Chapter Text
Shane didn't think he was asking for much.
A top ten draft pick. A good, solid team. Maybe a few cups at some point in his career. He would settle for just one cup. The chance for a cup, even.
What Shane Hollander was not asking for: an obituary in the Times because he just had to go buy kale while a Primordial was saving the city from destruction. Again.
The ground beneath Ottawa shook, almost knocking Shane to his feet. He knew he shouldn't have left the house that day. The horrible cramping in his stomach had tried to warn him, and he had tried to pretend he knew better, but he never did. If his terrible anxiety problems hadn't saved his life on more than one occasion, he might have gotten medication for them.
This time, his obsession with his diet had won out, and he was all out of kale and couldn't possibly make his disgusting breakfast smoothie without the kale. Not that he would admit to Hayden, his buddy since joining the junior league, that he was right. The smoothie was disgusting. But it was fuel, and his body needed fuel, especially on a game day, and go fuck yourself, Hayden, the last time Shane skipped his shitty nutritional breakfast on a game day, they had lost. So Shane got in his car and drove to the farmer's market, and now he was maybe going to die.
A high pitched cry rang out nearby. The patrons and farmers of the market were all scrambling away from the park. Maybe they were used to it, the ground shaking, but Shane had yet to find his cataclysm-legs and so he stood rooted, arms around a lamppost. His eyes scanned the area, squinting against the dust in the air that was nearly blocking out the sun. There, behind the stalls and a few benches away, a child sat crying.
Every now and then, Shane's sense of self preservation failed him, warped by his overwhelming empathy and lack of good judgement in stressful situations. When he saw the little girl, arms wrapped tight around a stuffed bear and rivulets of tears rolling down her face, calling out for her Mama, the ground shaking no longer scared him. He stopped caring about the kale or the fact that all this dust in the air meant he would have to take yet another shower. No one was going for the kid. The color changing dust in the distance meant the Primordial was shooting scary laser beams far away; they weren't going to help the kid. It was up to Shane.
Steeling himself to put his hockey playing balance to the test, he dropped the bag of kale in his hands and dodged and weaved past the rolling citrus fruit, vaulting over market stalls. He didn't let himself look beyond the bench, focusing only on the crying girl. He surprised himself a little, when he made it unscathed.
“Hey kid,” Shane crouched before the bench, trying to look reassuring and not creepy. She flinched away, crying even louder.
“Can you help me find my mom? Those guys are fighting really loud and it's scary.” Shane changed tactics immediately, widening his eyes. “Maybe, after you help me, we can find your mom too. What do you think?”
The little girl sniffled, quieting as he called out over the sound of two super humans trying to kill each other. He didn't look, still, focusing only on the child. Maybe that was why he didn't see it until it was too late.
Out of the haze of dirt and debris in the air, a tree came flying towards them. An entire tree, roots and all, hurtling through the air in what felt like slow motion. Shane could have sworn he heard evil laughter.
Without thinking too much about it, he grabbed the child, swinging her off the bench until his body was between her and the incoming wooden projectile. It was going to hurt either way, but maybe he would save her a few splinters.
Shane closed his eyes, bracing for impact, when all of a sudden, he heard cheers erupting in the distance. Suddenly, a sharp breeze blasted by them, ruffling Shane's clothes so hard he almost fell forward. He opened his eyes again, and then they were airborne.
Almost immediately, the little girl left his arms. They had appeared in front of a hysterical woman who had reached out to pluck her from his grasp with an incredulous look of gratitude on her face. And then they were shooting up, up, up over the trees, over the park, over the city. Shane squinted down, and he could just barely make out the spot where he almost became a shish kebab. On either side of where he knelt lay the tree, cleaved cleanly in two.
It wasn't until a rooftop zoomed closer and then, suddenly they weren't moving, that Shane realized he had been princess-carried in someone's arms. His own arms had draped around strong shoulders some time during the flight, and his throat was hoarse. Had that been him screaming? The whole time?
“You are safe now,” a deep voice spoke very matter of factly. “I put you down, yes?”
“Oh, yeah, I mean, yes, sir, Mr. Primordial, sir.”
Shane wriggled out of the arms of the world's most legendary hero before he started screaming again.
“You are very brave,” the superhero looked at Shane, appraising. Most of his face was covered, hair hidden by his cowl, but Shane still felt himself blushing at the sound of his attractive voice.
“Or very stupid,” Shane laughed nervously. “How, uh, thank you, I mean, first of all, but how do I get down, um, from here?”
One of Earth's Primordials looked down at Shane, a few extra inches gained on him when the hero started hovering off the ground again. His hazel eyes scanned Shane in his workout clothes, pausing somewhere near his mouth.
