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Shane knew he was like his mother. It was unavoidable. No one looked at the two of them and doubted the genetic connection, let alone when either of them spoke.
Mom thought like him, looked at things from the same perspective and it was maddening how sometimes she would figure things out about Shane before he was ready to confront them let alone acknowledge their existence.
He found out that his dad was the reason she never pressed asking about boys in addition to girls at their lunches and dinners together and had never been more thankful for his dad's influence.
All this to say, he was used to being known as Yuna Hollander's son. It was something he hardly thought about. He had gotten equally used to people not recognizing him as David Hollander's son.
When he was small, he remembered having a small silicone ID bracelet around his wrist. Shane fucking hated the thing, it always felt like it was caught on his skin and his hair despite it being loose enough to be comfortable. It was made to make sure if he got separated from his parents, it had his name and their phone number.
Shane didn't realize until he got older that while the purpose was to make sure he could reunite with his parents if he was separated, the reason his mom bought it in the first place was to keep him from being separated from his Dad.
Ignorant strangers insisting that David was not Shane's dad, police being called or weird remarks that Shane only knew were weird because Dad would put the music up louder than usual on the car ride home and rub at his eyes.
Shane was used to people having a two to five second delay of understanding and recognition when it came to seeing his dad enter the synchronous duo of Shane and his mom. He was used to people thinking he got his looks from his dad before seeing him, or hearing the name "David". Shane learned to ease people into it where he could, mention his dad being on the hockey team at McGill, his dad's chicken parm that he rarely ate but savored in the summer.
When that didn't help, he noticed he just talked about his mom more when the topic of parents got brought up. It was easy, his mom was known in the hockey world and when he was coming up, a lot of his teammates knew to ask Shane for his mom's insight into contracts to not get fucked over.
This all together should have softened the jolt of shock when Ilya got mistaken for being David Hollander's son, when Shane had rarely got to have experience.
It did not.
The Brad video outing them had at the very least permitted Shane to go out to eat with his parents and his fiance without issue. They had managed it a few times in the past but every-time Shane ended up eating half of whatever he ordered and fighting to keep it down from nerves the rest of the night.
This time the nerves were still there but Shane always did better at moving forward than he did at staying still. He could have Ilya hold his hand across the table and order something that made his dad and Ilya crinkle their noses at him. Nothing would fall from the sky, at least in theory.
His mom was telling a story about her most recent work trip which involved meeting with a sponsor she managed for Ilya and multiple marching bands performing in the lobby of the hotel they put her up in.
"I'm telling you David, it was at least four." Yuna's wine glass sloshed lightly as she gestured. Shane leant away from the splash zone and smiled at his dad taking a quick sip of his own wine to hid his smile from his wife.
"And I never said I didn't believe you." He said after swallowing though David's tone didn't match the words.
Yuna stared him down and resolutely ignored Ilya's shoulders shaking in small chuckles. "Four. And they all decided the lobby was a great place to practice…at the same time."
"You must have been very scared, Yuna." Ilya piped up, finally finishing the slice of cake he'd ordered for desert and hadn't been able to convince Shane to take a bite of.
Yuna muttered as she took a sip of her wine, pulling the fill line down past the danger zone of spilling on Shane when the inevitable next chirp got thrown her way.
Shane straightened up his position back to normal and came to her defense. "Careful, Dad, I know she handles your travel and you could get stuck at O'Hare for forty-eight hours, again."
David faux-shuddered as Yuna nodded at Shane's statement. "Never again."
Ilya's eyebrows quirked in question and Shane mouthed "later" as his parents began quipping about which airport layover would be an appropriate punishment for David's lack of belief in the amount of marching bands at a hotel in Houston.
His fiance squeezed his hand in acknowledgement and Shane felt vaguely proud that he fought against the muscle spasm that his bicep had at the reminder that they were holding hands. In public. In broad daylight.
While Shane basked in his own personal victory, the waitress came back over to drop the check off. "Thank you again for coming in! You keep these blondes in line, you hear? Like father, like son and I can just tell you're a trouble-maker." She joked, overly friendly in a way that always either made Shane feel at ease or overly aware of how social he should be while out and about. What tipped the scale into the latter was her directing her statement towards his dad and Ilya.
Not Shane.
His dad put his card back in his wallet, Shane having lost the race to put down his card first this time; he then elbowed Ilya as the waitress walked away. "Hear that? If only she knew what a handful these two are." His wink at his mom came easy and Ilya seemed to process the comment in slow-motion and a small dusting of pink appeared on his skin that only Shane would notice because of how earnestly and often he searched for it
Shane felt his face smile even as his skin started to buzz uncomfortably. It was probably the fact that he'd pushed himself to eat his whole entree, his own internal compromise for not eating dessert.
Ilya recovered quickly and grinned, "Yes, marching bands and portion sizes are crying in fear."
