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NOVEMBER 2018
Like many significant moments in his life, Shane Hollander’s first panic attack (or, the first time he registers an occasion as such) takes place in the locker room of the Bell Centre. The cause of it is not nearly as important as what happens next: Shane finishes lacing up his Reeboks from the tile floor and mechanically takes his bag back from Hayden. The hallway lights have long since flickered off from their stasis. The world keeps turning. He shrugs off the hand on his shoulder and plunges into the darkness.
Despite his insistence, Hayden drives Shane home in the van and casts worried glances at him every two minutes. Shane ignores them and stares out the window. The episode had scared him only because in its throes Shane had thought, If I let this kill me, no one will have to know. But of course, he was being dramatic and got his breath back very soon after that. He hopes there will be no repeat performances.
But of course, there are. He doesn’t tell Ilya, even though he really wants to. Ilya would make him feel better, but Shane doesn’t want to bother him with something so trivial as his brain trying to kill him while Ilya treads mercury captaining the fucking Centaurs, so he leaves it alone.
He wishes everyone else would, too.
Nearly two months later, an afternoon practice drags on till dusk. JJ waits for Shane, nearly shaking with frustration as the last of the lagging Metros go home for the night. They don’t acknowledge him or ask why he’s completely packed and stalling, sitting on the floor in front of his bench. The lump in his throat swells, thinking about what he has to say today. Hayden had to leave early for some child-related emergency, leaving JJ to say his piece alone. He feels like a snake eating its own tail.
Eventually, the door beside him swings open and Shane shuffles in. It’s only them now, just Shane in his towel and JJ, fully dressed for the winter snow.
"Aren't you embarrassed?" JJ asks. His hands are clasped tightly in his lap with an anger he is trying very hard not to misdirect at his captain, but the sudden cold front of Shane's expression is all JJ needs to know that he needs to tread very, very carefully, now.
"Excuse me," says Shane. JJ would be intimidated if Shane weren’t cowering away from his gaze. Right now he just stares at the combination padlock on his locker, mouth tight.
"This is bullshit, Shane."
"I don't know what you're talking about," he says carefully.
"Fuck you, yes you do. You're playing for a shit team that doesn't fucking like you anymore. What are you doing here?"
"They're playing well. Everyone's adjusting. We're winning."
"Mon dieu, Capitaine, that's not all that matters."
"It's all that matters to me."
JJ knows it’s a lie that Shane can’t even convince himself to believe, so he feels no need to call him out on it. He stays silent as Shane changes out, waiting until he's methodically pulled on at least two layers of clothing before continuing. "You're a lot better than this. You're embarrassing yourself, and you are going to regret this in two years when fucking Theriault and the boys have sucked you fucking dry and you have to retire at thirty because your defensemen won't defend you."
Only then does Shane manage to face him fully, blinking rapidly. He quips, "Oh, so you're not going to defend me anymore?"
JJ can only relish the notion that he is Shane's for a moment before he gets angry again. "Please—"
"Where the fuck would I go, JJ? Ottawa? What fucking city's gonna be better about this? Toronto? Yeah, right. You want me to move across the country?"
"New York."
Shane laughs without humor. He spits, "Fuck you."
"I'm serious, Shane, this isn't going to get better."
"I don't care. I've always been gay. I've always been a Metro. I've always been this, here, and they're not gonna drive me away now."
"It will be more our loss than yours."
"Oh, I know.” JJ smiles and Shane’s mouth twists. "I want to play good hockey and I want another cup, and this is the only place I can get one."
"That's one hundred percent not true. You think we're getting another cup when Wilson won't pass to you? When Drapeau's decrepit ass won’t communicate with your line?" Shane's left eyebrow twitches like JJ's just placed a bet he doesn't know he won't win, which he supposes he has. "You can rebuild without us, but we cannot win without you."
Which is true. The tension bleeds out of Shane's face only because he's decided he's done with this conversation. He's the only twenty-seven-year-old JJ knows that can make a baby-fat face look menacing. He shrugs his bag onto one shoulder and fidgets with the sleeves of his hoodie. "It's like you want me gone, JJ."
