Work Text:
Shane had a lot to be grateful for. He was grateful for an amazing husband, loving parents, and a new team that was shaping up to be as wonderful as Ilya had claimed. He was also grateful that he was playing at home tonight.
It was the first game of the season against Montreal. His first game playing against his former teammates. His first time ever in a game against Montreal without a Voyageurs jersey on.
He didn’t think he could bear playing in this game. He knew he couldn’t bear playing it in his old arena and having to see the rafters where his jersey would now never hang.
And having a breakdown about it in the visitors locker room would have been the cherry on top. Having a breakdown in Ottawa’s home locker room wasn’t exactly peachy either, which was how he found himself pacing the tunnels under the ice when he should have been changing into his gear.
Logically, he knew progress wasn’t always linear. Shane had heard it from his coaches from a young age. It was something he had thought about a lot more recently since it was something Ilya talked about a lot with his therapist. He didn’t tell him everything - or even most of what - he discussed with her, but Ilya mentioned that particular phrase a lot. Shane suspected that it was yet another one of his husband’s attempts to push him to be kinder to himself without outright having a conversation about it. Shane had to admit he much preferred Ilya’s attempts to convey that through sex.
Progress wasn’t linear. For most people, sure. But he wasn’t most people. He was Shane Hollander. He was the person who made a plan, stuck to it, and got the results he wanted. So if he wanted to get over the hurt from his abrupt rupture with Montreal, that’s what should happen. He should be over it by now, not on the verge of tears because he would be taking the ice against them in an hour.
“Hey, man, you got a minute?”
Shane looked up to see Troy Barrett leaning against the wall. He had his hands in his pockets and seemed uncomfortable, as if he had been cornered into a conversation despite being the one to initiate this one.
Troy seemed like a decent guy. He did a lot of good work with his activism. And just like the rest of the Centaurs, he had been nothing short of welcoming to Shane - both as a member of the team and as his captain’s new husband. For some reason, though, Shane could never quite manage to get a read on him.
Shane nodded, not quite out of his head enough yet to trust himself with words. He stopped pacing and mirrored Troy against the wall.
“So, first game against Montreal now that you’re not with them anymore.” Troy’s voice was carefully casual. “How you feeling?”
Was Shane that easy to read?
“I’ve been better.” It was the same answer he’d given everyone - even Ilya - when they asked him about facing Montreal.
“Yeah, I bet. After I got traded to the Centaurs, my first game against Toronto I was so nervous I almost threw up. I wasn’t even that nervous for my NHL debut. I played like shit too.” He shook his head like he was trying to push the memories away.
Shane couldn’t tell if this was a pep talk or one of the most self-deprecating new player hazing experiences he’d ever been a part of. “Is this supposed to be making me feel better?”
“It was supposed to, but it’s not coming out the way I planned.” Troy let his head fall back against the bricks. “Look, I just- I know what it’s like to face off against the team you left on less than great terms. The team that loved you like family. Until they didn’t.”
Maybe it wasn’t that Shane was overly easy to read, but that Troy had also been a character in this book. He was familiar with the mess of feelings swirling in Shane’s head right now. Shane couldn’t figure out how to express that, so he settled for, “yeah.”
“I can’t tell you it’s not going to suck, but I can tell you that you alone are a better player than their entire roster put together. Which is good because it might end up being just you out there tonight.”
Was Troy implying that the team was going to leave Shane to face down his former teammates alone? How would that even practically work during the game? Or maybe Troy was speaking metaphorically?
On the list of feelings Shane hated, number one was losing. Number two, as he’d recently learned, was the anguish he was currently experiencing. Number three was being left out because everyone else seemed to understand something he didn’t.
“What do you mean?”
“We might end up in a 4-on-1 power play tonight. You being the one.” Troy said it like it was a known fact and not a penalty scenario that any coach - even one as laidback as Coach Weibe - would be foaming at the mouth if their team got into.
This was shaping up to be one of the most confusing conversations Shane had ever had with a teammate, which was saying something after over two decades of playing hockey in some form or another.
“Why would that happen?” Shane resisted the urge to put his head in his hands from stress over what he hoped would remain a hypothetical situation.
“Well, we all know Ilya is going to end up in the box for obvious reasons.”
“He’d better not,” Shane grumbled. He and Ilya had spent this morning having a long talk about how Ilya didn’t need to fight Shane’s former teammates to defend his honor or anything like that.