Shane let himself kick his future husband under the table. He deserved it, as a treat. Judging by the way his dad rubbed at his shin before standing, it seemed his mother had the same idea.
As they walked out and to their respective cars, Shane heard his dad quietly ask Ilya if he should correct people in the future, that David didn't want to assume anything.
Shane felt his smile towards his mom tighten as he heard Ilya's quiet response, "No, no. It was…nice."
It was the food, for sure.
The weirdness from dinner dissipated soon enough after. Shane shook it off and was sickeningly charmed as he saw Ilya's texts to his dad become more frequent.
He covered his own bases and checked with Ilya that he was in fact fine with the assumption and wasn't just saying it was to smooth things over with his family.
Ilya looked at him like Shane thought he was born yesterday and Shane considered the matter dropped.
It made him happy, that Ilya's support network was broadening. He was too charismatic and extroverted to be as alone as he was before the plane, the outing, all of it.
Shane resolutely didn't look at the unanswered texts from the Metro's in comparison.
What was weird is that it kept happening.
Ilya's eyes were bright when he flopped down onto the couch to give Shane a beer-flavored kiss. He had just come back from going out with the team and Shane hadn't felt up to going out after a Facetime with the Pikes ended in Arthur asking him why he had to move away.
"Your dad was at the bar tonight." Ilya said after he'd pulled away from the kiss and shoved his head into Shane's lap, successfully moving Shane's laptop out of the way.
Shane held it up before the words computed and he realized that his fiance wasn't going to be moving anytime soon. He closed it half-way and placed it on the side-table. "Shit, really? Oh, were you guys at that one on the corner?"
Ilya nodded as best as he could manage with his head in Shane's lap. "Da, he was there with work people but we saved him from the boring and brought him to our table."
Shane felt a bit squirmy but readjusted his position on the couch nodded for Ilya to set his head back down after his personal pillow had moved on him. "So, the team met him? How'd that go?"
"Horrible, he bored them to death. But it was good training for them to meet you." Ilya smiled up at him, the ass.
Shane flicked him on the nose lightly and didn't manage to dodge the swat to his hand that followed. "So what? Half of your team is dead? The Eastern Division must be thrilled."
"Our team is alive. I saved them by playing drinking game, best way to cure the Hollander boring." Ilya pulled Shane's hand from where he'd swatted it and shoved it in his hair.
The squirmy feeling abated, the throw pillow that Shane had meant to donate must've ended up on the bare skin of his back again. "Oh yeah?" Shane pulled at a curl once, causing Ilya to bite at the closest part of Shane to his mouth which ended up being his forearm. Shane began to run his fingers through his curls to initiate a truce.
"Yeah." Ilya turned his body on it's side, so his nose was bumping into Shane's abdomen and pressed a kiss there, accepting the peace terms. "It was nice."
Shane hmmed, just to let him know he had heard him despite most of his words being muffled into his t-shirt.
"The bartender thought we were related again." Ilya said, his eyes fluttering shut and not paying any mind to how his curls were starting to poof up with Shane's repetitive motions.
The feeling started back up, Shane shifted a little and pulled the pillow from behind his back and tossed it to the other side of the couch. "How'd that come up?"
Ilya watched the pillow get flung with sleepy eyes and a chuckle. "We should just throw that away, moy lubimyy." Another small kiss met his side, helping the feeling go away. "Was time to pay, he put me on David's tab." A yawn cut through his words. "Bood gave me shit for not introducing my dad to them sooner." Ilya nuzzled in further, his nose swiping up and down in a way that was usually soothing but made Shane's skin itch as that squirmy feeling came back in full force.
"Huh." Shane's fingers stuttered in their movement before continuing their patterns. Maybe they needed to get a new couch too?
Ilya hummed in response, the vibration traveling into Shane's stomach. "Do not worry, they will be on best behavior to meet Yuna. Are already scared from what David and I say."
Shane felt his face reflexively smile at that, his dad and Ilya being overly concerned about people respecting his mom was nothing new; not that she needed their help. But, something still nagged at him like he'd put on figure skates instead of hockey skates, the toe-pick tripping him up no matter which way he went.
Ilya's breaths deepening and his weight becoming heavier on Shane's lap shook him out of it. "You know we have a bed? You might have heard of it? Comfortable, expensive, with pillows that don't require blood-flow?" He bounced his knee lightly to which Ilya groaned like Shane had killed him.
"No, Russian's do not have this. They have pretty boys that lay around waiting to be my pillow." Ilya's arms attempted to come up around Shane to snuggle in even further (if it was possible). Shane easily nudged them aside as he began to stand up, Ilya's body becoming dead weight and arms landing with a thud.
"You have killed me." Ilya said from where his face had landed into the other evil pillow.