"Jamais!"
[Never. He says it mock-outrageously, but it’s probably the most sincere JJ’s been his whole career.]
MARCH 2019
"Shane Hollander is the scariest motherfucker to play North American hockey, man," Wyatt murmurs, staring hard at the ornate centerpiece in the middle of Evan Dykstra’s dining table. Bood nods solemnly. It’s a Friday night, and the bonfire lit in the backyard illuminates the space through the glass doors behind them. The rest of the Centaurs mingle outside, a melting cooler between them. "Like, it’s one thing to get pucks shot at you for a living, but I should get a bonus every time we play Montreal because Hollander is a demon."
"Yes, he is very good at hockey," Ilya says diplomatically, thinking about getting a beer from the fridge. "But you are the very best goalie in whole league, and-"
Chouinard cuts him off, passing the weed pen to Boodram. "Nah, Roz, you don't get it because you're the only one who can manage to keep up with him. And also you’re an offensive player. He is a nightmare to defend against, because that short motherfucker-"
"Okay, well I do more than manage to, and he's six feet tall."
"Let me have this, bro—I’ve got half a foot on the guy and he'll fucking tackle me like we're playing American football, and he’ll say something stupid like ‘loser’ under his breath and skate away like the cat that didn't even bother to kill the canary before dragging it along because the canary’s ego is too bruised to fight back!"
"What the fuck does that mean?"
Bood jumps in, "And you can't even retaliate because A) You can't fucking catch him, and B) fucking-"
"Boiziau or Pike will jump you if you manage to!"
Ilya frowns. "Is that true?"
"Yes," Bood croaks as he passes the pen to Wyatt. "Those two go abnormally ham on everyone who hits him too hard."
"But not the others?" Something nags at Ilya, subconscious alarm bells ringing. He snags the pen from Hayes and huffs. "Whatever. ‘S not hard for me to catch him."
"Fuck off-"
Wyatt's delayed laugh cuts him off. "One of the Toronto coaches pitched a defensive line specifically to counter Hollander for the 2017 playoffs, and the only reason we didn't use it was that Kent said that 'if our anti-Hollander strategy leaked, it would go to Hollander's head.'"
Hollander's head, one of the trains of thought in Ilya's head goes, dreamily. "Well-"
"-I remember that," Troy drunkenly mutters from the couch. "As if anything could make Hollander more conceit-"
"We did not have one of those lines for you, Roz."
"Because no such line could have existed!"
The table erupts into groans again.
“You don’t get it,” Chouinard reiterates, and for some reason it strikes harder than expected. Maybe it’s the weed, but for the first time in Ilya’s life he wonders if there’s something these men know about Shane that he doesn’t.
It freaks him out. Through the fog of his own consciousness, he knew there was something different about Shane, but he never expected it to be hockey-related. The detail that Shane only had two teammates in his corner and that Ilya had failed to notice Shane was missing—what? The other 20?—sticks with him for days after the conversation. He spirals.
He gets to see it live on ESPN a week later.
In one particularly rough game against Columbus, the opposing left wing catches Shane at a bad angle, slamming them into the boards and accidentally catching Shane hard with a jab to the solar plexus with the butt of his stick as he tries to swipe the puck.
"Down goes Hollander. Tough blow."
Shane sags to his hands and knees while the left wing chases down the puck and the game goes on. None of the Metros seem to notice and the intensity of play has too much momentum to stop. Ilya leans forward on the couch.
"It doesn't seem like the Metros are looking to retaliate there, preferring to keep the play going. Interesting tactic, but- Oh, Columbus in possession. 19 shoots AND- misses, and what's going on at the bench?"
A shot of Boiziau standing and banging on the boards, yelling at the nearest Metro. "That's your fucking teammate, go check on him." Beside him, Hayden is watching the ice, or more likely, Shane pushing himself to his feet on it.
