Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

There was one thing Shane disliked about his jobs.

Or well, technically two, if you considered that the only reason he was working as a journalist and part-time as the social media manager for his favorite hockey team was because he couldn’t work as a player for said team.

He had been a pretty decent player once. More than decent, actually. Seventeen-year-old Shane was fully convinced he would’ve become a legend. But no.

It hadn’t even been anything direct either. He had just reposted a few LGBTQ organizations during Pride Month, donated to some charities and once tweeted something vague about understanding how exhausting it must feel to constantly feel like you had to hide parts of yourself. Most of it had been because one of his closest friends had recently come out. He was a figure skater, and coming out hadn’t exactly gone smoothly for him. Shane had simply wanted to make it obvious that he supported him. That he wasn’t alone.

A week later, scouts suddenly stopped replying to emails.

Then, coaches started acting weird around him.

Then, the Metros suddenly stopped contacting him altogether.

This had really confused Shane, more than anything else. They had shown genuine interest before that. He couldn’t understand why publicly supporting a friend would suddenly make people question whether he belonged in professional hockey.

Then the draft came and went and Shane had sat there watching significantly less talented players get picked over him one after another.

So instead of being on the ice himself, Shane went to university, majoring in journalism, specifically sports media. He liked to think he was pretty observant, and he had always been good at writing. Or well, obsessing over things. His mother had once said journalism would fit him perfectly. Shane was pretty sure she had just been trying to find him something unrelated to hockey to throw himself into.

His mother had been devastated when it became obvious that a hockey career wasn’t happening for him anymore, even if she never outright showed it. So Shane studied journalism instead, and eventually started working for a mediocre online paper that mostly posted sports articles people only clicked on when someone had been injured or publicly humiliated.

So much for getting over his hockey obsession.

Landing a social media job for the Metros had just been a coincidence. Even though the company he worked for wasn't one of the biggest names in the industry, Shane was actually a pretty big name himself. Big enough that the Metros had eventually reached out to him themselves, informing him they were looking for a new social media manager and thought he'd be a good fit for the position. His articles had also generated enough clicks over the years that the paper had become drastically more popular than it had been when he first started working there.

At first Shane had wondered why the fuck he would ever want to work for the team that had rejected him, a team he had been convinced dropped him because of his views. But in the end he still showed up for the interview. He and Charlotte, the previous social media manager, had ended up talking for almost two hours afterward. And, it hadn’t actually been the Metros who had rejected him.

No. It was Roger Crowell. The head of the NHL apparently wanted to maintain a certain image for the league, and Shane simply hadn’t fit into it anymore.

In the end, Shane still wasn’t entirely sure if the Metros had reached out because he was a really good journalist or because they felt bad about what had happened to him.

He decided it didn’t matter and took the job regardless. As a side gig.

Which ultimately led to the actual reason Shane hated his job.

Ilya Rozanov.

Rozanov wasn't only working as a journalist for a bigger paper than Shane was, it was actually the exact paper Shane himself had rejected. They had offered him a position right after graduation, but Shane had wanted to stay close to his family. So instead, he stayed in Montreal and accepted the fact that he was probably wasting his talent at a mediocre local sports paper, a paper that had become more popular after he started writing for them, but that wasn't really the point.

Those opportunities had instead gone to one of the biggest assholes Shane had ever met. An asshole who, to make things even worse, had once made out with him at a party and then never called him back afterward.

Shane had met Rozanov during his second year of his sports journalism degree at some party hosted by a mutual friend. Or more like a friend of a mutual friend.

Shane had been studying in Canada while Rozanov had been attending university somewhere in the States on a sports scholarship. And Shane had decided in less than 20 minutes that he did not like Ilya Rozanov.

Shane wasn't someone who hated people. He was a nice guy. A polite guy. And sure, he used to play hockey, and hockey was known for the players speaking very vulgarly and the fighting and stuff. But that was never Shane.

No, he was in it for the actual hockey. Because, like mentioned, he was really fucking good at it, and he didn't need to hit people to win a game.

His love for hockey was also his favorite thing to talk about, and apparently it was one of Rozanov's favorite topics too. Which the host of the party, Rhydian- or was it Ryan? It was something with an R. He couldn't really remember his name anymore.

Anyways, Riley had told him that he would definitely get along with Rozanov because they both wanted to specialize in sports media, so he introduced them to each other.

The first thing Shane disliked about Rozanov was that he was outside smoking. He’d been about to tell him he shouldn't be smoking here when he’d noticed that Rylan did not care in the slightest, so he held back from embarrassing himself and instead held his hand out to the blond guy.

Aside from the smoking, he quickly noticed how attractive Rozanov was. His blond curls looked like a mess, sticking out in different directions as if he had walked through a storm on his way here and then just brushed them back with his fingers. Yet somehow not a single part of it looked wrong. His features were sharp and masculine, but he still looked quite young. It didn't age him the way it did a lot of other men.

In that moment, Shane really hoped they would hit it off.

Not just because Rozanov was attractive, he didnt care if he was attractive, obviously. But because Rowan had told him that Rozanov knew a ridiculous amount about hockey. It would've been nice to have somebody around who actually wanted to talk about the sport instead of immediately getting bored whenever Shane accidentally turned a conversation into a twenty-minute analysis of a powerplay.

Rozanov took his hand to shake it after a few seconds of looking at it somewhat confused. He didn't introduce himself. And Shane hated silence. Rory was already gone again, so he had to come up with a conversation topic on his own. Also because for some reason he’d wanted to find out if his voice was as pretty as the rest of him.

“I was told you like hockey as well? Majoring in sports media?” He said slowly, sticking to ‘I was told’ instead of ‘Richard told me’ because, again, he wasn't entirely sure that was actually his name. And he didn't want to embarrass himself in case Rozanov knew it.

Rozanov's ice-blue- or green, eyes traced over Shane and he suddenly felt weirdly naked under his gaze.

“Yes,” he then just said flatly.

Shane waited. Surely there was more coming.

There wasn't.

The conversation didn't get much better from there. Shane wasn't exactly known for being talented in social situations, so he defaulted to talking about things he actually knew something about. Which mostly meant hockey. At least that got Rozanov talking, actually engaging once the topic shifted.

Shane would've really enjoyed listening to Rozanov talk. He had a pretty heavy Russian accent and the way certain words rolled off his tongue just sounded very nice to listen to, which was unfortunate because in Rozanov's opinion, most of Shane's opinions were wrong. He also didn't seem particularly shy about informing him of that fact, and not even a cool accent could make whatever came out of his mouth seem less insulting, or make him appear any less like a complete asshole.

Shane couldn't remember most of the actual arguments. Every time he said something, Rozanov somehow had a different opinion. Every time Rozanov said something, Shane felt an overwhelming need to explain exactly why he was wrong. It became a pattern pretty quickly.

Rozanov wasn't stupid. If he had been stupid, Shane could've just dismissed everything he said and moved on. Instead, he kept making really good points. Wrong points, obviously. But good ones. Good enough that Shane kept sticking around to argue back.

They didn't just talk about hockey. They started arguing about every single thing that came up. The actual topics blurred together after a while, but somehow the conversation- or argument- whatever it was- never died.

At some point they had stopped standing in front of the house and started wandering around the party together unintentionally. One of them would walk somewhere and the other would follow while continuing whatever pointless debate they were currently having. It just sort of happened.

The party seemed to shift around them as the night went on. People moved inside, others left and at least three different people told them to shut up at various points throughout the evening.

He really couldn't stand the guy. Yet somehow, every time there was an opportunity to leave, neither of them took it.

Shane hadn't even realized he had spent most of the evening talking exclusively to one person, a person he had already decided he didn't like.

Since it was a party, alcohol was eventually involved. The drinks seemed to lift the mood between them and turn the arguing into something closer to teasing. Making jokes at the other's expense, chirping each other for stupid things they had said earlier, and a lot of laughing. Looking back, that was probably the reason why Shane eventually stopped thinking Rozanov was completely horrible.

Probably also the reason why, later that night, Shane said yes when Rozanov suddenly looked at him and bluntly informed him, "Your mouth is too pretty to be saying so many wrong things. I should be shutting you up with my mouth that is saying all the right things, yes?’’

The guy was attractive, funny in a way Shane hadn't expected, and one of the very few people Shane had ever met who could actually keep up with him. Which turned out to be a pretty appealing combination. Shane wasn’t gay, and plenty of straight people kissed someone of the same sex while being drunk. There was no shame in making out with another guy every once in a while.

Rozanov was also an amazing kisser. His mouth seemed to work better when it wasn’t being used to argue. Objectively speaking, kissing him felt better than any kiss that Shane had shared with a girl. Maybe he just knew how to kiss a man right because he was a man himself.

Not that Shane had suddenly stopped thinking he was an asshole. Which he absolutely was.

Still, after everything that had happened that night, Shane had given him his number before leaving and fully expected him to text afterward. Rozanov was an asshole, but he was also surprisingly good company, and Shane thought that maybe, despite the constant arguing, they could eventually become friends.

But they never did.

Shane would’ve gotten over it if Rozanov hadn’t randomly reappeared two years later, writing articles criticizing Shane every other week. Well, not directly criticizing Shane. Mostly criticizing the Metros. But since Shane practically lived inside the Metros organization at this point, it still felt personal.

What made it even worse was the fact that Rozanov constantly tagged the Metros social media account in his posts. He even used pictures Shane himself had taken during games and practices without ever properly crediting Shane as the one who took the photos.

Who the fuck even did that? Was he making sure Shane was reading his articles?

Shane probably would’ve been significantly less annoyed if nobody actually paid attention to Rozanov’s articles. Unfortunately the exact opposite was true; people loved his writing.

Even though English wasn’t his first language, Rozanov had an incredibly sharp way of handling words. His articles were so good that even people who hated him still read everything he posted. Oh, and he also wrote the Russian translation, so even more people could read his criticism.

Shane also hated that Rozanov interviewed players from different teams, including the Metros. Technically Shane couldn’t really do anything about that. Even if part of him really wanted to sometimes. Rozanov worked for one of the biggest sports papers in the country. The Metros team obviously couldn’t just ban any other journalists besides Shane just because he found one of them deeply irritating.

Shane definitely wasn’t behaving normally about the whole situation. At some point over the past year he had developed the pretty embarrassing habit of scheduling his own Metros interviews and press coverage for The Faceoff (thanks to Hayden who let him sync his calendar, so he was always up to date with the team’s schedule) around the exact same days Rozanov showed up at the arena.

Obviously this was purely professional, Shane just didn’t trust him around the Metros organization without supervision, considering Rozanov seemed physically incapable of writing an article that didn’t include at least one insult directed at the team.

Shane unfortunately hated the idea of Rozanov being there without him knowing what exactly he was saying to players, coaches or management. Shane also hated how the players acted around Rozanov.

As mentioned multiple times, Rozanov loved criticizing. So getting something positive written about you by Ilya Rozanov had somehow become a challenge inside the league. The guy was ruthless in articles- he picked apart everything. So when he actually praised someone publicly, people acted like they had earned some sort of official hockey validation.

Not that Shane didn’t get that kind of attention. He always had an absurdly analytical understanding of hockey, even back when he still played himself. They called him a prodigy, the kid with the highest hockey IQ. Shane noticed things most people didn’t. Which was exactly why his own interviews and articles were so high performing, despite working for a significantly smaller paper than Rozanov, and that naturally turned everything between him and Rozanov into some weird competition.

Who got the better interview?

Who published first?

Who noticed something during games before the other one did?

Whose articles performed better online?

Even players had started noticing it at some point. Hayden constantly told him the whole thing was stupid. Not the rivalry itself maybe, because he was pretty sure rivalries in journalism were normal, especially in sports journalism where everybody fought over interviews, stories and insider information. But according to Hayden, Shane took the whole Rozanov thing way too seriously.

He always told Shane that he was obviously the better journalist anyway and should maybe focus less on obsessively monitoring everything the “annoying Russian guy” did, and more on just continuing to improve his own work.

Not that Shane agreed with that at all. In his opinion, it was completely normal to keep an eye on your competition, especially when your competition happened to work for one of the biggest sports papers in the country and somehow, constantly ended up involved in every major hockey story before everybody else.

Eventually there would be one huge story, a breaking article the entire hockey world would suddenly care about, and when that happened, The Faceoff would depend on Shane getting there first. So understanding Rozanov as well as possible, reading through his article archive, trying to figure out his tactics, only increased Shane’s chances of doing exactly that.

