Archive of Our Own

In a strange turn of events, almost like the way a siren blares before a particularly destructive tornado, Shane opens his mouth on a subject he’s only ever vaguely addressed with his parents. Perhaps because it’s Ilya, Shane doesn’t worry about being judged. He knows he’s neurotic, but Ilya’s always seen his strange habits as, at best, endearing, and at worst, oddly arousing.

Whatever it is, Shane opens the door to Ilya’s Ottawa house practically itching with a mixture of irritation and disgust. He’s in such a state he doesn’t even take Anya’s leash off. The poor Australian Shepherd just drags it with her to the water dish, too tired to complain.

“How was your run?” Ilya asks as he peeks around the corner of the kitchen. He’s shirtless (he’s practically allergic to shirts when it’s just them relaxing at home) with an oily spatula held upright in one hand like a scepter. “I am making grilled cheese. Yummy.”

Shane could ask a thousand questions. Is Ilya using the natural butter, the whole wheat bread, the special cheese they get at the local deli and not the disgusting Kraft singles all individually wrapped in world-killing plastic that they keep specifically to hide Anya’s anxiety meds in?

Shane should actually ask these questions, but he’s overstimulated and on the verge of a mental breakdown.

“You know what pisses me off?” Shane asks as he storms into the kitchen, hands flapping at his sides like he can shake off his discomfort like water.

“What?” Ilya responds, all attention on Shane.

“When people fucking exchange spit in public spaces.”

There it is.

Now it’s out.

Ilya only raises an eyebrow which urges Shane on. “I was just walking Anya on the trails behind the cul-de-sac and I turn the corner and there’s this man and woman fucking humping each other against a tree. It was disgusting, Ilya.”

Ilya makes a face, one of absolute curiosity and humor-filled skepticism. “Humping each other,” he repeats in his infuriatingly attractive accent.

“Well, okay, they weren’t exactly humping each other, but it was close,” Shane argues, face growing hot. “I just… I don’t know, I hate when people kiss in front of me, like, why me? Why include me?”

“So you hate love?” Ilya teases as he flips one of the sandwiches.

“No.” Shane frowns.

He should have expected Ilya wouldn’t understand. It’s one of those rules he internally sets for the entire world and gets upset about others unknowingly breaking.

Kissing in public is fine when it’s cheek kisses or chaste pecks, it’s when tongue or (godforbid) disgusting spit noises get involved, that it becomes something different. Something more private, more intimate.

Shane shouldn’t see it, because it shouldn’t be for him. Making out is for the privacy of your own home and nowhere else.

“Sweetheart,” Ilya calls softly. Shane glances up, unsure when his eyes fell to the floor. “My Shanya, my sun.” Ilya’s fingers slide up Shane’s arm, testing the waters before he brings Shane into a hug he knows is welcomed.

“I’m sorry,” Shane mutters as he pillows his head on one of Ilya’s full pecs. “I’m being weird.”

“You’re not weird,” Ilya says, and Shane can feel his voice rumble through his head. “Many people have silly little things they don’t like.” Ilya gestures with his hands when he talks sometimes. The action fascinates Shane for some reason. He finds himself completely sidetracked watching Ilya weave his words with a limp wrist and relaxed fingers. “Shane.” Ilya gets his attention back with a grounding pressure to his shoulders. “Come, sit, talk.”

So they sit. Ilya plates up the grilled cheese, unclips Anya’s leash and harness, and together they all migrate over to the couch. Anya settles between them, slyly begging for crumbs before Shane shoos her away, only for her to come back a few seconds later to do the same song and dance.

Ilya is no help, ripping off pieces of his bread and making Anya give her paw before he rewards her with it.

“She’s going to diarrhea all over the rug and you’re going to be the one to clean it up,” Shane remarks, one arm draped over the couch to finger the short curls at the back of Ilya’s neck.

“No, she won’t. She’ll ring the bell at the back door to be let out, like a good girl,” Ilya drawls lazily. Anya stares back at them, her tail patting loudly on the very rug she’s already halfway done destroying. “Explain that kissing thing to me again,” Ilya says as he gives Anya the last piece of his crust.

Shane groans and wiggles himself deeper in the couch. “It’s weird…”

“Shane.” Ilya’s voice turns firm in the same way he does to tell Anya not to eat dirt in the backyard. “Stop calling yourself weird. Is false, untrue. My Shanya is particular, but is what makes him my Shanya. My good, perfect boy.” He leans forward and tweaks Shane’s chin.

A familiar warmth blooms in Shane’s chest, his love for Ilya sometimes feels so big, so encompassing that he wants to get up and shake with it. “I love you,” Shane says instead, because it’s not socially acceptable to flail around like that, even in company he trusts.

“I love you, too.” Ilya pecks him on the lips before he leans back against the couch and sticks a hand in his pants, a sign he’s hunkering down and not moving any time soon. “Okie, now talk. Do your, how they say, Ned Talk.”

“TedTalk,” Shane corrects absent-mindedly. “And I don’t know, I’ve always hated it, even in movies.”

Ilya frowns. “Like?”

“Not that kiss, the peck we just did,” Shane quickly explains. “That’s fine. And cheek kisses, like the one Rose gives me when we meet up, that’s also okay.” Ilya frowns deeper at the mention of Rose Landry, but doesn’t interrupt. “It’s when people kiss like they’re putting on a show for other people. Like, cool, awesome, I see you’re in love and shit, but I don’t need to see how far you can shove your tongue down your partner's throat. Like, that’s gross, do that in private.”