"Hollander gets back up, and of course doesn't miss a step getting back into line.” Shane goes on to score twice in the next two periods, no worse for wear, but Ilya still feels strange. Maybe Shane actually was fine afterwards, maybe the Metros didn’t want to disrupt what was working, but the game clues Ilya in on what’s really happened: A) Shane is often alone and nearly defenseless when he plays, B) Ilya hadn't noticed, and C) Shane didn’t tell him.
He texts Shane after the game.
Good game
U okay??
Yes!
Ft tonight? ;)
Ilya doesn’t know why he tries.
JUNE 2019
The Metros win the Stanley Cup in an uncharacteristically hot June and Shane wins the Conn Smythe. JJ tells him, if you can win on this shitty team, you can win anywhere. You have no reason to stay.
Looking at his name engraved on the Conn Smythe trophy is much different than looking at the print on the Stanley. It fills him with such a sense of relief—it’s concrete proof that he is not fucking pathetic. Yuna had made it very clear to Shane when he was younger that Shane was a generational talent, that no one had done what he was doing. Shane knows he’s good. Shane knows he is phenomenal at hockey, a fucking winner. It’s intertwined with how he presents himself, but when he examines this too closely he finds himself utterly lost. If he’s that fucking good, why did it matter he liked sucking dick? Why was playing so pristine and living like a monk so important if he was already phenomenal? Why the hell was he letting his teammates call him a fairy to his face? This tended to weigh on one’s conscience and, even worse, self-esteem. He thought to himself when his bag got knocked onto the locker room floor, am i fucking pathetic? Am i a pushover, a coward, and probably an absolute insult to gay Asian hockey-playing children in Canada for letting them do this to me? And then he wins the Conn Smythe and the Stanley cup in the same year and thinks, nah. I rock. I’m still getting something out of this.
He mutes the Metros group chat and tucks into the cottage for the summer. His life is so bright and fulfilling. He wakes up in the morning with hands in the curls of a six-foot man with an Accent snoring on his chest, cheek smushed like a baby’s on his left pec. He is so blessed and blissed out. He doesn’t think about the time Ilya woke up from Shane’s heartbeat getting too fast and loud because Shane was thinking about what would happen next season at three in the morning. It was nice how it lasted, anyway. He got to pretend for a little while longer that JJ wasn’t right when he told him that the Metros were taking more than he should let them. Nice, nice.
So the reassurance only makes him feel better until September. Whatever. Then it’s back to the Sawtrap, or what he likes to call, Clocking in :(
JULY 2019
Ilya’s obviously aware that there’s something up with Shane, okay? No one who spent their formative years (as well as their twenties and thirties) obsessively watching Shane Hollander Best Goal YouTube clips could glimpse what was going on with the Metros last season and think nothing had changed. He asked and asked, and Shane denied and denied and denied to the point where Ilya had to wonder if Shane knew there was something up with himself. But that was silly. Of course Shane knew.
Ilya likes to think he’s the Shane Hollander whisperer. He knows about Shane’s dormant exhibitionism kink and how to trigger it without triggering what neither of them like to call an anxiety attack. He knows the difference between Shane's hungry stomach grumbles and impending-stomach-ache stomach grumbles. There’s probably not a freckle on Shane’s body Ilya hasn’t licked before, if he’s being honest. That’s not really impressive or a key to revealing Shane’s psyche or anything, but it’s probably worth mentioning.
Ilya has no problem understanding Shane, he thinks. Their lack of proximity is the issue.
Hayden rooms with Shane. Hayden’s on a line with Shane. Ilya’s a little fucking bitter about it.
If Ilya were on a line with Shane, they’d probably forget what losing felt like—it’s a feeling Ilya would really like to forget right now because upcoming seasons feel like the gauntlet with the Centaurs. His losses compile as he thinks about killing himself between games against Montreal. He’s no help to Shane, who spends his time fighting for his life on the ice, like this.
He would never admit it, but things actually got way easier once Hayden Pike found out about their relationship. For one, Shane no longer had to be secretive about where he’s going after Boston games or why he was spending twenty minutes in the shower beforehand. Shane’s days of hiding sexts in hotel rooms were far behind him. For another, Hayden’s just as experienced at talking Shane down as Ilya. Well, probably not as experienced as Ilya, but simply ganging up on Shane’s paranoia seemed to be effective.