But not because he was obsessed with him.

Only a few months ago Shane had come up with what he still considered a brilliant idea for a piece. He had spent days researching it, gathering interviews, collecting sources and putting the whole thing together. A few hours before Shane could publish his article, Rozanov uploaded his own one about almost the exact same fucking topic.

There was no way he could've known what Shane was writing; the draft hadn't left his laptop. Nobody outside the paper had seen it. It wasn't possible. But it also couldn't have been a coincidence.

Unfortunately Rose, his ex and co-worker, had a different opinion. "Maybe you two just have a lot in common," she’d said, followed by a wink. Complete bullshit. There were eight billion people on the planet and somehow the only journalist constantly stealing his ideas just happened to be Ilya Rozanov?

No way.

It was Monday morning when Shane arrived, with his camera hanging from one shoulder. He had a coffee for Hayden and a green tea for himself balanced in his hand, fingers hooked into the cardboard tray the cups were in. Mondays were already bad enough on their own. Days involving a certain Russian journalist somehow always made it a lot worse.

Even if that was mostly Shane’s own fault, considering he was the one constantly making sure he was there whenever Rozanov showed up. He definitely needed something to calm his nerves before dealing with that bullshit. Not that green tea was particularly calming.

Hayden was sitting on one of the tables in Shane’s makeshift office, scrolling through his phone, and immediately grinned the second he looked up and spotted him.

“Your best friend is already here,” he said, holding out one hand and making a grabbing motion before Shane could even properly put his stuff down. Hayden was definitely not referring to himself with the term ‘best friend’.

“Shut up,” Shane huffed, dropping Hayden’s coffee into his waiting hand and setting his bag down beside the editing monitors. Hayden only chuckled at that, glancing toward the window.

“I was surprised when I saw him smoking,” he said casually, taking a sip of his still very hot coffee and immediately hissing in pain. “But I guess that’s just a Russian thing, or whatever…”

Shane had stopped properly listening halfway through the sentence. “Is he smoking there?” He asked, already striding toward the window Hayden had just looked at.

His office was on the second floor and directly below the window was one of the main entrances to the building, where smoking was very obviously not allowed.

He could see a familiar blond head below and a cloud of smoke rising around it. As he watched, Rozanov casually flicked ashes into one of the raised flower beds.

“Oh my fucking god,” Shane muttered while shoving the window open.

“Shane- please don’t start anything-” Hayden started pleading, seemingly regretting having spoken.

Shane leaned out the window, making sure the Russian could see him. “You’re not supposed to smoke there!” He yelled down, before Hayden could finish his sentence.

Down below, Rozanov slowly looked up at him.

He was too far away for Shane to properly make out the expression on his face, but he could just about see how Rozanov took a few steps to the side, looking back up at him again.

“Better here, yes?” he yelled back in his stupid Russian accent.

“No! The sign is for the whole entrance area!” Shane shouted, dangerously close to tipping out the window, aggressively pointing toward the no smoking sign stuck inside one of the raised garden beds that Rozanov had just flicked his ashes into a few seconds earlier.

Rozanov followed the direction of his finger and looked at the sign for a second. Then he simply stepped towards it again, reached over and turned it around.

“I do not see a sign.” He yelled back, turning to face Shane again. His grin was so big Shane could see it even from this distance.

Shane was fuming. “You just turned it around!”

Rozanov just shrugged. Shane stared at him in complete disbelief for another second before leaning back in and aggressively slamming the window shut hard enough that Hayden physically flinched beside him.

He couldn’t stand his stupid attitude. He couldn’t stand his stupid face. He couldn’t stand his stupid smirk.

But whatever, Rozanov was only going to be here for around two hours max and right now Shane should probably focus on telling Hayden what he was allowed to say and what he wasn’t. Sure, Hayden was technically media trained and this wasn’t a live interview, but Shane knew how Rozanov liked to write his articles using the stupidest quotes possible that made players sound like complete idiots.

He also knew Hayden.

Hayden tended to say every single thought that crossed his mind out loud. No wonder his twins were so misbehaved sometimes. At least Jackie balanced him out. Shane loved Hayden, obviously, but Jackie really deserved some kind of award for putting up with him and his spawns on a daily basis. They were produced by both of them of course, but personality-wise those twins unfortunately took entirely after Hayden.

“Please,” Shane said, pointing at Hayden with one finger. “And I mean this genuinely. Think before speaking today.” He leant back against the table, taking a sip of his hot green tea.

Hayden looked offended immediately. “I always think before speaking.”

“That’s just not true.”

“It is true.”

“Last week you told a reporter your strategy during overtime was ‘just kinda hoping for the best’.”

“Because it was.”

“You’re not supposed to say that publicly!” Shane lectured him.

Hayden rolled his eyes dramatically, sliding off the table and grabbing his coffee again. “I still think people like the interviews because I’m honest.”

“No,” Shane immediately replied, picking up one of his camera batteries. “People like your interviews because they think there’s a fifty percent chance you’ll accidentally start league drama.”

“That’s still engagement.”

Unfortunately he also wasn’t wrong about that. Shane hated modern sports media sometimes. Everything had to become content now. Every quote got reposted. Every bad joke became headlines. Everything was about memes and being marketable and whether players looked good in edits with slowed down music behind them, instead of the actual hockey itself.

Unless you were Scott Hunter. Hunter somehow managed to exist completely outside of all that bullshit. People only talked about him because he was really good at hockey, which was probably Shane’s dream scenario. But for him to be able to join the league someday, a lot had to change first.

Shane grabbed his camera again and finally headed downstairs toward the rink, Hayden following him to join the others. Practice had already started by the time he stepped onto the ice level. Players skated laps around the rink while the captain of the team yelled instructions and somebody had once again connected their phone to the arena speakers. At least the music choice today wasn’t completely horrible.

Shane adjusted the camera hanging from his shoulder while walking along the boards, looking for a blond curled topped head.

He spotted Rozanov almost immediately. He was talking to Coach Theriault, this time holding a coffee in one hand and a small notebook in the other. Shane suspected the notebook contained nothing except criticism and somehow still found himself wondering what exactly Rozanov kept writing in it all the time. He also came to wonder what his handwriting looked like. Probably ugly.

Rozanov noticed him after maybe ten seconds.

“You are here again,” Rozanov commented, looking him up and down briefly, like he hadn’t just seen him yell from his window.

“I work here.” Shane replied, crossing his arms. He could hear the coach sigh and shake his head, but he didn’t comment on it.

“Yes,” Rozanov said slowly. “But every time I come here, somehow you are also here.”

Shane huffs. “Oh, crazy how journalists appear at hockey practices.”

Behind them JJ, halfway hanging over the rink boards, held back a snort before muttering something under his breath that Shane couldn’t properly hear.

“What was that?” The Russian asked immediately, looking up with obvious interest.

JJ glanced toward Shane, looking weirdly helpless for a second, before finally sighing. ‘’He somehow always figures out when you’re coming, and then schedules himself here too.’’ Shane’s face heated up immediately.

Rozanov slowly looked back toward him again. “Oh,” he said. “Is that so?”

“I- No?” Shane answered immediately, cutting himself off before he added any more very unnecessary details and made the whole thing even more unbelievable than it already was. It was a horrible attempt at lying. He had always been terrible at it.

Back in high school, his mother had once asked him if he had broken one of the kitchen glasses and Shane had panicked so badly that instead of just saying no like a normal person, he’d somehow blurted out: “No? Why would I even be near the kitchen glass area?”

His mother had stared at him for maybe three seconds before going: “So yes?”

And clearly nothing had changed since then, because from the still very present smile on Rozanov’s face, Shane already knew the lie had not sounded believable whatsoever. So instead, he just glared at JJ for his betrayal.

Rozanov said his goodbyes, joining the other players to pick the one he wanted to interview. Shane watched him go and then looked back to JJ, who held up his hands in defence. “You’re really obvious, Hollander, everyone noticed.” he said. “And I won’t ever understand why you actually always do this. Ridiculous.’’

When the article finally published the next day, Shane just couldn’t stay silent anymore.

So instead of being a reasonable adult and ignoring the article like he probably should have, he decided to email him instead.

It was pretty late too, which explained a lot. Shane tended to make worse decisions after midnight, and currently it was almost one in the morning.

Rozanov had just posted another article criticizing the Metros after their game against Boston and, naturally, attached one of Shane’s pictures to it without crediting him, again.

Not only was Shane annoyed at Rozanov. He could also strangle Hayden. He had told him like a million times at this point to only say things during interviews that were actually safe to print in articles. Rozanov had this habit of using every single thing someone said to him. Even if they had very obviously meant it as a joke originally.

Which was another thing Shane only knew because he had spent the last years subconsciously researching everything about Ilya Rozanov’s writing style. And it would help a lot more if people, especially Hayden, listened to him sometimes.

Shane rolled his eyes before grabbing his laptop from the coffee table and opening his emails. If Rozanov wanted to act like an asshole online, then fine. Shane could absolutely be an asshole professionally too. But he would only comment on the lack of credits. The fact that Hayden was stupid enough to say stuff like that in an interview was not Rozanov’s fault.

It didn’t even take more than 10 minutes for Rozanov's answer to come through.

Shane frowns. What was that even supposed to mean? Now he definitely shouldn’t reply anymore, but for some reason he couldn’t just let the other guy treat him this way. That Asshole.

Shane stared at the email for another few seconds before finally closing the laptop with way more force than necessary. This was stupid. Actually no, beyond stupid.

He would not be having a passive aggressive email argument at ten in the evening because some journalist kept stealing his pictures and writing mean articles about his hockey team. Which, now that he thought about it, sounded a lot more pathetic when phrased like that.

The next morning, Shane regretted staying awake for as long as he had. Mostly because he needed to be at the Metros arena by eight. Thankfully, working as the team’s social media manager was usually one of the more relaxed parts of his week. Most of the job consisted of filming practice clips, editing interviews, posting updates and occasionally reminding players not to post questionable things online while wearing team merch. Compared to journalism, it was almost peaceful.

Nobody expected groundbreaking investigative reporting from the Metros Instagram account. People mostly just wanted cool edits, funny player moments, behind the scenes photos, and dramatic slow-motion shots of skates hitting the ice, which Shane could absolutely provide.

Most of the time, Shane still worked for the Ottawa sports paper ’The Faceoff’, writing articles, covering games and doing interviews. Lately a lot of his work time has been spent researching specialised performance diets for an upcoming article.

Shane had become pretty interested in the topic somewhere along the way, and followed a diet himself. Professional athletes were constantly searching for advantages, and nutrition turned out to be one of the few areas where everybody seemed to have a completely different opinion.

Thankfully, the job was flexible enough that he could do most of it from home nowadays, especially after moving to Montreal. His editors didn’t particularly care where he worked from, as long as his articles were submitted on time and people kept clicking on them. Which they did.

That also meant Shane could spend more time around the Metros than he technically probably should’ve been spending for a “side gig.” Not that he minded. It gave him an excuse to be at practices, games, media events and occasionally travel with the team for away games whenever they needed extra social media coverage.

Watching the others on the ice still made something twist unpleasantly in his chest sometimes. Technically Shane could still play hockey if he really wanted to. Nobody was physically stopping him from skating anymore. He could join some smaller league somewhere that didn’t care if he was supporting gay rights, or just skate recreationally like thousands of other people did. But Shane had never really been interested in doing things casually. He liked being good at things. The best. And he couldn’t become the best hockey player in the world anymore if the NHL hadn’t even given him a real chance in the first place.

So instead, he stayed off the ice almost entirely, because in Shane’s opinion there wasn’t much point in half-doing something he had once planned his entire life around.

By the time Shane got home later that evening he felt pretty good. Practice had been easy, the players had been cooperative for once, and he already had enough footage edited for the week. Obviously, that meant the universe had to decide to ruin his mood again. Sitting in his inbox was another email from Ilya Rozanov.

Unbelievable. Asshole.

And said asshole would even have Shane’s number, but no. He had most likely tossed it aside the second that Shane had given it to him three years ago. Now he acted like Shane was the weird one for using email, as if Shane was actually interested in talking to him outside of this.

This was a professional matter. Shane had emailed him because of the pictures. Rozanov really didn’t need to turn this into… whatever the fuck this was supposed to be.

The moment he hit send he could’ve hit himself instead. What the fuck? That sounded way too open to the idea of actually talking to him outside of professional matters. Which he definitely didn’t want to do. Obviously.