“I see.” Ilya hums. Anya decides to finally join them on the couch, uncomfortably trampling over Ilya to get over to Shane and curl up on his lap. Shane pets her silky fur and internally counts each of her vertebrae as a grounding exercise. “Makes sense.”

“Does it?” Shane demands.

“Yes,” Ilya says, choosing his words carefully. “It… It makes you uncomfortable…and you don’t like social interactions, yes?”

Shane bobbles his head. This is something Ilya has always just known about him. He’s never had to ask, he’d just figured out an intimate part of how Shane interacts with the world and accepted it.

Ilya has always been in Shane’s corner, his biggest cheerleader and favorite shoulder to cry on. To have Ilya in his life is to be always understood…always loved.

Shane reaches out and takes Ilya’s hand—the one not wrist-deep in his pants—and threads their fingers together.

“PDA is advanced social interaction for you…unwanted social interaction, probably even more than eye contact,” Ilya continues. “And maybe…maybe, makes you jealous.”

Shane cocks his head. “Jealous?”

“Mh, maybe?” Ilya shrugs as he thinks aloud. “These people, they get to kiss their lovers out on trails and clubs and you can’t even hold hands with your handsome boyfriend.”

“Don’t say lovers,” Shane scolds quickly. “And, well, I never thought of it like that. Maybe I am a bit jealous, beneath all that disgust.”

A devilish smile crawls onto Ilya’s face. “What if I kissed you like that, in public. Put my tongue down your throat for everyone to see.”

Shane squirms as his cock gives a curious twitch. “Sounds good in theory, but in practice I’d probably kill you.”

Ilya lets out a gruff moan. “Oh, yeah, baby. Keep talking dirty to me.”

Shane shakes his hand out of Ilya’s to punch him in the shoulder. “Fuck you,” he says with a dopey smile. Anya lets out a huff between them–if she could roll her eyes she definitely would.

“Mmm, you’re turning me on, touch my dick,” Ilya mumbles lazily as he smacks an open kiss to Shane’s palm. There’s currently a slight bulge in his sweatpants (Shane thinks Ilya is always hard in Shane’s presence, which is both a turn-on and a detriment to anything productive), but the urge to have sex feels too much. Shane wants a shower, a nap, and a negotiated blow job, if he’s feeling frisky later.

Instead of dealing with the problem at hand, Shane shifts slightly to lay his head against Ilya’s chest and just relax. Anya acts as both his weighted blanket and stim toy, her fur the perfect texture to clear his head. Ilya flicks on the TV and kisses the side of Shane’s head.

“How many steps did you get?” Ilya asks when he notices Shane fiddling with his watch.

“Like, about, ten thousand,” Shane answers vaguely, watching his heart rate slowly go down.

“Mm, I’ll beat you later on the treadmill downstairs,” Ilya says.

“In your dreams.”

There’s a pause. Shane glances up at Ilya and finds those piercing blue eyes staring back at him. “You are my dreams, Shanya.”

Shane’s heart rate climbs, the numbers going from eighty to a hundred to a hundred and ten. “You did that on purpose.” Shane frowns, his face flushed, much to Ilya’s delight.

“Probably.”

Which, when Ilya says probably, he means yes.

Shane flicks Ilya’s abs just to hear the man he loves grunt in pain, it’s only right.

Shane has a love-hate relationship with meet-and-greets.

He likes meeting the fans, putting names to faces to people he seems to always see at both home and away games. He likes the children with the big, toothy smiles and dreams bigger than their bodies. He likes the handmade gifts, the crochet dolls and the intricate drawings, the realization that someone took hours out of their day to make him something so thoughtful.

Shane loves those parts, but he also hates the touching. The sneezing, the coughing. The sticky hands, the wandering hands. He hates the phones shoved in his face, the flash of cameras, the forced conversation about things not related to hockey.

Shane tries his best, and he’s not completely unaware of his reputation. Most fans will gab on Reddit about how awkward and stunted he seems, but in the same breath say he’s earnest and respectful. In the grand scheme of things, Shane thinks (despite how annoying his current reputation is) it’s better than being known as a douchebag.

This meet-and-greet is following a similar vein of all the rest. Shane’s been sneezed on, coughed on, and his butt subtly grabbed by one leering (hopefully) single mother. He’s already put up his mask, a neutral face that doesn’t elicit anyone asking him if he’s okay. So far he’s making magic; he’s actually really proud of how not-autistic he seems.

Of course, Shane knows by now that when he gets cocky, all hell breaks loose.

Shane is in the motion of grabbing a quick drink when the handlers for the event lets in two men. They are tall, both wearing Hollander jerseys that fit them well. One man, with the mustache, claps a hand over his mouth and lets out something of a squeal. It’s like this man can’t believe Shane is here…in the meet-and-greet tent…for Shane Hollander, hockey player.

Shane carefully locks his smile in place. “Hey, guys,” he says, and accepts the tight hugs that come. Maria, the handler, is there. She’s a beautiful woman who after ten minutes of knowing, Shane already trusts with his entire life.

“I can’t believe I’m meeting you,” the mustache man gushes, so flamboyant that even the repressed gay jock in Shane can recognize it.