(Ilya remembers about a week after they announced the Irina Foundation, he found himself watching Shane pace back and forth across a dining room beside Hayden Pike in Shane’s apartment.
He said, "You're being paranoid. What the fuck hockey fans are going to watch Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov launch a charity for suicide prevention and think, well obviously they're fucking. You're not being logical."
"It's unrealistic to think people won't talk, Rozanov. Everyone knows I'm gay." By everyone, Shane meant the Metros and the slowly growing number of players the Metros had leaked the news to across the league. Also, the mass amount of people on Twitter saying Shane had a gay face.
"Shane, buddy, the most unrealistic part about this plan is gonna be successfully convincing people that you give a shit about charity," Hayden had helpfully supplied. This actually made Shane stop pacing to glare at Pike, who wasn’t cowed at all by this expression. Point to Pike, Ilya had thought, and put the knowledge that Hayden Pike had his uses away for later.)
So really, Ilya should probably text Pike about this. It’s a little annoying because Ilya had the whole summer to figure it out, but Shane really is a locked vault of inane worries and secrets when he wants to be. Plus, Shane felt lighter over the summer. He won’t text Pike till the season starts and he starts to feel it again, but he furrows away these thoughts for another day.
APRIL 2021
JJ has seen Shane trip maybe twice in his career, and once was on a raised crack in the sidewalk outside Hayden’s parents’ house. There is an instant where JJ doubts, and then promptly realizes he had written Shane into godhood. He was in so much awe of Shane that he couldn’t believe Shane might make a mistake. For a moment JJ thinks that it must have been on purpose, but by the time he realizes he has misstepped, it’s too late to truly take it back.
He is sorry. He is incredibly sorry. He knows from the moment Shane leaves the Metros’ locker room that they’ll never see him in there again. But if this is what it takes to get Shane to leave, JJ can’t be quite as sorry as he should be.
JJ still apologizes profusely of course, in person and over text and through drunkenly sent voice notes. Shane is as gracious as he can be about it, and they’ll never be the same, but JJ is still the first person Shane tells after Ilya when he secures the trade to Ottawa.
He recalls their conversation, nearly three years ago now and says, “Tu m'aurais ri au nez si j'avais suggéré cela!” [You would have laughed in my face if I suggested that!]
Shane just laughs. “C'était avant qu'ils n'aient le deuxième meilleur joueur de la ligue. Et maintenant, ils m'ont.”
[That was before they had the second-best player in the league. And now they have me.]
JJ shakes his head before he meets Shane's triumphant, frightening gaze.
“Motherfucker,” he hisses, “I have to get off this team.”
Shane pats his shoulder and JJ tries not to let the adoration show on his face.
JULY 2021
Shane does not vibrate as they walk up the porch steps to Bood’s front door, but the hand calmly fisting Ilya’s jacket sleeve is tight enough to let his fiancé know he might as well be. Emotion pools under his tongue, sticky as he tries to swallow. You cannot ruin this for Ilya. Do not fuck another team up, he tells himself—even though he knows the first one was hardly his fault.
He shakes out his limbs, clears his head. Reminds himself that he memorized everyone’s name and position weeks ago to make a good impression. He will not be a dick, he will not be a problem. Takes a deep breath and prepares to knock, but instead Ilya just lets them in through the unlocked door.
Well.
Shane doesn’t grimace or roll his eyes because that would probably be rude. Before Ilya can notice his face, Shane reaches for his hand. Ilya smiles at him and leads them to the backyard, where the party’s in full swing. There is Zane Boodram by the grill talking to Evan Dykstra, Wyatt Hayes entertaining the children, and a group of younger players huddled near the fire pit. Wives and girlfriends and children and the enticing smell of the barbecue. He feels untethered until someone he recognizes as Cassie Boodram presses a dripping beer into his hand and says, “Hi, Shane! Welcome you guys.”
“Thank you for the invite,” he replies politely. Ilya goes in for a hug, and Cassie leads them to the grill.