Shane stretched, closed his laptop all the way and began to walk to their bedroom determined to shake off whatever weird feeling had crept up on him. "Fuck, I guess I'll have to find someone else's dick to suck tonight."
Hearing Ilya scramble and fight to get off the couch as he left was a good start.
Shane hadn't gotten sick from the food at the restaurant, pillows had been donated (not trashed, fuck you Ilya); so why the fuck was this feeling back?
He tried to take a subtle deep breath, not wanting Ilya or his dad to clock his frustration that he didn't even know the source of. He was happy that his mom had to rain-check the lunch due to her business trip meetings running over.
He felt Rose twitch by his side, she nudged him gently in askance and he shook his head. She let it drop but Shane knew it would only come back to bite him in the ass.
It wasn't Miles' fault that he didn't know hockey and therefore his family from TV interviews. He was being polite that he'd said that he thought Shane's father was joining them so why wasn't there another place setting? Miles was trying to smooth left-over bumpiness with Ilya by saying the two looked dashing enough that he assumed they were related.
There was nothing about it that should irritate Shane. His fiance and his dad got along and looked related because his dad was the epitome of a nondescript white man and he was dating a very descript but white man nonetheless. Shane didn't need to have an aneurysm about it for fucks sake.
He took his fourth sip of sparkling water in as many seconds and felt Ilya's toe tap against his shoe under the table. Shane looked up and saw that his dad was looking at him expectantly. Shit.
"Sorry, I didn't hear you. What was that?" Shane said, sounding pretty normal if he did say so himself.
Rose clearly didn't think he got a good grade in "normal" as she elbowed his ribs a little harder this time. People needed to stop touching Shane on this fucking restaurant patio or he was going to lose it entirely.
His dad shook his head and went back to his burger. "Nothing that needs repeating."
Ilya scoffed and began talking. "His old McGill team is in town. They want to do a scrimmage and David is so scared that with both of us, we will murder them easily that he did not invite you after you were not listening the first time."
Shane blinked. "Both of us?"
Biting into his own burger, the blond nodded. "Da. Family is invited."
Shane moved the last mushroom on his plate around some more and tried not to feel like the outside man in his own family. The mushroom slipped off his plate and onto the floor. He kind of wanted to join it.
Shane's dad swallowed and looked at Shane before glancing at Rose & Miles. "I know you mainly came with me and your mom on this trip because you wanted to see your friends, so it's no biggie. It'll be a slow game compared to your usual anyways."
Rose was already shaking her head at David. "Miles and I actually have to dine and dash, there's a open casting call for something I can't even talk about happening in 30, so we wouldn't even be able to see these guys til later."
Miles sighed but nodded along. "And believe me, I'd rather be doing anything else than compete against 20 other hot men for the same role."
Rose clicked her tongue at him. "Liar, you love it."
Miles sipped the last of his water and winked at Shane. "I love a lot of things that are bad for me."
Shane felt his cheeks flush at the brazen but harmless flirt and felt Ilya's foot go from a toe tap to nudging at his ankle in an attempt at footsie.
Anything to get out of this, "yeah that sounds cool." The words felt lame as soon as he said them so he quickly tacked on a question that he knew would indicate interest. "Is Logan going to be there?"
His dad laughed, "Who do you think was the one messaging me so much that your fiancé got worried enough to snoop?"
"There was no snoop! Your screen was open, David, on table for anybody to see." Ilya said gesturing to where Shane's dad did in fact have his phone open and at full brightness face-up on the table.
"The polite thing to do is ignore it, son." Shane felt his eye twitch. Ah.
Shane resolutely was not going to process the epiphany that he was somehow jealous of the closeness between his fiance and his father at a vegan and veg-not steak-house's patio in LA. It was just too much.
"Fine, get murdered by Bratva. Yuna will just kill me right after." Ilya muttered the last bit into his own water.
Shane hadn't been this happy to receive a check with minimal conversation from a waiter in a long time.
They said their goodbyes to Rose & Miles, with the former giving Shane a suspicious look and the latter holding onto a hug a little too long. Judging by the slap Ilya gave to Miles' back, Shane telling Miles that Ilya got jealous and that got him amazing sex may have been a miscalculation on his part.
The remaining party split up, with David in his company car and Shane and Ilya in their rental.
Shane got behind the wheel and turned the radio on immediately, hoping for Bad Bunny to come on and turn the drive from a place of conversation to a place of Ilya singing in attempted Spanish.
It was Nickelback. Fuck his life.
Ilya leant across the center console and pulled Shane in for a kiss. Shane gave him all the openings to turn it dirty, make them late to the rink, but Ilya backed off with a sweet kiss to his freckles.
Fuck. His. Life.
Trying very hard to not process how long he'd been jealous like a toddler learning to share, Shane began to drive. And tragically, Ilya began to speak.
"Was the food okay?" Ilya asked as he opened up his phone to one of his many games.
