieved. “Yeah, of course.”
Shane hesitated. “Yeah it’s taken, or yeah I can sit here?”
“You can sit there!” Wyatt jumped in, his smile taking up half of his face.
Shane nodded, then slid into the seat. Wyatt continued his story about his nephew in Vancouver, while Troy interrupted every now and then with an oh really or huh.
“I’m going to grab a beer, do you guys want anything?” Troy asked when Wyatt paused to take a breath. Shane shook his head, while Wyatt asked for another beer as well.
A heartbeat of silence overtook them, which was the longest Shane had ever heard Wyatt be quiet in his life. Suddenly, an idea formed.
“Hey Wyatt, Lisa’s a doctor, right?”
Wyatt beamed. “Yeah, she’s on call right now, or she’d be here too. I still can’t believe she was interested in an idiot like me.”
Shane chuffed a laugh out of politeness. Wyatt was a pretty smart dude, if a little nerdy. Still, he had learned that people didn’t usually want compliments when they said stuff like that.
“Um, we’ve known each other for a while now. I don’t know Lisa as well, I guess, but I was wondering…”
Wyatt looked at him patiently, and Shane’s face quickly turned hot. Hopefully he would just think it was from the fire a few feet away.
“Does she—would she, I guess—think I’m… autistic?”
Wyatt frowned, just enough to send Shane’s heartbeat spiking. Oh fuck, that was weird of you to ask. He’s going to think you’re weird as fuck and if Wyatt, one of the nicest people alive, thinks you’re weird then what will the rest of the team think? Fuck, this was stupid.
“Buddy, Lisa’s an ER physician. She wouldn’t know,” Wyatt said gently. That was almost worse than him saying Shane was a lame weirdo. “I can ask her what she remembers from her neuropsych rotation in med school, but that was a while ago. Why do you ask?”
Shane stared at the bottle in his hands, wishing he could explode it with his mind so that the glass shards would fly everywhere and he could escape to find a broom. He tightened, then loosened his jaw, then tightened it again.
“Someone just mentioned something,” he said, trying to sound casual. “And it got me thinking. I don’t know, it was a stupid question.”
“Not stupid at all,” Wyatt shrugged. “I got diagnosed with ADHD when I was like five, but it took Kristy until like three years ago to get one, and that was only because Isaac got one and his doctor had to explain to her that all of her answers were biased.”
Shane nodded jerkily, still tracing the lip of the bottle with his eyes.
“It’s not a big deal, either way, you know? Not for us, at least. I mean, normal people don’t choose a sport where you run around on knife shoes and shove each other into walls.”
Troy, blessedly, returned. Shane forced himself to at least look in his direction, even if it wasn’t at him exactly.
“What did I miss?” He asked, taking a long pull from his beer and handing the other to Wyatt.
“We were just talking about how hockey is, at least on paper, the dumbest thing you could possibly sign up for.” Wyatt turned to Shane and smiled softly.
“Hmmm,” Troy mused, “what about skydiving? That’s pretty dumb too.”
They slipped into a much easier conversation on the safety of various sports (all relatively dangerous, in one way or another), and Shane manually released the tension in his shoulders. This was fine. He was fine.
“American football is fucking stupid,” he chimed in when it was his turn. “But I also can’t imagine a single hockey player wearing one of those new helmets either, so maybe the CTE will get us all eventually.”
“Hollzy has jokes!” Wyatt quipped. “I’m safe, because I have a wife who concussion tests me every time I come home, but I’ll make sure I visit when the rest of you have brains like Swiss cheese.”
When he and Ilya finally left the party, his phone buzzed in his pocket.
Wyatt Hayes: Lisa said you’re not her patient, so she couldn’t give advice (and she was really bad at her psych rotation but that’s between us). The main evaluation used in Canada is the RAADS-R. She said it’s available online but only for personal use, not diagnostic. Let me know if you have other questions! ADHD and autism overlap a lot, from my understanding :)
Shane liked the message, texted back a quick thanks, and pocketed his phone again.
It took three days to work up the courage to look up the RAADS-R, finally giving in after his parents came over for dinner. They were all in the living room, watching a Scouts-Nomads game, while Shane fiddled with the webpage he had found.
“Do I speak with a ‘normal rhythm?’” he asked during a commercial break.
“Yes?” Yuna said, “why? Is there a tweet of someone being a dick?”
