Work Text:
Shane: Hey, do you have a sec?
Rose: I'm eating lunch but they're gonna need me back on set soon, can I call you tonight?
Shane: No, that's okay, don't worry about it
Shane: Just wanted some advice about what to wear
Shane was standing in the middle of the bedroom in his house in Montreal. After he texted Rose, his phone buzzed with an incoming call before he could set it back down on the dresser. "Hey," he said. "Sorry, it's fine. I know you're busy."
"Shane!" Rose sounded full of mock outrage. "C'mon, you know you can't just put up the bat signal like that and not expect me to call. What are we dressing for?"
"Uh, so I'm going to the Centaurs game tonight."
"And?"
"And, what? That's it. I don't know what to wear to the game."
"Okay, just so we're clear," she said slowly. "You're asking me -- you, Shane Hollander, are asking me -- what to wear to a hockey game."
"Hey! I show up in a suit and then I put on a uniform. This is a little different." Shane rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, because he was not unaware that he was saying something completely reasonable and also acting a little ridiculous.
"Alright," Rose said. "Put me on FaceTime and show me what we're working with."
He switched the call over to video. Rose was sitting in what he assumed was her trailer, wearing a fluffy robe and eating something with chopsticks. He held his phone up over the bed, where he'd laid out three shirts. "Just pick one of these."
"Babe, those are three identical plain black shirts."
"Can you please just pick one?"
Rose picked the long-sleeved Henley in the middle. "Let's see the full ensemble," she said.
Shane set his phone face-up on the dresser so the camera was pointed at the ceiling while he changed out of the basketball shorts and button-up flannel shirt he'd been wearing around the house.
"When was the last time you got to watch one of his games in person?" Rose asked him.
"When we weren't playing against each other, you mean? Um, never, I guess. No, wait -- I think I watched Russia play in the semi-final at World Juniors in, uh, 2010. That would have been the last time."
"Huh," Rose said. "Wow." She used that aggressively light tone that let Shane know he'd inadvertently said something about his relationship that sounded really depressing to a person with even a semi-normal romantic history. He'd heard it over the years from his mom, and also a few times from Jackie. "And that was before you guys were--"
"Kind of, yeah," Shane said. He never really knew which moments in their history were before or after what. That game was before the first time they'd hooked up but after he'd stopped pretending that it had been a one-time moment of insanity when he'd jacked off to the memory of Ilya Rozanov's hand wrapped around a water bottle. So what did that make the two of them then? He had no idea. "It's, you know--"
"Yeah, yeah. I know. It's complicated."
Shane put on the shirt Rose had picked and a pair of dark wash jeans, and then added an unbranded black warm-up jacket. The last thing he did was jam a ball cap on his head. He'd picked out the hat earlier, and the amount of deliberation he'd managed to pack into that decision was what made him decide to call Rose for reinforcements.
Like any guy who'd played sports his entire life, Shane had a large collection of baseball caps that seemed to breed like bunnies when he wasn't paying attention. When trying to pick out one to wear tonight, he'd immediately passed over all of his Voyageurs hats, including the one from last year's post-Cup locker room celebration that still had a faint beer smell. Deciding that anything associated with Montreal was a bad idea, he'd dismissed his faded and well-worn Expos hat and the even more beat-up McGill Redmen one that used to belong to his dad.
He'd also passed over a Banff National Park ball cap with an outline of the Ten Peaks, one with the Hockey Canada maple leaf and skater silhouette logo, and a cheap baby blue trucker hat with #ITSCOMEAUVER printed across the front, a souvenir from Gil Comeau's bachelor weekend two summers ago. The first one because it was bright red and the second one because it had a weird stain on the bill and he needed to remember to just throw it out already. The third one for obvious reasons. He'd eventually settled with a plain black ball cap with a small Bauer logo stitched in black thread.
He held up the phone so the camera was facing him again and said, "Well, what do you think?"
Rose gave him a once-over with her chin tucked in her hand. "You look like one of my plainclothes Secret Service agents from when I was in Escape With the President's Daughter," she said.