“It’s a pleasure, thank you so much for supporting me.” Shane means it. To everyone: to the kids that sneeze on him, the ladies that grab his butt, the flamboyant gay men unafraid to be themselves when he cannot even fathom it for himself— Shane loves them all.

“He’s your biggest fan,” the other man, his hair so blond it has to be artificial, chimes in.

“Drew…” mustache man whines.

“It’s true!” Drew argues. “Jack here always watches your games and we have this St. Shane candle we light all the time for you— It’s good luck!”

“If it’s helped me thus far, then keep lighting it,” Shane says, a little more comfortable. He’s used to conversations like these, they’re easy to navigate. “Can I sign anything?”

Jack wants his jersey signed, right in the middle of the four of the big twenty-four patch on the back. Drew has the trading card, so Shane is more careful to make his signature legible. He still remembers when one of his signed trading cards went for sale on eBay, and Ilya had been beside himself, howling with laughter, because the signature had been barely legible. Shane’s a hockey player. Who cares if his handwriting is shit and, by the way, that card sold for nearly ten thousand dollars, so who’s laughing now, Ilya?

“Do you want a photo, too?” Shane gently guides the experience towards its inevitable end. Small talk in the beginning, sign what needs to be signed, take a photo, and then everyone goes home.

The men, especially Jack, are absolutely ecstatic (Shane doesn’t point out that this is the entire purpose of meet-and-greets). Drew hands his phone to Maria, and he says something into her ear, something quiet that Shane can’t make out over Jack’s insistent questions.

Whatever it is, it must not be important.

Shane goes into picture mood. He straightens his spine, he tilts his lips up in the right way (no teeth, just a nice, quaint, closed mouth smile) and wills his eyes not to blink. He’s ready. He’s ready for this fucking photo– And then Drew steps out from under Shane’s arm.

“Jack… Jackal,” he says, voice warm and full of fondness. “When I met you five years ago, at that Metro game, I knew we’d be perfect for each other.”

Jack: “Oh my god.”

What the fuck is going on?

Drew drops down to one knee and flashes a velvet box.

Oh.

Okay.

But like, still, what the fuck is going on?

“I love you so much. Every day, I wake up and I think about how much I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to go to Metros games and light our St. Shane candle, and listen to you talk about hockey for the rest of my life.”

“Drew,” Jack whispers wetly.

Shane… This has never happened to Shane. It makes him think of Ilya. His handsome, extroverted boyfriend who will never, ever get a proposal like this, and if he ever tried to do this to Shane, Shane would have to kill him.

“Will you make me the happiest man in the world?”

“Yes! Yes! Of course!”

Drew surges up and it’s like everything slows down to Shane. He knows what’s going to happen, it’s practically tradition. You propose, they say yes, you… you kiss. And it’s fine, everything should be fine, but he also sees that Drew and Jack are not going in for just a peck or even a solid, conservative, closed-mouth smooch.

Their open mouths literally mash together in a kiss so intimate, Shane actually recoils (he’s not jealous; Ilya is wrong, all that Shane feels is white-hot revulsion). His perfect mask slips and he can feel his cheeks and nose tightening up in a disgusted sneer. The very second he realizes he’s doing it, he immediately schools his face back to normal.

It’s not polite, even if he doesn’t particularly enjoy feeling like a voyeur. His mother raised him better, and it doesn’t completely escape him, that if it had been Ilya proposing, Shane would probably lose all sense of propriety and climb his boyfriend like a tree, too.

In hope of salvaging his already guilty conscience, Shane averts his eyes over the two embracing men’s shoulders and starts to clap. “Congratulations!”

The happy couple are beside themselves, they hug Shane and thank him for being there (Shane literally did nothing but cringe and wish to die). In turn, Shane tells them to send their wedding registry to the front office so he can buy them a blender or something, it feels only right after sneering at them for being in love.

Once they’re gone, Shane finally finds the moment to breathe and decompress.

“Next person in five,” Maria says, her voice strangely sharper (meaner?) than it had been before.

“Ah, thank you.” Shane flushes and reaches desperately for his water, he hopes no more people propose in front of him today.

One is definitely enough.

Ilya is exhausted.

Training had been particularly brutal today, even for him. He’s got sweat crusting on every crease of his body and he desperately wishes to hibernate, or shower, or hibernate in the shower. He’s halfway out of his padding when Troy gasps from his corner of the locker room like some kind of scandalized maiden.

“What the fuck,” he breathes, nose buried in his phone.

“What?” Wyatt pants from one of the benches he’s commandeered in order to lay his full body across it.

“Shane Hollander is homophobic,” Troy gossips.

Ilya can only scoff, he’s so tired. “Shane Hollander is not homophobic.”

“He is!” Troy argues. “Look at this video, dude.” He crosses the battlefield that is the Ottawa Centaurs locker room and thrusts his phone in Ilya’s face. It’s opened to Twitter, which is already not a good sign, with a tweet that reads:

Because my fiancé is such a big Metros fan, I decided to propose to him in front of his idol. Everything was perfect until I watched the video back and saw this…

Attached is a video of a man proposing to another man, Shane Hollander stood between them like the most awkward officiant to ever live. Ilya can see the panic and confusion on his face, Shane’s telltale signs. His boyfriend is uncomfortable, so, so uncomfortable, and it only gets worse when the two men share a passionate kiss. Ilya sees it before it happens, the random conversation they had in the living room about excessive PDA ringing in his head like a death knell.