Shane’s personal address had been leaked twice: by a dedicated group of Metros fanatics and an asshole supporter of whatever team he beat the weekend before the exposure. He had to move both times, which he was never too upset about because an apartment is an apartment and with every year, his home and landscaping budget increased with his salary. He now shudders to think about what could have happened if he left his door unlocked like the Boodram family; perhaps there are perks of being on a shit fucking team.
He introduces himself needlessly, shakes hands and nurses the beer Cassie gave him. Everyone is nice and polite and fucking jolly. The Metros were many things for him, but he never realized their intensity was so grounding. Shane at least felt in the moment while he was with them, even if the moment was often stressful and painfully tedious. They could always talk about hockey, but he hasn’t heard next season plans come up in conversation once—only how great everyone’s summers have been and how nice it has been to spend time with the kids. He finds himself unsettled, so he sticks to watching Ilya interact with the Centaurs with what he hopes is an expression of tenderness.
Ilya’s so sharp and bright beside him. He grins like a shark, holds Shane’s waist possessively and laughs loudly at everything he finds funny. Shane doesn’t have to pretend to be in love nor pretend he isn’t in love with him. This, he believes, is what makes listening to Tanner Dillon’s fucking Niagara Falls marriage proposal worth it.
Eventually, Ilya takes his long-empty beer bottle from his hand and tosses it into a nearby recycling bag. When he notices that Shane no longer has anything to do with his hands, he points him to the cooler again and slaps a kiss on his jaw.
He side-steps Troy Barrett and nods at Nick Chouinard on his way. Great job, Shane, he thinks reassuringly to himself. He likes the ice-cold water on his hand as he grabs a new beer. A couple players approach as Shane pops the bottle open.
“Hello,” Shane says, reaching out a hand. “Shane.”
The blond one, Luca Haas, practically yells, “Yes, I know! It’s good to meet you. Officially.”
Shane frowns.
“Well, you’ve beaten us before but I don’t think that counts, right?”
“Right.”
“I’m-”
“Luca Haas, right wing,” he fills in. Luca clasps his hands together tightly, ecstatic. “Um, and Wyatt Hayes, but I think we did meet officially at All-Stars, right?”
“Yeah. It’s great to have you on the team, man.”
Shane says some mindless thing, like, great to be here! even though he knows they know the circumstances regarding the transfer weren’t ideal. Even though it isn’t. His heart pounds as the conversation continues. Be normal, he thinks to himself. Say normal things.
“I’m looking forward to doing some shooting practice with you. You’re a fantastic goalie.”
Wyatt snots. “I’m not, dude. You’re a killer.”
(Remember who you are.)
Despite himself, Shane smiles with his teeth.
OCTOBER 2021
Ilya's never met an MLH player that didn’t hold these grand, insane misconceptions about Shane Hollander. They used to be funny, a secret he was proud of keeping in the beginning. They used to say Hollander is a robot and Ilya would think you wouldn’t think that if you heard the sounds he makes when he gets his dick sucked and giggle internally (and occasionally, externally) and move on with his day. Strangers, mediocre men he’d never spoken to beyond chirps would come up to him at awards shows and All-Star games and try to bond by insulting Shane. Hollander’s so boring, so rude—fuck is he fast, though! Glad no one’s making me compete with that, haha. Yeah, Ilya used to think it was hilarious. All these people with such wrong opinions of his boy. All these people who would never know Shane Hollander the way Ilya did.
And then he began to know Shane, and he began to get angry at them. And he began to get confused, because it wasn’t just shallow assholes who thought these wild, utterly inaccurate things about him. It was his friends, good and kind people, too:
"I don't know what you're talking about, dude, Shane's a fucking dick," Barrett says. Ilya looks taken aback while JJ gives him a look of disdain. They’re at a hotel bar with half the Centaurs roster and exactly two Metros, celebrating their last regular-season match until playoffs. "No, I mean it's hot and all, and he's a beast on the ice, but isn't he?"
"You're an actual piece of shit, Barrett," JJ says, teeth nearly bared. "At least he was never the lackey of a fucking rapist."