"I'm not sure if that's good or bad."
"In this case, I think it's the vibe you're going for." She paused and turned her attention to something off-screen. "Hey, sorry, I gotta go," she said.
"No problem, I should get going, too. Thanks for your help."
"Don't worry about tonight," she said. "Just try to have fun."
Shane had a lot on his mind right now, but he wasn't worried about having fun watching his extremely hot and very talented boyfriend play high-stakes postseason hockey. First game back home after going down 0-2 in the series? Ilya was going to be out for blood tonight. If Shane should be worried about anything, it was not getting a hard-on in front of his parents.
He slid his phone into his pocket, put the two black shirts that were still laid out on the bed in his duffle bag, and then started taking more clothes out of the dresser. In the privacy of his own thoughts, he didn't think the Centaurs were getting past the Admirals this round. Especially not after dropping the first two games in New York and reminding everyone that their second line offense consisted of Luca Haas and some hopes and dreams. But if there was anyone still playing in the postseason who could single-handedly drag their team to the conference finals, it was Ilya. So Shane was going to pack like he'd be in Ottawa until someone hoisted the Cup.
His phone buzzed again. This time it wasn't Rose, but an incoming text from Ilya. He'd sent a picture of the inside of his fridge, with his hand entering from the corner of the frame to point at a glass tupperware. The tupperware was in between the coffee creamer Shane always claimed could double as a glucose drip and three cartons of BioSteel in the cherry lime flavor that Ilya only kept on hand because it was Shane's favorite. In the tupperware was what looked like a serving of the spicy gochujang noodles from Ilya's meal delivery service, which Shane liked but hadn't eaten in almost a year on account of the refined carbs.
Shane reacted to the picture with a thumbs up. He always kept a couple of his own pre-prepped meals in Ilya's freezer, but maybe it wouldn't kill him to eat the fucking noodles.
**
When Shane got in the car, he saw that Ilya had sent him another picture. This one was a selfie taken in front of the mirror in his entryway. Ilya was wearing his gameday suit and the red and black striped tie that Shane's parents had given him when he signed with the Centaurs. Ilya had worn it on the night of their home opener that year, and continued to say it was his lucky tie even though the game itself had been a spectacularly embarrassing loss.
Driving away from Broussard over the bridge, Shane considered how many times he'd made this trip, the car pointed at Ottawa like it was zeroing in on a homing beacon. And then, there was a flickering thought, like a shadow he could only see out of the corner of his eye, about what it would be like to drive to Ottawa and never come back.
Things between Shane and the Voyageurs were in limbo. Locker room cleanout earlier this week had been … annoying. Most of the guys on the team had straight-up ignored him, and everyone else around him had handled Shane like he was a ticking timebomb. As though he hadn't played in the league for eleven seasons, with seven of them before this one ending in the exact same way. Like he didn't know how to grimace and nod and say, "Well, obviously we were hoping for a different outcome," and, "Couldn't ask for a better group of guys, they really played their hearts out."
Before he'd left the practice facility, Shane showed up for his usual season-ending exit interview with Leblanc, the Montreal GM. He had been and still was confident that if he'd walked into Leblanc's office and said he wanted to sign a new contract, Leblanc would have written one out right then and there on the back of a gum wrapper. But there must have been something else showing on Shane's face, because Leblanc had looked at him wearily and said, "Why don't we let things cool off a little bit and we can talk in a couple weeks?"
Maybe in a couple of weeks they could talk about how Montreal had kind of mortgaged its immediate future because the team had an aging core and everybody knew the cup window didn't stay open forever. They could talk about how the Voyageurs had gotten eliminated in the first round by a team that barely made the playoffs not just because Shane had tripped, but because their offense had as much depth as a kiddie pool and Drapeau needed labrum surgery.
Those were dangerous conversation topics, maybe. But over the last few days, he couldn't help thinking about them.
