Chapter Text
“Will you disappoint them?”
“No.”
Only he had. He’d tripped, and he’d single handedly ended the Voyageur’s playoff run. He’d slept with the enemy, worse, he had fallen in love with the enemy. Disappointed might not even be a big enough word for what he’d done. Sitting in his locker stall, suffocating under the weight of his teammates’ accusatory stares, he felt his legacy die.
He was supposed to retire a Voyageur. His number was meant to hang in the rafters across from the three Stanley Cup banners he’d already won them, and however many more he led his team to the remainder of his career.
The moment he tripped he knew where this would go. They hadn’t been able to move past his unforgivable sin of falling in love. There was no way they could get over this perceived betrayal. It didn’t matter how many of them he had welcomed onto his team as rookies, showed the ropes, and spent countless hours working with one-on-one. It didn’t matter that he’d stood as a groomsman in at least half a dozen weddings or that he always sent a baby care package to the hospital stocked with their wives’ favorite snacks. It didn’t even matter that he had won them three Stanley Cups, all while being devastatingly in love with Ilya Rozanov.
Shane pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, needing to see the stars that bloomed across his vision. Needing to block out the distrustful glares that hadn’t left him since the handshake line. They had stayed with him as they retreated to the room. He had felt them as he took off his Voyageurs jersey for what he thought was probably the last time.
There had been a brief respite when he was the first into the showers. This wasn’t unusual anymore, it seemed that the rest of the team (with the notable exceptions of Hayden and JJ) no longer felt comfortable showering around him. He tried not to take it personally but the humiliation of being seen as some sort of pervert still stung. He avoided using the word homophobic about his teammates, maybe because acknowledging that their treatment of him stemmed from bigotry would make it more insidious, more permanent. Hayden and JJ had made it their mission to shower with Shane at every opportunity. They may hate Ilya, but they wouldn’t stand for homophobia. If making it a point to shower with him was their way of sending a message, he appreciated it. But today, even they had left him alone. Maybe they hated him too now or maybe they just sensed that he needed some space.
He turned the water up way too hot, faced the stream, and let the water swallow the tears he could no longer hold back. He returned to the locker room when he’d composed himself and washed off the grimy feel left by his teammates' fury. Shane felt more than heard the whispers stop the moment he stepped back inside. He changed back into his suit from walkups, he’d felt good putting it on. When Ilya had raked his eyes up and down and bit his lip, Shane couldn't help but blush.
“Stop that, we have to go,” he had said firmly. Ilya had said nothing back, just continued to stare in a manner that felt distinctly objectifying. “Jesus, Ilya, we can’t be late.”
“We are already going to be two hours earlier than everyone else,” Ilya had said, still not taking his eyes off Shane. “We could instead be just one hour early.”
“Or we could go now, do the jobs they pay us millions for, and after I win you can celebrate with me,” Shane said. That was enough to snap Ilya out of his lust induced haze.
“What do you mean ‘when you win’?” Ilya had narrowed his eyes. “Tonight we will be celebrating my win and yourdevastating loss. And when I win I want you on your knees, in this suit. Maybe even the glasses.”
He hadn’t known how accurate of a prediction Ilya had made. His expertly tailored suit felt more like funeral garb now in the wake of the loss.
There was no way the team would keep him on. Truthfully, they shouldn’t. The locker room had been toxic ever since the FanMail leak. The team wasn’t listening to him. Shane had noticed them second guessing everything he said. He had lost the room.
“Shane, I’m sorry, but we need you for media,” Valerie’s voice, Shane registered with an unconscious relief, despite what she was summoning him for. Valerie was a longtime employee of Voyageurs public relations and she had always been incredibly kind to him. Even now, she sounded apologetic, though with an edge of pity. “It doesn’t have to be for long, just answer a couple questions.”
“Sure, no problem.” Shane ran his hands through his hair, more out of stress than any sense of vanity. He'd already made himself look terrible enough today, a put together image couldn’t recover all he had lost. He silently followed her out of the locker room, down the cinderblock hallway dotted every few feet with framed images of historical Voyageurs moments. As they neared the media room he glanced at the frames, noting with a pang that he was in most of them. His own highlights watching him walk to the gallows.