Barrett's face hardens and Ilya interrupts whatever he was about to counter with by replying, "Shane's not a dick." Barrett glances at him like he's crazy but JJ lets him go on, intrigued. "Why do you think he's a dick?"
Barrett has the sense to look cowed and uncomfortable. "He's just so aloof? He's so dry when I try to talk to him and I get the sense that he thinks I'm, like, actually beneath him. And I’m not the only one, okay? I heard from some Montreal folks that he was belittling and never accepted criticism and ignored everyone to their faces."
"And what were their critiques? 'You're a faggot, maybe work on that'?" mocks Ilya.
Barrett grimaces, fidgeting with the empty shot glass on the table.
"He's joking, but he's actually right," says JJ harshly. "You weren't in the room, you only heard what my stupid teammates wanted other teams to know to make themselves seem less like the idiots who drove Shane Hollander away."
“Okay, fine. He’s not a dick. But he definitely doesn’t like me.”
Ilya rolls his eyes. “What are you-”
“I’ve told you this so many times, Roz: your boy hates my guts.”
“Oh, I wonder why,” mutters JJ.
“Shane is not like that,” argues Ilya. “He doesn’t hold grudges. He knows that you changed. He encouraged me to be friends with you back when he was in Montreal.”
“Oh my god, dude, then why the hell has he been ignoring me?”
Like he’s an idiot, JJ says, “Why don’t you ask him yourself.”
Huh. All three of them glance back at the man in question, who’s alone at the bar, making a drink. Ilya’s face softens, the fucking dope. Troy watches Shane pour a can of ginger ale into a plastic cup and totters over before he can psyche himself out of it.
“You don’t like me,” Troy says. His face feels warm from the alcohol. With the swagger of a tipsy gentleman, he takes Shane’s empty can of Canada Dry and tosses it for him, but Shane’s expression just shifts from politely disinterested to irritated. He pours a generous amount of whiskey into his half-full cup of ginger ale and maraschino cherries and drinks deeply. “Can’t you admit it for me?”
Shane eyes him. “Why?”
Troy’s sigh deflates him. “Because I’m sick of everyone saying I’m being sensitive or seeing things. You go out of your way to avoid me, and no one else notices! Not even Ilya, and he reads you like a human mood ring. Please do me the favor of giving it to me straight.”
He takes another swig of his concoction. “I really don’t get how that translates into me not liking you.”
Troy takes a deep breath and thinks carefully about what he wants to say. “Hollander, I’m so sorry. I’m genuinely so sorry. The way I treated you and JJ, and Pike, too, probably, when I was at Toronto was completely unacceptable and fucked-up and there’s no excuse for it. If I could take it all back, I would and I’ll never stop feeling horrible about what happened, but I swear to God I’m not actually homophobic. I never believed in that shit. None of the racist shit Kent said to you was okay and I’m sorry if I made you think it was, and I’m sorry for just standing by and letting that shit slide, and-”
“Shut up, Barrett.”
“Yeah okay, man but-”
“I don’t think you’re homophobic or racist or a bigot. I don’t think you’re a bad person. In fact, I don’t think about you at all.”
Troy gapes even though he feels relieved. “Then what the fuck’s going on?”
Shane levels him with a whiskey-weighted stare Troy can only handle because he’s two shots deep. “You’re an okay winger, man, but you’re not literally not worth my time of day. I’m sorry you were gay and a Guardian, that must have been really tough—but you actively made it harder for us to come out. No one else resorted to being a piece of shit, so—and I’ll walk that ‘not thinking about you’ part back—I don’t think you were conflicted or a coward or evil, I literally just think you were weak.”
Troy blinks. Shane glares into his empty cup.
“Get the fuck out of my face,” Shane says, reaching for the liquor again. Troy immediately recognizes that he needs to go home. He stops back at JJ and Ilya’s table on his way out and downs one glass from the last row of shots they’d been lining up.
“Did Hollander set you straight?”
“No. He set me gayer and even more ashamed and now I’m calling it a night. Stay safe, boys.”
Ilya wonders what the fuck Shane said to Troy as he watches him walk with an emotional limp back to the lobby. He glances back to JJ. "I still don't get why you think Shane is a dick."