Once he was on the long stretch of highway that made up the bulk of the two-hour drive, Shane thought back on his conversation with Rose and wondered if it was really true that the last time he'd watched one of Ilya's games from the stands was in 2010. It wouldn't have been possible before now for either one of them to show up at the other one's NHL games. When they'd played in Sochi, their first round matchups had been scheduled back-to-back, and he'd heard about Latvia's upset win in the locker room. They'd each gone to Worlds a couple of times as pros, when one of them had been sent home early from the postseason, but somehow never the same year. So, yeah, the last time really would have been World Juniors in Ottawa.
The details were hazy, but he'd probably watched the game with a couple of his teammates, maybe McMullen and Cutone. Those were the guys he'd hung out with the most often that year. He'd played with Mully in Kingston and Mully had known Cutter since they were kids. A memory popped into his head: Mully saying, "You're gonna cream Rozanov next season," and Shane's face going hot for a reason he hadn't understood at the time.
Both Mully and Cutter got drafted, Cutter the same year as Shane and Mully the year afterward. Mully had managed a pretty decent career, bouncing around the Western Conference a little bit before landing in Anaheim a few years back. Cutter had stalled out in the AHL and after that he'd fallen off Shane's radar. Of the two of them, Cutter was the one who had sent him a supportive text after the FanMail video, and Shane had momentarily felt a little bad that he had no clue what Cutter was doing with his life.
**
Shane pulled into Ilya's driveway a little after five o'clock. He'd timed his departure from Montreal so that he wouldn't arrive until well after Ilya had left for the arena, not wanting to distract him before the game.
As he was getting out of the car, he saw that Ilya had sent another picture while he was driving. In this one, he was kneeling on the sidewalk with his arms wrapped around two little kids who Shane assumed were his neighbors, Willa and Andrew. The kids were grinning wildly and holding red and black pom-poms. Shane reacted with a smiley face. Now that they could keep pictures of each other on their phones, Ilya seemed to be determined to max out the storage space in each of their photo libraries.
Shane let himself into the house, greeted Anya at the door and wandered into the kitchen, taking the noodles out of the fridge and a bottle of sparkling water from one of the cupboards. He could hear Ilya's voice in his head, saying, "Oh my god, Hollander, I keep it in there because I am civilized and that is where it will stay at a normal temperature." He stood at the kitchen counter eating the noodles cold. He was plucking out each piece of gross baby corn he encountered and flicking it into the garbage disposal when his phone buzzed in his pocket.
After the video leaked, Shane had pretty much permanently set his phone on Do Not Disturb mode. He'd tried to make a short list of people whose calls could ring through, but it had still felt too long: Ilya, his parents, Farah, Rose, Hayden, J.J., the numbers for his cleaning service and his home security company, Coach, the team doctor, and half a dozen other Montreal staff who needed to be able to get ahold of him for one reason or another. When their season was over, he removed everyone associated with Voyageurs' organization except Hayden and J.J.
So there were a limited number of people who could be calling him right now, and this time it was Hayden.
"Hey, man," Hayden said. "Do you want to come over and watch the game tonight? I think Jackie's gonna make those fish taco bowls for dinner."
"Thanks, but I'm actually in Ottawa." Shane found another baby corn hiding under a piece of red bell pepper and fished it out with his fork. Then he scooped up the last spoonful of noodles and set the tupperware down in the sink.
Phone still tucked between his ear and his shoulder, he walked into the living room, looking at it with fresh eyes. It still felt crazy to even think about signing with the Centaurs. But if he did, this would be their living room, his and Ilya's. Well, maybe he shouldn't assume that moving to Ottawa would mean that Ilya would want to live together right away. No, that was stupid. By the start of next season, they'd be married, of course married people lived together. Unless Shane was still living in Montreal. That would be different, though. That would be a different thing.
But if Shane lived here full-time, he was going to put his foot down about getting new throw pillows for the couch. Neither of them knew a damn thing about interior decorating, but even Shane knew that leopard print pillows belonged on a porn set.
"You watching the game with your parents?" Hayden asked.
"Well, yeah. We're going to the game. My parents and I."
"Oh. That sounds … cool."
Hayden said this last part in a drawn-out way that made it clear he thought Shane was making a questionable decision, but he wasn't going to say that. