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Shane had ordered the name tags three weeks in advance after comparing different suppliers and testing font sizes against what he considered to be the hostile lighting conditions of a hockey rink.
They were supposed to be simple, with first name, group colour and pronouns, if supplied. A small coded mark in the lower corner for medical information, discreet enough that no child’s private business was announced to the room, clear enough that the coaches could check quickly if they needed to.
It had been elegant in the spreadsheet, but in reality, the name tags reflected the overhead lights in sharp, silvery flashes, making half the names unreadable unless held at precisely the right angle. The lanyards had tangled into a single, vindictive nest, and the adhesive on the spares clung to Shane’s fingers every time he tried to peel one free. Half of the red group name tags had been printed slightly off-centre, which was not a crisis, but unreasonably pissed Shane off.
Ilya was nearby somewhere; Shane did not need to see him to know it. It was difficult to explain and therefore irritating for Shane to acknowledge, but Ilya’s presence always seemed to alter a room, people turning towards him without appearing to decide to.
Shane saw a boy in a green hoodie walk into a vending machine while looking over his shoulder, then pretended he was only admiring the chocolate bars. Shane followed the line of the boy’s dazed stare, and there Ilya was, crossing the lobby in black jeans and the foundation coaching hoodie, sleeves pushed up to his forearms, his hair still damp because he had probably showered at the rink. His name tag sat crookedly over his chest; ROZANOV slanted under the lights, as if even laminated plastic became smug when attached to him.
Shane had asked him to help at registration, not vaguely or in passing, but said the words aloud and sent over the morning rota with Ilya’s specific column highlighted in acidic yellow. He had managed the entire process with what he considered to be heroic restraint, trying desperately to avoid becoming the kind of boyfriend who used phrases like as per my previous email in his own relationship.
Shane wanted Ilya with him because registration was where things were most likely to go wrong. Missing consent forms, children sorted into the wrong groups, unlisted allergies, and unsigned photo permissions. Parents with questions they had already been sent the answers to, but who still felt the need to ask them aloud. Nervous children, children pretending not to be nervous, and parents who were nervous on behalf of their children, apparently expressing this through increasingly specific demands about water breaks. Shane had tried to prepare for it all.
He had printed group lists and had digital backups. He had spare pens and spare forms. He carried medical summaries, allergy notes, emergency contacts, a changing room rota, and an incident folder with colour-coded tabs. He even possessed a plastic wallet labelled Miscellaneous Problems, because naming a threat made him feel less likely to be ambushed. His system ensured that a child’s allergy was never handled casually and that a nervous parent was not expected to rely merely on good intentions and a famous player’s smile. Shane believed in plans with the exactitude of a man who knew exactly how much anxiety he was holding back, and Ilya, who was supposed to fucking be here beside him, was thirty feet away, laughing with Bood.
Shane looked down at the list in his hand and scanned some of the names.
Mackenzie Singh: Blue group, asthma inhaler and emergency contact confirmed.
Sebastian Lennox: Yellow group, sensory note, parent requested quiet instructions where possible.
Cassandra Ortiz: Green group, first time on ice.
Sam W.: Red group, name on registration is different from the payment form. Use Sam.
His throat tightened slightly at that final entry.
Two words in a notes column, quiet, but enormous. Shane had checked it three times because he understood the absolute necessity of getting it right.
He found Sam’s red tag and the name was centred perfectly.
The lobby doors opened again as families continued to arrive with kit bags bumping against legs, sticks clicking on tile, and children hovering behind parents or pushing ahead of them, too eager to hide it.
Shane looked over and saw Ilya had moved from Bood to Leah, who had sunglasses pushed into her hair and a kit bag slung over one shoulder. Beside her stood her husband Max, easy and solid, already listening more than he spoke.
Shane continued to move through the queue one name at a time, checking forms, handing over lanyards, and pointing people towards changing rooms. He kept his voice calm, he kept his hands steady, and he smiled in a way he hoped was reassuring but not falsely bright.
Ilya was now talking to Ryan, who had arrived carrying two enormous kit bags as though they weighed nothing at all. Wyatt interrupted them, dropping his own kit to pull Ryan into an unhurried hug.
Hayden arrived loudly, predictably, bringing coffee and far too much enthusiasm. J.J. followed just late enough to be annoying, but not quite late enough for Shane to snap at. Ilya caught them both near the door, said something that made J.J. grin and Hayden look deeply unimpressed, then clapped each of them on the shoulder.
By the time registration was finally over, Shane felt as though he had dealt with every possible problem except the ones he had actually prepared for. The printer jammed, a child dissolved into tears because his skates felt wrong, and an entire crate of water bottles vanished. Hayden loudly asked where the hockey tape was while standing directly beside it. Bood was sent for extra cones and returned with the cones plus a packet of biscuits nobody had requested, and J.J. knocked over a bucket of pucks before muttering something that made Hayden laugh and forced Shane to revise his assumptions about J.J.’s vocabulary around children.
At nine-thirty, the first groups stepped onto the ice.
Shane had seen Ilya command a rink with skill, menace and the kind of physical confidence that used to leave him feeling both furious and wanting. Now he stood at centre ice with children and teenagers gathered around him, while Shane waited by the boards with his tablet tucked under one arm, ready for whatever complication came next.
