Archive of Our Own

J.J. called at eight-thirty on a Friday night and didn't let Shane say no.

"You've been in that apartment since Tuesday," J.J. said. "I know because I called Tuesday, and Thursday, and you were home both times, and now it's Friday and you are coming out with me or I am coming over there and dragging you out by your collar, do you understand me?"

"I've been watching film," Shane said.

"Shane."

"The Guardians have a new—"

"Shane, baby, I will physically carry you. I have done it before."

He had, once, at the end of last season when Shane had been trying to skip the championship dinner. Shane had made it about twelve feet before J.J. got both arms around him from behind and just—lifted.

"Fine," Shane said. "One drink."

J.J. sent Hayden to his door anyway, just in case. Which was how Shane ended up on the 96 bus on a Friday night pulling on his jacket with Hayden beside him looking like a man who'd won twenty dollars on a bet.

"He said you'd say fine and then try to stay home," Hayden told him.

"He's not always right," Shane said.

Hayden looked at him.

"He's not always right," Shane said.

The rooftop was exactly the kind of place J.J. found; knew a guy who knew a guy, Benoit's friend on the decks, amber lights strung across the overhang so the whole space sat warm and gold against the November dark. Shane could see the city over the low wall at the edge, all of it, the whole lit grid of Montreal laid out like it had been arranged specifically for them to look at. He stood near the heaters with Hayden and thought: okay. This is actually nice. He was going to have one drink, tell J.J. it was nice, and be home by midnight.

J.J. materialized from the crowd like he'd been waiting, which he probably had, because J.J. always knew when someone arrived, it was some kind of spatial awareness that made no sense in a man that large. He had on a dark green button-up with the top two buttons open and he'd done something new with his hair and he was grinning before he even got to them, the full high-wattage version.

"Yes!" He pulled Shane into a hug that was really more of a lift, both arms around Shane's shoulders, his face buried briefly in Shane's hair. Shane's face ended up somewhere in J.J.'s collar. He smelled like whatever expensive thing he'd put on. "You actually came, I can't believe it."

"You sent Hayden," Shane said, muffled.

"I sent Hayden because I knew you'd flake." J.J. set him down, kept one hand on the back of his neck, looked at him like he was checking for damage. "You good? You look like you've been inside for four days."

"Three days."

"Three days." J.J. shook his head, clicked his tongue, already steering Shane toward the bar. His hand moved from Shane's neck to his shoulder and stayed there. "Drapeau is here. Berkes, Gagnon. You know everyone. Relax."

"I'm relaxed," Shane said.

"You're doing the thing where your shoulders are near your ears."

Shane consciously dropped his shoulders.

"Better," J.J. said, and steered him into the crowd.

The drink situation became a situation approximately twelve minutes in. Shane had taken the beer J.J. pressed into his hand, which was how it always started, and gotten about a third of the way through it before accepting the truth of the matter, which was that he genuinely did not like beer, had never liked beer, and kept taking it at parties because it was easier than explaining that he didn't like beer.

J.J. looked over and caught the face Shane was making at his glass.

"What's wrong with it."

"Nothing."

"Shane."

"It's a little—it's bitter."

"It's beer," J.J. said. "Beer is bitter."

"Right, yeah, that's—yeah."

J.J. looked at him for one long second with the expression he used when Shane was being stupid in a way J.J. found endearing rather than frustrating, which was, unfortunately, most of the ways Shane was ever stupid. Then he turned to the bar, flagged the bartender—young guy, clearly charmed by J.J. within seconds of making eye contact, which was just what J.J. did to people—and started talking. Quick French, some gesturing, the words ginger ale and lime and something else Shane didn't catch. The bartender got interested, the way people got interested when J.J. gave them a project, and there was a little back-and-forth, some experimenting, J.J. nodding over the guy's shoulder like a coach watching a drill.

The result was something with rum and lime and ginger ale and some herb Shane couldn't identify, and it was, against all odds, genuinely good. Cold and sharp and sweet enough, the ginger doing something at the back of his throat.

"Good?" J.J. said.

Shane took another sip. "Yeah."

The grin J.J. gave him was absolutely insufferable. He said something to the bartender that made the guy laugh, some back-and-forth that ended in the bartender looking over at Shane like Shane was a pleasant problem he'd been asked to solve. Shane decided not to ask what had been said.

Hayden appeared at his elbow. "He special ordered you a drink."

"He talked the guy through making something."

"Right," Hayden said, with an indescribable tone. He took a very deliberate sip of his own beer.

