Work Text:
Shane never listened to music when he was alone in the car, and tonight was no different. He’d only been on the road from Ottawa back to Montreal for thirty minutes, but the winter storm that had been rolling in throughout the afternoon had decided NOW was the time to fully hit. The sky was pitch black, snow was falling at a concerningly fast rate, and the road that Shane was driving down was simply not lit. What did Ottawa have against street lights anyways?
He knows he’s going too fast, even if his definition of too fast would be a speed that Ilya considered to be painstakingly slow (so sue him, he’s going 15 KMPH over the speed limit) and his visibility is further inhibited by the tears that haven’t stopped since he stomped out of Ilya’s house. When Ilya had asked him to leave. On fucking Boxing Day.
He’d known something was off with his boyfriend for awhile, Ilya was pretty good at masking when he was upset but Shane could read him like a book – Ilya was growing impatient with the set-up, Shane could tell he was bored in Ottawa, but he hadn’t considered until this very moment that Ilya was also lonely. He’d left everything and everyone he’d known since he was seventeen years old in Boston to move to a sleepy town in the middle of Canada. For Shane.
Ilya had simply asked him to go to a party, he’d even given him the option of going as friends. Shane really hated pretending to be Ilya’s friend. Ilya was way more important to him than any friend he’d ever had. Ilya was a part of him, a part of his soul, and Shane couldn’t even swallow his anxieties to meet the only family (aside from the Hollanders) that Ilya had found since his move. Ilya had insisted that his team was kind, accepting and would absolutely keep their mouths shut, but Shane still felt a pit in his stomach when he thought about the changes that were sure to come once they started telling people they were together. The pit was a mix of thrill and anxiety – lately the anxiety had been winning out.
Shane was lost in his thoughts just long enough to veer slightly off center; he felt his tires roll over some accumulated ice on the winding back road and suddenly he had a vision:
His tasteful, respectable Jeep wrapped around a tree deep in the backwoods of Ottawa, nobody around for miles to call the accident in or to get him help in a timely manner. He could hear the approaching sirens, almost felt the crushing pain and throbbing in his head as he realized he was bleeding profusely into the brown leather seat. He heard the rustling of EMTs trying to pry him out of a crushed car, felt his consciousness slip away, and his last fleeting realization was that nobody would call him. Nobody would call Ilya. They wouldn’t know who to notify, and when they finally got the news to his parents, he could envision the crushing grief on Yuna’s face while they called his very secret boyfriend who would not even be able to mourn him in public. The world wouldn’t know that half of his soul had left, and it would be Shane’s fault.
Shane shook his head, trying to dispel the image from his mind as he righted his car and made a decision. He was going to turn around, he was going to go to Boodram’s goddamn Boxing Day party and he sure as hell wasn’t going to pretend to just be friends with the love of his life.
Shane made a careful U-Turn, flipping on his bright lights – he absolutely could not crash now, not when the realization that maybe coming out to a group of trusted people wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Sure beats dying on the side of the road with no way to reach his boyfriend. He reached for the blue-tooth button on his dashboard and dialed.
“Hollander?” Ryan Price was beyond confused, why in the world Shane Hollander was calling him at 8PM at night was a mystery, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Shane paused, steadying his voice, “well I will be. Listen, Ilya invited me to his team’s party tonight and I said no, we had a huge fight..”
“And you called me to talk about it? Is this because I keep walking in on you guys at camp?” Ryan cut Shane off, still trying to understand what his place was in this conversation,
“Sorry sorry, no that’s not it,” Shane replied quickly, “it’s just uh… you played with Barrett right? In Toronto?”
“God I fucking hated that homophobic piece of shit,” Ryan answered, before remembering that Troy had recently gone through quite a renaissance, “I mean he seems like he has his shit together now. Calling out Kent and all that. But yeah I played with him. Why?”
“Do you by chance have his number?” Shane asked, “I need to get the address to the party, I’m going to surprise Ilya, so I can’t ask him.”
“I think so, one sec” Ryan scrolled through his contacts before finding the right number, he quickly shared the contact, “okay, I just sent it to you.”