JJ shakes his head, face soured from the last shot. "I don’t think he’s a dick. He's just blunt, you know? Maybe rude when you can't keep up with him, but he took care of me—of us—just fine. The Metros just thought he was a dick because he never went easy on them, and he never has any empathy for anything less than excellent. It felt like there was very little room for the rest of us in his thoughts with how much space his neuroticism took up."
"Not true." Ilya blurts the first thing that pops into his mind: “He won’t let me carry my bags when we go shopping. He sweetens his oatmeal when we’re home together so that I will have some and he still kisses me when I’m sick.”
The last one seems to him home. JJ blinks, face stunned like Ilya has just revealed to him the secrets of the universe. “Oh.”
“Shane is very good,” Ilya tells JJ.
“I know,” he says, softly. They sit with this for a bit. Both watch Shane talk to Bood, Pike, and Wyatt on the couches, cup clasped and resting on his stomach as he laughs up to the ceiling. “Being with you must be really good for him.”
“Yes,” says Ilya smugly. And because he loves hosting his enemies at his husband’s secluded wilderness mansion as an excuse to drink the good wine: “We will have you over for dinner over break so you can see it up close. Sounds good?”
“Sounds like something I’ll regret agreeing to in the morning,” JJ jokes, “but yeah. For sure.”
NOVEMBER 2021
Shane does not keep his head down in the locker room. He never did to begin with, but it’s one of the lines he refused to cross in Montreal. The rink and the players were his, and by extension so was the locker room. He also couldn’t really afford to give, so Shane kept up the habit of a poised posture and carrying voice. Shane never really thought about whether or not he was a good captain, mostly because he knew nobody else on the Metros could be any fucking better. He wasn’t great at being what they wanted him to be off the ice, but he could control the room just as well as Ilya through other means. He could be commanding in the face of someone calling him a fairy, but he just couldn’t stop being one.
He overhears, one night after practice, a conversation he doesn’t want to stay out of.
“...Since Hollander will probably get the A soon.”
Shane turns, frowns at Dykstra. “What?”
“I mean, you’re a vet, man. With a lot of experience. You should be a co-Captain, or the alternate, at least.”
“I don’t want Bood’s captaincy,” he says in a carefully confused way. Bood’s gaze shoots to him and Dykstra’s face drops. The difference between the removed ‘A’ and ‘Bood’s captaincy’ is lost on no one. Shane knows firsthand that captaincy can only be stripped from someone because it was theirs to begin with. Being deserving of it is not the same as being entitled to it. “I haven’t even been here for a year, why would I take away another vet’s A?”
Nobody has a response, not that Shane was expecting one. He keeps organizing his locker, fitting his gear inside methodically while fitting other things in his take-home bag.
A locker room, he can handle.
Shane is too quiet that evening at dinner, still shuffling the contents of his first plate around when Ilya comes back to the table with his second. What Ilya has noticed about Shane is that this sort of stalling and silent mood doesn’t indicate that Shane is thinking hard about something, but rather wondering how to bring it up to Ilya, wondering if it’s the right time. These topics have ranged anywhere from whether or not Ilya would be into the idea of installing a removable mirror on the ceiling of their bedroom to what kind of art Ilya would like to see above the toilet in the ensuite. There are things about Shane’s mind Ilya will never understand, but he has learned that taking the plunge off Shane’s shoulders leads to more productive conversations. He steels himself. “What are you thinking about?”
Shane puts the fork he’d been using to roll around the chickpeas down and says, “So, I’m not a captain anymore.”
This is one of the conversations Ilya has been anticipating, though he hadn’t expected Shane to bring it up until the summer. He’d had the talk with Wiebe a few weeks after his trade had been finalized. Wiebe had expressed some guilt about both demoting and underpaying Shane Fucking Hollander, but Ilya had told him that they should have this conversation next year, after Shane wasn’t losing his mind. He wasn’t sure Shane would appreciate being given any form of captaincy without earning it, and he was also pretty sure Shane wouldn’t want anything to do with the C for a while.