Drapeau held court near the wall with Gagnon and Berkes and a few people Shane didn't know, and that was where the four of them ended up for the first hour or so, easy back-and-forth, the comfortable shorthand of people who spent most of their waking lives in the same building. Shane leaned on the wall with his good drink and let the night settle into something mansgeable. J.J. was arguing with Drapeau about the power play's defensive breakout, which was J.J.'s constant preoccupation, and at some point he drifted to stand beside Shane, close, and put a hand on Shane's hip while he made a point at Drapeau with his other hand.

Shane didn't think about it. He just leaned back slightly, into J.J.'s side, the way he would into a wall, and J.J.'s hand settled more firmly against his hip and J.J. kept talking.

Berkes glanced at them. Just a glance, then away. Shane couldn't read it.

The city was very pretty from up here. Shane had been in Montreal for two years and still felt a little blindsided by it sometimes, the particular quality of the lights, the way the river caught them on clear nights. He was thinking about this, and his drink, and not about J.J.'s thumb moving in a slow absent arc against his hip, when Gagnon cracked a joke that made J.J. laugh—not his regular laugh but the bigger one, the one that started in his stomach—and Shane felt it through his whole side and thought: yeah. This was worth leaving the apartment for.

J.J. squeezed his hip once, let go, turned to say something to Hayden. Shane straightened up, looked at the city, finished his drink, and felt Drapeau watching him with an expression that was evaluating something Shane didn't have context for.

The girl found him when J.J. drifted off with Berkes toward the other end of the roof, which left Shane standing slightly apart from the group, which apparently made him approachable. She came up alongside him at the wall, dark-haired, genuinely pretty, with an easy smile and a Québécois accent and the warm, unguarded energy of someone who'd been having a good night for a while.

"Shane Hollander," she said, like she was confirming it. "I thought that was you."

"Yeah," Shane said.

"I was at the Boston game last month." She leaned on the wall next to him. "The breakaway in the third, what was that?"

"The Rozanov," Shane said immediately, and then caught himself. "It's—I took it from watching Rozanov. The angle, the speed. It's his."

She tilted her head. "You study his game?"

"I study everyone's game." True. Also true that he had studied Rozanov's game across hotel rooms and early mornings for twoish years now, and that studying his game was a phrase that covered approximately seventy percent of what he actually meant and left about thirty percent unspoken. He was not thinking about that thirty percent.

"That's kind of fascinating," she said. "You're rivals."

"Yeah."

"And you're taking notes on him?"

"He takes notes on me too, probably." Definitely. Ilya had once described Shane's transition game to him, from memory, in bed, at… Shane was not thinking about that. "It's mutual."

"Mutual," she repeated, amused, and something in her voice made him think she'd heard something he hadn't intended to say. He was saved from examining this by the warm pressure of a hand on his shoulder.

J.J. had come back. He materialized at Shane's side with a drink in each hand and offered one to Shane before Shane could mention he still had half his current one, and said "Bonsoir" to the girl with the smile that was just J.J.'s standard-issue smile but which had a different effect on most people than it had on Shane, because most people hadn't been looking at J.J.'s smile for years and built up a tolerance to it.

The girl—Elise, she'd said at some point—looked between them, and her expression shifted into something Shane couldn't quite decode, a little knowing, a little like she'd figured something out. She made easy conversation with J.J. for a few minutes, said she'd keep an eye on the Voyageurs' season, told Shane it was great to meet him. Smiled at him on her way past, specifically, warm and slightly wry.

Shane watched her go. Then looked at J.J.

"I was fine," he said.

"You were talking about Rozanov," J.J. said.

"I was talking about hockey."

"To a woman who was very interested in talking to you specifically."

Shane opened his mouth. Closed it.

J.J. shook his head slowly. "I don't even—okay. Come dance with me before I cry."

He took Shane's wrist and pulled, and Shane went.

The DJ had found his stride by the time they reached the floor, something slow and heavy with a bass that lived in the chest rather than the ear. J.J. moved into it immediately—he always did, walked into music like walking through a door, no hesitation, just suddenly in it—and pulled Shane with him.

They started out facing each other, J.J.'s hands loose at Shane's waist, both of them moving with the floor. Shane had gotten better at this over two years of team nights; he'd never be J.J., whose whole body seemed to know things, but he could follow, and following J.J. was easy the same way following J.J. on the ice was easy, something wordless in it, some frequency his body had learned to tune to.

The crowd pressed in as the floor filled. J.J. pulled him closer, one hand shifting from his waist to the small of his back, and Shane turned with it, let himself be turned, until he was fitted back against J.J.'s chest with J.J.'s arm across his middle and J.J.'s chin finding the top of his head. Shane's hands settled on J.J.'s forearm, not pushing away, just… there.