Shane nodded before remembering verbal confirmation was usually preferred. "Yeah, good."
Ilya raised an eyebrow but kept his eyes on the bright colored candies on his screen. "Good? You did not eat that much."
"It was fine." Shane tried to imbue his voice with all the casualness that he wished he was feeling.
He could feel Ilya's side-eye as Shane pulled to a stop for a yellow light that was about to turn red, better to be cautious. "No itchy throat? I know California is usually better—"
"No, no allergies, really. It was good. You picked a good spot." Shane's hand darted to squeeze at Ilya's thigh in reassurance but was then ensnared as his cold hand went on-top of his own.
"You are being weird." Shane saw Ilya pocket his phone in his periphery. "I can drop you at the hotel and go by myself to the rink, I'm sure David wouldn't mind—"
"Just fucking drop it, Ilya!" Shane winced at the sharpness of his voice cutting off the contrast of Ilya's soothing voice, the one he used when he could tell everything was a bit too loud.
Nickelback sounded out in the car for a moment as the light turned green and Ilya released Shane's hand to let him drive safely.
"The fuck, Shane?" Ilya's voice had been sapped of the sweetness. "Miles flirts with you all lunch—"
"—es isn't actually flirting, he knows we're togethe—"
"—space out and look like your dad asked you to club when—"
"—ust didn't hear him! It was—
"—not loud, I texted Rose to make sure and you keep looking at me like I've done something wrong! What the fuck is it?" Ilya finished with a huff and turning off the radio from where Nickelback had faded into Post Malone singing about flowers, thank god.
The silence rang out for a moment until the next set of directions were voiced by Shane's phone, letting him know that he was about to turn into the parking lot. Shane saw his dad's rental car and parked a little bit away from it and looked at Ilya directly for the first time since they'd left lunch.
He looked angry and worried and like the lines of both had been on his face for a lot longer than just this car ride.
Shane put his forehead to the steering wheel. "Fuck. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm—" He turned his head to look at Ilya who seemed like he wanted to put a hand on Shane's neck to comfort and maybe strangle at the same time. "You haven't done anything wrong. I'm just—"
Ilya's eyebrows raised, egging him on to finish his sentence.
"I'm figuring it out, okay?" Shane finished lamely.
Ilya's mouth opened to respond and Shane put a hand out to grab his before he could speak. "Like how English is hard sometimes? Feelings…can—fuck— be hard and I just need some time to process this one. I'm sorry, Ilya."
Ilya squeezed his hand a little harder than usual. "You will tell me when you figure it out." The question wasn't present in the statement and the direction eased something in Shane. A clear expectation he could work with.
"Yes. I will." He squeezed back, his eyes following the glint of sun that came from his dad opening his car door a couple spaces away from them. "Just give me some time."
His dad looked at their car and Shane tried to sit back up slow enough that it didn't look obvious. "It's to do with David?" Ilya asked with insight that Shane wished he would never lose and also that he never had.
"Yeah."
Ilya hummed in consideration before letting go of Shane's hand. "We're stopping for ice cream on the way home."
Shane exhaled a laugh, knowing he was forgiven but that was his penance. "Okay."
"And you're having some." Ilya said as he opened his door and waved at his dad.
"Okay, Ilya." It was a small price to pay for such kind understanding…and Shane could always get frozen yogurt instead.
The scrimmage had been fun, it was a good mix of guys his dad's age and a younger crowd. At some point the teams had gone uneven and Ilya had reminded him that his wrist was still causing him problems. This in ear-shot of his dad and someone's nephew who had some type of fifty-cent bet on the Centaurs made for a flurry of men shooing Shane to the bench for a while.
The bench where Shane was currently processing everything he'd been feeling over the past couple months while watching his fiance and his dad play his favorite game in the world. Fuck feelings.
Shane rubbed at his chest through his hoodie, willing the sickly-green feeling to go away. This was good. This was great even. Ilya hadn't had this, Shane reminded himself. Ilya's own father had been colder than the ice the two were playing on and Shane wouldn't begrudge anyone his father's warmth.
The reminder didn't stop his eyes tracking how in even light gear, the two looked similar enough that Shane couldn't even blame anyone if they believed them to be father and son. After all, wasn't that what Shane wanted anyways? He twirled the ring that was around his neck, thinking of Ilya in a suit and his mom in a dress that Shane would have to have an opinion on and his dad crying into a pocket square that would have been folded perfectly only to be taken out within five minutes into the ceremony.
He had to get over this bullshit.
Logan, one of his dad's old teammates that Shane had grown up knowing, skated to a stop near where Shane was leaning against the boards. "Pass me that water will you?"
The man was huffing and puffing after a bit of keep away between the guys. Shane tossed him the water and began fiddling with his ring again. Logan followed his eyes to the two men still skating and smiled. "It's crazy isn't it?"