He sees Shane cringe and then quickly correct it, but it doesn’t matter. The damage is already done, and now thousands of clueless people have seen it.

This isn’t going to be pretty.

“Oh, Shanya,” Ilya sighs.

“Look at the way he recoils,” Troy points out. He’s already moved on to showing the others, and, really, if Shane were actually homophobic, Ilya would understand putting him on blast, but Shane’s not homophobic, just deeply misunderstood (and particular).

“Oh, wow.” Wyatt’s jaw is hanging open. “He really is disgusted. I’m surprised he didn’t gag.”

“He looks close to it.”

“That’s really gross,” Young, one of their rookies, adds. “It’s whatever year, and he’s really out here hating the gays.”

“The gays,” Holmberg echoes jokingly.

“Do you know what year it is, Young?” Boodram asks, incredulously.

“I thought Hollander was gay,” Luca’s voice cuts through the chatter, a silence settling over them.

“It was a rumor,” Troy answers after a beat.

“Nobody confirmed it,” another adds with a shrug.

“I thought he came out to his whole team,” Luca continues. Ilya appreciates how desperately Luca is arguing in Shane’s favor, but it might be rooted in Luca’s hero worship of the top players.

“I thought he only came out to his A,” Boodram says with a hum.

“I heard from one of the Metro rookies that he’s staring at guys in the shower,” Young says.

Troy: “Dude, what the fuck? Those are harmful stereotypes. What would Harris say?”

Young: “No, don’t call Harris. I have the texts—wait.”

This has gone on for too long.

Before Young can even lunge for his bag, Ilya grabs him by the shoulder and roars, “Enough!” Everyone stops talking, everyone freezes; they stare at their captain wide-eyed and anxious.

“He’s your friend,” Troy finally says what they are all thinking.

The charity, the constant pictures people sneak of them in public when they are in ‘business meetings.’ The camps, and sleepovers, and the tweets they shoot at each other every so often to the delight of fans. Ilya’s life revolves around Shane, so whatever Shane is accused of, surely Ilya shares the sentiment.

“He is my friend,” Ilya is unafraid to admit. Shane is his friend—his best friend to the same degree as Svetlana. It’s a lie, but also not. “And he’s also not homophobic. I promise you all, he’s just a…prude?” Is that the right word? He’s only ever heard Cliff use it. Desperate to clarify, Ilya adds, “He thinks public displays of affection is…gross.”

The explanation feels lackluster, the words heavy on his tongue. In his nervousness, his accent has attempted to swallow all sense of clarity whole.

Troy, honest to god, scoffs. “Is that what he told you?”

“What a weak excuse,” Wyatt mutters.

“Is true.” Ilya frowns. “Straight or queer, he thinks is all gross.”

“I think that’s what he told you to get you off his back,” Troy says solemnly.

Ilya opens his mouth. He wants to shoot back that he knows Shane isn’t homophobic because Ilya fucked him last week. No straight man would ever take it up the ass as eagerly as Shane Hollander does, but… Ilya can’t say this. All his proof would mean outing them, and he would never do that without Shane’s permission, even if it means pushing a narrative that Shane hates his own kind.

“It makes sense. I heard the Metros are super homophobic,” Troy says. Now that he’s unburdened by Toronto’s homophobia, Troy’s become something of an inside agent to all things homosexual. He knows which teams are allies, which say slurs, which run rampant with backwards beliefs.

And Troy isn’t wrong that the Metros are homophobic either, he’s just blind to the fact that Shane’s suffering the same torture he’d experienced under Dallas’s thumb.

“Hollander probably made it that way, what a dick.” Wyatt huffs. “He’s the best player in the league, but also a bigot? Like, what the fuck makes you so brave to be like that?”

Ilya has never felt so helpless. He wants so badly to defend Shane, but he can’t. He doesn’t know what to do, and he hates that his teammates are talking so horribly about the man he loves.

As if knowing exactly what conversation is going on, Ilya’s phone lights up beside Boodram. “Your Jane is calling,” he says dutifully as he gives it over.

Of course Jane is calling.

“Ah, I need to take this.” Ilya snatches his phone out of Boodram’s hand and hightails it out of the locker room. The very second he picks up, he can already hear Shane hyperventilating. “Jane,” he says in what he hopes is soothing and has no traces of his earlier anxiety. “I need you to breathe. You are having panic attack.”

“Yeah, I know,” Shane yells, audibly coming apart at the seams. “Everyone thinks I’m homophobic, Ilya!”

“You aren’t.”

“You don’t think I know that?! I’m so fucking stupid!”

It breaks Ilya’s heart to hear Shane talk about himself like this. “You aren’t stupid.”

“I should have known they were filming, fuck!” There’s a thump on the other side of the line followed by what Ilya can only imagine (because he’s seen it once or twice) is nervous pacing.

“Did they not tell you they were filming?”

“No! I thought we were taking a picture!” Shane growls. “I was so ready.”

Ilya knows Shane. He knows that Shane navigates the world the way he always puts on his left skate before his right skate. When things tumble out of his routine, he flounders. His ironclad control is gone and for someone like Shane, it’s devastating.

That’s why they plan in advance. From big life events (their coming out) to the smaller things (grocery shopping). All of it has its own directions that need to be followed, and when that fails, things start to spiral out of control.

“Jane.” Ilya lets out a tight breath between his teeth and crouches down slightly so the phone is pressed towards his mouth. “Shane. Sweetheart. I love you, but I need you to calm down. You’re going to pass out.”