They swayed. The song moved through them. Drapeau and Gangon were somewhere on the floor, Hayden was somewhere, Berkes was somewhere, and Shane was not thinking about any of them. He was just here.

J.J. said something against his hair, too low to hear, and Shane tilted his head back trying to catch it, which put his face near J.J.'s jaw, and J.J. repeated it: something about the bassist, some observation about whoever was doing the live instrumentation. J.J. always noticed things like that. Shane smiled and said yeah, I know, which was not a response that made sense but J.J. laughed anyway, Shane felt it in his whole back, and they kept moving.

The song changed. Slower, heavier. J.J.'s arm tightened briefly, then relaxed, his hand at the small of Shane's back beginning to move in a slow circle. Shane's fingers curled over J.J.'s forearm. They were—they were just dancing. This was just dancing. They danced like this at team events, had been dancing like this for two years, there was nothing—

J.J.'s hips moved against him, not pushing, just moving, following the music the way the rest of him was following the music, and Shane's brain went sideways.

He was. He wasn't particularly straight. He'd been aware of this since sometime around seventeen, when Rozanov had looked at him across a faceoff circle and something in Shane's head had gone oh no and not really recovered. He had, in the past two and a half years, done specific things with Rozanov on two specific occasions, and both times he'd felt it in his whole body, the particular electricity of finally, and then gone home and not thought about it as hard as he could. He thought about it now, despite himself: Rozanov looking down at him with that expression—imperious, like Shane was proving something Ilya had already known, like this was just the natural order of things settling into place—and the memory alone made heat prickle up the back of Shane's neck.

And then his brain, entirely without permission, put J.J. in Rozanov's place.

Except J.J. wouldn't be like that. J.J. wouldn't look at him like he'd won something. J.J. would be—Shane's brain filled it in with horrible, vivid clarity—kind about it. Would have both hands in Shane's hair, gentle, would say his name like it meant something, would be looking down at him like Shane was the only thing worth looking at in any room—

Shane evicted the thought from his skull with both hands.

What the fuck, he thought. What the — no. That is your friend. He is literally right there, you absolute—

He became extremely aware that he had half a chub, pinned between himself and J.J., and that if J.J. moved any differently Shane was going to have a very awkward conversation that he had no framework for.

He thought: please, God, do not let J.J. notice.

He thought: I am going to go home and throw my own brain in the trash.

J.J.'s hand pressed flat against his back, shifting him slightly, and Shane bit the inside of his cheek and looked intensely at a fixed point across the room and thought hockey. Breakout formations. The Bears' forecheck. Anything.

"You good?" J.J. said, against the top of his head.

"Yeah," Shane said, at a register slightly higher than his normal voice. "Yeah, good. The—the bassist is really good."

"Right?" J.J. grinned, satisfied. His chin came down to rest on Shane's head. His hand resumed its slow circle at Shane's back.

Shane exhaled. The crowd helped. Being pressed close by the crowd helped, made the whole thing less conspicuous, made him just another body in a dense floor, and the bass was doing its work and J.J. was warm and solid and after another minute or so Shane's brain stood down from emergency alert status and went back to just… being here, in this, with the music and the lights and J.J.'s arm around him.

It was good. It was still good. He was fine.

He was so embarrassed.

They broke apart eventually, the floor thinning out during a transition, J.J. spinning him outward with one hand, the both of them landing at the bar where Hayden and Jackie were sitting. Jackie had a margarita and an expression that was calm and unreadable in the way Shane associated with people who had clocked something and decided not to say it.

"Nice moves," she said.

"J.J. is the moves," Shane said. "I'm just there."

"You hold your own," J.J. said, and ruffled his hair, and went to say something to Hayden.

Jackie watched this and took a very slow sip of her margarita.

"So how long have you guys been," she said, and then paused. "Close like that."

"Huh? Uhm, years," Shane said. "Since I came up to Montreal. He kind of—he takes people under his wing. That's just how he is."

"Uh huh," Jackie said.

"He does it with everyone," Shane said, though even as he said it he was aware it wasn't quite true;  he'd watched J.J. with every other teammate for two years and J.J. was warm with everyone, consistently, generously, but there was something that happened specifically when J.J. looked at Shane that Shane had always filed under we're close friends, this is what close friends are like and never examined further.

Jackie looked at him for a moment. She had a very level gaze.

"He does," she agreed, pleasantly, and changed the subject.

It was past midnight when J.J. found Shane back at the wall, watching the city, running a little low on social battery but not ready to leave. J.J. appeared at his shoulder the way he always did—without announcement, without you quite seeing how he got there—and leaned on the wall beside him.