“Thanks Price, you’re a life saver, and ya know…thank you for keeping quiet about Ilya and I, we really appreciate that. Hopefully you won’t have to much longer,” Shane profusely thanked his acquaintance who still sounded uncomfortable,
“Of course, and uh, no problem,” Ryan said back, “good luck with your grand romantic gesture.”
*****************************
Shane took a 5 minute breather to steady his racing heart before hitting the CALL button under Troy’s new contact – it rang twice before a slightly intoxicated Troy Barrett answered,
“Who is this?” Troy’s first question was fair, Shane had only ever talked to the guy in passing, it wasn’t like he had any reason to know who was on the other end of the call,
“Hey Barrett, it’s Shane,” Shane realized he probably needed to be more specific, “Hollander. Do you have somewhere private you could talk really quickly?”
“Yeah,” Shane could practically hear Troy straighten up and walk away from whatever debauchery was going on at Bood’s house. “Okay, I’m on the porch now. The rest of my team is inside, they can’t hear us. What’s going on?”
“This is going to sound insane,” Shane prefaced before he took another deep breath and continued, “but I’m gay.”
“Uhhhhh…” Troy’s voice on the other end actually stuttered before he gathered himself, “I mean I’d heard some rumors but congratulations? I guess? Is this what you wanted to talk about?”
“It’s related. Ilya said you’ve been a really good friend to him in Ottawa, so thank you for that,” Shane began, “and he also mentioned you’re not homophobic, so don’t worry that wasn’t my intention with this call.”
“I mean I’d hope I’m not homophobic, considering I’m gay,” Troy replied, slightly slurring but still seemingly cognizant of what was going on,
“Ilya may have alluded to that too,” Shane chuckled, “anyways, you might have guessed it at this point, but Ilya and I…he’s my boyfriend. We’re together.”
“Fucking KNEW it,” Troy almost cheered on the other side of the phone, “thank fuck I didn’t ask him for your number. That would’ve been a death wish. I’m happy for you guys. Is that what you needed?”
“No no, I just wanted to give you the background of the situation,” Shane was ashamed of what he was about to say but he pressed on, “he invited me to Bood’s for the Boxing Day Party. I said no, we got into a huge argument over it.”
“That explains why he hasn’t said a word for the entire hour he’s been here,” Troy tried to be understanding, Ilya asking Shane to his team’s party when they weren’t even out to the public was pretty brave, he was probably feeling embarrassed, “he’s like obsessed with you, you know that right? I was starting to worry he was stalking you with the way he’s on and on about your stats every fucking practice.”
“He shares my stats?” Shane diverged from his planned talk track, the idea of Ilya going over his hockey performance with a room full of people under the guise of making the team better gave him a warm gooey feeling,
“Yeah,” Troy laughed, and then in a terrible Russian accent, “none of you are good as Hollander. Only me. I need Hollanders not Pikes”
“Jesus,” Shane let out a quick laugh, leave it to Ilya to roast the fuck out of Hayden any chance he had, “god I can’t believe he talks about me. I thought he just kind of kept to himself up there.”
“I mean he does, we were all starting to worry about him but then we saw he was always texting some girl named Jane?” Troy caught himself before letting out a deep chuckle, “fuck that’s you isn’t it? Really smooth name change there.”
“Yeah I’m Jane, Rozanov, he uh,” Shane gulped, again the shame of how he had acted the past few days bubbling up in him, “he moved to Ottawa to be closer to me. I’m the reason why he’s there. And he asked me to come to the party, assured me you guys would be cool about it. And like I said, I said no, but I changed my mind. So I was hoping you could maybe send the address? And also make sure Ilya doesn’t blackout or leave before I get there?”
Troy grinned to himself, this party was about to get 10X more exciting. He was the only person on the team (aside from Harris if you counted him) who had any inkling that Rozanov’s girl maybe wasn’t a girl. And Shane was right, this squad was super accepting, they’d get a kick out of the league’s number one and number two players in a loving, committed relationship. And they’d keep their mouths shut,
“I’ll send it to you right now. No promises on the blackout though, your boy brought his own vodka.”
************************************************
The address ended up being 25 minutes from where Shane had been when he received the message, he drove calmly and safely, finally pulling up in-front of a stunning white home with a long driveway and about 10 cars piled up in the driveway. You couldn’t hear the party from the outside, but Shane could tell the boys were still going strong based on the bright lights shining through every window in the house.