“You look pretty,” the hero said, a charming quirk to his lip. Shane couldn't place the accent, like his brain immediately forgot the man's voice, but not his words. “And you are brave. Not stupid. What were you doing in park?”
“Kale! I needed, um, kale. For my macrobiotic smoothies. Sorry, did you just call me pretty?”
“Macrobiotic– sounds boring. Okay, I go. You take stairs down, go home, yes? No more heroics.”
Shane must have hit his head, maybe on the incredibly hard, muscular shoulder of his savior, because before the Primordial could turn and fly off, Shane's hand was fisted in the material of his cape.
“Wait! Please, um, do you have a name?”
His hero turned back to look at Shane. Maybe he was fooling himself, that his eyes weren't really focusing on Shane's lips again, but Shane's insides still twisted regardless. Oh, he would be revisiting this moment later.
“Lily.”
Shane let go at the response, trying to stammer out his own name, but it was too late. Lily was gone.
“Lily,” Shane whispered to himself, holding the hand that had held the cape up against his lips.
Down the thirty flights of stairs, into the cab, and all the way home, Shane kept whispering the name to himself. It was like if he stopped, the interaction never would have occurred. There were probably videos online, him being swooped up and carried away, but he wasn't quite ready for the embarrassment yet.
So if he stopped saying Lily Lily Lily, there was no proof it happened. He already couldn't remember the color of his eyes or the shape of his jaw or the tamber of his voice.
The only evidence he ever met Lily was waiting for him when he got home. He unlocked the door, and his cat padded up to greet him immediately. Jane wound around his ankles as he walked to the window, in desperate need of fresh air in his kitchen. She meowed once, hopping on the counter ahead of him, and pawed the window.
Shane opened it, sucking in a lungful of jesuswhatjusthappened and there, on the fire escape, was the evidence. Sticking out of a tote bag conspicuously, a bag that was not Shane's, was a large bundle of kale. A much nicer bundle than he had picked out for himself.
So it really had happened.
-
Shane was not given the honor of being first draft pick. No, that honor had gone to Ilya Rozanov, the asshole that didn't know what a smoking area was and didn't know how to keep his elbows to himself, on or off the ice.
But he got the team, his mom's favorite team, as evident by her talking the ear off his new GM, and that was fine. Because then he didn't have to pay attention, not fully anyway. Momager Yuna would fill him in later, when his brain no longer felt like it was full of molasses and he wasn't itching to get away from the cameras and this stupid rented tuxedo.
He chimed in at the right times, assuring that he was shocked but ready to put in the work. And so that was what he did. One week later, when he and Jane were settled into his shiny new Montreal condo, he filled the fridge with whole foods and lean protein and only a few cans of diet! ginger ale, and he got to work. Practice, solo conditioning, at-home recovery.
All the while, the Primordials were quiet. It had only been a few weeks since the incident that Shane had told no one about. Mysteriously, all video footage of the incident had been corrupted, and no one could make out any identifying features on his or Lily's face. Lily, who may or may not have been a figment of Shane's imagination, considering he hadn't been spotted again out in the wild, battling ne’er-do-wells or laser cutting trees in half with his eyes. It was fine, Shane was fine.
The night before his first gameday as a Metro, Shane was… less fine.
Jane was pawing at the balcony door as Shane finished his nighttime routine. She meowed at him, a little too humanly, to get his attention, and meowed again until he walked over. Shane bent at the waist to scoop her up and peered through the glass. The long haired cat rubbed her head on the underside of Shane's chin affectionately as his eyes scanned the skyline. Then, as he meant to turn away, his gaze caught on a bag, billowing in the slight breeze.
He unlocked the sliding glass door and, after a steadying breath, opened it. Nothing jumped out at him, Jane didn’t even meow. There was no one hiding in the shadows. It was just a bag.
Shane grabbed the bag quickly, stepping only one toe out onto the balcony, before dodging back inside, slamming the door shut and the lock back into place. He huffed a breath, bemused. He was being a little ridiculous.
Jane struggled in his grip until she could shove her nose into the bag. Shane could feel her claws sink into his forearm.
“Ow, you little asshole,” Shane crouched down, releasing the bag and the cat onto the floor. Jane backed away with a prize. A small stuffed mouse dangled from her teeth and she sprinted away with her prey before Shane could take a closer look.
“What?” Shane mouthed, turned away from where his feline had skittered off to. The bag, a fairly innocuous tote bag to match the one he had found on his fire escape after the Incident, sat unmoving on his floor. Gingerly reaching with both hands, Shane opened the bag.
Kale.
Shane dropped the bag.
-
The Montreal Metros won their first game.
Shane personally had won his first official face off and scored two goals, but who was counting except his mom and the media and Ilya Rozanov and himself?