Shane nodded, though not entirely sure what he was agreeing with. "Sure is."
"Y'know when Dave said his kid was good at puck, we all took bets on if he was exaggerating or not." Shane blinked in surprise before turning his attention to Logan.
"I guess you lost your money then." He resisted the urge to wince at the bite in his own voice.
Logan only laughed, "I didn't lose shit. Dave was a generational talent, only made sense that his kid would be even better once Yuna was in the picture."
Shane's eyebrows lifted. "Generational talent, him?" He thought of when he learned to skate as a kid and how it was Yuna who let go of his hands for him to learn to push forward on his own.
Gulping down more water and then tossing the empty bottle onto the bench, Logan responded. "Fuck yeah, your dad was something else. We lost touch after college for a bit there when I went to the AHL but I kept up with the up and comers. When I saw you skate as rookie? I knew you were Dave's."
Shane shoved the way that green-sickly feeling both grew and ebbed at the statement and looked back to the ice. "Well, I'm sure the Hollander on my back helped with that."
A chortle came from Logan as he looked over to where Shane's dad was doing a decent job weaving in and out of defenders. "Name had nothing to do with it. You skate the same way— Look there!" Logan pointed as his dad executed a cross-under (albeit slowly) and Shane could feel the exact angle his dad had between the blade of his skates and his ankle because Shane did it the exact same way. Down to the placement of his hands on his stick to work as a small counter-balance that arguably shouldn't work but ended up working 80% of the time.
Shane blinked a few times at the speed that his dad gained before a cheer erupted as Hollander—22 sunk in a goal.
"That right there, that's a Hollzy special." Shane was startled by the nickname, the one that he was slowly getting accustomed to in the Centaurs locker-room. He never thought it could've been his dad's before it found it's way to him.
"Man, it's so good to see him play again. I didn't love the Metro's but I tuned in when I could, seeing you play was a trip down memory lane for us old folks." Logan slapped at Shane's bicep jokingly.
A shout came from the ice. "Logan! Get your ass on the ice, we're dying out here."
"Duty calls. Good seeing you, Shane."
Logan's words rung in Shane's body for a while. The scrimmage ended and Ilya crashed like a dog that had run around too hard when they got back to the hotel. Shane's mind was wide-awake.
He'd never looked too much into his dad's season's at McGill. Shane was too focused on the current state of hockey, even when he was a kid. The past wasn't useful unless it was old great's imparting wisdom.
After coming to the conclusion that Shane wasn't going to get any sleep, he kissed Ilya's shoulder and slunk out of bed to make his way to the living room of their suite.
He began his deep dive, looking into the matches during his dad's undergrad years. Someone had scanned the files into McGill's database for the sake of preservation, maybe due to one of the teams having a superstar kid. Shane eyes flitted over the results seeing Hollander—22 pop up all over.
His dad had been an alternate captain, school articles described him as friendly. They also described him as a force on the ice, some of them crediting his steady personality to the McGill's killer back-to-back seasons.
Shane was able to pull up some of the stats, though some of the measurement scales were a little outdated. His dad was good. Like, if Shane was asked his opinion on whether or not to pick him up as a rookie for the Centaurs it would be a clear yes, kind of good.
Shane opened up a new tab, YouTube was definitely before his dad's time but people uploaded older video files all the time. McGill's prestige meant there was one tape that had made it's way to the 21st century, it was a championship game between McGill and Carleton.
He cast it to the TV, the volume on low to not disturb Ilya who was usually the insomniac between the two of them. If Shane ignored the shakiness of the camera, the graininess of the video quality, and the red of the McGill Redbirds; it almost felt like he was watching game tape of a current rival team.
Carleton was giving the team a run for their money. The score was tied 3-3 and the video seemed like it was only able to get the third period. He could hear the announcers faintly, and fought against the urge to turn the volume up. "—llander with the puck now, passing it to Wiebe right as—Ooh, quite the check from Logan as he blocks the Ravens out. It's passed back to Hollander, the Ravens are scrambling and—now that's some fancy footwork! The stamina on this kid, oh—and he's going for it, and right off the crossbar and into the net! Score is 4-3 McGill! They've won the cup!"
Shane felt a shiver as he watched it all. How did he not know he skated this much like his dad without knowing? He watched his teammates all dog-pile on him, hearty backslaps and noogies. Shane swore he could see his dad's freckles, and Shane's own jaw there as he smiled bright and threw off his gloves and helmet.
He was so caught up in it he almost missed the announcers congratulations of the college seniors. —aduting this year are seniors Hank Logan, Paul Resco, and David Hollander. Logan and Hollander have been rumored to be in talks with teams from the AHL and we anticipate seeing them back on the ice with the pro's next year. Resco will be graduating with a degree in —. The video ended, right as the cup was being handed to Resco who looked mad with glee.
