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Shane is good at quite a number of things – playing hockey, pushing himself to the limits of what his body can do, acting like the perfectly bland, family-friendly hockey player the league likes.
He’s also, unfortunately, quite good at not actually being that last part.
It’s been a fact he’s grown up with, from the moment it became apparent that he had the skill to off-set his skin-colour, which had been an actual thing a coach had told his mother. Shane hadn’t been supposed to hear it, of course, and the coach had very suddenly taken a leave of absence for a couple of weeks after that, but it’s stuck with him.
The league claims it’s progressive, but mostly, what that means is that they’d prefer nobody make a fuss. And Shane, by virtue of being Asian-Canadian, is already making a fuss.
And then, of course, Shane realised that he was also quite bad at being family-friendly, at least in the eyes of the league.
There are no out players in the league; at most, there are open secrets and boys will be boys, but in the end, everyone knows that hockey players will settle down with a wife and a few kids, ready to continue their legacy.
Shane had tried, of course. Again, it’s just what hockey players do: even if they fool around in juniors or during their rookie years, they’ll grow out of it. Shane had been waiting for that, maybe, that switch to flick from chasing danger and thrill with Ilya fucking Rozanov to building a life with a girlfriend, and it had taken Rose looking him in the eye and gently pulling him from the closet for him to admit that it would not happen to him.
Which brings him to the here and now, doing something he’s very, very bad at indeed: drafting a statement should it get out just how royally he’s fucked up being bland and family-friendly.
It’s not the first statement he’s had to write – and yeah, he doesn’t actually have to write it, but it’s probably better to have it prepared in case something happens instead of scrambling in the moment of panic – but it’s the first one he’s actually writing himself. Usually, his mother is right there, suggesting words and tweaking sentences, providing structure and guidance.
Okay, who is he kidding? Usually, is mother is the one to write these words, and he’s maybe, possibly, absolutely never given her enough credit for how much of a chore this is.
“It’s just words,” Shane tells himself, because apparently he’s reached the point where he’s talking to himself in the emptiness of his own flat. “It’s just fucking words, how the fuck can this be so hard?”
Nobody answers, because there’s nobody there to witness his miserable, abject failure at doing a very basic task. It shouldn’t be this hard, of course. The knowledge does nothing to make it easier; if anything, it digs into the abyss in his chest and opens it wider, sucks any thought he’s ever had on the topic down into it.
Part of him just wants to give up, shove all of this into the back of his mind and not think about it. But he’s tried that, in a way, and look where it got him: to sitting across from a successful, gorgeous, lovely woman and nearly bursting into tears because he’s so fundamentally broken that even she cannot fix him.
A problem is something you can fix.
So he’s tried that, and failed, and while Shane got to where he is by getting up after each and every failure and trying harder, there is no trying harder here. If even Rose Landry isn’t the answer to his predicament, then maybe it’s time to face up to reality and admit that he is gay, no fix available.
And if there is no fix, if there is no escaping this, then Shane has to be prepared for the fall-out. Even if the mere thought makes him want to fling himself out of the nearest window. Even if the empty page is staring back at him like it will swallow him whole.
He exhales and reaches for his phone. Better to look at past statements just to get a vibe.
Two panic attacks, one broken pen (not his finest moment), eight discarded drafts that never got beyond the first sentence, and an hour-long run in the frigid February air later, Shane is ready to scream.
This isn’t hard. Or, well, it shouldn’t be. It’s just fucking words.
Somehow, it truly is worse than fucking death. At least, if you ask Shane’s brain. He wants to claw out of his skin just looking at the near-empty page in front of him, the My name is Shane Hollander and I am in his own messy handwriting. He can’t even write it down, like putting it on the page will make it more real than saying it to Ilya; like putting it on the page will make it more real than admitting to Rose that he prefers to bottom; like putting it on the page will make it more real than having taken a cock up his ass.
And yet, somehow, it does.
With a disgusted snort, Shane balls up his latest attempt, and then makes the executive decision to let it rest for now. He’s only driving himself up the wall, and maybe a good night’s sleep will help the words come.
“What is this, Hollander?”
“Already back to last names?” Shane asks drily before he realises what Ilya is looking at: the balled up evidence of his abject failure. Icy cold sluices down Shane’s back, though it’s only Ilya. But – it could have been Hayden or any of his other teammates, if he’d been less lucky.
“Well, Shane is smart,” Ilya says matter of fact as he unfurls one of the pages before Shane can get to him, “Hollander is an idiot.”
“Hey!”
“So. What is this? Is this…”
Shane’s heart sinks. “I – this is… damage control.”
“Oh.” Ilya reaches for the next page, and Shane is incapable of stopping him, suddenly glued to the ground. “This is shit,” Ilya declares with his usual tact.
Shane wraps his arms around himself. “Well, I want to see you do better.”
“Okay.” Ilya pulls the chair out with his foot and sits down, turning back to Shane after a moment. “So, will you join? Or do I suddenly write it for you?”
“Uh – no, of course not,” Shane stammers, and tries to will his feet to cooperate. He still cannot move.
“Hollander.” Ilya exhales in a rush, eyebrows knitting together. “Shane. Is just words, yes?”
Shane snorts. “Yeah, well, that hasn’t helped, you know?”
Ilya rolls his eyes a little and holds out his hand to Shane. “Is just, I am gay and this is none of your fucking business, but in more polite words, yes? Come, is not that hard, I promise.”
“Do you have a statement prepared?”
Ilya shrugs. “Yes,” he says, like it’s no big deal.
“You have?!”
“Yes. Sveta made me, after I returned from Russia. Just in case, you know?”
“Svetlana knows?!”
“She knows Jane is a guy,” Ilya says, fingers curling in a come-hither motion. “But is not the point. This is embarrassing, and we will fix it.”
Fix it. There it is again, that insidious pair of words. Shane grimaces. “Fuck you, too,” he says, but he finally unsticks his feet from the floor and makes his way over to Ilya.
“Later. Once we do this.” Ilya smirks at him, smooths out the crumbled paper, and clicks the pen obnoxiously.
“Fine.”
And, as it turns out, bickering with Ilya over word-choice and appropriate language actually does make it easier. Or maybe that’s the reward beckoning in the distance.
Either way, less than half an hour later, Shane has a first draft for a statement, and Ilya even helps him shred the remnants of his earlier attempts, and then pulls him towards the bedroom.
Shane may be bad at words, but he’s getting increasingly good at being with Ilya.