All Shane wanted was for Rozanov to stop using his pictures. That could’ve been done in two emails. Him sending Rozanov a notice to stop. Rozanov agreeing. And then maybe a quick thank you mail afterward if Shane was feeling exceptionally polite. Instead they were somehow several emails deep into whatever the fuck this was supposed to be. No answer came after that, which should’ve been a good thing.

Still, a small irritated part of him couldn’t help wondering if maybe Rozanov suddenly remembered that Shane had actually been interested in him once and now felt weirded out by the fact that they were casually emailing each other like this, which was ridiculous considering Shane had gotten over that whole thing years ago.

On Tuesday, Shane checked his Montreal Metros emails again during breakfast, because he was avoiding missing the perfect time window to get the most engagement by posting the pictures he had taken over the past week too early. There was an actual science behind social media algorithms and unfortunately Shane had become just obsessed enough with numbers to care about things like that.

His inbox was full of the usual stuff: messages from his editor, media requests, two different notifications from the Metros, and some random company once again trying to sell him sports analytics software he absolutely did not need. And then there was an email from Rozanov. Sent Saturday evening.

Shane frowned slightly at the screen. So the asshole had replied after all. Three entire days later too.

When Shane read it he immediately noticed that this wasn’t the mail address Rozanov had previously used. This seemed to be his private mail.

Shane stared at the screen for a few more seconds. Is he fucking serious? Is he now not only insulting him in his articles, but also coming directly for him in emails? And using his private mail for it too. Contacting Rozanov in the first place had turned out to be a really big fucking mistake.

How about no emails at all? Shane thought to himself, shaking his head in disbelief. He wouldn’t tell him that though. He was just going to ignore him, hope this whole thing disappeared again and he could go back to working without getting annoying emails from the man who was technically his rival.

The ignoring worked for about three days before he got another email from Rozanov. Shane had been patiently waiting for his editor to return the article he was planning to publish next when a new notification appeared on his screen, again from Rozanov's private email.

And that complete bullshit actually ripped out a laugh from Shane. Because what the actual fuck? Obviously, Rozanov wasn’t really going to post this. It’s ridiculous but also… pretty funny. Maybe Shane should do the same, try to make Rozanov’s plan to get under his skin backfire.

After he had sent the email, he finally got the article back that he had recently sent to his editor to look over before publication, the actual article he was supposed to be publishing instead of trading stupid banter emails with Ilya Rozanov.

Thanks to the reputation he had built over the years, he didn't need to run every article by his supervisor anymore. The guy had already read the first draft anyway and liked it enough to approve the topic immediately.

The article itself was basically a closer look at some of the more specialised performance diets athletes followed, things like macrobiotic diets, extreme meal plans and other nutrition trends that somehow always seemed to come back around every few years. Shane had interviewed several athletes for it and, in his admittedly very unbiased opinion, it was a pretty good article.

After making the few changes his editor had suggested, he gave it one final read-through before hitting publish.

Then he closed the tab and moved on with his day. Or at least he tried to. Because less than ten minutes later another email notification appeared on his screen.

And in Shane’s opinion it looked NOTHING like him.

Shane stared at the drawing for another few seconds before scoffing quietly to himself. That looked absolutely nothing like him.

The proportions were completely fucked, the hair looked like someone had drawn it during an earthquake and for some reason Rozanov had decided Shane must always look irritated. He narrowed his eyes slightly at the picture, grabbing his phone from beside the laptop. Mostly because he suddenly had the brilliant idea to actually prove Rozanov wrong.

He would ask Hayden.

Technically Shane was aware that Hayden was incredibly bad at recognizing faces. Not in a “medical condition” way, but enough that he regularly failed to recognize actors between movies if they changed hairstyles and once accidentally introduced himself twice to the same guy at a party. He quickly took a photo of the drawing before opening his chat with Hayden.

The fact that Hayden had guessed it correctly didn’t actually mean anything. And Shane could just lie. There was no way in hell he was going to admit that the stupid drawing maybe vaguely looked like him.

Shane frowns. What a mean thing to say. He shakes his head. Rozanov is just unbelievable. Shane stares at the screen for another few seconds before typing again.

What a smooth fucking change of topic. Not that Shane hadn’t thought about messaging him from a private mail instead. Well technically he would prefer to chat over messenger or something, but clearly Rozanov still wasn’t interested in having his number.Fucking asshole. But he just couldn’t get himself to stop texting him… So he grabbed his phone and switched to his private mail.

Eventually Shane let out a long sigh before finally closing the laptop. He had already stayed awake way too late and if he kept answering Rozanov’s emails they’d probably still be doing this at three in the morning.

The next morning Shane immediately remembered why giving Rozanov his private email had actually been a terrible fucking idea.

Because unlike his work mail, his private Outlook notifications went directly to his phone. And for some reason Rozanov had now decided to become the most active email user alive. Shane woke up to three separate notifications already sitting on his lockscreen.

Immediately, Shane panicked, opening his laptop before he even got up to brush his teeth or get ready in any way. His eyes scanned over the article he had posted the previous day. It already had thousands of views, and his editor had checked it before publication. So had Shane. Had they really overlooked a mistake that even Rozanov had noticed?

After twenty minutes of reading an article that only took five minutes to get through, Shane still hadn't found a single mistake.

He didn't get an answer immediately, so he started opening the other two emails he had gotten.

How nice, Shane thought to himself, shaking his head, as he opened the last mail. Which was completely empty. Rozanov had probably accidentally hit send before typing anything.

He’d never ended up telling him what the typo was, which told Shane there probably hadn't been one to begin with. If Rozanov had actually found a typo, he would've attached a screenshot, highlighted it in red and written an entire article about it. The fact that he’d never mentioned it again was proof enough that he had just been trying to annoy him.

The emails didn’t stop after that. It was quite the opposite. At some point, opening an email from Rozanov had become just another part of his day. Sometimes they were about articles one of them had written. Sometimes about hockey. Sometimes about absolutely nothing at all. Once Rozanov had sent him a picture of a cat because it looked angry enough to remind him of Shane. Shane had spent an insane amount of time typing a response explaining why that comparison made absolutely no sense.

Most friendships probably weren't built on a foundation of passive aggressive emails and professional irritation. Shane wasn't even sure if friendship was the correct word for whatever this was. Rozanov wasn’t his friend. And he would never be. No matter how many weeks they kept emailing each other.

Today was one of the days Shane actually had to go into the office. They had some kind of meeting, and because it wouldn’t make much sense to drive two hours just to go in for the meeting only to immediately leave again, he would just spend the rest of the day working there.

Not that he had much to do. Most of his work that day consisted of checking a few source materials and proofreading an article for Rose, one of his coworkers and, as previously mentioned, his ex. Rose had been one of Shane’s longest relationships. Which admittedly wasn’t saying much, considering they had only lasted a little under three months.

They had met during their first year at university, became friends almost immediately and somewhere along the way decided they might as well give dating a try. He really liked her. They got along well and had the same sense of humour, but they’d also noticed pretty quickly that they would be better off as friends. The physical side of the relationship certainly hadn’t helped as an argument. Shane had mostly blamed himself at the time, that school was probably stressing him out.

Rose had eventually sat him down over coffee and very gently explained that they simply weren’t compatible.

Shane understood. Rose loved spontaneous plans while Shane liked knowing exactly what he was doing a few days, if not weeks, in advance, Rose loved going out with the mindset ‘the more the merrier’ while Shane preferred doing stuff alone, or with only a few close friends. So in the end they decided to revert back to being friends. That worked a lot better.

Even back then, she’d always given him her stuff to read through, and when they ended up working for the same paper things hadn’t changed. He wasn’t even part of the editorial department, but he had developed a reputation for completing articles with almost no mistakes and very little need for revision. And even after finishing university, and being really good at editing her own articles, she still always wanted Shane to look at them.

Shane strongly suspected it had less to do with trusting his editing skills and more to do with the fact that she was trying to woo the guy actually responsible for editing. Apparently handing in an article with almost no mistakes counted as making a move.

Shane, however, had a feeling that Miles, the guy Rose was trying to impress, wasn’t particularly interested, considering Miles’s complete lack of reaction to Rose’s increasingly obvious attempts at flirting.

When Shane entered the building, he found his desk exactly the same as he had left it a few days ago. Nothing had been moved this time. The last time he’d come back after not being there for quite a while, everything had been a mess. All his supplies had been in different places and half of his stuff had either been used up or had completely disappeared.

Shane knew, of course, that his desk would be used while he wasn't there. It wasn't like they were just going to leave an empty desk lying around. But all he wanted was for it not to be messy and for him to be able to start a day at the office without having to spend twenty minutes searching for pens and notebooks.

The only thing that had changed this time was the lock screen wallpaper on his computer. A very unfortunate picture of himself, that made him choke on his own spit. The photo had been taken years ago in college when he went on a date with Rose and accidentally sneezed while a stranger was taking a picture of them. Rose had obviously been cropped out, leaving only a close-up image of Shane's sneezing face.

That was definitely Rose's doing. And he would absolutely be paying her back once he had time for it. He had some pretty good material on his phone.

The meeting he had to attend wasn't for another hour, so he had some time to get other things done first. Right as he unlocked his computer, his phone chimed next to him. A new email from Rozanov. This time it had been sent from his work email again, which told Shane that Rozanov was probably at work and couldn't use his phone.

Attached was a video of Shane playing hockey only a few months before his dream of becoming a professional player had been destroyed. Watching it, he scrunched up his face in discomfort. He didn't like being reminded of that time.

He decided to answer truthfully anyway, even though it was kind of a stupid question. Obviously it was him. He didn't know how many half-Asian kids named Hollander had played junior hockey. Probably not many.

The message confused Shane for a moment, because he was pretty sure he had told Rozanov that when they first met. Maybe he’d forgotten.

Shane was starting to get a little tired of all the questions, and was suspicious of why he was seemingly being so nice about it. He definitely didn't feel like explaining to the guy he supposedly hated how his hockey career had ended before it ever really started. Or how he had been forced into a career that he didn't dislike, but that would never make him quite as happy as hockey had. Before he could reiterate that he didn't want to talk about it, another email arrived.

Right when he wanted to put his phone down, Rose appeared with the little pink USB stick she always used to hand over her articles.

"Who are you texting?" She asked curiously, already trying to peek at his phone. Probably wondering if he found another lead for a good story.

"No one," he answered, sounding more annoyed than intended. It technically wasn't a lie, either. He wasn’t texting anyone.

She lifted an eyebrow, demanding a real answer.

"Rosmnof," he mumbled avoiding eye contact.

"What was that?"

"Rozanov," he repeated a little louder, now looking at her.

Her eyes widened immediately. "The asshole who keeps writing insulting articles?"

He nodded.

"The guy who never credits you when he clearly uses your stuff?"

Another nod.

"The hot Russ-“

"Okay, I think we're talking about the same guy. Enough of that," Shane interrupted before she could continue.

"So why exactly are you texting him?" She leaned against the desk, supporting her weight with her arms behind her.

"Well, I emailed him a few weeks ago that I don't appreciate him using my pictures without crediting me," Shane explained. "And now he just keeps emailing me." He shrugged like it was nothing.

Rose's lips curled into a lopsided smile. "A few weeks." She didn’t say it as a question, but as an observation.

"What?" Shane asked.

"He is totally into you."

"Stop it. If he were into me, he would've texted me three years ago. And I’m pretty sure he’s straight."

"...He kissed you."

"Straight people kiss other people of the same gender sometimes. That’s completely normal. Look at me!” Rose immediately started laughing. Shane rolled his eyes and swatted a sheet of paper at her. "And anyway, he would’ve texted."

Rose shrugged, still laughing and dodged the paper. "Maybe he lost your number and was too shy to ask."

Now Shane was the one raising an eyebrow. "Rozanov? Too shy?"

Rose sighed. "Okay, yeah. You're right, So what are you two texting about exactly?

"Right now he’s asking me a whole lot about my hockey past.’’ He huffed and grabbed at the USB stick still in her hand from where she was leaning back against the table. He needed to distract himself, and did so by opening her article on his PC. "He also insults me a lot."

"Like how?"

"Yesterday he called my email address boring.’’ He told her. "That doesn’t even make sense."

"Your private mail?"

He nodded. "Obviously. I couldn't really control my work mail address."

She didn't say anything, but he got the feeling he probably shouldn't have told her that they were chatting over their private emails now. The look on her face certainly suggested that, anyway. When Shane finally glanced up from her article, Rose was still staring at him with the same expression.

