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1
Shane knows that Jessica isn’t all that interested in hockey. Which is cool. A lot of the girls who ask Shane out seem to mostly care about the fact that he is very good at hockey and is probably going to be first pick in the draft.
So Shane knows it isn’t fair to not be into Jessica because she’s the opposite, it’s only… It’s only that he kind of wishes he could be with someone who’s into hockey, but also not star-struck by how good Shane is at it.
He knows there’s no-one like that, though. So it’s great, dating Jessica, even though he can’t see them staying together in the long term. She’s fun but doesn’t push him to go to parties with her. She respects that he has to train every day. She doesn’t mind if he doesn’t text her all the time when he’s travelling for games.
She goes with him to quiet restaurants that fit the macrobiotic diet he recently started, even though her favourite food is four-cheese pizza with extra goat’s cheese. The restaurant they’re in now has a lot of different salads, and she is gamely chewing her way through a bowl of radicchio.
“How was the game?” she asks, smiling at Shane across the table. She always says how was the game because she doesn’t know who he’s played or exactly when.
“Good. Uh, we won,” Shane says. “How was your – um…” This is why he can’t blame her for not knowing details about his games.
She’s still smiling, because she’s kind. “The poetry slam? Really fun.”
“Great.”
“Yeah.”
They chew in silence, until she says. “Listen, Shane.”
Shane is doused in sudden, dizzying relief. Jessica is going to break up with him.
“Yes?” he says, sitting up straight.
“I really like you.”
“Right, me too. Like you, I mean.” He does like her, he just – there’s something that he can’t explain that he thinks is not supposed to be like it is. That’s the best his brain can do whenever he tries to come up with an explanation of why things don’t feel quite right between them.
“Okay, Shane,” she says. “It’s just that we haven’t seen each other in three weeks. I really missed you. And you have that championship coming up where you’ll be gone.”
Has it been three weeks? It doesn’t feel that long. He’s grateful that she is showing him how he should respond, though. “I missed you, too.”
She smiles at him again. She usually smiles and she is pretty. It’s definitely nice to have a pretty girlfriend. He feels kind of guilty for not liking her more because she’s so friendly.
“Yes, but,” she stops. “I really want to explain this right, because I want to be with you so much.”
She’s still going to break up with him, though, right? Any time now.
“I just wish we could do more, you know. Couple-y things, I guess?”
“Oh,” Shane says. “Oh.” No breakup, then. “Like what?”
“Like, maybe when we go somewhere, we could hold hands. Or kiss sometimes, when we’re not at home. Not, like inappropriately. Just a little. Or, maybe.” She’s blushing. Shane feels the heat on his own face, too.
Jessica soldiers on. “Maybe you could call me, like, pet names sometimes? Like some of my friends, their boyfriends call them baby and… things like that.”
She goes quiet and looks down at the remainder of her radicchio.
“Um,” Shane says. “Right. I – I’ll – I’ll definitely try.”
“All right,” she says. “That would be nice. Thank you, Shane.”
After he’s paid and they’re standing outside the restaurant’s door, she looks up at him. “Do you want to come back with me? We can watch a movie? My parents aren’t home.”
“Oh,” Shane says. He swallows hard. “I have to get to training.” It’s not really a lie, right? It’s always good to train more.
“Oh, right,” she says. “Okay. Enjoy your training.”
“Thank you.”
She kisses him, which is fine. She goes very red in the face again when she adds, “Bye, sweetie.”
Should Shane call her babe or sweetheart or darling or something after what she said about acting like a couple? None of that seems right, so all Shane says is, “Bye, Jessica. I’ll… I’ll see you after the World Juniors.”
2
“He’s fine, but he’s a little woozy from the anaesthesia,” the nurse tells Shane.
“As long as he’s fine,” Shane says.
“Definitely nothing to worry about.” She smiles. “Can you stay with him until we’re happy he can be taken home?”
“No problem,” Shane says. “His wife is also on the way but she might be a while, she has to drop off their kids. I’ll stay with him until she gets here.”
The nurse shows him into the room before thanking him and leaving. Hayden is looking up at him from the dentist’s chair. “Shane,” he says, smiling and then wincing. “Ouch.”
“Hey,” Shane says. “You okay?”