Shane lets out a gasp. “What am I going to tell my mom?”

“Mama knows you’re not homophobic. This will pass, it’s just a scandal…” Ilya bites his lip and after some deliberating, he adds teasingly, “Baby’s first scandal.”

Shane’s response is immediate. “Fuck you.”

“Mmm, no, more like ‘fuck me,’ Mr. Homophobia.”

“I hate you.” Despite the words, Shane’s voice is lighter, a bit more clearer, Ilya counts that as a win. “No, fuck, I love you. I love you so much.”

Ilya dips his chin towards his chest to hide his smile. “I love you, too,” he answers, instinctively, desperately.

Shane pauses. “Can you say it in Russian, please?”

Ilya says it in Russian and Shane clumsily echoes him, his accent atrocious and inflection all over the place, but Ilya loves the attempt.

“Please go take a run,” Ilya tells him.

“Yes.” Shane agrees in a daze. “Run, then come home. Shower. Eat. Review game tapes.”

Ilya nods his head. “And after game tapes, call me so we can have phone sex.”

“Okay.” Shane doesn’t even fight it anymore. If he had it his way, Ilya thinks Shane would schedule their phone sex (and perhaps sex as a whole) in his big calendar, if not for it being shared with his mother.

“Okay,” Ilya echoes. “I need to go, I still have to shower.”

“What is everyone saying about me in your locker room?” Shane asks out of the blue.

“Uh…” Ilya hates how he hesitates, it only goes to confirm Shane’s fears.

“Don’t lie to me, Ilya.”

Ilya doesn’t think he’d lie, more like embellish the truth, but he thinks that would only make things worse. “Is… Is not good, Shanya. I’m sorry.”

“Fuck,” Shane whispers to himself. “Okay, fuck, okay. It’ll blow over.”

“It will.” Now that’s a lie. Ilya can be honest with himself about that. It doesn’t help make him feel better about the sad, almost puppy-like whimper Shane makes.

“I’ll let you go.”

“I love you,” Ilya repeats it in Russian for good measure. “Go run. Send me your step count after, I want to make sure I’m beating you today.”

“Alright…” Shane doesn’t even rise to the challenge. Fuck, maybe things are really bad.

Ilya reluctantly hangs up and then takes a moment to just stare blankly at his phone. His homescreen flashes, the time doesn’t even feel real, and all he can do is focus on the picture of Anya below it. She’s in her life jacket, posing on the deck leading out onto the cottage’s lake. Ilya remembers Shane had been at his side, a tiny training treat in his slobbery fist. ‘Stay, stay, stay,’ he’d been repeating, even though Anya continued to wiggle around, anticipating the ‘go’ command that meant she could jump in the water.

A part of Ilya felt like her sometimes.

Just…constantly stuck following orders when the thing he wants is literally right there, in reach. Yet, when Shane says ‘stay,’ Ilya is nothing but a loyal dog. One day his ‘go’ command will come…

One day.

Ilya takes some calculated breaths, cycling through the exercises Galina had shown him for when his emotions feel too much. He’s just about talked himself down from whatever ledge he’d conjured up when he looks up to find Harris’s stocky figure at the other end of the hallway.

They stare at one another, locked in a trance of queer solidarity. A part of Ilya thinks Harris can read minds—he knows everything about everyone.

“Ilya,” Harris says after a long moment.

“How is it in there?” Ilya jerks his chin at the locker room door.

Harris’s lips flatten into a rigid line. “Ilya.” Harris doesn’t look disappointed, not like Wyatt, or outraged like his boyfriend. He looks sad, pitying.

Ilya knows that if he confirms Shane’s sexuality, that in itself will confirm his, too. Their closeness could be misconstrued by straight people, but not queer people. If anything, there are big blinking couple signs around them. Yet, staring up at Harris, Ilya sees an opportunity to spill, because if Ilya knows anything, Harris treats secrets like he’s a doctor bound by HIPAA laws.

“Shane’s not homophobic,” Ilya says, and whatever unspoken words Ilya hadn’t said, Harris hears regardless.

Harris’s lips fall open and he makes a soft ‘oh?’ sound. “Really?” he says.

“Troy wouldn’t be able to see, hits too close to home,” Ilya adds cryptically.

“You’re not wrong.” Harris nods. “What are you going to do?”

“Nothing.” Ilya hates that's his answer. “I can’t do anything, Harris.”

“Well…”

“No.” Ilya’s eyes bore into Harris. “I can’t do anything.”

Harris steps closer and lays a comforting hand on Ilya’s shoulder. “You do understand that by doing nothing, you’re indirectly saying you are also homophobic. That’s internet logic, Ilya.”

A humorless chuckle escapes Ilya. “Us? Homophobic? To think the last time I saw Shane I ate his ass out so good his legs were shaking.”

Harris chokes. “Okay, TMI, buddy.”

Ilya shrugs. Shane would probably have an aneurysm if he ever found out Ilya told someone that, but it felt nice. Now, if Ilya ever dies, there is at least someone not related to Shane that knows of their torrid affair.

Shane is not having a good time. He actually thinks he’s having a mental breakdown. An early mid-life crisis if he’s being overly dramatic.

Why did that video need to be published online? Why did Drew and Jack have to do that to him? They certainly aren’t getting anything bought off their registry, that’s for sure. Shane’s buying himself a blender, in purposeful retaliation that isn’t a blatant cry for help.