Valerie pulled to a stop a few metres from the door, turning and facing him. She placed her hands on his arms and looked down. She'd known him since his rookie year and figured out pretty early on that if he had to focus on maintaining eye contact he wouldn’t hear a word she said.
“Shane, it wasn’t your fault,” she said softly. “I know what they’re saying, but anyone who knows you knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that you would never throw a game.” He felt his eyes sting and he stared hard at the ceiling. Valerie was tough, any woman in sports had to be, but especially one who wrangled a team of men who never grew up into making the team look good in the press. She was always a professional at work, but she had a warmth to her that he'd felt many times over his career, when he'd really needed it. When she'd been sure to tell him that he was more than his mistakes, that he was more than hockey. During those moments, he'd privately, guiltily wished his mother was sometimes more like her.
“I didn’t trip on purpose,” he whispered through gritted teeth, eyes still staring resolutely at the ceiling. “I would never, ever–”
“I know, Shane. And they do too. Everyone knows you love this team, you love this game, more than anyone. They’re just looking for a scapegoat right now.” Valerie shot a quick glance around and leaned in closer. “They can’t acknowledge that our shitty defense couldn’t force a single turnover against the Dubek-Rozanov-Marlow line. Or that we rely so heavily on you to score that the Raiders could have a picnic at center ice whenever your line was off.” He huffed a soft laugh despite himself.
“Thank you,” Shane said, forcing himself to meet her eyes. “I don’t know if I’ll still be here next season, so if this is the last time I see you, I need you to know you’ve been a real help to me. Ever since I joined the team.”
“Oh no, Shane. It’s been such a pleasure. You’re the best captain–best player–that this team could ask for. They’re so, so stupid to let you go, you have a lot of good hockey left in you.” He appreciated that she didn’t insult his intelligence by denying the likelihood that this was his last game as a Voyageur. “Okay,” she squeezed his arms and cleared her throat, transforming into the professional woman he'd known for a decade. “When you go in there, they’re going to ask about the trip, they’re going to frame it in the worst way possible. They’re going to insinuate that you did it on purpose–I know, I know you didn’t, but they’re going to accuse you in their roundabout journalist way. I need you to be prepared for that. They’re going to ask about Rozanov,” she paused, giving him a moment to nod. “They’re going to ask if you let him win. Shane, this is not going to be fun, but you need to go in there, answer the questions, and you need to treat this like any other loss.”
“Okay, I can do that,” he nodded again, squeezing his eyes shut. Could he do it? Could he treat this like any other loss? Sure, it was a loss in the same way most losses came about, someone made a mistake. But this time he had made a mistake. And everyone thought he did it on purpose.
“You need to treat this like any other loss because it is just like any other loss. Because your career is not over and this isn’t even a speedbump. Everyone loses, everyone trips, and it doesn’t end your career,” she punctuated the last few words with a slight shake.
“Thank you,” he said, for what felt like the hundredth time since he met her. He meant it, he hadn’t realized how badly he needed to hear it from someone who wasn't in love with him or related to him. Hearing it from Valerie, who had watched careers rise and fall for years, made it feel true.
“You need to remember that you are The Shane Hollander. You carried this team to three Stanley Cups, you have won the Hart, the Conn Smythe, the Ted Lindsay, the Rocket Richard–my God, Shane–is there an award you haven’t won?”
“I don’t have a Vezina yet,” he joked weakly.
“Honestly, if we strapped you into goalie pads I have no doubt you could get that one too,” she laughed. “You were born for this and who you love doesn’t change that. If anything, Rozanov has pushed you to be an even better player. The stats don’t lie, your points per game are higher when you play against him, you're plus/minus even better. You play your best hockey against him, but today’s result didn’t reflect that and that’s okay. It's so wrong to blame this on you. Those banners hanging in the rafters wouldn't exist without you leading this team. Say it.” She demanded. He felt his chest and cheeks warm a bit at the praise.