So Ilya is caught off guard because it’s only November of Shane’s first year with the Centaurs. Eloquently, he replies, “Yes.”
Shane takes a shuddering breath. “I… ugh. Jesus.”
He puts his head in his hands and Ilya reaches to pet his head roughly. Shane keeps staring at the chickpeas on his plate. Ilya says, “Shanya, moya lyubov’, please tell me what exactly is going through your mind?”
Shane thinks, I have never told anyone such a thing before; looking into Ilya’s kind and pleading eyes he wonders why. He thinks about an answer to Ilya’s request and immediately remembers. Then he thinks of how to deliver his answer in a way that won’t freak him out, because the truth most definitely would.
Shane has spent his life scrambling to stay inside an imaginary box, a zig-zagging spotlight. Trying the center himself correctly. He tries very, very hard to be socially aware and acceptable, though he knows he often fails at this. When Hayden tells him, you can’t say that in front of the team, Shane! he is both laughing with him and giving Shane a warning. People want him to perform everything from heterosexuality to an interest in designer watches. Shane has learned that there are things he will never get, things he will never be. It’s mostly okay though, because Shane has learned that Ilya loves him regardless. But he cannot tell Ilya about the box, or how fast his heart beats when he realizes he’s alone at a party, or the anxiety festering within him in the locker room when someone makes a joke he doesn’t know how to respond to. Most things send Shane spiralling. He tries very hard not to let that show.
The truth is that Shane Hollander has spent most of his life in overtime: playing hard and fast, watching with his heart in his throat, all eyes on him. He has spent most of his life waiting and waiting for something to stop him, for his time to be up. It never is. He never gets to catch his breath. The one last push is never his last.
Ilya comes to sit beside him with their thighs pressed together and kisses his temple.
“I’m so angry,” says Shane. It tastes like true defeat.
“Of course you are.”
He shoves the plate away from himself and says, “I fucking hate chickpeas. I can’t do this anymore.”
“Shane?” asks Ilya, startled.
“It’s not fucking fair! I don’t know what to do with my hands anymore, but we’re safer than we’ve ever been before, and I keep on reminding myself that I’m Shane Hollander, but being that made me fucking intolerable to my team. And that’s bullshit because they loved me until they found out who I was, and I never liked them in the first place. It’s all bullshit.”
“Yes,” Ilya agrees quietly. “But you’re not there anymore.”
“I can’t stop thinking about it.”
True. Ilya knows this is true. He has long since figured out what exactly Shane’s ghosts are and long since realized how close Shane holds them to his chest.
“I’m sorry I didn’t understand it.”
Shane grips his hand, tightly.
“I didn’t want you to.”
Which is the best they can come to, right now. Ilya would never accept the box in the first place and Shane refused to step outside of it for a decade.
“I think you need a hobby, sweetheart.” Shane gives him the same scandalized, infuriated sort of look he gave Ilya when he suggested Shane start sleeping with other people. Which Ilya supposes is sort of the same thing to Shane. His husband, ever faithful. “I’m serious. You should start knitting or something.”
“I do yoga.”
“Something unrelated to hockey.”
Shane huffs. The tension seems to dissipate from his shoulders, but his eyes remain intensely locked on to Ilya’s. “I don’t want you to think this isn’t what I want. Every morning I wake up ecstatic that I get to play with you, and live with you, and do your fucking laundry.”
“Yes, thank you for doing my laundry, Shanya.”
“Fuck off. I mean it.”
“Mmm.”
“I’m done eating chickpeas, I’m done thinking I can’t be mad, and I’m going to pick up 'knitting or something,'” Shane tells him.
“Are these your New Year’s resolutions?”
“No, I’m starting those now. My resolution will probably be to win a cup.”
“Shane!” Ilya says, exasperated. “You say that every year.”
“What’s yours?”
“I think we should be nicer to Dillon,” Ilya admits just to hear Shane bust up laughing. “Just kidding. If you were meaner, he’d probably get better at his job. I just want to spend more time winning with you.”
“Okay, baby,” says Shane, grinning. “I’ll keep that in mind.”