“Great.” Hayden pulls a face and winces again. “Fucking hurts. Fucking Toronto. Was Toronto, right?”
“Yeah,” Shane says. “It looked painful. Lucky you didn’t get your nose broken as well.”
Hayden nods. “Yes, yes, yes. For sure.” He tries to smile again, and naturally ends up flinching in pain like before. “Can I go home?”
“Not yet,” Shane says. “They gave you drugs. We need to wait for them to wear off a bit.”
“I wanna go home. Show ‘em all my new tooth. I wanna hug Jade and Arthur and Jade – no, wait. Arthur and Jade and Jade – no – whass the other one, Shane?”
“Ruby.”
“Ruby. Thass it. My beautiful little princess Ruby. They’re all beautiful little humans. That I made. Me ‘n Jackie. Mostly her, but still. We made three humans together. An’ we’re gonna make more, maybe. Crazy, right, Shane?”
Shane grins. “Very crazy, buddy. You can hug them all soon. Jackie’s on the way, she’s dropping them off at her parents’ before coming to get you, and you can see them later.”
Hayden nods again a couple of times. “Jackie’s so beautiful, right? Isn’t she beautiful?”
“Uh, sure, very pretty.”
“Do you think she will think ‘m beautiful with my new tooth?”
“I’m sure she will.”
“’kay. Man, I love Jackie. Is she missin’ me? Did she say anythin’ to me? Like on my phone? Can you check?”
“If you want, yeah,” Shane says, taking Hayden’s phone from where it’s lying on a chair in the corner. It takes Hayden about five tries to unlock it.
“Can’t read,” Hayden announces once he’s clicked into his messages. “You check, Shane.”
“Ah, okay,” Shane says. He feels kind of awkward looking into Hayden and Jackie’s messages, considering someone reading his own text chain with Rozanov is his worst nightmare. But Hayden seems okay with it, and after clicking into the thread, Shane sees that the only thing he can see without scrolling up is Jackie’s messages from today and a shopping list from the day before. Briefly, Shane imagines having a normal text conversation with Rozanov, one that is something besides room numbers and hot insults. One that has shopping lists and are you okays and goodnight texts with heart emojis.
“Whass she sayin’?” Hayden asks, thankfully pulling Shane out of his thoughts.
“Um,” Shane says. “She wants to know how you’re doing.”
“’m good, tell her not to worry.”
“She knows, I texted her earlier.”
“Okay, good, good. Read me her texts,” Hayden mumbles. “I miss her. Read ‘em. Pretend to be Jackie.”
“Oh,” Shane says. He doesn’t really want to pretend to be Jackie. He doesn’t think he’d do a very good job. So he just reads the texts in his normal voice. “She says: ‘hey, are you okay, I’m dropping the kids off and then I’ll be there’.”
“No,” Hayden says. “’s not right. Didn’t she call me babe?”
“Uh -” She did, multiple times. Shane doesn’t know how to say that out loud, so he skipped it pretty much automatically.
“Read them properly, Shane,” Hayden whines. “I want to feel like Jackie is here. Love her so much.”
Luckily, that’s when the door opens and Shane is saved by Jackie’s arrival. “Oh my god, babe, your face is all swollen! Are you in pain, sweetie?”
3
Rose’s friends say darling and honey, and the international ones keep saying love. Shane wonders whether Rose would like to hear endearments like this from him. He wants to make the effort to fit in with her friend group, because he thinks she might be that girl he used to think didn’t exist, the one who’s into hockey but not star-struck.
She has to be.
He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him if he can’t think of her that way.
He brings it up after she comes to one of his games. “I just – uh. Maybe I’m different from your friends? They act – I mean, they talk – I don’t know.”
“Shane,” she says. “Don’t take this the wrong way. But you are definitely very different from my friends.”
“Oh,” he says.
“I like that about you! Do you know what it’s like to only hang out with Hollywood people? It’s awful! I love them, but we’re all the same. You’re so sweet, and so -”
“Boring?”
“You aren’t boring! At all! You’re so funny, in such a subtle way. I would never call you boring!”
Shane is relieved, not because he’s worried Rose actually thinks he’s boring, but because he can’t explain what boring means nowadays. What it means when other people say it. How he misses hearing it, and seeing it pop up in his texts. How it felt like a term of endearment in the weirdest way. In the best way.