“No,” Shane said quickly. “Just filling out this thing Hayden was talking about.”
A few minutes later, he asked, “Do I have a normal tone? What constitutes normal?”
Ilya looked over, unimpressed. “You are the most normal person I have ever met,” he drawled, in that way where Shane couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. He clicked true now and when I was young anyway.
Finally, he clicked Score at the bottom, and scrolled to the number below.
131. He scrolled further.
All scores of 65 or higher are indicative of autistic traits. The higher the score, the more autistic traits you have. In the table below are general interpretations of various total scores on the RAADS–R. He looked at the heading for 130. The mean score of autistic people; strong evidence for autism.
Well, fuck.
He clicked through the links to other evaluation tools at the bottom of the page. 43 out of 50 on the ASQ, with 25 being the threshold for autism. 153 on the CAT-Q, which had something to do with ‘masking,’ which was pretending to be normal, as far as Shane understood. He knew all about pretending to be normal. The charts at the bottom all said the same thing: Shane Hollander was off-the-charts autistic.
He closed out of the tabs and carefully placed his phone down on the couch, trying to focus on the game again. The Scouts were losing, but that wasn’t a surprise. Everyone knew the Admirals were the better team in New York, and had been for years.
He and Ilya walked his parents to the door at the end of the night, telling them to drive safe and promising to set aside tickets for their next home game. The door closed, and Ilya turned to him with that analytical look on his face.
“What is going on,” he said, more like a statement than a question. “And do not pretend it is nothing.”
Shane let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
“Remember how I asked you if you thought I was autistic like two months ago? And Jackie and Hayden had to get Arthur tested last month? Well, after the game against Chicago where I freaked out, I started thinking. And I did some research. And then I asked Lisa what she thought but she’s not a psychiatrist so she doesn’t know, but she sent me some quizzes to take. Which is what I was doing tonight. And they all say I’m autistic. Like, really autistic. So, yeah.” He was rambling, he knew he was rambling, but he couldn’t stop.
Ilya watched quietly, waiting for him to finish, then folded Shane into his arms and against his chest.
“Sweetheart, I do not care if you are autistic. You are Shane. I love everything about you. If that means you are autistic, okay. Whatever.”
Shane nodded against his chest.
“These quizzes, are they medical?” Ilya asked against Shane’s hair.
Shane furrowed his brow, trying to parse out what Ilya was asking. “No, they’re for personal use. More of a way to gauge if it’s worth talking to a doctor or not.”
“And will you? Talk to a doctor?”
“No, that’s part of why I was so freaked out. At first it was because in some places you can’t adopt if you’re autistic, but that’s not really a thing in Canada. But now, I realized that I don’t want to make that part of my public identity. I’m already the asian hockey player. The gay hockey player. The hockey player who has a mental health charity. I’m fine with those parts of my identity being part of my brand. But being publicly autistic? Everyone would expect me to be the paragon of autism, and I’m not. I don’t struggle like most people do. I don’t need to represent everything all the time.”
The words poured out of him, tumbling over each other as they fought to leave his chest. And he felt lighter than he had in weeks, finally telling Ilya.
His husband nodded against the crown of his head. “Okay. We do not go to the doctor. But your medical information, it is not anyone’s business. You do not have to tell them if you do not want.”
Shane sighed. “I know. But it’s not like it goes away. I can always change my mind. The real point of a diagnosis is accommodations, like at work and stuff. I don’t need those. You’re the captain. I can just talk to you.”
Ilya leaned back, catching his eyeline. “And you will? Talk to me?”
He nodded, throat suddenly tight. “Yeah. I will.”
“Good.” Ilya pulled him back in for another hug. “Can I tell you something? Is funny.”
“Sure.”
“I had suspicions. After CCM shoot, when you folded your clothes before I could suck your dick. I have slept with many people—”
Shane groaned loudly, out of annoyance more than anything.
“—and none of them have folded clothes before sex. I knew you were little freak.”
Shane thumped his head against Ilya’s chest in mock frustration.
“Hush,” Ilya cooed, “I am freak too. Is why we work.”
“Yeah. I guess so.” That, Shane couldn’t argue with. He detached himself from his husband, and the two of them slinked back to the couch to cuddle with Anya.
“I guess I am the bad bitch you pulled by being autistic, no?” Ilya chirped, receiving a face full of pillow for his troubles.