“Okay. Okay, you’re right. This doesn’t have to be the end of my career,” he said with a little more confidence than he had before.
“No, this isn’t the end. Now go remind them who the hell you are.” She strode towards the door, holding it open and gesturing him in before he had the chance to second guess. As he passed, she whispered up at him, “I’m proud of you, Shane. And you’re definitely going to see me again, you’re inviting me to your wedding.” He quickly concealed his highly-inappropriate-for-a-post-loss-interview smile before mounting the platform and facing the Montréal media for what would likely be the very last time.
Valerie had been right, of course. The media had asked him the questions she predicted, with drawn out pauses for effect before words like “distraction” and “divided loyalties.” The writing was on the wall, Shane wouldn’t be a Voyageur for much longer. As he sat in front of the clamboring mob, Valerie’s words–but more importantly, her implicit faith in him–wrapped around his heart. She knew hockey, she knew Shane, and she knew Shane’s hockey.
Valerie was always right about the media. It was her job to know that sort of thing, but she also had a knack for predicting what people were thinking before they even knew. It had come in handy often when he was overwhelmed and struggled to find the right words in any of his languages. She was more than a PR person, at least to him.
They had been something of a dynamic duo over the years. Shane, the Canadian golden boy, and Valerie, the liaison to the outside world who could also somehow read his mind. They'd met his rookie season, nearly a decade apart in age and in very different fields, but both with a lot to prove. He had to show up Rozanov and prove he was worth his high draft pick and higher salary. She was a young woman in a male dominated industry, just starting out and determined to show she could hack it in the big leagues. He understood being a minority in an extremely homogenous sport, so he'd always admired her tenacity and felt a sort of kinship to her. The nature of her job and his own meant she spent a lot of time shuttling him around press events. He always did right by her; he never made her job harder, stuck to the scripts no matter how “boring” his answers were, and stayed in the good graces of the public. In short, he was a publicist’s dream. In return, she coached him not only on how to talk to the media, but also how to handle day to day challenges.
His rookie year she sat him down and helped him come up with nonchalant, good natured phrases to excuse himself from partying with his team.
“Say it again, but this time try a gesture, maybe hold your phone up.”
“Ugh, sorry guys, I told my girlfriend I’d call her tonight after the game.” He gave his phone a little wiggle. “You know how it is.”
“Good! That was good, Shane,” she smiled at him.
“Val, I don’t have a girlfriend, this is never gonna work,” he frowned.
“They don’t know that! You’re very private about your personal life, if they start asking questions you can say you broke it off and we can find a different excuse.” He had been skeptical, but he tried it anyway. He pulled out his phone and pretended he had to rush back to the hotel to talk to his girlfriend. His team ribbed him a bit about being whipped but let him go with only a few protestations. And with none of the usual semi-insulting comments about his inability to let loose.
The year after his first Stanley Cup, when his name was hitting stratospheric levels of fame, she helped him rehearse fan interactions that were becoming increasingly common.
“Okay, pretend I’m a fan. Oh my God! Are you Shane Hollander? Can you sign this?” She thrust a magazine in front of him. It was one of the hotel info magazines she had found in a bedside table.
“Yeah. I’m Shane… Hollander. But you already know that.” He stood uncomfortably.
“Okay, a little awkward but we can work on it.” She let him practice until he felt comfortable smiling, greeting the fan, and knowing how to tell if he should offer a handshake or a selfie.
When the pressure was getting to be a bit too much, she could just tell and was the only person who said something.
“Is this becoming overwhelming for you?” She asked kindly. They were in a conference room at the practice facility, the day after a decisive 6-2 win that he contributed a hat trick to. It was mid-playoffs and the city had been celebrating the run. Everything was riding on him. The fans took every opportunity to remind him that they were counting on him. They said it like encouragement but it was starting to feel like a cinderblock tied to his ankle.
“No, of course not. I’m so grateful to be where I’m at. I wouldn’t be here without the fans,” he said, but not entirely convincingly.