They didn't say anything for a bit. The music was a comfortable distance away. The city sat there doing what the city did.

Shane looked over at him. J.J. was watching the lights with a small smile, the private version of his smile, the one Shane had spent two years cataloguing without meaning to. He had J.J.'s profile memorized the way he had memorized the faces of people he spent serious time with: his mother, Hayden, Rozanov. It was just proximity. It wasn't anything.

J.J. turned his head, caught Shane looking. His smile shifted slightly, warmer, more direct.

"Come here," J.J. said, quiet, and put his arm around Shane's shoulders, pulling him in.

Shane went. Let his head tip sideways against J.J.'s shoulder, felt J.J.'s cheek come down to rest against his hair.

"Good night?" J.J. said.

"Yeah," Shane said. "Good night."

J.J.'s hand squeezed his shoulder, once.

Shane tilted his head up. J.J. was already looking at him, very close, his eyes warm and unguarded and focused entirely on Shane, the way they got sometimes, the way that felt like being the only lit room in a building. Shane thought, with the strange clarity that came occasionally: oh. And then, more faintly: hm.

He kissed him.

Not dramatic about it, not a big decision, just tilted up and pressed his mouth against J.J.'s, soft and simple. J.J. made a small sound and kissed back immediately, his arm pulling Shane closer by the shoulders, and Shane's hand found J.J.'s shirt and held on. The kiss was unhurried, easy, J.J.'s mouth warm and sure against his, and Shane let himself sink into it for a moment—a long moment, longer than he'd intended—J.J.'s hand moving from his shoulder to the back of his neck, tilting him just slightly, and Shane opened his mouth and J.J. made that low sound again and kissed him properly, deep and slow and completely focused, the same way J.J. did everything.

Shane pulled back first. His forehead stayed against J.J.'s. He was a little out of breath, which was—that was fine, that was a normal response to—

"Salut," J.J. said.

Shane laughed, surprised into it. "Hi."

J.J.'s thumb was at the back of his neck, not moving. He was smiling, the small version, and his eyes hadn't moved from Shane's face.

"Good?" J.J. said.

"Yeah," Shane said.

"Good," J.J. said.

Neither of them moved for a moment. The city sat there below them. The music was still going, somewhere. Shane could feel J.J.'s pulse, or maybe his own pulse, or maybe both, but he couldn't tell anymore.

He straightened up eventually. J.J. let him. His arm moved from Shane's neck back to his shoulder, easy and loose, and Shane leaned back into it and they stood there and looked at the city, and that was that.

Shane got home a little after one. He ate half a granola bar standing at the kitchen counter, drank a glass of water, brushed his teeth. His brain was quiet, which was unusual, which he noted without examining. He sat on the edge of his bed in the dark and thought: hm. That was the extent of it.

He thought: J.J.'s hand at the back of his neck.

He thought: hm.

He went to sleep.

He woke up at nine with a clear head and a text from J.J. that said hey r u awake followed by okay you're asleep, call me when you're up followed, forty minutes later, by a photo: the two of them at the wall at some point in the evening, Shane mid-laugh, J.J. looking at him instead of the camera. Someone had taken it without either of them noticing. Shane stared at J.J.'s expression in the photo for a while. The way he was looking at Shane.

He typed I'm up and put his phone down.

It rang within thirty seconds.

"Salut, toi," J.J. said, which he said often, but it landed differently this morning, softer. "How's your head?"

"Fine," Shane said. "Yours?"

"Perfect." He could hear J.J. was smiling. "Good night, right? You see the photo Gagnon sent?"

"Yeah."

"Nice photo." A pause. Comfortable, no pressure in it. J.J. waited the way he always waited, like time was a resource he had plenty of. "You should eat something. That place on Bernard with the eggs, yeah?"

Shane looked at the ceiling. He thought about the wall, the city, the moment before. He thought: hm.

"Yeah," he said. "Okay."

"Twenty minutes," J.J. said.

He hung up. Shane sat up in bed and looked at his empty apartment, the November light coming gray through the curtains, Montreal going about its business outside. He thought about J.J.'s face in the photo, turned toward him. He thought: something has been there for a while and he has been not looking at it, and maybe this is what not-looking had actually been.

He got up. Found his jacket. Decided not to think too hard about what shirt to wear and then thought about it anyway for four minutes and put on the gray one, which J.J. had once, unprompted, told him looked good.

He was fine.

He was going to eat eggs. He was going to see J.J. He was, he thought, stepping out into the gray November morning, more than fine.