His mind was whirling, his parents friends had told him his dad was good in college but Shane always took that like someone who is good a beer league. Good for what it was, not good enough to be paid for.
What the fuck.
What the fuck.
They left California when Yuna's business trip was over and Ilya continued to be gracious about Shane's over-all offness. But Shane knew it wasn't fair to keep just, being like this for much longer. Plus, Rose has been sending him increasingly worrying emoji combinations for his general "aura" at lunch.
It was a while before Shane could ask about it. He didn't want to ask around Ilya (he refused to listen to the voice in his head that told him Ilya somehow already knew, because his fiance and his dad were just that close) and he didn't want to do it while they were out somewhere.
As luck would have it, Ilya had agreed to go out with the Hayes & Bood the same night Shane's folks asked them to come for dinner. Ilya wouldn't be over until late. His dad had excused himself from the living room to begin dinner while Shane's mom and him looked over the some of the brand proposals that his mom had kindly let sit in her inbox until some of his life settled down.
If he ever had to look at a LGBT sex toy company's proposal for him to be an ambassador with his mother again, it would be too soon.
When they had hit a lull, Shane inhaled deeply before asking almost in a rush, "I didn't know how good dad was in college." He winced, knowing it was a statement instead of a question.
His own brown eyes stared back at him with surprise before his mom leaned back in her chair. "You think I'd marry a subpar player?" Her eyebrow quirked up incredulously.
Shane rolled his eyes, "You know what I mean. I saw some tape the other day, of his championship game? They said he'd been talking with the AHL."
His mom nodded along as he spoke. "I told you, he was good at McGill."
"I know, I know. I just didn't realize how good." Shane picked at the side of his thumbnail looking down. "So…why didn't he?"
"Why didn't he what?" His mom leaned back from where she'd been glancing at her screen. "Stop picking at it, I'll get you some clippers."
Shane waved her off. "Go to the AHL. His stats were crazy, if we were offered a rook like that, we'd snatch them up." Shane resolutely kept pulling at the skin on his hand.
Yuna paused, rolling her lip between her teeth. "Ask him." She closed her laptop and the lack of eye contact made Shane feel slightly bad for Ilya whenever Shane decided he didn't want to talk about something.
Shane decidedly did not want to just ask him. "Well. You know, don't you?" He felt like he was ten years old again and not allowed to go the rink unless David cleared it even if his mom already said yes.
"It's not my history to teach. Go on, we're done here anyways." She packed up and patted his shoulder as she went to put her laptop away in her office. Traitor.
Shane looked down at his hands, looked at the entrance to the kitchen, and looked down at his hands again. He could do this.
His dad had his phone playing music so low that Shane didn't hear it until he'd already walked through the doorway. It was what Rose would call "dad-rock" and Ilya would call horrific. He was humming along as he chopped up bell peppers.
Shane knocked softly against the counter to announce himself. David looked up, smiling. "Hey kiddo, whatcha need? There's some of that bubble water you like in the fridge, third shelf down on the door."
Shane nodded and grabbed the water, just to have something to do with his hands. He smiled a little as the next song began to play, "You used to play this on our drive back from practice."
His dad was bobbing his head a little, it looked so dorky that Shane was glad most people didn't drag him onto the dance floor if these moves were in his genes. "Yeah, I had their CD for a while and you usually liked these kind of songs to come down to from practice. One time I played ABBA and you wouldn't sleep til 11 that night. Your mom was pissed."
That got a chuckle out of Shane who set down the can. "Do you need any help?" Some thought came into David's head and showed on his face before he nodded. "Sure, can you fill both of those pots up with water?"
Shane did so and stared at the water streaming down before counting down from four. On one, he said "So, you were really good at hockey in college." Another statement in lieu of a question.
His dad looked surprised but continued chopping. "Did the guys put you up to this? Tell them they still owe me and in fact— they owe me extra for trying to get my kid to bail them out."
Shane winced, wondering what kind of bet his friends had. "No, no one put me up to it. I—I kind of watched your championship game. Or at least the third period of it."
There was a lull as Shane put both pots on the stove and David added the bell peppers to a hot pan. "Oh? What'd you think?" His dad finally asked, stirred the peppers slowly, coating them in oil.
Annoyingly, Shane couldn't sense anything but neutrality in the question. "The announcer said you were in talks for the AHL."
David nodded and threw some tomatoes into the pan, the noise hissing. "I was."
He wanted to pull his hair out but settled for bending the metal tab of the can of water back and forth. Why was this so hard? "Why didn't you go?"
His dad put the pan down on low and put a lid on it before leaning back against the counter and looking at Shane. "Something more important came up."
Shane's brow furrowed. "The treasury? You never said it was your dream or anything. And you were good, like. Really good. Your stats were crazy." Shane left off the "for that time" that he knew would derail the conversation into chirps that wouldn't get him closer to his goal.