"What?" he asked.

Rose shook her head. "Nothing." Which usually meant something.

"Rose."

"Shane."

Her lips twitched. Shane narrowed his eyes at her before returning his attention to the article. Unfortunately, that only seemed to encourage her.

"So how often are you two emailing each other?"

He shrugged. "I don't know." The answer didn’t seem to satisfy Rose. She let out another laugh and looked away, as if pretending she hadn't just done that. Shane frowned.

"What?" He asked, for the 10th time.

"You don't know?"

"I never counted." Which, in Shane’s opinion, was a perfectly reasonable answer. Nobody counted how many emails they exchanged with another person. At least, he was pretty sure nobody did.

Rose, however, seemed to disagree.

Shane sighed and scrolled further down her article. There was already a comma missing in the second paragraph. "Didn't you have something important you needed me to proofread? You don't want to distract me while I do."

"Hmmm." She answered, unconvincingly.

Shane rolled his eyes, gesturing to his laptop. “Go on. Let me get this finished then, and we’ll talk later.”

"Great. We’re still on for after work?" She asked him, but it wasn’t a question. Not that Shane would’ve replied with a no if it were a question. Life had been so busy lately and he rarely ever had time to actually hang out with her, even though she was, alongside Hayden, one of his best friends.

She thankfully didn't push any further, instead finally stopping her nagging for an answer Shane himself didn’t even know yet.

"Thank you for checking my article. You're the best." Before Shane could respond, she leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to the side of his head, disappearing back towards her own desk.

The rest of the morning passed quickly.

Most of Rose's article was in decent shape. Shane fixed a handful of grammar mistakes, added several comments in places where entire paragraphs could probably be cut in half and gave it back to her before returning to his own work.

In between that, he answered a few emails, checked some sources for an upcoming piece and watched the view count on his article about specialized performance diets continue to climb throughout the morning.

The reactions had been about what he expected.

Some readers agreed with the athletes who swore by carefully planned nutrition. Others seemed convinced that most specialized diets were little more than expensive trends. Considering half the athletes he had interviewed disagreed with each other too, Shane couldn't really blame them. More importantly, the article had already generated enough traffic that the boss seemed happy with it.

The scheduled meeting could have probably been an email. Most of it consisted of discussing upcoming assignments, article performance, and reminding everybody about deadlines they were already aware of. A twenty-minute discussion broke out over a headline that Shane still thought had been perfectly fine before people started overthinking it. Cancel culture applied to everything these days and was a serious issue that had become larger and larger. You had to put way more thought into what you can write and what not nowadays.

By the time it was finally over, nearly an hour had passed, and Shane had written almost no useful notes. When Shane returned to his desk after the meeting, a new email was already waiting for him. From Rozanov.

Shane read the email twice. The criticism wasn't unusual. The random word at the end of the paragraph definitely was. The word looked vaguely German, which unfortunately didn't help and the translator he opened refused to translate it or tried to convince him it meant something that definitely wasn’t right.

Shane snorted. So apparently being able to insult him in Russian and English wasn’t enough for Rozanov. He’d had to learn another language as well. But Swiss German? Really? He decided to stop replying and ignore the emails that followed with other probable insults.

After work, Rose was already waiting for him by his car. She lived close enough to either bike or walk to work. By the time he reached the parking lot she was already standing by the passenger door, repeatedly pulling on the handle despite the fact that the car was very obviously locked.

"You know, most people wait until the owner unlocks the car."

Rose looked up from her completely unsuccessful attempt at breaking into his car and smiled. Shane finally located his keys, unlocked the doors and she climbed into the passenger seat before he had even gotten behind the wheel himself.

"I read your article today.'' She opened the conversation when they both sat down and Shane started the engine, surprised she didn't want to begin with the topic of ‘Rozanov’.

Rose was supportive. She was a good friend. She also had the attention span of a distracted squirrel whenever sports journalism was involved that wasn't about a game.

"You actually read it?"

"Most of it."

He nodded, amused, and she ignored it, leaning back in her seat as the city slowly moved past outside the windows. Then she started telling him her thoughts about his article. According to Rose the article had been good, which was nice to hear, although less impressive after she admitted she hadn't actually finished reading all of it. Still, she seemed fairly interested in the topic, or at least interested enough to remember parts of it, and Shane found himself explaining one of the interviews he had done, with a Russian guy, which gave her cause to finally change direction.

“So… are you making a move on him?” She asked. Shane’s head immediately swung toward her in shock, causing the car to drift slightly to the right before he quickly corrected it. “I’m sorry, what?”

Rose just casually reached over to the air conditioning controls, clicking through the settings until she seemed satisfied with the temperature. “Well, he’s totally into you,” she said matter-of-factly. “And he’s hot as fuck. You’re gonna need my help making a move though. You’re miserable at flirting.”

Shane frowned, trying to focus back on the road. The drive to their favourite café only took about half an hour, and he’d quite like to arrive there in one piece. “I’m so confused.”

“I just feel like you’ve been so lonely.” She shrugged. “You haven’t dated anyone since we were together, and that’s been years.”

“And so you think I should ask out a guy?” Shane shook his head, already trying to think of a way to redirect the conversation somewhere else.

“Well, yes. Obviously.” Rose laughed as if the alternative was ridiculous. “Would you rather ask out another girl?”

Shane glanced at her again. It slowly started to make sense what she was trying to imply. “…you think I’m gay?”

This time Rose was the one looking confused. “Well… yes? We broke up because of it.”

Shane frowned. “Huh? We broke up because you thought I was gay?”

“Shane… what did you think I meant when I said we weren’t compatible?”

He hesitated for a second, trying to remember a conversation from years ago. “I thought it was because we had really different interests. Like… you loved going out all the time and I didn’t. You always wanted to do everything with loads of people while I preferred staying home or hanging out with just a few friends.”

Rose just stared at him. “Oh my God…” she muttered, sounding completely speechless. “You’re not gay?”

Shane’s gaze stayed on the road. “I don’t think so?”

She continued staring at him for another few seconds before trying a different approach. “You don’t think Rozanov is… attractive?”

Shane made a face. “I mean… he’s obviously not ugly, I guess-”

Rose immediately interrupted him. “Would you kiss him again if you were sober?”

That made him think. He didn’t answer straight away. The question made him far more uncomfortable than it probably should. He also didn’t want to know the answer himself, let alone say it out loud. Instead he did what he usually did whenever a conversation became inconvenient: moving the topic in another direction. "How's Miles?"

Rose narrowed her eyes. "Don't change the subject."

It only confirmed to Shane that he had picked the right topic. He glanced over at her for a second as they stopped at a red light, watching her cross her arms and sink further into the passenger seat.

"He's good. Why?"

Shane shrugged as if he hadn’t spent the last several months watching her find increasingly creative excuses to interact with the editor. "No reason."

Rose snorted.

"There obviously is a reason."

He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel for a moment. He probably shouldn't say anything. He knew that. Rose had made it very clear over the years whenever he attempted to involve himself in her dating life.

But he had already started. He couldn’t back down again.

"Well..." he says, keeping his eyes on the road. "You've been flirting with him for months."

Rose turned her head so quickly he wouldn’t have been surprised if her head flew off.

"I have not."

"You have."

"No."

"Yes."

She stared at him in complete disbelief while Shane tried very hard not to smile. The conversation had successfully moved away from Rozanov and that was really all he cared about.

"You changed your entire writing style because he said he preferred shorter sentences."

Rose opened her mouth, closed it again and then let out a long suffering sigh before holding back a laugh.

"Oh my God. You think I like Miles."

Shane frowned slightly. From his perspective he was being perfectly reasonable. "Well, yeah."

For some reason that only made her stare harder. "Shane."

"What?"

"He's gay."

That made him glance away from the road, towards her again. "You know he's gay?"

Rose was looking at him as if he'd announced he had only just discovered gravity. "Shane, he is painfully obviously gay, everyone in the office knows that."

He had really thought he was being helpful. "Well, at least you noticed he’s gay, which is an improvement.” He offered, after a few seconds of thinking what to say next.

She laughed, somehow cackling and giggling at the same time. "Well, you know someone else who's obviously into guys?" She asked in a whisper, a shit-eating grin slowly spreading across her face. Shane already knew where this was going and didn’t react as he pulled into the café parking lot, focusing very hard on finding a space and absolutely not on whatever terrible conclusion Rose had just reached.

Rose leaned closer across the centre console, her voice still lowered as if she was about to reveal state secrets. "Rozanov."

"I will leave the next moment you mention him, and then you can walk home." He said as he stepped out of the car. She just lifted her arms in surrender.

She actually managed to survive the entire coffee without bringing Rozanov up again. Instead she spent most of the afternoon making fun of Shane for apparently being the last person in the office to realize Miles was gay. A humiliating experience, in his opinion.

By the time he finally dropped her back off at her apartment, he had been informed countless times that his gaydar was apparently malfunctioning. He first didn’t even understand what that meant, and after an explanation from her side it made even less sense because he did notice Miles was gay, he just didn’t notice how obvious it was. And apparently Miles was also flirting with him, which he’d had absolutely no idea about.

“Proves another point.” Rose had said, trying hard not to mention Rozanov again.

He didn’t get another email from Rozanov until Saturday evening.

In the meantime, after everything Rose had said to him, Shane had spent far too much of his free time turning the conversation over in his head, thinking about his feelings, what he actually felt towards other people, specifically women. He liked women; they were nice to look at, he enjoyed spending time with them, and he had dated them before. But was he actually attracted to them?

Looking back, sex had always felt like work. He never understood why it didn't excite him the way his friends had always described it after nights with their girlfriends or random hookups. If he was being honest with himself, the only genuinely enjoyable sexual experience he'd ever had had been a blowjob from Jessica Baley, his girlfriend back in high school. Just like Rose, she had broken up with him after a disastrous attempt at having sex. Back then it had been even worse than it had been in university, awkward enough that he'd spent years convincing himself he had simply needed more experience.

Now, for the first time in his life, he had to admit something he’d never dared put into words: he didn't like having sex with women. The conclusion should have been obvious, but somehow his mind refused to make the leap. It had also never occurred to him that maybe the problem wasn't that he didn’t enjoy sex - maybe it was just that he wanted to have sex with men instead. The thought felt foreign, almost absurd. He didn't even know how that was supposed to work. Shane definitely wasn't at the point where he was willing to type gay porn into a search bar. He was too afraid of what he might feel if he did.

Shane looked at the link a bit confused for a second before clicking it. He was met with ‘open TikTok app to view video’ screen, which he didn’t have on his phone, and wouldn’t download.

It somehow sounded both fun and incredibly stupid. Then again, Shane had never been the type to back down from a challenge, especially not one he actually had a chance of winning. He wasn't exactly a gifted artist, but judging by the masterpieces Rozanov had proudly attached to his emails so far, he wasn't expecting much competition either.

After sending the email, Shane pushed himself out of his bed and wandered through his apartment in search of pens and crayons. He honestly couldn't remember the last time he'd sat down to draw something that was actually supposed to look good, and within minutes he remembered exactly why. He absolutely sucked. No matter what he tried, every line somehow made it worse.

For the next half hour he stubbornly kept starting over, crumpling up sketch after sketch before finally admitting defeat after the fifth attempt. In the end he dug out the second drawing he'd started, erased a few of the worst mistakes, and forced himself to finish it until it looked... acceptable. Definitely not good but acceptable. There was no way Rozanov was better than he was anyway. Satisfied enough with that conclusion, Shane snapped a picture of his masterpiece, dropped back into his bed, grabbed his phone, and started typing another email.

It took almost another hour until he finally got another email from Rozanov informing him that he was done as well. In the meantime, Shane had made himself a healthy salad, trying to distract himself so he wouldn't just go to sleep, because he really wanted to see what Rozanov had been working on for this long.

Seemed a little unfair that Shane had to show his first, but whatever. He had finished first, so he guessed it only made sense that he'd be the first one to send his masterpiece as well. Taking one last look at the drawing on his phone, he decided it wasn't going to get any better and hit reply.

Shane wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but it definitely hadn't been that. The drawing looked incredible. Rozanov had somehow managed to capture Shane's features almost perfectly. Shane immediately felt even more embarrassed about his own pathetic attempt at drawing the Russian. He hated losing, and this was very clearly a loss. But disappointment wasn't the only thing settling somewhere in his chest.

