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Shane was never quite comfortable facing the phalanx of the press. Even after all these years of practice, even when his face smoothed into a neutral expression on autopilot and his polished, repetitive answers came easily, it still felt like wearing a suit that was too tight. Confining. Uncomfortable. Risking, at any moment, that that he'd tear something open and expose himself.
He shook off the image of suddenly bared skin and an avid audience... not now, brain. He sighed, and glanced over at his husband, who — as always — looked obnoxiously poised and confident. Shane knew Ilya didn't love these conferences, either, even now that his English flowed near-flawlessly. But he sure didn't look anxious.
Shane also didn't love the logic behind calling this particular press conference in the first place. He could recognize there was sense in it, but he didn't like it. This ought to be like any other game. He felt the tension in his shoulders as the questions began.
"Shane, any anxiety about facing off against your former teammates for the first time?"
Polite and calm. "I've really been meshing well with the Centaurs, and I'm always excited to get on the ice, against any team."
"I'm excited to crush the Voyageurs, as I always have been," Ilya added, unprompted, and Shane rolled his eyes.
"Shane, we've heard rumors that the Montreal locker room was tense after the end of last season; any concern that's going to trickle through into the game?"
"We'll play a good, clean game, and I hope the Voyageurs will as well," Shane said, as close as he was going to get to acknowledging the rabid hostility he knew he'd face tonight. He tried not to clench his jaw. It came through in the photos when he did.
"You do not need to rely on rumors," Ilya scoffed. "You could see what they said right out loud. Absurd things." Shane shot him a glance — they had talked about this. Specifically, they had talked about not talking about this. Ilya pursed his lips and stopped.
"Shane, do you have any comment on allegations that your on-ice performance declined after you started your affair with Rozanov? Have you seen the blogger who has been re-analyzing your stats and making that case?"
Shane wrinkled his brow. "Don't call it an affair," he said, reflexively. "That makes it sound like we were cheating. And no, no comment."
"I will comment," Ilya said. "It is ridiculous."
"I'm sorry," Shane said, his brain just now catching up to the second half of the question. He really hated the word "affair." It had distracted him. Too much, apparently. "Did you say something about my stats?"
"Yes, there's this hockey analyst, TheStatMan, and he's been publishing these stat breakdowns. He recently argued you had a noticeable performance decline after the 2017 All-Stars game, with fewer goals scored that spring…"
"I got a concussion and was put on IR," Shane said, outraged. "My total goals for the season were down, but my points-per-game for the games I actually played were right on track for my career average."
The reporter blinked, surprised by the quick rejoinder, and said, a little reluctantly, "Well, he says your shot percentage noticeably flagged."
"That's a notoriously variable stat," Shane huffed. "And I'll point out I finished the season with a hundred points DESPITE missing those games, so I think it's pretty clear this guy doesn't know what he's talking about."
"Not to mention that that's not when we started," Ilya said with a smirk.
"None of their business, Ilya," Shane snapped at him. Then he turned to the press. "But yes, for the record, the entire premise is wrong."
"So when did you first…" an enterprising reporter began.
"We're not gonna give you the blow-by-blow," Shane said, barely concealing his irritation.
Ilya laughed. Shane glared.
"What? Come on, you have to admit, that's funny," Ilya said. Shane just shook his head, warningly.
The next question was, mercifully, about the upcoming game and the new power play they were testing. Shane answered it on autopilot.
The red-headed reporter who had asked about the blogger raised her hand again. Shane sighed.
"Shane, TheStatMan just posted — looks like he's watching this live — and he says he also analyzed your stats starting a little later, in the fall of 2017 and there was a drop in shots on goal —"
"Oh, my God," Shane said, exasperated. He turned to look directly at the cameras. "You're watching live? Great. Listen close. What you're doing is — it's an act of violence towards statistics, is what it is. You are picking random timeframes and looking for any negative trend in any of my stats. That's not scientific. It's meaningless. Any real decline would be visible across all my stats, not just a cherry-picked few, and also I assure you someone would have noticed it already, given how many fantasy hockey pools are pivoting on my goddamn stats. And it's also very stupid, because you don't even know when we started — seeing each other. So just quit it, okay? I don't think anybody on earth knows my stats better than I do, and I guarantee there's nothing to find. So stop wasting your time."
"He could run your stats for when you were dating Rose Landry," Ilya drawled, like a traitor. An amused, annoyingly handsome traitor. "You played like shit then."
"He should run YOUR stats for when I was dating Rose," Shane snapped. "Your game tanked."
"Yes," Ilya said, unbothered. "I was very jealous."
"Which is absurd," Shane heard himself saying, "because I watched you screw your way through half of North America and I was never jealous."
Ilya leaned forward, eyes locked on Shane. He held a finger in the air. "Okay, first of all, those girls — I never dated them. They never meant anything and everyone knew it. You never saw them in the stands with my jersey on their backs. I never took them out for romantic dinners, laughing at their jokes in paparazzi photos. You never had to read the comments on the Internet full of people saying we were perfect for each other, and how I looked like I would carry her bag and her whole life, and when would we get married. It was not the same, okay?"
He held up a second finger. "And second of all, you were jealous. You just pretended you weren't, just like I pretended I didn't wish it was you every time. And we were both very bad liars."
Share felt like something had squeezed the breath out of him. He thought of Ilya imagining him, every time he picked up a girl at the club. He still felt a stab of jealousy, but his heart broke a little, too. For both of them. They had wasted so much time.
Ilya held up a third finger and turned to the press.
Right, the press. Shane had nearly forgotten about them. "And third of all, we were not exclusive, so don't go writing stories about how I cheated on Canada's sweetheart. It is not what happened."