His dad scratched at his jaw, where stubble was coming in. "That's really kind of you to say, Shane. But I—"
"Why didn't you ever tell me?" He blurted out.
David looked cautiously confused now. "Tell you what?"
Shane refused to have his voice shake, this was stupid, this whole thing was dumb and he was being selfish— "That I skate like you."
His dad leant back against the counter, both hands on the corner. In the tapes, his dad looked so big and young. Here in the kitchen that Shane used to come through like a storm after practice, he looked small. "I didn't want to put that on you, not if you didn't want it." The words sounded like they'd been said before, like Shane's did when he practiced pre-game interviews in the mirror to get the shake out of his voice.
"What—"
"You and your mom love hockey so much. And I thought that we'd find other things to bond over and I never wanted to be the dad who made his kid feel like his dreams had to be their dreams. So, I didn't tell you. I didn't think it'd matter too much, there aren't many people who remember an old alternate from McGill." His dad shrugged, like it was an obvious answer.
"Logan remembered."
"Ah." A bemused smile came over his face. "I was wondering what you two were talking about."
"He said that when he saw me debut, he knew without a doubt I was a Hollander." His dad smiled, proud. "And then I saw your cross-under." The smile turned to look a little embarrassed.
"I'm sorry for how your left ankle will feel in fifteen years. The compensation gets you after a while." David tried searching for Shane's eyes but he was resolutely looking at the stove where he noticed the different pasta boxes on the counter. One with protein added and the other regular. Two pots, two pastas.
"That was the first time you know?" Shane sniffed, he felt his eyes watering but refused to give in. "I know Ilya and you have joked about it, how strangers think you're related but—that was the first time someone told me they looked at me and saw you in years."
David still looked confused but shifted a bit closer to Shane. "Well, you can blame your mom for that one." The line that'd been regurgitated 1000 times over landed harsher than it had in a while.
"I just—" Shane sighed. "I wish it happened more… I guess. I don't know. I'm…" He thought about Ilya and how he always wanted to know what Shane felt even though it usually felt like a gross puddle of I-dont-fucking-know. "..sad I didn't know sooner that I play like you." He said it and immediately wanted to shove the words back in his mouth and swallow them back into his belly where that feeling should live instead of being naked and open in the kitchen air.
"I know I'm a lot like mom, I know that and I love her, and I get that we're not always in sync but—seeing you bond with Ilya—God, it's so stupid. I just wish people would see me and you in the same way, as easy." He thought saying more words might dilute the intensity of the ones he said previously but from the way his dad's face changed, Shane was drastically wrong.
David put his hands on Shane's shoulders and Shane was so fucking mad that he had all this muscle and he still couldn't control it enough to stop the tiny trembles of emotion running through his body.
"You asked me why I didn't go to the AHL, right? The thing that was more important wasn't the treasury, kid. It wasn't hockey, it wasn't work, it was the fact that me and your mom were going to try for kids within the next year." His dad squeezed his arms and pulled him in for a hug, his warm hand on the back of his head as Shane's arms remained at his sides.
"But—You were—?" Shane couldn't make sense of it, couldn't imagine someone in his family choosing of their own volition a life with less hockey. Especially if hockey was there, just waiting for them to say yes.
His dad was well-versed in Shane though, even if Shane wasn't as well-versed in his dad as he thought. "Yes, Shane, I did want to go pro. But I wanted to be a dad more, and I wanted to be a present dad who would be there for every birthday and hockey practice even more than that…" His dad paused, and Shane inhaled hoping to breeze past the mention of Ilya that hung in the air. "And I still do, kid. You…you seemed like you needed me not to for a while now, and I wanted to respect that. You do so much and it's rare that you let me see you need anything, let alone want. I could back off if you needed me too. And Ilya was the opposite—and I missed being able to be a dad." He let out a watery sigh as his breath hitched. "I'm sorry that hurt you. I love you so much Shane."
Shane's arms finally came up around his dad's torso, returning the hug. His eyes finally watering and causing his throat to croak. "I'm—I'm sorry I didn't let you be a dad the past couple years."
David squeezed him tighter before loosening. "It's okay. You're letting me now."
Shane disentangled himself from his dad and looked at him. "I—with Ilya—" Shane shook his head trying to get his thoughts in order, this was important. "You always talked about how you feel with mom. What love is like. I knew that even if I tried to say that… that there was a girl. You'd see right through me. So. It was easier to just. Not." Shane sniffed again. "And it sucked."
David had wiped up most of his own tears but another fell as he laughed. "It did, it did suck." He cleared his throat and lifted the lid from the pan. "I can…be less with Ilya if it—"
"No! No, please. It—It makes me happy you two get along." Shane's stomach rolled at the idea of Ilya's eyes dimming at his dad cancelling puzzle nights or correcting waitresses assumptions.