He took what felt like his 1000th inhale of the night, and he texted Troy. Troy had agreed to come get him and let him into the house so that he wasn’t left knocking on the front door guessing who might answer it. Troy had also let Bood know that another guest was dropping by and Bood had been happy to have whoever wanted to join in the merriment. Shane pulled on the drawstrings of his hoody, a giggle escaping his mouth when he realized that the hoodie he had hastily thrown on under his winter coat was Ilya’s. It had the horrendous Centaur logo on the front and the number 81 stitched on the sleeve.
He saw Troy’s form emerge from the front door, waving him in and Shane broke into a jog to get out of the cold. He hadn’t ever had a full conversation with Troy face-to-face, but he felt kinship with him after their eye-opening phone call earlier. He accepted Troy’s hug even though human contact with strangers was at the top of his list of things he hated,
“Hey man,” Shane grinned, nervous but relieved that he had finally made it, “thanks for the help. I just realized Ilya needed me here. And ya know, I love him, so I want him to be happy even if I am fucking terrified right now.”
“I know it’s scary,” Troy agreed solemnly, putting his hand on Shane’s shoulder, “but this is a great group of guys. They’re going to love you. And Roz is going to love that you’re here. He’s been looking like a sad puppy all night.”
Shane grimaced, knowing he was the reason that his boyfriend was in such a foul mood – he could have avoided all of this pain if he’d just said yes the first time, but he hoped the grand romantic gesture of showing up in the middle of a blizzard to a strangers home to publicly claim Ilya as his would make up for it.
Troy opened the door and Shane was met with roars, nobody was paying attention to the front entry-way, they were deeply engrossed in some sort of drinking game. Well most of the team was. Ilya was sitting in the corner, glass of vodka in his hands and his head resting on his palm, looking both upset and bored simultaneously,
“Uh Roz?” Troy said quickly, the other guys didn’t look up, but Ilya raised his head slowly, you could tell (if you really knew Ilya) that he’d been crying earlier, “there’s someone here..”
Troy couldn’t finish his sentence before Ilya had flown from his chair, convinced that the vision of his wonderful boyfriend in the front entry of Bood’s house was some sort of vodka-induced mirage. The speed in which he extracted himself from the chair finally caught the attention of the other Centaurs, who looked confusedly between Ilya, Troy and…..Shane Hollander?
****************************************
Shane could feel his heart in his stomach as Ilya paced towards him, their eyes not breaking from one another; he tried to read his boyfriend’s mind, what was possibly going on behind those beautiful blue eyes, but he couldn’t see through his adrenaline,
“Shane?” Ilya said softly, he was in front of him now, his eyes worried, “are you okay? Did something happen?”
Shane swallowed, Ilya’s teammates were watching but they couldn’t hear the couple over the loud music that was thumping through the speakers, he willed himself not to cry, looking up at Ilya, he’d had a whole speech planned but it was gone now,
“I want you to be my emergency contact,” Shane choked out and Ilya looked at him with even more concern than before,
“Was there emergency?” Ilya asked again, and Shane shook his head,
“No, but there could be. And nobody would know to call you. I’m so sick of pretending not to know you Ilya, it’s fucking killing me inside,” Shane swallowed and met Ilya’s gaze, “and I didn’t even consider that it was killing you too. I was so fucking selfish. I moved you away from all of your friends. From your team. From your city. From Russia. I asked you to come here and then I left for Montreal and you were alone.”
“Shane…” Ilya, who was now sufficiently convinced nobody was dying, tried to calm his boyfriend down, but then, to Ilya’s surprise, Shane reached up and cupped Ilya’s face with both of his hands,
“I should have said yes the first time. If you trust this team and it’ll make Ottawa feel more like home for you, then you deserve to tell people too,” Shane ran his thumb down Ilya’s cheek, wiping at the tear that had escaped his eye,
“I can tell them we are friends from the charity,” Ilya offered almost silently and Shane furrowed his brow, and stepped forward, shrinking the space between the two of them so that their gap was only a few inches, his mouth hovered over Ilya's.
Before leaning in and taking Ilya's beautiful mouth against his, Shane growled, “Fuck being friends Ilya. You’re the love of my life.”