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Did Shane like girls? This question came to him almost every night now. Did he like guys or girls? He debated between those two ends of the spectrum so much he did sometimes stop to wonder, maybe he was bi? But something about that didn’t feel right to him. Was that biphobic? What if he was biphobic? No, no, he wasn’t biphobic. Ilya was bi, presumably, and Shane had no problem with him. He’d even had sex with him and everything. Like, multiple times.
Okay, okay. So Shane liked Ilya. Whether that was a good thing was a different question, but he seemed to like Ilya. Rozanov. He seemed to like Rozanov. It was just that he hadn’t been with anyone other than Rozanov. What if it was just the sensations that felt good? If a girl touched him like that, would he enjoy that too?
He tried to picture it.
Shane could imagine himself having sex with a girl. Like, factually, he could imagine it. He lay awake trying to imagine really hard what it would feel like. How would he feel, besides physically? Would he enjoy it? Did he enjoy thinking about it? How did he feel?
Well, ok, he could at least imagine it, so he wasn’t like, repulsed or anything. That was good.
Shane went over these questions often. It became almost a bedtime routine for him. He couldn’t fall asleep unless he’d done some thinking about it. If the problem was left unattended his brain wouldn’t settle.
Shane knew he had always been most vulnerable to these kinds of thoughts at night because up until the moment he got in bed he kept himself busy, and that was on purpose. He had a routine. He had a diet. He didn’t overthink while he was busy. It was good. He got together with Rozanov every couple of months, but mostly he was content to keep those thoughts swimming in circles caged up in his head where they belonged.
Oddly enough, when he was with Rozanov the questions actually got quieter. You would have thought they would get louder while he was actually having sex, but it was like the sex allowed him to turn his brain off for a moment. He liked that. Once either of them left, the doubt and anxiety would come back, but just for a few moments Shane could turn his brain off and enjoy what was happening.
Other than the moments after sex and the moments as he lay awake at night, the thoughts stayed behind bars where they couldn’t freak him out. He’d have to figure it out eventually, he really would have to, but for now there wasn’t a deadline. He was free to question himself indefinitely.
The tuna melt incident had freaked him out. First names were a different level of intimacy. What was happening between him and Rozanov was not just casual anymore. It was turning into something serious. It was turning into something that said something about him.
It wasn’t that he realized he didn’t want to be with Rozanov. When they’d shared each other’s names he’d been struck with the feeling that he liked it. And that was bad. That was bad. That was not good for him.
If it was getting more serious there was more of a risk of either of them being found out. What if Shane was wrong? What if he blew up his whole career for something he wasn’t even right about? What if he overreacted and became the MLH’s first gay player and then that was it, he was the gay player for the rest of his life, and he ruined his chance at ever living normally, and no woman would take him because they thought he was gay. No one would believe him if he went back on his word. If he was gay that was the rest of his life.
So he needed to be sure. He had to check that there wasn’t another way. He had to try to be normal.
He wasn’t sure how he was going to go about that. He had never put himself out there like that. Rozanov had just kind of found him and scooped him up before he knew better. Could Shane Hollander, two time Cup winner, put himself on a dating app? Wouldn’t a bunch of people match with him for the wrong reasons? Maybe he could just think about it harder. Watch straight porn?
When he had agreed to meet JJ at the restaurant it hadn’t been about trying to get a girl. The cast of the X Squad movie was there. That was crazy. He’d love to meet any one of them. That was crazy! But as fate may have it, he met Rose Landry.
He hadn’t meant to sit down with her- he had just grabbed a booth. Honestly, if he had known what he was doing he probably would have freaked out and been all awkward and screwed it up. But he did sit down with her by accident, and he did succeed in striking up a conversation. And she was really nice to talk to! He was surprised how easy it was. It was the same kind of feeling he had when he was first drafted into the league and suddenly like, holy shit, he was chatting casually with players he’d looked up to for years. So he shouldn’t have been so surprised it was so easy to talk to her. He was just one celebrity talking with another celebrity.
Maybe… maybe that was the perfect set up for a relationship. They were on equal footing that way. They both knew what it was like with the fame and the publicity and the sponsorships. They talked about ads they’d done and interviews and fan encounters. It didn’t feel like flirting with a girl, it honestly felt like talking with one of his guys.
So as the evening went on Rose started to get flirtier, and Shane went with it. She leaned into him and he leaned back. Maybe this was just what he needed.
He left the evening feeling happy. He’d enjoyed that! He had! Maybe Shane Hollander really did like a girl.
Before they parted they’d made plans for another dinner at a different restaurant.
“So, is this a date?” Rose asked, smiling knowingly and tilting her head.
“I guess it is,” Shane said with a smile.
He liked talking to her. He liked that she was a hockey girl. She wore his jersey to his game. That was something that Rozanov, or any man he could possibly be with, would never get to do for him. Shane could be normal like this. Finally he had a girl and the guys on the team would stop teasing him.
“You know, I had really started to think maybe you were a fag,” one of the guys said, clapping him on the shoulder.
Shane smiled forcibly, and couldn’t come up with a response. You know, I almost did too, he thought to himself.
He could be straight. He didn’t have to throw his life away.
Sure, he did have trouble keeping it up, which had never happened with Rozanov, but that didn’t have to mean he wasn’t attracted to Rose. That could happen for any number of reasons. Maybe it was a coincidence that it was just happening now. Maybe he was just too much in his own head. Maybe by thinking too hard like this he was sabotaging himself. He tried to just enjoy the moment like he did with Ilya. But whatever it was, he just couldn’t get into the right headspace.
Rose invited him for dinner that night. He assumed it was going to be like any other dinner. But then it became clear that it wasn’t.
He fought really hard to keep the tears in the corners of his eyes. He didn’t like crying. Sometimes when he got like this he had trouble speaking. Having someone recognize that thing he kept inside him, that thing that felt like it doomed him, that thing he thought he had fought his way out of so well, made his stomach churn and gave him the urge to flee the restaurant entirely. But he couldn’t leave her unanswered like that. So he nodded.
Yeah. Yeah, it was better, he admitted to himself, even as his heart was hammering in his chest.
Rose recognizing this about him seemed to put everything in place in a way he hadn’t yet seen. Ok, sure, he could imagine himself having sex with a girl, if he put his mind to it. He did have sex with Rose… poorly. But it didn’t come naturally. And the way that Rose put it, maybe, maybe he didn’t need to know for certain that he would never be attracted to a woman ever in his life. Maybe he just needed to know, for him, that guys were… better. Ilya was… better. Maybe he was allowed to want it.
He swallowed and nodded and slowly his heartbeat settled.
He was probably gay. Or at least attracted to guys more than girls. If Rose could recognize that after only knowing him for a little while…
Remnants of doubt still flickered at the edges of his mind, but they were dying down like the last smolderings of a wildfire as the wind shifted course.
Guys were better. He was allowed to want better.
They took their time parting. He wanted to keep her around, yeah, as a friend. She was a good friend.
As soon as Rose got into that car Shane’s brain went into fix-it mode. He had to find a way to get his man back. Fuck his earlier decisions, he was now going to do everything in his power to get Ilya back.