“Nice try,” she gave him a look, “but you can’t out PR the PR rep, Shane.”
“I’m afraid it’s throwing me off my game,” he confessed quietly. “People keep coming up and telling me it’s all up to me, that I got this, that I’m gonna bring the Cup home for them. I’m afraid that I’m carrying all of that onto the ice when I play and it’s starting to feel too heavy.”
“I need you to know that it isn’t all on you.” Valerie spoke with her hands. He liked that she did that, he could focus on what she was saying when he could watch her hands. Now, she pressed her pointer finger to the table, drawing an invisible mind map and connecting the dots she saw in her head. “Whenever a journo asks you about a victory, you deflect the praise onto everyone else. You say it’s a team effort, everyone played their role well, you are so quick to share glory. But after a loss, you internalize it all, you take all the blame. Can you see how that doesn’t make sense?”
“But I’m the captain,” was all he could say.
“Don’t you think your logic is inconsistent?” She pushed back. Fuck, she had him there. “There are twenty players on the bench, and they all have a role to play. And sometimes that role is to just stay out of your way. Or to score some goals of their own. To stop the puck from going into our net. To stand between their forwards and our goal and do something to keep them back. You are an excellent player and truthfully, I don’t think we could win a Cup without you. But you don’t play on that ice alone. You play an incredible game of hockey no matter what, if we win it’s because the rest of the team stepped up, if we lose it’s because they didn’t. Maybe that’s awful of me to say, but us losing will never be because of anything you did or didn’t do.”
Maybe it was awful of him to feel better when she said that, but he did.
Years later, when he'd sheepishly asked her for advice inviting a girlfriend to come to his cottage, she had smiled so hard her eyes watered.
“And this Valerie wants to come to the wedding?” Ilya raised a brow. “Do you think she would want to be a bridesmaid? I like her.”
“Okay, first, you have to stop offering positions in our wedding to everyone who’s nice to me,” Shane rolled his eyes. "There isn’t even a bride, how can there be bridesmaids?"
“Groomsmaid? I don’t know if Sveta would agree to be groomsmaid, that does not sound very pretty.” They were lying on the couch, his head on Ilya’s lap for a change, Ilya carding his fingers through Shane’s hair.
“Svetlana is definitely going to talk her way into maid of honor status, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Shane smiled fondly, if a little weakly.
He felt a clench in his gut. Ilya should be out celebrating with his team, not here comforting him for a stupid mistake. But Ilya wouldn’t hear of it. “You need me more, and I wouldn’t want to celebrate win with anyone but you,” he'd said. Ilya could tell that the Voyageurs wouldn’t be kind to Shane, or maybe Hayden had texted to let him know the state of the locker room. Shane embraced the silence and melted further into Ilya’s hold. They stayed like that for a while, just listening to each other breathe, feeling Ilya’s hands in his hair, inhaling the most familiar and comforting scent in the world.
“They really think I threw the game for you,” Shane broke the silence with a raspy whisper. Like if he said it too loud, he would speak it into existence.
“Insulting.” Ilya sniffed. “They think I cannot win without cheating games. Worse, they think you would break a rule. You won’t even drive over speed limit, you could not throw a game. You would have nervous breakdown.”
“I can’t even argue with you or it will sound like I’m saying I would cheat. That’s not fair,” Shane grouched.
“Yes, I win again. It’s been a good night for me, I think.” Ilya injected enough humor into his voice for Shane to know he was being light hearted. “And you will win again soon. On a new team, better team. A team that understands how lucky they are to have you.”
“I hope so,” Shane was afraid to imagine a future on another team where he could potentially even be happy.
“Fuck Montréal. They are so stupid they cannot even see how stupid they are being,” Ilya said.
“Not Hayden,” Shane defended.
“Yes, Hayden. Pike is very stupid. He belongs with them. Low IQ team,” Ilya waved his hand.
“Not Valerie,” Shane said softly.
“No, not Valerie,” Ilya agreed.