“Yeah, but he will. And Haasy will follow Ilya anywhere, including the sin bin, so he’s out.” Troy held up a finger for each player. “Dysktra’s kind of a degen, so he’ll inevitably end up there at some point or another. And Bood’s the most loyal guy you’ll ever meet. He’d go to ground for any of us, you very much included.”
Shane noticed Troy hadn’t included himself on the list. “What about you?”
“My therapist thinks I need to channel my anger into something more productive. I think she means arts and crafts,” Troy shot him a wicked look, “but I much prefer punching dickheads. Anyone says some shit to you, I’ll be in the box with the rest of the team.”
Shane laughed and realized that despite it being seeped in threats of violence to his old team - most of whom he never wanted to see hurt - Troy’s pep talk had actually made him feel better. “I appreciate it, but I think scoring some goals would be a better way to have my back tonight than giving me a power play to kill solo.”
“I’ll score a couple goals for you too. I have the range,” Troy said with a wink.
That made Shane laugh harder. So much that he didn’t notice a presence he was usually so attuned to come up behind him.”
“Barrett,” Shane’s favorite voice said, “you have your own member of the Centaurs organization to flirt with. Why are you winking at mine?”
While it had been a pretty shitty road to get here, Shane would do it all again for the privilege of hearing Ilya claim him as mine so casually in public.
Troy rolled his eyes. “You talked me off a ledge before my first game against Toronto. I was trying to pay it forward. I guess no good deed goes unpunished.” He turned back to Shane. “Seriously, though. You’ve got this. We’ve got you.”
Ilya came around to face Shane as Troy started walking to the locker room. “He is right.”
“That the Centaurs have my back tonight? I know.” Shane had heard Ilya talk about it, but he hadn’t quite believed the team culture Ottawa had until he’d signed on. He still couldn’t believe it sometimes.
“No.”
Shane tilted his head, confused.
“Well, that too,” Ilya amended. “But he was right that his head was a mess before he played his old team. But your head has never been an issue.”
Shane was about to protest that his mental state has almost never not been an issue, when he noticed Ilya’s grin. That wasn’t what he had been talking about when he was referencing Shane’s head.
“Can you at least wait until I’m out of earshot to both insult me and reference your sex life?” Troy was clearly not as amused by Ilya’s innuendo as Ilya was.
“What are you going to do about it?” Ilya’s grin widened in a way it only did when he was getting to chirp someone.
“I’ll tell Harris to post embarrassing pictures of you on all the team’s social media,” Tory shot back. “Like you said, he’s ’my own member of the Centaurs organization,’ so I have it on good authority that he’d do it for me.”
“Too bad I am flawless and there are no embarrassing pictures of me to be found.”
Maybe Shane was biased, but he agreed. If you looked up “flawless” in the dictionary, there was a picture of his husband. And any dictionary that said differently would be getting a strongly worded letter.
“Sure. We’ll see if Yuna Hollander says differently,” Troy called out as he rounded the corner, disappearing from sight. “Harris has been facebook friends with her ever since the wedding. Maybe she can scrounge something up.” Despite his earlier promises of violence toward the Montreal players, this was the most threatening thing he’d said all day.
“Your mother would not betray me like this. I am her favorite son.” Ilya said it like it was the highest accolade he could ever receive.
Despite 13 years of nonstop competition, Shane couldn’t even attempt to fight him on it. The most important people in his life being important to each other meant more than winning. Not that he could ever tell Ilya that. Appearances had to be maintained after all.
Before Shane could respond, Ilya took his face in his hands and kissed him. When he pulled away, he met Shane’s eyes. “You will be brave. Not because Montreal is scary - without you they are a joke team of joke players - but because you are a brave person.”
“I love you,” Shane said in Russian.
“I love you too,” Ilya responded, before switching to English. “Letting you go was the biggest mistake they ever made. Tonight we show them this.”
“You sound pretty confident about that.”
“I am speaking from experience. I let you go once. I won’t ever again.” Ilya moved one hand from Shane’s face to gently tug at the chain holding his wedding band.
Shane put his hand on Ilya’s chest where his crucifix and matching ring rested beneath his shirt. “I don’t plan on letting you go either.”
“Any other big plans?” Ilya asked. “Besides not letting me go?”
Shane had a lot of plans for Ilya, from what they would do when they got home later to wha their life would look like years down the line. One plan was more immediate than any of those. “Yeah. Winning a hockey game.”
_____
Healing from the heartbreak of losing his old team may not be going the way Shane planned. The game against them did, though. Even if he did have to help kill multiple power plays because the Centaurs couldn’t stay out of the penalty box.