No reply came. Shane stared at his phone for another minute, before he pulled the screen down, refreshing his mail app. Nothing. He frowned. Rozanov had been replying almost instantly all evening. Now he’d just stopped. Shane considered sending another email asking if everything was okay, but quickly decided against it. Maybe he'd gone to bed. Maybe he had simply missed the email. Or maybe asking about his mother had crossed some invisible line Shane hadn't known existed.

Whatever line Shane had been worried he’d crossed, it hadn’t been far enough to end the conversation. Only a few days later, the emails continued again.

What started as an email every other evening gradually turned into getting one almost every day again, just like before.

When Shane checked his calendar, he always checked Hayden’s calendar too. The stupid habit.

Hayden’s calendar was synced with the rink’s schedule, so it was usually the easiest way to see what was going on with the team. He immediately frowned when he looked at it. Rozanov was scheduled for Thursday. That was odd. The Metros didn’t have practice scheduled on Thursday. At least, not according to Hayden’s calendar.

Shane clicked back to his own schedule almost subconsciously, checking whether he was free that day. He was. Then he clicked back to Hayden’s. Maybe the team had scheduled something last minute and nobody hadn’t bothered informing him because they didn’t actually need the social media guy there.

Which was fine. But again, Shane wasn’t particularly thrilled by the idea of leaving Rozanov unsupervised around the team.

The man already managed to find enough dubious material for his articles under normal circumstances. God only knew what kind of nonsense he would write if nobody was there to keep an eye on him. So Shane should probably show up too.

The decision seemed perfectly reasonable.

At least that's what Shane told himself over the next few days whenever he caught himself checking Hayden's calendar again. There was probably a completely normal explanation for Rozanov being at the rink on a day without practice.

Thursday arrived far quicker than Shane would’ve liked.

He didn’t have anything particularly important to do that day. Quite the opposite, actually. He could’ve slept in, gone to the gym, finished some work from home and enjoyed a rare day where nobody expected anything from him. Instead, he found himself driving toward the rink shortly before noon, still convinced that there was probably some kind of team activity which nobody had bothered to put on his schedule.

The parking lot should’ve been the first sign something was wrong, because it was almost empty. Not completely empty - there were a handful of cars scattered throughout the lot, but nowhere near enough for a team practice. Shane slowed his car, eyes automatically searching for familiar vehicles. He recognized none of them.

His suspicion only grew once he stepped inside.

There were rink employees moving through the hallways, somebody cleaning part of the stands and a group of kids walking out of one of the side rooms carrying hockey bags that were nearly as large as they were. But there was no sign of the Metros.

Shane pulled out his phone and checked the schedule again as he walked.

By the time he reached the rink itself he was starting to wonder if he had completely misunderstood something - maybe he’d mixed up the dates. After all, why would Rozanov be showing up again so soon after the last time?

The ice was empty, freshly resurfaced and untouched, while the stands sat dark and abandoned above it. He walked further down the bench area until he finally found the only other person.

Rozanov was sitting on one of the benches with a pair of skates hanging loosely from one hand. He looked up the moment Shane appeared, as if he had been expecting him the entire time, which was probably the case. “Punctual as always,” he said, flashing him a cocky grin.

Shane simply stared at him. There were at least a dozen questions he could have asked first, but somehow the words that came out were, “There isn’t even a practice today.”

Rozanov nodded as if that were the least remarkable thing in the world. “Correct.”

The answer somehow only made Shane more vexed. “Then why are you here?”

Instead of answering immediately, Rozanov lifted the pair of skates. “I wanted to see you skate. I picked up size 11, that should fit you, yes? Hm, maybe too big.” He looked down at his feet like he could tell what size he was wearing just from that.

For a moment Shane wondered if he had misheard him. The words themselves weren’t complicated, yet his brain seemed unwilling to arrange them into a sentence that made any kind of sense. “How did you know I’d show up?” Shane asked, immediately noticing how fucking stupid the question was.

It was obvious that Rozanov noticed him always being there when he was. And apparently he’d used it to his advantage. Shane had shown up, after all. Drove all the way to the rink on his day off because Rozanov’s name had appeared on a schedule where it realistically had no reason to be. In hindsight that probably hadn’t been his strongest moment.

Rozanov didn’t answer his question. He didn't need to. Instead he held up the skates and kinda waved them around by the laces, to get him to take them.

“I don’t have any gloves.” Shane tried an excuse first, because everyone knew how dangerous it was to skate with no gloves. How someone could run over your hands and sever your fingers. Even though no one else was here.

Rozanov chuckled, rolled his eyes and then pulled out a pair of rather thin, fluffy gloves. And threw them at him. He only caught one of them, automatically bending down to pick up the other as well. They kinda looked like women’s gloves. Where did he even get them from? Stole them from one of his hook ups? He couldn’t hold back an unpleasant expression.

Again Rozanov shook the skates, making the blade click against the heel of the other skate. “Here, put them on. Do you know how? I can tie them for you if you want.” He said, teasingly. “I am very good at tying knots.”

Shane ignored the comment. The thought of skating alone was enough to make him feel vaguely sick. Not because of the skates themselves - they were just skates. A pair of black and blue skates that had probably been rented twenty minutes ago. The problem was what came with them.

Shane still loved hockey. His entire life revolved around hockey. He watched it, wrote about it, talked about it, spent most of his working hours around it. Hockey had never been the thing he’d stopped loving.

The problem was skating, because the second his blades touched the ice, he wasn’t a journalist or a social media manager anymore.

He would become the eighteen-year-old version of himself again. The one who had expected his future to look completely different. Shane had spent years avoiding that feeling.

“I don’t skate anymore.”

Rozanov lowered the skates slightly but didn’t put them away. “You said that,” he said, “but is like swimming. You can't unlearn it, yes?”

“That’s not- that’s not the point, okay?” He still wasn’t particularly keen on telling Rozanov his entire life story. Especially not the parts of it he usually avoided thinking about himself.

At the same time, he could feel his resolve starting to crack. Shane wanted out of this conversation altogether and was desperately looking for something to redirect it toward.

That’s when he noticed the skates. Or more specifically, the lack of them.

Rozanov wasn’t wearing any himself. In fact, there wasn’t even a second pair anywhere nearby. Which made absolutely no sense.

Wanting to watch Shane skate was already weird enough. Wanting to watch Shane skate while staying firmly off the ice himself was even weirder.

And Shane knew for a fact that Rozanov used to play hockey.

There was no way he had simply forgotten to bring skates. The guy had definitely planned this entire thing days in advance. He had rented ice time, manipulated a schedule and rented a pair of skates in Shane’s size.

So there had to be a reason why he didn’t want to get on the ice as well.

“And what about you?” Shane asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “Why aren’t you wearing skates? Wouldn’t you want to join me?”

For the first time since he’d arrived, Rozanov hesitated.

“Don’t want to,” he finally said with a shrug.

Shane stared at him.

A few minutes ago Shane had essentially said the exact same thing and Rozanov had refused to accept it as a valid reason. Apparently the rules only applied to other people.

“I don’t think it’s fair if only I get on the ice,” he said, setting his bag down on the bench. “If you’re so interested in me skating, you can skate too.”

Rozanov shook his head. “No.”

Something flashed across Rozanov’s face. It was gone so quickly that Shane couldn’t really identify it before it disappeared behind the usual expression of cockiness and a hint of irritation.

Interesting.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“That wasn’t a good enough answer when I said it.”

“That is different.”

“How?”

He didn’t answer.

Normally Rozanov would’ve kept arguing out of principle. Unfortunately, Shane recognized that particular strategy because it was exactly the same one he had been using for the last ten minutes.

“I will get you skates,” Shane decided. If Rozanov was going to be persistent about Shane skating, then he could be persistent too.

Before the journalist could object, Shane turned around and started walking toward the rental counter. He wasn’t entirely sure what size Rozanov wore. The guy was taller than him, but not by an absurd amount. Probably half a size bigger.

“Hollander.”

He ignored him. The fact that Rozanov sounded noticeably less amused than he had moments before only encouraged him.

A few minutes later Shane found himself carrying a second pair of skates back toward the bench area with a huge amount of satisfaction. The expression on Rozanov’s face the moment he spotted them made the trip worth it.

“I do not need them.”

“I don’t think skating without them is possible,” Shane retorted, dropping the skates onto the bench beside him.

Rozanov looked at the skates. Then at Shane. “I am not getting on the ice.”

“And I’m not getting on the ice without you,” Shane replied.

Shane had his reasons for avoiding skating and Rozanov clearly also had his reasons for staying off the ice. Shane didn’t know what they were and, considering who he was dealing with, he probably wasn’t going to get an answer anytime soon.

Still, that wasn’t really the point.

The point was that Shane had finally found an argument Rozanov couldn’t talk his way around. Or at least it seemed like it.

His expectation was that Rozanov would eventually throw his hands up, decide neither of them was skating and leave.

Instead he groaned in annoyance before bending down and pulling off his shoes.

Shane stared at him in confusion.

Rozanov grabbed the skates Shane had rented, dragged them closer and started loosening the laces. “Alright. Let’s lace up.”

Fuck. That had not gone according to plan at all.

“Hollander,” Rozanov said without looking up from the skate he was currently forcing onto his foot. “Hurry up.”

He stayed still for another few seconds before slowly sitting down next to Rozanov, starting to put the skates on as well. The right one first, then then the left one, just like he used to do. With the second skate on, slight panic started to rise inside him. And also another feeling… anticipation.

He could still recall the last time he’d actually skated. It had been when he was eighteen, the day before the draft. He hadn’t been able to sleep the whole night - he’d been too excited for the next few days - so he’d gone to the rink as soon as it opened in the morning, skating some loops and shooting a few pucks to blow off some steam. He hadn’t known that it would be the last time he stepped foot on ice with skates on.

He was now also nervous. What if he embarrassed himself in front of Rozanov? What if he actually had forgotten how to skate and was about to look like a child being on the ice for the first time? What if Rozanov was better than him? He grimaced as he tightened his skate. Three years ago when they had met, after the Russian had told him that he skated as well, he’d started showing him videos of his games back in Russia. And he was really, really good.

Not that Shane had told him that, that night. But he was indeed awesome to watch. Now, he watched Rozanov tightening his own skates before standing up and holding himself at the side of the rink. The casual pose looked almost forced, but Shane decided to not comment on it as he came to stand by him.

‘’Ladies first.’’ Rozanov said, bowing slightly and making an exaggerated motion with his arms towards the entrance to the ice.

“Bitches next.’’ Shane retorted, flipping him off as he stepped one foot onto the ice.

The ice felt different than he remembered, but also the exact same way. His blade slid forward slightly, and Shane's entire body tensed as years’ worth of anxiety immediately rushed to the surface again. What if he couldn't do it anymore? What if he'd spent the last decade pretending he wasn't bitter about hockey anymore only to discover he'd actually forgotten the one thing he had always been good at?

Then his other foot touched the ice and suddenly everything came back. His balance adjusted before he even consciously thought about it. The movement felt so natural. It had been almost ten whole years but his body still remembered exactly what to do.

Shane pushed off. The sound of blades cutting through the ice filled the rink, making something warm settle in his chest. The feeling was so familiar it almost hurt. For a few seconds he completely forgot Rozanov even existed.

The cold air hit his face as he picked up speed. He relished in the feeling of his edges digging into the ice, the certainty that his body knew exactly what it was doing. He came to a halt near the centre of the rink, small splinters of ice shooting up from his skates as he stopped.

He turned around, only now noticing what a huge grin was on his face as he looked at Rozanov, who was still off the ice holding onto the boards of the rink.

“So? Aren't you joining me?” Shane said, trying to hide the enjoyment in his voice. Unsuccessfully.

Rozanov didn't answer. He simply stepped onto the ice as well.

He looked unstable. Very unstable. He was still holding onto the boards with one hand and Shane's gaze travelled over his body, trying to figure out what was causing him to stand so... weirdly.

He was standing mostly on his left leg. His right one was also planted on the ice, but he didn't seem to be putting all of his weight on it.

Slowly Shane skated over to him. “You alright?” he asked, not entirely sure what to say to that. Did he have pain in his leg? Had he injured himself recently? Was that the reason he couldn't stand up straight?

“Yes,” Rozanov growled before letting go of the boards and skating a few feet forward.

It didn't look bad, per se. It just didn't look like someone who had played more or less professionally only a few years ago.