Ilya raised the whistle and blew entirely too hard. The sound cracked across the rink. Three children jumped, Hayden flinched visibly, and Ryan shouted something that made Leah turn around and slap his shoulder. Ilya pulled the whistle from his mouth and said something Shane could not hear, but whatever it was made the whole group laugh.
Then the coaches spread out across the rink in hoodies with the foundation logo stitched over their hearts as blades scraped, children shouted too loudly, and parents pressed themselves tight against the glass. The group colours blurred and reformed as children shuffled into lines, and the drills settled into motion.
Leah had taken a small group of girls off to one side and was talking them through something slowly enough that even the most hesitant among them began edging forward to try. Near the boards, Max was speaking to a teenager in an oversized black hoodie until the boy finally pushed away from the wall and joined the others. Wyatt was crouched beside a young goalie half-swallowed by their pads, steadying them by the elbow until they found their balance.
Further down the ice, Ryan had put the oldest boys to work dragging cones into place, feeding pucks into drills and helping the younger children reset equipment between turns. Hayden had the smallest players laughing so hard that Shane suspected his fucking awful dad jokes were involved, while J.J. hovered beside him with the roster, checking and rechecking names before calling each child forward.
Shane saw Ilya crossing from one group to another, stopping briefly to say something or demonstrate a movement before skating on. At one end of the rink, he joined a cluster of children taking shots on goal and turned it into a competition, the group shouting with every puck that went in while Ilya celebrated each goal loudly enough to encourage the next one.
By lunch, Shane had accepted that perfection was not going to happen and, more surprisingly, that was ok. Every time something slipped, someone caught it, and the strange, difficult part was accepting that the someone did not always have to be him.
The vegetarian sandwiches had been put in the wrong cooler. A child had misplaced a single glove and believed, with absolute conviction, that it had been stolen. One parent wept in the corridor and apologised so intensely that Wyatt ended up holding a clipboard, a banana, and someone else’s coffee while reassuring her that no, really, it was fine. The printer still flatly refused to connect to the Wi-Fi. Bood found the missing water bottles in a storage cupboard nobody had checked because the door was labelled “Mops” and J.J. spilt iced coffee across the spare group lists and looked so appalled that Shane almost felt bad for him.
Sitting in the dining hall, Shane looked around at the children eating with the coaches and felt a slow, creeping embarrassment. The logistics mattered; all the boring paperwork and phone calls were what made the camp safe, but Shane had been so consumed by them that he had failed to see the whole picture. Ilya had been the one to reach out to most of the coaches, extending the invitations and pulling this particular group together with more care than Shane maybe understood. He knew some of its hidden shape; who was queer, who was out, who was an ally, and who was there simply because Ilya had vouched for them with a seriousness that made Shane stop asking questions.
Shane had known all of that for weeks. Still, looking around the dining hall now, seeing them among the children they had spent the morning encouraging and making laugh, Shane realised Ilya had been moving between them, quietly putting people where they were needed, matching them to the children they were best able to reach while Shane had stood at registration silently accusing him of fucking around.
Shane thought of himself at sixteen. He did not do so often because he did not enjoy thinking back to a younger version of himself who had been so rigidly controlled and terrified of wanting incorrectly that he had tried to become untouchable through sheer discipline. He had been loved, he had been supported in many ways, but hockey was still hockey.
He thought of Ilya at sixteen, and he had to look down as his eyes blurred. He imagined Ilya with his mother gone, his father cruel, growing up in a place that had taught him early that wanting the wrong person was not merely confusing or shameful, but dangerous.
Shane wondered what this room would have done for them.
It would not have fixed everything. Shane was not stupid enough to believe that a week-long summer camp could undo an entire childhood, but maybe it would have shown them, much earlier than either had learned for themselves, that it was ok to be who they were. That they did not have to hide. That their love and hockey could exist together.
Shane found Ilya in the equipment room. He was sitting on an overturned crate, skates unlaced, hoodie sleeves pushed up again, one forearm marked with blue ink where a child had apparently drawn a star on his skin. His name tag had finally come loose and was now stuck to his thigh, and he looked tired but not in the ridiculous, sprawling way he used when he wanted Shane to roll his eyes and touch him gently. He turned a roll of tape in his hands, and Shane watched his thumb trace the adhesive edge.
Shane pulled up a wooden bench and sat down across from him. “Hey,” he said quietly. “I feel like we haven’t really caught up all day.”
Ilya smiled at him. “No. Has been busy.”
“You did good,” Shane said.
Ilya gave a faint, familiar tilt of his head. “Obviously. With what?”
“With the coaches. You picked good people, Ilya.”
Shane watched the joke die on Ilya’s lips before he could speak it, leaving him looking strangely unguarded and young in the harsh light of the room.
“I keep thinking,” Shane said, softer now, “that I needed something like this when I was younger.” He watched Ilya’s hands. “And I think you could have needed it too.”
Ilya looked down at the tape, and Shane reached across the narrow space between them and took the roll away. He set it on the floor and took Ilya’s hand instead.
For a long while, they sat holding hands like teenagers. Then Ilya squeezed Shane’s fingers once, and they stepped back out into the impossible thing they had made together.