He didn’t know why he had been singled out for this idiotic rivalry, not really, but he tried not to care. The game hadn’t even been against Boston, but he just kept getting asked over and over again about the asshole that had declared he was going to get fifty goals in his rookie season. Whatever. Shane could get fifty goals.
When Shane returned home that night, Jane was already at the balcony door, waiting for him. Still in his game-day suit, he padded over to the glass, ignoring the urge to move to a new apartment building.
There was no bag this time. Only a note, tucked under a rock that definitely hadn’t been on his balcony before.
I only have two bags. You will have to return if you want more bitter lettuce.
Shane snorted at the note, shaking his head incredulously. He crossed to the cupboard where he stored his reusable bags and pulled out the two, neatly folded canvas totes. They were nice quality bags. He felt a little bad that he had kept them, but it wasn’t like Shane had a return address for the kale.
Turning back towards the balcony, he paused, pondering. Then he turned back to the kitchen, not quite on a whim, and opened his freezer. He pulled out one of the bagged and meal-prepped smoothies, blending it quickly and pouring it into a biodegradable cup. He wasn’t quite sure if it would get picked up before it melted but Shane did it anyway. His mother had always impressed upon him to never return tupperware empty; surely the same applied to tote bags.
Scribbling on a scrap of paper, Shane penned his response, hesitating on if he should sign his name. The Primordial had found his apartment twice, in two separate cities. Surely, the man already knew his name.
Sorry. Thanks for the kale, but you don’t have to keep bringing me more. I have a new farmer’s market nearby now. Thank you for saving my life that day. I owe you, but all I have right now is this smoothie.
Shane
He set the note under the rock, the smoothie next to the rock, and the folded bags next to the smoothie. Shane stood up, stretching his arms overhead, and looked around his new city. His apartment had a beautiful view of Montreal, but there was no sign of Lily. Of course not. He was probably busy saving someone else’s life, or doing something else that super-people do. Shane had hockey to focus on anyway. It didn’t matter.
When Shane woke the next morning, the note, the smoothie, and the bags were all gone. The rock remained on his balcony, hiding a new note.
You try to poison me with your bitter lettuce juice. I will show you how smoothie should taste.
Despite receiving ample notice, Shane was still dumbfounded when, after that day’s practice, Jane was yowling at his balcony door, staring aggressively at a catnip plant beside a tall smoothie cup. He didn’t recognize the logo on the styrofoam.
Quickly, Shane brought everything inside. He hesitated with the cup in his hand, watching his cat going absolutely feral for the grass. It was stupid to drink out of the cup that had mysteriously appeared on his balcony. Surely anyone would tell him not to do it. But really, what was going to happen? If Lily had wanted to kill him, surely he would have done it by now, and surely not via smoothie.
Stabbing the straw into the cup, Shane tentatively took a sip. It was fucking amazing. Definitely not part of his diet plan, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care very much. A superhero had given it to him. It would be a waste to throw it away. And rude.
A quick internet search of the logo yielding a strange result. The smoothie shop was in Boston, MA. Shane’s eyebrows furrowed. He tried searching for other locations of the franchise, but there weren’t any. Just Boston.
Lily had what? Flown all the way to Boston after leaving him that note and flown all the way back with a still-cold smoothie on the same day? Airports took longer to traverse– oh.
Lily had flown.
Shane felt giddy suddenly. That was the, well, sweetest thing anyone had ever done for him. Kind of crazy, and mildly insulting, but still, the sweetest. Shane grinned, writing a new note on the special stationary he may have picked up for the express purpose of communicating with his new friend.
It was delicious, but unfortunately, I am on a special diet for the hockey season, so I cannot make a habit out of it. I will go back to my kale, but thank you for bringing me this.
He hesitated before adding.
Did you really fly all the way to Boston for a smoothie?
Shane
Could he ask a Primordial questions like that? It felt like he was overstepping, but he did it anyway, tucking the slip of paper under the rock on his balcony. Then, he doubled back to the kitchen, plucked a can of diet ginger ale from the fridge and left that outside too. That was the best he could offer for now. Maybe he would pick up some other treats on his next grocery trip. It was the least he could do for the man that had saved his life.
From then on, every game day, Shane woke up to a bundle of kale on his balcony. Sometimes, it came accompanied by a treat or toy for Jane. Sometimes it was just the kale. One time, it came with a full sugar ginger ale can, which he left on the balcony for Lily to take back. Every time, there was a note.
Boston is home, I fly all the way here to give you poison leafs so you win at hockey.
Give cat pets for me. What is name?
Jane is dumb cat name. Give Jane kisses from Lily.
What is that weak backhand? Do better next time.
You won’t drink regular ginger ale? Boring.
You are bad at flirting, Shane
What else you call weekly bouquet of disgusting salad if not flirting?