Shane watched him for another few seconds. Rozanov kept moving, slowly making his way along the boards before eventually pushing himself a little further onto the ice. The movements weren't clumsy, which somehow looked stranger than if he had just been bad. Shane had spent most of his life around hockey. He knew what inexperienced skaters looked like. He knew what injured skaters looked like too. And right now Rozanov looked much closer to the second category than the first.

"You sure?" Shane asked again. "Because you don't exactly look comfortable."

For a second it looked like Rozanov was considering whether or not to tell him to fuck off. Instead he pushed forward again and slowly skated closer to the center of the Ice.

Shane followed after him, mostly because standing still felt impossible right now. The second he started moving again he felt that same familiar rush settle back into his chest. His body felt so much lighter on the ice. It was ridiculous how much he had missed this. He spun around once, purely because he could, before skating backwards for several feet. When he looked back toward Rozanov, the other man was watching him.

"You're showing off," Rozanov huffed.

Shane grinned. Showing off almost sounded like a compliment coming from Rozanov. And even if it wasn't a real one, he was starting to understand why so many players around the league wanted to get complimented by him. It felt pretty good.

"Maybe you're just jealous because you can't do it."

The glare Rozanov sent him this time could've killed someone instantly.

Rozanov rolled his eyes before looking down at his skates for a second, like he was concentrating on something. Shane watched him carefully as he completed another slow turn around the rink. The longer he looked, the stranger it seemed. Not because Rozanov couldn't skate. He obviously could. The fundamentals were all there. Everything looked like somebody who knew exactly what they were doing. It was just... slower. Like every movement required conscious effort.

"Are you going to tell me why you skate like that?" Shane asked, more direct this time.

He didn't get an answer immediately.

"I am here to watch you skate. Not to skate by myself," Rozanov finally said before making his way back toward the boards and grabbing onto them again. His face was scrunched up in an unpleasant grimace that seemed impossible to hide.

"Why did you stop skating?" Shane asked again, changing the question.

Rozanov stared at him for a few seconds, obviously considering what to say next. "I couldn't skate anymore," he finally said, kicking lightly at the ice with his left blade.

Shane skated a little closer. "Well, I can see that," he said, unable to keep the amusement out of his voice.

That immediately earned him another middle finger.

"But why?"

Rozanov let out a long sigh, finally accepting that Shane wasn't going to let it go.

"I had an accident after I moved to Boston," he said slowly. "Stupid mistake."

He looked away, no longer meeting Shane's eyes.

"An accident?" Shane pushed.

"Mhm." Rozanov nodded. "Never put your leg on dashboard as passenger." A bitter laugh escaped him. "Especially if driver crashes car."

Shane noticed his English getting worse, how he was dropping more articles and sounding even more foreign than he already did.

"So your leg..." Shane tried to imagine what had happened. It was one of the first things they told you when learning to drive. Or at least one of the things somebody always brought up eventually. Never put your feet on the dashboard. Never rest your legs there. The injuries were horrifying.

"Completely fucked," Rozanov said with a shrug. "I am very lucky to have rich friend who helped pay for all medical things." Another bitter smile appeared on his face. "American healthcare sucks."

Shane nodded slowly. "That was really nice of them," he said. "They must be a pretty close friend then."

"Yes." Rozanov looked down at the ice. "She is daughter of Sergei Vetrov. Former Soviet goaltender. We grew up together."

Shane nodded again, not entirely sure what to say to that. He felt bad for him. Really bad, actually.

Until now, Shane had always thought his own situation was pretty much the worst-case scenario. He had spent years being angry that he’d never gotten the chance to prove himself. Angry that he never got to see how far he could've gone if people had just given him a fair shot. But this was different. This was worse. Shane could still skate whenever he wanted. He simply chose not to.

His eyes drifted back toward the ice stretching out in front of them. Seeing Rozanov standing there holding onto the boards felt so wrong. If hockey had been taken away from Shane the way it had been taken away from Rozanov, he would've killed somebody. Probably multiple people. Hayden would tell him that that wasn't a normal reaction. Hayden would be wrong.

"You know," Shane eventually said, pushing himself backwards a few feet before turning neatly back toward him, "this is really depressing."

“Mmm, you don't say.'' Rozanov exhaled.

"No, seriously." Shane pointed at him. "You came all the way here just to stand there."

"I came here to watch you.”

"It sounds so creepy when you say it like that."

Rozanov rolled his eyes, but Shane noticed something interesting. He wasn't looking at Shane anymore - he was looking at the ice. Every few seconds, his gaze drifted somewhere else across the rink before returning again.

Shane knew that look. He had spent years having the same expression every time somebody talked about hockey around him after the draft. The wanting. The quiet bitterness of looking at something you had loved, something you still did, and knowing things should've turned out differently.

"Come skate with me."

The answer came immediately. "No." Rozanov shook his head.

Shane frowned. "That wasn't a suggestion."

"Good thing I do not care."

"It'll be one lap."

"No. I already did a lap, is enough"

"Half a lap."

"No."

"Stop behaving like a child. You played professionally."

"And now I do not."

Shane stared at him for another few seconds before shaking his head, exasperated. Rozanov was unbelievably stubborn. Still, he couldn't quite let it go, because he hated seeing Rozanov look at the ice like that. And for the first time since emailing him, Shane wanted something from Rozanov that had absolutely nothing to do with journalism, arguments or proving a point.

He reached for Rozanov's hand and tugged lightly. "Come on." Shane expected him to pull away, or tell him to fuck off.

Instead Rozanov just looked down at where Shane was holding onto him before lifting his gaze back up again. For a second neither of them said anything. Shane became strangely aware of the fact how he was holding his hand.

Still he said "No," eventually. But it sounded way less convincing this time.

Shane groaned dramatically before letting go of his hand and pushing himself backwards a few feet. Then he turned and skated away without another word. If Rozanov wanted to stand there being miserable that was his own problem. Shane had tried. More than tried, actually. He had practically begged. Which was ridiculous, considering they didn't even like each other. At least that was what Shane kept telling himself.

Shane made it halfway across the rink before hearing the familiar scrape of skates behind him and turned around.

“So why don’t you skate anymore?” Rozanov asked, coming to an unsteady halt in front of Shane.

The discomfort was clearly visible on Shane's face as he spoke. “I told you I don't really wanna talk about it.”

Rozanov sighed. “I told you what happened to me. Is only fair you tell me too. Yes?”

“You’re not seriously using this against me now?” Shane said, skating a few feet backwards.

Rozanov followed after him. “Obviously it is not an injury, your form looks very good, a bit rusty but good.”

“Gee, thanks.” Shane replied.

“What is it then? I will start guessing if you do not tell me.” Rozanov informed him, turning around and also trying to skate backwards. It didn't look so bad.

“I didn't fit into the NHL.” Shane relented. He’d compromise by only telling half of it. But from Rozanov's gaze he could tell that he knew there was more to it.

“They thought I was gay.” He said then, and because he knew Rozanov would keep asking, he continued explaining. “A friend of mine came out when I was about eighteen years old, and, well, his family sucked. They basically disowned him. And some of his friends didn't react well either, so I wanted to show my support. I reposted some stuff about LGBTQIA+ causes, donated to charities, and then the league stopped being interested in drafting me.” Shane shrugged like it was just a stupid thing that had happened when he was only a kid. Like it wasn't something so significant in his life. He looked at Rozanov, waiting for a response.

Rozanov's brows had pulled together slightly, mouth parted like he had started forming a question and decided at the last second not to let it out. For a second, Shane thought he understood the reaction as sympathy. Then Rozanov’s eyes narrowed a fraction in obvious confusion.

“What?” Shane asked, a hint of nervousness in his voice.

“Hmm…. You are not gay?” Rozanov eventually asked.

Shane stared at him for a long second, letting out a short, disbelieving laugh. “From everything I just told you… that’s the one thing you’re pointing out?”

Rozanov frowned slightly, clearly not understanding why Shane sounded so offended. “Well… yes.”

Shane shook his head, pushing himself forward again. “No ‘that sucks’? No ‘I’m sorry’? No ‘The league is full of idiots’?”

“The league is full of idiots,” Rozanov replied immediately. “I thought this part was obvious.”

“Uh, yeah, I guess." Shane shrugged again, not sure where to look.

“But you said they thought you were gay, so… you are not gay?”

Shane stayed quiet, thinking about the answer he had given Rose when she asked him the same question. I don't think so. But that had been weeks ago, and he’d thought a lot about it since then. Now he wasn't sure anymore. Because he did think Rozanov was attractive. Very much so. But did he think he was attractive in a… gay way?

“I- I’m not sure?” He responded. Rozanov's brows furrowed again, perplexed.

“Well do you like fucking women? Or you like fucking men? Or both?”

“Gross, don't talk like that.” He told Rozanov, who just huffed out an amused breath.

“Are you a child? Talking about sex is normal, yes? And I think we are friends now, friends talk about stuff like that.” He said, with a cocky grin.

Shane thought about disagreeing, but only shook his head. “Well what do you prefer?” He flipped the question back on the other man, his eye roll almost audible in his voice.

“I do not have preference, women, men, either.” He shrugged, gesturing at himself. “Is selfish, not giving everyone the opportunity to have some of this.”

Shane laughed at that. “Ah, yeah, would be very selfish.”

“So? Now you tell me.” Rozanov asked again.

“I’ve never had sex with a man before.” Shane answered. “Sex with women was… well, I don't know, kinda tiring I guess?”

Rozanov lifted an eyebrow. “Tiring?”

Shane nodded. “Well, yeah. I’m not sure how to explain.”

There was a moment of silence before Rozanov spoke. “That is the gayest answer I have ever heard.” He informed him, mouth curling upwards at the corners.

“I said I've never had sex with a man! How is that gay?”

“No straight man would say sex with women is ‘tiring’, trust me.” Rozanov said, followed by a chuckle. “Also you are considering sex with a man. Is not straight thing to think about.”

"Oh, fuck you," Shane replied, laughing as he lightly hit Rozanov on the shoulder.

Rozanov's eyes widened in exaggerated surprise. "Did you just hit me?"

"Yeah, obviously."

"That is very homophobic. Hitting someone who just came out to you," Rozanov said, bumping Shane's shoulder much harder in return.

"You did not come out," Shane clarified, rubbing the spot on his shoulder with an exaggerated grimace. "You hit way harder than I did."

"Because I am stronger."

"No, you're not. Also, we're skating, not boxing," Shane informed him, skating away from him.

"Mmm. If it was boxing, I would win," Rozanov replied teasingly.

They didn't say anything after that for a while, just stayed quiet. The only sound on the rink was the echo of their skates scraping against the ice.

"So if you do not know whether you are gay..." Rozanov suddenly said, "...why have you been flirting back with me?"

Confused, Shane turned around. "Huh? I wasn't flirting with you?" he replied, but as soon as the words left his mouth, he registered what Rozanov had actually said. Back. Had he been flirting with him?

"Well, when you first emailed me I was a little bit confused. You had never said anything before," Rozanov explained, coming to a stop in one of the face-off circles. "I had heard rumours about you, obviously. If you know the name Shane Hollander, you also know the rumours. Especially after I did digging into your hockey career." He shrugged. "So from your emails I thought you were attracted to me." The confession sounded surprisingly innocent before he added, "is understandable. I am very hot."

"Ah, right. And no supposedly gay guy can withstand you?" Shane smiled jokingly as he skated closer to him.

"Oh yes. I am irresistible," the Russian grinned.

"I must disappoint you though, because I didn't even notice you were flirting with me," Shane admitted, sheepish.

"Is good to know, because I just thought you were really bad at flirting."

Rozanov laughed, the sound cut short when one of his skates slipped ever so slightly beneath him. He barely stumbled at all, but almost subconsciously, Shane reached out, grabbing both of Rozanov's hands to steady him. He wanted to pull them back the second he realized what he'd done, how humiliating this had to be for Rozanov. After everything that had happened, after hockey had been taken away from him, now he was being given Shane's help just to stay on his feet, which he probably didn't even need in the first place. But when Shane tried to pull his hands back, Rozanov's grip tightened around them, keeping them exactly where they were.

Shane looked at their locked hands, then back at Rozanov.

"I think you should skate again," Rozanov said, looking directly into Shane's eyes.

Shane had to avert his gaze almost immediately, focusing on a point somewhere behind Rozanov instead. "Why would I?" he asked, shaking his head and closing his eyes for a brief moment.

"Because you are good. Would also make me write more positive articles, yes?" Rozanov snickered, slowly skating backwards without letting go of Shane's hands, pulling him along.