“So do not worry about not being like my friends, or not talking like my friends. I like you as you are.”
And that is nice, because Shane thinks he likes Rose as she is as well. He’s less sure about their friends, and he doesn’t know how their lives could mesh together down the line, so he doesn’t focus on it too much. But it’s nice to know someone likes him as he is, now that he’s ruined – it’s just nice with Rose. It is.
4
Svetlana is waiting outside the restaurant, wearing a fur coat Shane isn’t sure is fake, and frankly alarmingly bright eyeshadow. She looks amazing and terrifying in equal measures, as usual.
Shane awkwardly kisses her on both cheeks. “Ilya is running late,” he informs her.
“He told me,” she says. “Not to worry. Let’s go in. I was waiting for you because I want a better table.”
“I’m sure wherever they’ll seat us will be very nice,” Shane says, following her into the restaurant.
She shakes her head. “No, no, I want to sit in the front, near the purple lake. That’s the point.”
It’s true, the purple lake is the point of the restaurant, even though Shane doesn’t get it. But Svetlana and Ilya were very excited about going and sitting on a table on a purple lake, so here they are. And, to be fair, Ilya made sure it offered macrobiotic options.
Svetlana smiles at the maitre d’ in a terrifying way that would have Shane seat her at any table she asked for. The man in front of them doesn’t even blink as he checks and informs that there are no more tables at the lake available, but he’s happy to seat them somewhere else.
Svetlana mouths name-drop at Shane.
He leans over and whispers, as quietly as he can, “Name-drop who?”
“Yourself, Hollander,” she whispers back. “I want to sit at the lake. And also the best seats. Drop your name or flirt with this man. Just a little bit, in your Canadian way. Call him darling, or something.”
“You flirt with him!” he hisses.
She blinks at him. “He will not care.”
“Why not?”
“How you got a husband, I’ll never know. Well, I know. Ilya must have just pounced on you before you could politely decline.”
Shane doesn’t argue with that, because Svetlana has a way of stating things that is very… decided.
When he doesn’t say anything else, she squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, takes his arm, and lets the host lead them to a non-lake-adjacent table.
Ilya arrives shortly after, so gorgeous in a new suit that Shane wants him to just take Shane home straight away. Ilya hugs Svetlana and kisses her on the cheek, and then kisses Shane way too thoroughly considering they’re in public. Shane doesn’t stop him, couldn’t even if he wanted to, which he doesn’t.
Svetlana fills Ilya in on the reason that they’re not sitting by the purple lake before he can look at the drinks menu.
“Ah, Sveta,” Ilya says. “Why did you ask him to do this? Shane cannot flirt. Everybody knows this.”
“I can flirt!”
“No, you cannot. When you tried to flirt with me you always just got hard very quick or insulted me or dated famous movie stars.”
“You are such an asshole.”
“See? That is you flirting with me.”
Shane groans. “Leave me alone.”
“Also flirting.” Ilya pulls him close and presses kisses down from Shane’s temple to his chin. “You are doing perfect. Just how I like it.”
5
They’re kissing on the sofa, slow and filthy, like their first time at the cottage, when Ilya says, “Like that, sweetheart,” and Shane can’t keep himself from pulling away to ask.
“Should I say that?”
Ilya blinks at him. “Say what?”
“I mean, should I call you pet names?”
Ilya stares up at him. His hair is all mussed from where Shane’s run his fingers through it, his lips are wet and slightly swollen, and his dick is hard against Shane’s. Really, Shane should not focus on whether to use pet names right now, but he can’t help himself.
“You said in the past that you do not think you would pull off calling me pet names,” Ilya points out.
“I – yeah. Yes, that’s true. But if you want, I can.”
“Okay,” Ilya says. “But do you want to?”
“I was just remembering my first girlfriend, and she really wanted me to call her pet names, and I was thinking maybe you would want that.”
Ilya drops his head back against the cushions. “Shane,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“Has our sex life become bad?”
“What? No! Of course it hasn’t! It’s amazing! It’s so fucking good! Why – why are you asking that?”
“Because we are about to have sex and you are thinking about your first girlfriend.”