Oh god, he’s actually going insane.

The worst part—the worst fucking part—is not the constant death threats he’s getting on social media, or the pitying check-ins from Rose, or even the bone-rattling, bigoted cheering he’s subjected to every game he’s played since this got leaked, it’s his team’s reaction—

“Dude, what the fuck is going on? I thought you were gay,” Comeau says the very second he enters the locker room for practice.

Shane whips around from his cubby, still in a compression shirt and sweatpants with the ugly Montreal Metros logo and his last name decaled down the side. Every team member present looks at him with faces that scream that they were all thinking the same thing, just too afraid to say it aloud.

“I—” Shane feels a tremor start to vibrate in his hip and he widens his stance to not bring any attention to it. He feels like he’s coming out again. Oh, this sucks balls. “I am gay, I was just caught off-guard.”

“Caught off-guard?” JJ echoes, his accent making the words take on a sing-song manner. “You looked absolutely…” He takes a moment to find the right word. “Revolted.”

Shane flinches. “I— I wasn’t revolted!” And even that sounds like a lie, because Shane had been revolted, but not because it was two men.

“Be honest,” JJ continues on his tirade. “Did you tell us you were gay to get us off your back? If so, that’s totally not cool, dude.”

Why is JJ being so progressive? Is Shane not woke anymore because he thinks public kissing is disgusting? What the fuck is going on?

“I am gay!” Shane yells. JJ opens his mouth and Shane already knows what he’s going to say, so he briskly cuts him off. “I just don’t want to go on those dates you set me up with—” And because it feels necessary to disclose, Shane adds, “I have a boyfriend, I don’t need help.”

Silence.

Shane doesn’t know why admitting he has a boyfriend deserves a silence this profound. It’s like when someone gets hurt on the ice and everyone collectively goes quiet to show respect. Is this the same thing? Are they going to start clapping?

“Wait, you have a boyfriend?”

Shane doesn’t like how skeptical Drapeau sounds.

“Yes?” Shane looks around at everyone’s disbelieving face and thinks, this has to be some kind of elaborate nightmare. He needs to wake up now. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“A little,” JJ admits.

“Why?” Shane breathes.

“Well, it’s you.” JJ gestures at him, like this might help Shane understand what’s going on.

“What about me?” he demands.

“How long have you been dating?” Miitka asks, totally not like he’s vying for more decadent gossip.

“A while!” Shane says. “About two years now, but we’ve known each other for over ten years.”

“Wait.” Comeau looks so confused. “You’ve known your boyfriend—”

Shane: “Well, we started out hooking up sometimes.”

JJ, even more skeptical: “You were hooking up with this guy for over ten years?”

Shane: “Yeah?”

He fucks, guys. Shane Hollander has loads of tantalizing rizz, he just prefers not to use it…

“What about Rose Landry?!” Drapeau demands.

“Oh, my boyfriend and I broke up.” Shane pauses and then rubs his chin. “Okay, technically we didn’t break up, because we were never actually together. He wanted something more and I got scared—”

JJ: “You were afraid of commitment? You? Shane Hollander? A fuckboy?”

Shane speaks over JJ, “I think what we had is called a situationship.”

Comeau steadies himself against the wall. “And Rose Landry was your fucking rebound? Holly, you dog.”

“I guess?” Shane decides. He doesn’t think of Rose as a rebound, but as more of an exploratory time in his life that helped him figure out he’s gay and forever bound to Ilya.

“Rose Landry is a fucking babe,” Comeau groans.

“Hey.” Shane shuts that shit down fast. “She’s a lovely lady and my best friend, shut up.”

JJ makes a noise and leans into Miitka to whisper, “See, this is how we know Shane really is gay. He called Rose-freaking-Landry a ‘lovely lady.’”

“You’re all idiots,” Shane tells them, at a loss.

“What do you find hot?” JJ breaks away from Miitka to ask. “What is your type?”

More silence.

Shane actually thinks he prefers the cold shoulders he’s been experiencing to whatever this is.

“Uh.” Shane sticks his two fingers in his pants pockets and begins to rock back and forth. “I like guys that are tall…blond…muscular, like, more muscles than I have. Someone big, both physically and personality-wise. Someone that likes me for me, not…Shane Hollander hockey player.”

He’s describing Ilya. Fuck, he’s describing enemy no.1, Russia’s greatest fuck machine, the NHL’s collective sleep paralysis demon, to a bunch of guys who aren’t smart enough to connect the dots.

What is his life???

“Okay, but—” Drapeau waves a hand to get everyone’s attention. “Are any of us your type? I’m pretty muscular.”

Shane sneers. “Yeah, no. You aren’t my type, no offense. You’re all disgusting.”

Everyone makes a loud sound of discontent.

“Seriously?!” JJ sounds genuinely offended. “You don’t even find me attractive?!”

“Well—” Shane looks JJ up and down and when he realizes he’s doing that, he slaps a hand to his forehead. “Objectively, you are attractive,” he admits beneath his fingers. “But the fact you can’t hold down a girlfriend for more than a few months docks you a significant amount of points.”

“Fair,” Miitka remarks, much to JJ’s visible chagrin.

“Shut up. At least Shane thinks I’m hot.”

“I never said hot,” Shane rushes to clarify. “Attractive and hot are not the same thing.” JJ is attractive, Ilya is hot.