Shane let himself be pulled. "Even if I went back to hockey, I would never play in the league. So there would be no reason for you to write about me," he said quietly, unable to keep the disappointment out of his voice. "The league has to change before I can play there again. I didn't even come out as gay, and look at how they treated me."

Rozanov didn't answer right away. For a few seconds he simply kept skating backwards, his grip around Shane's hands steady. "If you say you are not gay... you could just tell them that," he said eventually. Shane caught Rozanov's gaze flickering down to his lips for the briefest moment before finding his eyes again.

Rose's question suddenly resurfaced in Shane's mind.

'Would you kiss him again if you were sober?'

Would he?

His eyes settled on the Russian's face. Then, almost against his own will, they drifted down to Rozanov's lips. Just thinking about it made something twist low in his stomach. It was different. Stronger than anything he remembered feeling before when it came to kissing girls. Was this what everyone had always been talking about?

"I was told not to lie," Shane whispered at last, barely realizing he'd spoken the words aloud.

A smile tugged at the corner of Rozanov's mouth. "Mm, yes. Lying is very bad," he murmured, gently pulling Shane just a little closer. "Do you think you would find kissing a man tiring, too?" His voice was barely above a whisper.

Shane didn't answer immediately. His heartbeat felt like it had become louder than the sound of their skates gliding over the ice. He stared at Rozanov, trying to think of something clever to say.

Again, he heard Rose’s words in his head. ‘Would you kiss him again if you were sober?’

He would. He definitely would. More than that, he wanted to.

"I don't think so," he whispered just as softly. "No."

Rozanov didn't move for a second, almost as if he was waiting for Shane to take it back. When he didn't, he let go of one of Shane's hands and brought it up to cup his jaw instead. "Let's see if that's true then," he murmured before closing the last bit of distance between them.

The kiss wasn't anything like the one at the party. Not that Shane could remember that one particularly well. The entire night had been blurred by alcohol, but still he knew this felt different in a way that had nothing to do with sobriety. It might be the best kiss he'd ever had, maybe ever would have.

Rozanov's lips fit against his almost perfectly, warm despite the cold air around them, the slight roughness of his chapped skin sending an unfamiliar shiver through Shane.

When Rozanov parted his mouth ever so slightly, Shane mirrored him without thinking, instinct taking over long before his brain could catch up. His free arm slipped around the Russian's waist when he felt the two of them begin to lose their balance on the ice. The irony almost made him laugh. Of all places to have the best kiss of his life, it had to be in the middle of an ice rink.

Once they parted again to get some air, Shane couldn’t hold back a breathless chuckle. That made the other guy also laugh. “что?” He said in Russian, probably accidentally judging by the way he corrected himself. “What?”

“Are you going to ask me for my number now?” Shane said, a hint of teasing in his tone.

“Hmmm.” Rozanov pretended to think. “I do not think so, email is very funny, no?”

Shane's smile disappeared in an instant. “Are you serious?” He asked slowly, memories of his first disappointment when Rozanov never texted him starting to boil up in his stomach.

“I have gotten used to email,” he said with a stupid shit-eating grin.

Shane finally moved his hands away, trying to get some distance in between them. “You are fucking unbelievable,” he said, not bothering to hide the anger in his voice.

A hint of bewilderment appeared on Rozanov's face. “Hollander, wha-”

“No, it’s fine.” Shane cut him off, skating another few feet away from him. “You still don’t want my number, I got the message.” His tone very clearly showed that it was not fine. “I thought it was different this time. We're not even drunk, but you’re doing it again anyway.”

“I did not mean-” Rozanov started, something shifting in his expression, like he’d realized a half second too late that the joke had landed wrong. “Hollander, that night, I do not even remember most of-”

“No, it's fine. Just leave it.” He shouldn’t leave. He knew that even as he was pulling away, skating clumsily back toward the boards on legs that suddenly didn’t feel as steady as they had five minutes ago.

“Shane.” Rozanov’s voice followed him, less teasing now, almost urgent. “Wait, please.”

He didn't wait. He yanked his skates off so fast it hurt his heels, his socks leaving wet prints across the floor as he, very untypically for himself, walked over to his shoes to put them on. Normally, he would take off one skate and immediately put on the matching shoe to avoid stepping onto the dirty floor in his socks. This time, he didn't care. He left the skates behind for Rozanov to return, which, admittedly, was another asshole move. Still, he didn't look back until he was already in the parking lot, breathing harder than the short walk should have warranted.

Shane was so done with Rozanov. At least, that was what he kept telling himself. It had been exactly 17 days since the rink, and in those 17 days, he'd felt worse than he had in a long time. He didn't feel like writing articles. He didn't feel like editing videos for the Metros. He didn't even want to hear anything hockey related. Shane couldn't shake the feeling that he was somehow cursed, that every single thing he cared about eventually got ruined. Maybe he was overreacting, maybe he wasn't. It was too late now anyways.

In those 17 days, Rozanov hadn't even reached out: 17 days without a single email, the longest they'd ever gone without talking since that stupid first message. Shane hated how often he caught himself opening his email app out of habit, only to find nothing there. The silence shouldn't have bothered him as much as it did, but his inbox just felt so empty without Rozanov.

Rose had checked on him more than once. The first time had been three days after the rink, when Shane finally said out loud what he'd only just started admitting to himself: "I think I'm gay."

The words came out smaller than he expected, considering how much damage they'd just done to his entire understanding of himself. Rose obviously hadn't been surprised. She'd just smiled and pulled him into a hug. They talked for hours after that. At one point, Shane’s throat closed up so tight, he thought for sure he would cry. His eyes stung, vision blurred at the edges, and for a second he had to stare very hard at a spot on the wall behind Rose's back until it passed. No tears actually fell, so technically, it didn't count as crying, or so he told himself.

Rose kept insisting nothing had really changed, that he was still just Shane, the same person he'd always been, except that now he had a word for something he'd never let himself look at too closely.

But Shane didn't buy it. Everything had changed. Every date he'd forced himself through because he'd assumed that was just what dating felt like for everyone looked a little wrong now. He felt guilty thinking back to every time he'd told himself sex was supposed to be a little exhausting, a little underwhelming, because why would it be anything else? Even the party that he'd spent three years writing off as a drunk mistake now made a horrible, obvious kind of sense.

The worst part about figuring out he was gay was realizing everyone else had somehow figured it out before he had.

Shane had started dividing his life into two parts now. Supposedly-straight Shane and post-realising-he-was-gay Shane. The weird thing was that post-gay-realisation Shane felt a lot worse than supposedly-straight Shane ever had, which made absolutely no sense to him. He had spent the past week doing an unreasonable amount of research. He’d read entire Reddit threads and so many Twitter posts. According to hundreds of strangers on the internet, finally understanding yourself and having people around you who accepted you was supposed to feel freeing, like a weight being lifted after you didn't have to be hiding anymore. Even if Shane hadn't exactly been hiding, considering he hadn't even known himself, he had still expected to feel better. Instead, he just felt miserable.

Sure, there was something comforting about finally being able to look at a man and understand what the feeling in his chest actually was. Attraction. It had a name now. But somehow that only made everything worse, because now his brain insisted on comparing every remotely attractive man he saw to Rozanov, and none of them came even close, which was probably for the best. The world could not handle two Rozanovs, two unbelievably intelligent men who somehow also managed to say the dumbest things Shane had ever heard. Two incredibly attractive assholes that were so unlikable that you just had to like them.

Shane was pulled out of his thoughts - somewhere in the middle of wondering what else there was to do if there were two Rozanovs in a room - when the doorbell rang. He checked the clock. Hayden was nearly 20 minutes late every time.

Shane had invited him over to watch the Admirals game because it had seemed like the easiest way to tell him. Telling your best friend you were gay should theoretically be easier while doing something normal instead of sitting across from each other like they were attending some kind of intervention. At least that had been Shane’s logic when he sent the invitation - it had seemed like a good plan at the time. Now, with Hayden standing on the other side of his door, it felt like a stupid one. Not because he thought Hayden would react badly - Hayden was a lot of things, but a homophobe definitely wasn’t one of them - though it still made him nervous. He’d read on Reddit that you should come out to at least three friends before telling your parents. The reasoning was that if things went badly, you’d have people to lean on afterward, which, in Shane’s case, also felt a little ridiculous. He couldn’t imagine his parents reacting badly either.

Shane stayed where he was for another few seconds. The bell rang again, followed by Hayden knocking hard enough that the sound echoed through the apartment.

Shane finally made his way over and pulled the door open. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t destroy my front door,” he said, brushing a hand over it as if he was checking for damage.

Hayden only laughed. “Chill, man. It’s all good.” He stepped inside holding a paper bag stuffed with snacks in one hand and a four-pack of beer in the other, which Shane assumed was for himself, considering Hayden knew him well enough to know there wasn’t a single beer anywhere in the apartment.

Shane glanced at the size of the bag before lifting an eyebrow. “Planning on feeding the entire building?”

Hayden followed his gaze and let out a long sigh. “Jackie made me bring all of it. She said if I left it at home she’d eat the whole stash in one sitting.” He kicked off his shoes by the door. “Pregnant women, you know?”

Shane snorted quietly and motioned him further inside. “Are you excited for a third kid?” Shane asked his best friend as he opened the fridge to grab himself a ginger ale.

“I love kids,” Hayden answered. “They’re loud, stinky and expensive, but they’re also funny and cute.” He grinned. “It’s also kinda exciting to see what a mix between me and Jackie will look like, especially now that we know it's gonna be a boy this time.” Hayden opened a beer for himself before looking over at him. “What about you?”

Shane looked up, taking a sip of his cold ginger ale. “What about me?”

“Do you wanna have kids?” Hayden followed up.

Shane opened his mouth, then closed it again. He’d never really thought about it before. Back when he still assumed he’d eventually marry a woman, kids had always just been part of the picture. Something that happened somewhere down the line. But now… could two men even have kids in Canada? Probably. He thought so. Adoption? Surrogacy? He honestly had no idea. It had never occurred to him to look into it. In the end he just settled for “I don’t know. Maybe one day,” followed by a shrug.

Hayden looked at him for a long moment before nodding. “You’d make a good dad.”

Shane let out a quiet laugh. “Based on what?”

“I don’t know.” Hayden shrugged. “You just would.” He started unpacking the snacks onto the kitchen counter, somehow managing to spread them over almost the entire surface. “You already have the disappointed parent look down perfectly.”

“I do not have a ‘disappointed parent’ look,” Shane insisted.

“You do.” Hayden pointed at him. “You’re doing it right now.”

Shane rolled his eyes, though the corner of his mouth twitched upwards despite himself. “Haha, very funny.”

Hayden chuckled. “Alright, let’s watch the game. For once I actually have no idea who could win this.”

“My mom says the Admirals will win,” Shane said, taking some coasters out of the cabinet and making his way over to the TV. He grabbed the remote from the coffee table, turning it on.

Hayden dropped onto the couch, a bag of nuts in one hand and a beer in the other. “Yeah?”

Shane hummed in confirmation, sitting down beside him.

“Then I’m also saying the Admirals will win.” Hayden propped his feet onto the coffee table, only for Shane to immediately push them back down without even looking away from the screen.

“They certainly have a good chance of winning,” Shane agreed.

He switched to the right channel and turned the volume up a little before setting the remote back onto the coffee table.

Now he just had to find the perfect moment to say it.

During the introductions maybe. Or the commercial break. He didn’t need some dramatic speech. Just… Hayden, I think I’m gay, that would be all. Four words- Well, technically five. Six if he added actually, which he probably wouldn’t because it sounded like they’d just had a conversation about him being with a woman. Or like he had just figured it out. Which he had, but still- maybe he should explain that too? The more he thought about it, the more complicated it became.

They watched the game mostly in silence, occasionally disapproving of something the refs called or the way certain players kept passing instead of shooting when they clearly had the lane. It went back and forth for most of the third, nobody pulling ahead by more than a goal, until the Admirals finally broke it open with about six minutes left and held onto the lead from there.

Hayden spent the last few minutes of the game with his leg bouncing, muttering at the screen every time the other team touched the puck in the offensive zone, and by the time the final buzzer sounded he threw both arms up like he’d personally scored the winner.

“Called it,” he said, pointing at Shane. “Me and your mom. Undefeated.”

Shane huffed out something like a laugh, only half paying attention, because his stomach had been in knots since the second intermission and hadn’t loosened a bit.