Shane can’t help but whine a little. It’s mostly automatic, and maybe also a little bit because he knows Ilya finds it very sexy. Indeed, Ilya slides his hands up to Shane’s thighs and squeezes. “I was not thinking about her like that,” Shane says. “I just – you call me sweetheart sometimes.”
“Yes, sometimes. When things are very special.”
“I know. I really like it.”
“Okay, that’s good.” Ilya kisses him softly. “I can do it more, if you want. So what is the problem?”
“Just – I want you to know that I love you. So much.”
Ilya sighs, and smiles. “Shane. I know that you love me. You married me. You take care of me every day. You suck my dick, a lot. I do not need you to call me pet names to prove it.”
“Right,” Shane says. He feels a blush creep up his cheeks, and he can tell by Ilya’s wolfish look that he notices it. “Fine. All good. Let’s get back to -”
“No, no,” Ilya says. He gets up, unceremoniously knocking Shane back onto the sofa. Shane whines for real at Ilya leaving. He only goes to open the door through to the kitchen, though, and Shane hears the click-click-click of claws on the living room floor.
“Here she is, my sweet girl,” Ilya coos. “Your dad is having an existential crisis and you can solve it. Yes, you can.”
A moment later, Ilya is holding Anya up to Shane’s face. “Say it to Anya,” he says, gently bopping her up and down like an actual baby. They’ll have to have another conversation about treating her like a child. “Look at her cute face. You can definitely say pet names to that adorable little face, even if you don’t love your husband enough to say them to him.”
Shane pouts up at Ilya. Anya yawns. God, Shane hopes their actual kids will be less disaffected once they have them.
“No?” Ilya says. “No pet names even for our fur baby?”
“I told you not to call her that when I’m around.”
“Ah, yes, is a turn-off for you, you said.”
“Yes,” Shane says.
Ilya puts Anya down on the floor, and slides his arms around Shane to pick him up from the sofa. “I have long night ahead of me. Making up for this turn-off.”
Shane can’t help it. He never can, he loves Ilya too much. He laughs all the way to the bedroom.
+1
Shane had been very stressed about becoming a dad, not helped by Ilya’s constant reassurances that we have our fur baby Anya, is the same thing, will be very easy. Turns out, there was no need to worry about anything, because it’s only screaming, and wet wipes, and spit-up. Among all of that, there is very little time to have thoughts of failure.
Ilya, predictably, is dealing with all of it much more calmly. When they’re woken up in the middle of the night for the ninth time, he just slides a hand over Shane’s hip, pressing him back into the mattress, and says, “Is okay. I will get her.”
“You did the last five times,” Shane says. “It’s definitely my turn.”
“I cannot believe you are counting,” Ilya says, rubbing at his eyes. He looks so fucking sweet that Shane can’t stop himself from stealing a kiss, even without brushing their teeth first.
He shuffles over to the crib to pick her up, and is pleasantly surprised when she stops screaming in his arms.
“Oh my god,” he whispers.
Ilya is looking at him, wide-eyed, from where he’s sitting on the edge of the bed. “Shane,” he breathes. “You did it. You are magic.”
Shane has no idea how he’s making her happy enough to stop screaming, but the elation is akin to winning a Stanley Cup, or the day he and Ilya got married.
It lasts for about ten seconds until the baby starts screaming again.
“Oh no, oh fuck,” Shane says, desperately rocking her. “Oh, shit, I just said fuck to our baby. Oh f- oh no. What’s wrong? Oh, sweetheart, don’t cry.”
“Bottle, do you think?”
“Worth a shot,” Shane says. Any thought of routine and plans went out the window as soon as she arrived, and it’s the most terrified Shane’s ever felt. But it feels so good to be in it with Ilya.
It is the bottle that calms her down, and Shane and Ilya sit on the edge of the bed pressed close together, watching her drink.
“By the way, I win,” Ilya whispers, before pressing a kiss into Shane’s hair.
“What the fuck?”
“You called her sweetheart,” Ilya says. “I have two sweethearts, you and her. You only have one. I win.”
“Ilya,” Shane says, voice low as well to not startle their daughter.
“Mhm?” Ilya is still kissing his hair.
“I’m going to tell Anya you forgot about her.”
Ilya looks outraged for only a second, before poking Shane in the side. “Oh sweetheart,” he says with another kiss. “Not unless you want me to tell Yuna you keep saying fuck in front of her granddaughter.”