“What constitutes hot versus attractive?” Drapeau wonders.

“Do you find me attractive?” Comeau of all people asks. Shane doesn’t answer, which is an answer in itself. Comeau hears it loud and clear. “Wow, fuck you too, dude.”

“Why are you upset?!” Shane sputters. “Didn’t you ask me like a week ago not to ogle you in the showers?!”

“Yes, and still don’t do that, but sometimes it’s nice to be lusted after,” Comeau argues so harshly the vein in his forehead bulges out. Shane is pretty sure this line of thinking has to do with Comeau’s most recent divorce, but he won’t say that aloud.

“Do you want me to lie?” Shane offers.

“Maybe?”

“Okay, Comeau, I find you very attractive.”

It’s instant the way Comeau’s whole body relaxes. “Thank you,” he says, completely serious.

“Yeah? Glad to help, man.”

Shane would really like to wake up now. This is actually his fucking nightmare; one step below his dad walking in on him getting his ass groped by Ilya against the glass patio door of the cottage.

As if the world senses Shane needs another useless voice in a debate that they shouldn’t be having in the first place, Hayden bursts into the locker room. He’s windblown and wearing a hoodie that has a stain on the collar that looks suspiciously like spit-up. “Hey, fuck, sorry for being late,” he huffs, trying to catch his breath.

Because Shane can’t help himself, he says, “Swear jar.”

“Dude, not now,” Hayden hisses. “My kids actually tried to kill me this morning, I need you on my side.” He gives Shane a dazed hug that Shane confusedly returns. They aren’t hugging people, but he’ll allow it.

“Did you see the video, Hayden?” JJ asks as he scoots down the bench to get right beside Hayden’s locker.

“What video?” Hayden sighs.

“Shane’s apparently homophobic,” JJ drawls like the gossip he swears he isn’t.

“What?” Hayden makes a face. He knows about Ilya and has called them both out on how obvious their heart-eyes are for each other. Telling Hayden Shane isn’t gay is like telling him the grass now grows purple.

JJ snickers and pulls up the video, Hayden barely glances at the blurry screenshot before he says, “Oh, yeah, no, Shane just hates PDA.”

A trickle of terror drips down Shane’s spine. He turns slowly, horrified. “How do you know that?” He’s never told Hayden.

“Dude, you were my best man. I got, like, 4K shots of you gagging in the background of 80% of my wedding photos.”

Terror is quickly replaced by humiliation. “Oh my god, Hayden, I’m so sorry,” he whispers.

Hayden is unbothered. “Like I care? You’re my brother.” He claps Shane on the shoulder and shakes him slightly. “Plus, Jackie thought it was hilarious. We spent like a whole week playing ‘find Shane judging us for being in love’ when we finally got all the pics back. We even ranked them, I might still have the list in my notes app—”

Hayden attempts to wiggle his phone from his pocket, but Shane reaches out and stops him with a hand on his wrist. “That’s alright, I’m good,” he says, a slight tremor in his voice.

“Okay, your loss.” Hayden laughs with good humor.

“Hold on.” JJ swishes his head between them. “You’re telling me Shane made that face, not because he’s homophobic, but because he thinks kissing is icky.”

“Kissing isn’t icky, I actually enjoy kissing a lot.” Shane feels like a petulant child with the way he says that sentence.

“Just not public kissing,” Hayden tacks on. “Or grinding in clubs.”

“Any type of dancing in clubs,” Shane says. “Actually, just include clubs as a whole—and pubs, and dive bars while you’re at it.”

“And don’t forget karaoke,” Miitka pipes up.

Shane shudders. “Karaoke.”

“Dude, you’re literally the no-fun police,” Comeau groans.

Drapeau giggles and smacks Shane heartily on the back. “More like the PDA police. How the fuck does that boyfriend put up with you, Holly?”

Hayden shoots Shane a scandalized look that says ‘you told them about the boyfriend without me?!’

“Graciously. He loves my weirdness,” Shane snaps as he drops his pants to change into his pads.

“There’s a person out there for everyone, or whatever that saying is?” JJ, this time with purpose, sing-songs. “Did you know Shane finds me attractive, Hayden?”

“Dude, you’re not special. Shane’s type sucks,” Hayden mutters.

“Hey,” Shane warns, ears burning cherry red.

“And he swallows, too,” Drapeau quips childishly.

“This discussion is over!” Shane shouts. He thinks he’ll actually explode if anyone else makes fun of him today. “I want everyone out on the ice in ten, can I get a ‘yes, captain’?”

“Yes, captain,” everyone choruses.

Shane jerks his head up and looks out at the collection of bobbing heads and muscled torsos that mill around him. They… They listened to him.

They actually fucking listened to him.

Shane’s been fighting for months to restore power back in the locker room since coming out. It’s like the very second he came out as gay, the Metros lost all respect for him. No one wants a gay captain unless it’s fucking Scott Hunter, which makes no sense, because Shane has better stats than him. (It’s not a gay-on-gay crime to point out the obvious, Ilya. It’s called being a catty bitch or whatever.)

Yet, suddenly, after experiencing the most gut-wrenching, humiliating scandal to ever happen to him, Shane has somehow regained power.

Maybe someone will finally pass him the puck today.

Maybe being outed as a fucking prude rather than a bigoted asshole is all he needed to do to push the Metros to another cup.

Who would have thought?