Hayden grabbed a handful of nuts, glancing sideways at him. “What’s up with you, by the way?” He asked, stuffing his mouth with the snacks. “Usually you say a lot more when we watch a game.”

This was it, a door swinging open on its own, and all Shane had to do was walk through it.

“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about,” he finally said.

Hayden set the bag of nuts down, giving him his full attention, his expression shifting into something that almost seemed worried. “Okay. What’s up?”

Shane takes a deep breath, preparing himself to finally say it out loud.

And right when he wanted to say it, mouth already opened, suddenly loud cheering erupted from the TV, the broadcast cutting to some kind of on-ice celebration. Hayden’s eyes flicked toward the screen out of pure reflex before snapping back to him. “Sorry, go ahe- WHAT?!” He did a trouble take, eyes landing on the TV again instantly, and Shane followed his gaze.

It took him a second to understand what he was even looking at. The postgame camera had cut away from the studio desk back to the rink, crowded with players who’d clearly just won something. On the side of it, Captain Scott Hunter was standing at center ice with a man Shane didn’t recognize, someone in regular clothes who’d very obviously come down from the stands. Hunter had both hands on his face and was kissing him in front of thousands of people and several dozen cameras.

“Holy shit,” Hayden said, sitting bolt upright, what Shane wanted to tell him forgotten entirely.

“I’m gay,” Shane blurted out.

The words came out flat and fast, almost on top of Hayden’s own sentence, and for a second neither of them said anything, the screen still cutting between shots of Hunter and his teammates and a stunned looking reporter.

Shane could literally hit himself. He’d spent so much time thinking about how he would tell Hayden, and now it was all for nothing.

Hayden didn’t react. Not the way Shane expected it. His eyes were still on the TV, mouth slightly open.

“I can’t believe this is happening right now. This is insane, do you think the league knew about this? There’s no way the league-” He stopped, Shane's words finally registering. “Sorry, what?”

Shane’s heart was going so hard he could feel it in his throat. “I said I’m gay,” he repeated, quieter now.

Hayden’s whole face shifted, his attention fully leaving the television. He blinked at Shane for a second.

“Wait.” He sat up straighter. “Wait, for real?”

“Yeah.”

“Like actually? Not because of,” Hayden gestured vaguely at the TV, at Hunter still being shown on the ice, “-this?”

“No. I mean I don’t know, maybe that helped. But no. I’ve been trying to tell you for like two hours.” Shane let out a short, disbelieving laugh, mostly at himself. “I invited you over specifically to tell you and then just…” Shane trailed off at the end of his sentence.

Hayden stared at him for another second, processing, and then his face changed into a warm smile.

“Dude.” He set his beer down on the coffee table without looking, missing the coaster completely and didn’t seem to even notice. Shane reached for the glass, moving it on top of it.

Hayden dragged a hand down his face, half laughing now, like he didn’t know what to do with all of it at once. “Okay, wow. That’s- thank you for telling me.” He said it so soft and affectionate but then, immediately, ruined it. “Wait, this is why you’ve been acting so weird all night? I thought you were dying or something.”

“I wasn’t dying.”

Hayden shook his head, still grinning, and pulled Shane into a hug hard enough to knock the air out of him, one arm wrapped tight around his shoulders. “I’m really glad you told me,” he said, quieter now, some of the joking dropping out of his voice. “For real. Thank you.”

Shane sat there for a second, stiff with surprise, before something in his chest finally loosened, the same tight knot he’d been carrying around for two weeks unraveling all at once. He brought a hand up and clapped it against Hayden’s back awkwardly.

“Okay,” he said, voice a little rough. “You can let go now.”

“No.” Hayden held on another few seconds, entirely unbothered by the fact Shane was clearly uncomfortable. “This is a moment. Let me have the moment.”

Shane huffed, but he didn’t pull away either, yet. “This should be my moment, though,” Shane said, and after another few seconds tried to push Hayden off, until he finally let go of him, leaning back against the couch cushions.

“So how did you figure it out?” Hayden asked, placing one arm along the back of the couch. “Or have you known for a while?”

Shane looked down at his hands for a second “Uh… I think I just ignored the signs,” he said eventually. “And then last month I had this conversation with Rose.”

Hayden nodded like that explained more than Shane had actually said. “She’s very perceptive,” he said, sounding amused, and Shane huffed out a small laugh before nodding in agreement. That was one word for it. Rose had managed to figure out his sexuality years before he had.

“And then there was…” Shane paused, already regretting where the sentence was going. “A guy.” He didn’t say the name. Hayden’s opinion of Rozanov had never been particularly good, and Shane didn’t want to ruin the mood.

Hayden’s eyebrows lifted immediately. “A guy?”

“There’s nothing going on,” Shane said far too quickly. “He just… helped me realise it, I guess. Or made it harder to keep pretending I didn’t know.”

Hayden nodded. Shane thought he was about to start asking more questions, but instead he just looked at the TV again. “Man, nobody’s gonna be talking about the actual game tomorrow,” he said, nodding toward the TV, where the cameras had already cut back to the reporters. “Biggest win of the season and it’s gonna be a footnote by morning.”

Shane huffed out something that was almost a laugh, his head still spinning from the adrenaline of finally saying the words out loud.

It took another couple of minutes before his brain finally caught up with what had just happened. He was a journalist and had just watched, live, the biggest hockey story of the decade unfold on his own television. He’d been so wrapped up in his own two-word confession that not a single article idea had crossed his mind. “…Oh, shit.”

He was on his feet so quickly that Hayden instinctively snatched his beer off the coffee table before Shane could send it flying. Shane barely even noticed. He disappeared down the hallway at almost a run before returning a few seconds later with his laptop tucked under one arm and his phone in the other.

Shane dropped back onto the couch, setting the laptop onto the coffee table with considerably less care than he usually treated expensive electronics. It hit the wood with a loud thunk before he flipped it open and jabbed at the power button.

“Shit, shit… I have to get something out before everyone else does.”

Hayden watched him for a second, reaching into the bag of nuts again. “I thought you wanted to have a night off,” he said, sounding more amused than annoyed. He clearly understood what this meant for Shane. He didn’t even need an answer.

Still, Shane answered. “Plans changed,” he muttered as he typed in his password.

He opened The Faceoff’s writing program, creating a new document, which loaded pre-prepared with the publication’s standard formatting. Hayden leaned over for a second to glance at the screen, then settled back into the couch and pulled out his phone instead, probably texting Jackie, who had been watching the game at home.

Shane started the same way he always did. He wrote down everything that came to mind first - he’d clean it up afterward. The first thing to appear on the page were five different ideas for a headline. None of them were particularly good, but they at least gave him something to work with. After that, he started describing what had happened on the ice before they won. He wanted to write about the game first, because he already knew most journalists would barely mention it. Everyone would immediately jump to what happened afterward. If he spent a little longer on the actual hockey, his article might stand out from the others. So, he explained what the win meant for the Admirals before planning to address the elephant in the room.

While writing, he opened a handful of websites in the background, reading through articles about LGBTQIA+ players in professional hockey, trying to find anything even remotely comparable to what had just happened. Obviously there wasn’t. He’d known that before he’d even opened the first tab. But still, the last thing he wanted was to miss something because he’d assumed he already knew the answer.

Hayden’s phone eventually rang and, from the voices Shane could make out the second Hayden answered, it was definitely Jackie and the twins. Hayden quietly got up from the couch and wandered into the kitchen while talking to them, leaving Shane alone with the television still quietly running in the background.

Shane felt like he was racing against the entire hockey world. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this stressed while writing something. Every sports outlet was probably working on the same story right this moment and, unavoidably, in the back of his mind he kept thinking about Rozanov, who was almost certainly writing an article too. Shane hoped he at least had one advantage. English wasn’t Rozanov’s first language, so surely Shane had to be a little faster… although he didn’t actually know how Rozanov wrote. Maybe he drafted everything in Russian first and translated it afterward. They never really talked about how they wrote their articles. They didn't talk at all anymore.

He had spent around three hours working on the article now, and judging by the amount of editing still left to do, he would probably need at least another hour and a half before he was satisfied enough to publish it. Hayden had remained sprawled across the opposite end of the couch the entire time, occasionally leaning over Shane's shoulder expressing his thoughts on whatever Shane had just written. Most of his input consisted of complete bullshit which Shane mostly ignored, but every once in a while Hayden made some pretty good points, forcing Shane to reluctantly rewrite another sentence.

They’d been debating whether it was worth including a section about the league's treatment of homosexuality over the years, and whether reminding readers how recently players had been discouraged from any public displays of queerness would strengthen the article or derail it, when a small notification slid into the bottom-left corner of Shane's screen.

When Shane read Rozanov's name his first guess was that the smug asshole had probably already finished his article, and now wanted to mock him about how he would be posting it first and had once again beaten Shane.

“Why is Rozanov emailing you?” Hayden asked, confused. Shane didn't answer. He just kind of zoned out as he opened the email.

Beside him, Hayden had gone uncharacteristically quiet. Shane could feel him glancing between the screen and Shane's face, clearly trying to evaluate how much commentary he was allowed to make right now.

“Shane,” Hayden eventually spoke, like he was waiting for approval to say something.

Shane didn't answer. His eyes kept catching on the same few lines. He'd spent three years assuming the worst version of that night, building an entire rivalry partly out of the certainty that he'd been discarded on purpose, and apparently none of it had even happened the way he thought.

He scrolled back up to the part about the article. Rozanov had finished it and then decided to risk losing the race Shane knew he cared about winning, for the exact same reasons Shane did.

I would like you to read it before I publish it.

Rozanov didn't ask permission for anything, least of all an article, not in the three years Shane had known him.

“Please don’t tell me the guy who helped you figure this out about yourself is Rozanov,” Hayden groaned, looking back at Shane.

Shane pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “I’m sorry.”

Hayden let out a breath through his nose, somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. “Couldn’t you have picked someone normal?” he asked, reaching for his mug on the coffee table. “Weren’t there any nice guys in Montreal?”

Shane snorted quietly. “I didn’t pick him.”

Hayden took the last sip of his beer. “Could’ve at least used it to your advantage.”

Shane frowned. “What advantage?”

“Get him to write something nice about me for once.”

Shane rolled his eyes. “We’re not together. I can’t make him do anything.”

“Well… what happened then?” Hayden asked, looking over at him now with genuine curiosity. “He apologized for something?”

Shane took a little too long to answer before letting out a quiet groan and dropping his head back against the couch.

“I…” He rubbed both hands over his face. “I kind of ran away after he made that joke about only wanting to text over email.”

Hayden frowned. “Why?”

Shane stared at the ceiling for another second, wondering how much of this he actually wanted to admit. Looking back now, he had probably overreacted. At the time it had felt like everything had crashed down on him at once, but maybe he’d just been overwhelmed.

“We…” He winced. “We made out at a party a few years ago. I think I gave him my number.” He paused. “He never texted me.”

Hayden’s eyebrows lifted slightly, but he stayed quiet.

“Then last month we…” Shane gestured vaguely with one hand. “We kissed again. So I asked him if he wanted my number again…” He let out a frustrated breath. “He made some joke about only communicating over email.”

Shane covered his eyes with one hand. “And I don’t know… I just kind of lost it. I thought he was making fun of me, so I left.”

“I think it’s a valid assumption,” Hayden said with a quiet huff, shaking his head. “He makes fun of everyone.”

Shane gave a small nod. He hadn’t reached a different conclusion himself.

“Are you going to text him now?” Hayden asked after a moment. There was no judgment in his voice, but no encouragement either. He was leaving the decision entirely up to Shane.

Shane nodded once. “I think so.” His eyes drifted back to the email still open on his screen. “The article is… a lot. But it’s good. He should post it.” A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “With a few changes.”

He downloaded the document Rozanov had attached and opened it in Word so he could edit some lines.

Hayden watched him for another second before speaking again. “Am I allowed to tell Jackie?” he asked as Shane started adjusting Rozanov's article.

Shane nodded. Even better if he didn’t have to tell the third person himself.

They kept talking for some time while Shane edited, and eventually Hayden had to leave and get back to Jackie and the kids. He had glanced at the time on his phone and groaned before pushing himself up off the couch. They said their goodbyes with another hug by the door, Hayden holding on a second longer than usual.

“Again, thank you for trusting me,” he mumbled into Shane’s shoulder, finally letting go and grabbing his jacket.

After Hayden had left, Shane finished the article, reading it over one more time before he was satisfied with the changes he’d made. He saved the number Rozanov had sent him to his contacts and sent the article back with his little adjustments