"Not that it's anybody's business," Shane scowled.
"Anyway, Mr. Statman, run those numbers."
"Or don't," Shane said. "That's also an option. Next question?"
Shane was still thinking about Ilya picking up a girl at the club and taking her home and kissing her and thinking of Shane. He wondered if he went for girls with freckles.
The redhead raised her hand again. "Well, if you started dating earlier than that, in 2014 there's a shift in Corsi —"
"No," Shane snapped, with real vitriol now. "Stop. Just — drop it I am telling you, it is literally impossible for you to figure out when Ilya and I got together by analyzing my league stats. It can't be done."
"I know you think it didn't affect your play, but … "
"It absolutely didn't, but even if it did, you still wouldn't find it. You're all running numbers on MLH games, right?" She nodded. "Yeah, not possible. I guess you could pull stats from juniors and compare them to how I did in the MLH, and good luck controlling for confounding variables there. And if you really think after running those numbers that I played worse as a professional hockey player than a teenager, then, go ahead and make that argument and see how far it gets you," Shane said. He carefully didn't look at Ilya, but he didn't have to; he could sense him grinning. "Next question?"
The reporters sat for a moment in stunned silence.
Eventually, one spoke. "Does that mean the two of you … have been together the whole time?"
Now he turned his head and looked at Ilya. He hadn't quite meant to … how should they … ?
Ilya saw him wavering, and smirked. He took control. "I thought reporters were supposed to be good at this connecting-dots business, no? As I think my husband just made very clear, I talked my way into his pants before either of us played our first MLH games."
" 'Talked,' huh," Shane said. "I don't remember a lot of talking."
"I thought you didn't want to give them the blow by blow," Ilya said, and Shane blushed.
"Every goal he made, every cup he won, he did it while he was obsessed with me," Ilya went on, arrogantly.
"Okay, that's —" Shane spluttered.
"And vice versa," Ilya continued, unbothered. "The rivalry was real, because our very favorite thing on earth is to beat each other. We made each other better, never worse, because we were always striving to best each other. But yes, the whole time we were fighting to out-score each other, we were also … well. I'm not allowed to give details, I think." Shane was glaring at him. How did he manage to make not talking about their sex life sound as salacious as talking about it?
"Next question?" A flurry of arms went up.
"And let's make it about tonight's game?" Shane said, pleadingly. Most of the hands came down.
"Do you think the Montreal players will have any regrets about how they responded to the video, now that they know you were together all along?" It was a reporter Shane didn't recognize. He was trying to compose himself for the right, diplomatic answer, but Ilya beat him to it.
"Oh, Montreal will have regrets," Ilya said. "Not from finding out when we got together, I think. But because while they are very stupid, nobody on earth is stupid enough to do what they did and not, eventually, regret it.
"They had Shane Hollander," he said, carefully enunciating every word. "Shane Hollander gave them everything. The team, the coaches, the fans, that whole stupid city. He lived for them, worked for them, bled for them, ate for them. He studied tape until 2 in the morning for them, and only stopped because he needed to sleep for them. He brought them back from oblivion and won them two cups back to back and that wasn't even what mattered.
"Shane Hollander loved the Voyageurs. Do you know what a precious thing it is to be loved by Shane Hollander? I do. I've had the best drugs money can buy and it doesn't come close to the feeling."
"Ilya, I'm not sure you should admit —" Shane interjected, weakly.
"When Shane Hollander loves you, he loves you with everything he has. There's nothingl ike it. You should wake up every day and thank God that he blessed you with the love of Shane Hollander. That's what the Voyageurs should have done. That's what every Montreal fan should have done, every day.
"Instead, the man slips — once. Like all of us trip, sometimes. And do they remember all the years he gave them? Do they try, even a little bit, to love him back? No, they turn on him like stupid, feral dogs; they accuse him, Shane Hollander, the most competitive man on earth, who loved them to the moon and back, who would have done anything for them, of throwing a game. They spit on him. They throw him away like garbage. And of course they were wrong. They were so stupidly, stupidly wrong to ever think Shane ever, for a moment, gave them less than everything he had. But that's not some big news that they realize now from this press conference. They should have known all along, if they'd known this man at all. If they'd cared about him a fraction as much as he cared about them.
"They never deserved him," Ilya said, bitterly. "But they could have kept him forever, if they hadn't been so incredibly stupid. But they were so incredibly stupid. So Shane Hollander came to Ottawa, his home town, and guess what? Shane Hollander loves Ottawa too, and Ottawa loves him back. The fans. The coaches. The team. We love Shane the way he deserves to be loved, we love all of him, not for what he can do for us but for who he is."
Shane was blinking away tears, determined not to cry on camera.
"And he gets to play with me, now," Ilya said, with a smile that had no amusement and a great deal of predatory menace. "The two best players of our generation, side by side. We're coming for the cup. And then we're going to do it again."
"Ilya, don't jinx us," Shane whispered. Ilya ignored him entirely.
"Montreal is nothing without him. They will fade away into obscurity. Everyone will remember the glory days when they had Hollander and other than that, eh, nobody will ever talk about them again. They are like nothing, next to us. And they'll have only themselves to blame. As they watch us claim our glory, on TV from their sad little homes, every Montreal player and coach and owner and fan will know that this is their fault. That they had Shane Hollander, who loved them, and they drove him away.
"I think many of them are smart enough to regret it already. But the rest will come to regret it, soon enough. And that's good. They should regret it. They should regret it every day for the rest of their days."
For the second time in a few minutes, the press corps had absolutely nothing to say.
Shane did.
He nudged Ilya's foot with his and gave him a small, wet-eyed smile as he leaned forward: "What he said."