David hummed in agreement. "Okay, then we have to find something. Something that's ours then."
Shane nodded, "Sounds good, Dad."
They didn't find anything for a while but somehow that kind of became their thing anyways.
Shane suggested hiking, David suggested Formula 1, Shane suggested golf, his dad suggested chess, they both resolved to never talk about the time they attempted fishing.
Shane couldn't really remember whose idea it was or if it even was one of theirs and not his mom shoving both of them outside after they attempted to have playing music be their thing; but regardless, birding began to take over his life.
They'd both been exiled from the "Hollander (and one Russian)" family group chat when the photos of birds became egregious. Shane found a birding app from Hayes who somehow knew at least something about every hobby there is and spent an afternoon showing his dad how it worked. The two of them had Life Lists now. And they were competitive in a way Shane hadn't been with his dad in a while.
"Pull over!" Shane slapped at Ilya's shoulder as he scrambled to pull up the app.
"The fuck?!" Ilya got into the right lane and on to the shoulder, following Shane's order to a tee.
Shane unbuckled in record time and got out the door without closing it, trying to be as quiet as possible despite the loud noises of the road making his own noise moot.
There it was, just perfect for the taking. Shane took a picture, thanking everyone who had improved the zoom function on cell-phone cameras since the 2010's. He pulled up the screen to start recording, hoping that it would start to call.
He could hear Ilya before he saw him and Shane hurriedly waved a hand behind his back to indicate silently to shut the fuck up with your loud walking. Ilya did not get the message.
"Are you sick? Is it a reaction?" Ilya asked and Shane was too focused to see the epi-pen he held in his hand or the intense worry in his eyes.
"No, it's a Ancona Duck." Shane pointed helpfully to where the duck was laying in some shade. "My dad was just talking about finding one but it looks like I beat him to it."
The duck began to call right as Ilya began to mutter darkly in Russian; Shane swatted at him to shush.
With the duck call was successfully logged, Shane sent off his victory to his dad with a smug smile and turned around. "Okay, we can go now."
Ilya looked at him and mimed strangling him, epi-pen still clutched in-between his fingers as the two began to walk back to the car. "One day Hollander, one day it will be me killing you and not the mangoes."
Shane slid into the passenger seat, rolling his eyes as he took the epi-pen from Ilya and put it back into it's place in the glove-box. "The mangoes don't kill me, they just make me itchy."
"For now!" Exasperated, Ilya threw the car back into drive and continued their journey home.
Shane's smile remained in place and only grew when his phone buzzed with a text from his dad.
Dad: No way! I will let your mom know you and Ilya will be late. Did you get it's call too?
They'd found their thing alright.
Coda:
Shane was well into his first season with the Centaurs when he was sent to speak to the press for the nth time. Well-practiced answers came easily: rude personal questions getting a "no comment", technical questions receiving a thought out response, inflammatory questions about his last team getting a "next question". It was a great formula.
He was feeling good after their win and went a little rogue. Shane had noticed a woman reporter who had steadily moved from the back of the room towards the front seats of the press room throughout the season. "And last question, from you with the red."
The reporter smiled and stood up, the red jacket making her even more visible. "Mr. Hollander, you're known for your speed and I would say you should be equally known for your footwork. In this game, your tight cross-under proved invaluable in maneuvering around the other team and securing passes to your teammates. You often cite your success as diligent hard work as opposed to natural talent, with something like your cross-under that requires a specific amount of ankle mobility as well as practice, which do you say wins out?"
Shane took a moment to process the praise-imbued question before cracking a real smile, one that he subconsciously knew would go viral by the next hour. "Well, in this specific case, I would say genetics. My dad has told me I have a lot of fun waiting for my left ankle due to how much I abuse that mobility."
The reporter nodded, making sure her phone picked up his response before following up. "Yes, your father, David Hollander, was also a hockey player. A video of David Hollander playing at McGill has gone viral on the internet recently after Rose Landry retweeted it. A lot of the buzz around the video has been from your similar play-styles set years apart and the lack of his involvement in your career in comparison to your mothers. Why is that?" She didn't pull her punches but Shane respected the clarity of the question.
"My dad is great at a lot of things and one of those things is being a father. He has been very involved in making me the man I am and that includes the hockey player parts. I'm happy when people can see him in me, on the ice or off it." Shane answered, matching the reporters intensity.
She nodded and spoke again. "If you'll allow one more follow-up, I received a quote from—" She looked down at her notebook, "a Hank Logan, formerly of the Ontario Reigns that quote 'Make no mistake, Shane is a beast on the ice, just like Hollzy was.' End quote. Do you have any comment on that?
Shane felt a warmth in his chest, as he looked over and saw Ilya leaning against the wall of the press room with his phone camera pointed at Shane with a big grin.
"Not to be too generic, but I'd say like father, like son."