“Hell yeah,” Hayden whispers beside him with a gentle, nudging elbow to the ribs.

Shane smiles, satisfied.

Everything is great until they’re filing out to the ice, and Shane hears JJ say to Hayden, “You know, Shane’s my ‘If I had to pick a dude.’”

Hayden: “You’re not special, he’s the entire NHL’s ‘If I had to pick a dude’-dude.”

JJ: “Even Rozanov?”

Hayden: “Especially Rozanov.”

Shane steps out onto the ice and immediately eats shit.

Just as Ilya predicted, the whole scandal blows over in a week. Shane apologizes publicly to Jack and Drew and donates thousands to a couple of reputable queer charities. He makes a long post about ‘educating himself’ and ‘listening to queer voices’ and ‘talking privately with Scott Hunter and his team to better understand the gravity of his actions and taking accountability.’

(The talking with Scott Hunter and his team had actually been Shane stuck in a group chat with every gay hockey player along with their partners roasting him for his inability to stand a little public spit-sharing.

Fabian notably saying, ‘Baby, you wouldn’t last a second at a pride parade.’

Followed by Shane’s bitchy: ‘Yeah, I know, and I’m not afraid to say gay people making out is gross.’

And finished off by Kip’s snark: ‘You’re the most homophobic homosexual I’ve ever met and I’m married to Scott Hunter.’

Ilya sent a page’s worth of crying laughing emojis and had been unceremoniously banished from his own bedroom because Shane couldn’t stand his actual crying-laughing in real life.)

Life moved on from Shane’s big uh-oh. Shane won another cup, Ilya got the flailing Centaurs to playoffs; people sometimes brought up Shane being homophobic as a meme or a reason to un-stan him, but nobody had been ready for Hayden’s leaked FanMail.

There, in a video so similar to the scandal, Hayden became Shane while Shane and Ilya were Jack and Drew, swapping spit in a kiss that the media mildly referred to as ‘an intimate embrace.’

Shane is embarrassed, but also frighteningly relieved. His biggest secret has been aired, silencing the angry majority of hockey fans that saw Shane as no.1 Homophobic Piece of Shit—with Ilya at no.2 for no other reason than his association to Shane. (Ilya took great offense at being no.2 and made a valiant attempt to call Troy the ‘f-slur’ in a Centaurs livestream, but was expertly thwarted by Harris’s screech, and then sentenced to multiple sessions of media training for his transgressions.)

Nobody online had known what to do other than question the proposal video from a year ago. Hayden, after being forgiven and thanked in the same breath, went to social media to post pictures of Shane at his wedding: cringing, sneering, and gagging, much to Shane's horror.

Yuna even joined in on the fun with her own pictures of teen Shane judging his parents for smooching in front of him on vacation. The internet cooed at Shane’s time-period accurate emo fringe and violently sunburnt cheeks. Ilya printed that one out and stuck it in his locker to stare at every home game; it’s his ‘good luck Shane.’

The world laughed, and judged, but that’s to be expected given it’s the internet. Some people made compilations of Shane’s face during every hockey game’s ‘Kiss Cam’ intermissions, others tried to use this knowledge to throw off Shane’s game by making out against the glass, unaware that when Shane locks in, he rarely, if ever, glances out from the scratched plexiglass bowl that encases the rink.

Everyone coped with the information in different ways, and maybe it made the transition to normalizing his and Ilya’s relationship a bit smoother.

Montreal had been appalled, Ottawa unsurprisingly supportive. Shane had once more lost his barely-held authority and had been forced to give up his position as captain, but in turn he’d been offered a spot on the Centaurs’ second line and he had greedily gobbled up the opportunity to play everyday with his now-husband.

Everyone forgets the PDA police joke (other than a few scattered incidents and useless fun fact accounts) until the day the Centaurs finally won their first cup and an on-ice camera, broadcasting live to thousands of viewers at home, caught Shane’s disgusted sneer as he watched his teammate Zane Boodram tongue-kiss his beloved wife Cassie.

‘Didn’t he just eat Ilya’s face??? like…he literally has his husband’s spit on his lips while he judges,’ one Twitter user points out.

‘I think he’s just a bit confused, he thinks kissing is only supposed to be between a man and a man,’ another jokes in the mentions.

‘Shane Hollander-Rozanov hates straight people?’

‘No, Shane hates all people, the PDA police makes no exception unless it’s to kiss his own husband,’ Jack, from the historical, unforgettable meet-and-greet proposal, throws in his two cents.

Ilya retweets with crying laughing emojis and then a couple hours later posts a picture of himself tucked in on his couch, Anya’s fluffy body squeezed against him. ‘I risked my marriage to laugh at that joke, everyone please go like before Shane makes me take it down.’

The PDA police is strict: the emoji-ed post only manages to stay live for another hour.

‘Someone please save Ilya,’ a Rozanov-dedicated, please-come-back-to-Boston-please-oh-please account grumbles.

It had been then retweeted by Ilya with his most famous tweet to date: ‘Nobody come save me, I’m right where I want to be— in PDA Police Custody.’ With a picture of Ilya trying to kiss Shane in public. Ilya’s lips are overly puckered, his eyes squeezed shut while Shane is merely a blur of pixels, desperate to dodge whatever hot and messy kiss Ilya had planned to bestow upon him in a non-descript café.

It’s safe to say that picture went triple platinum on the Hollanov side of Twitter.

The PDA Police makes few exceptions.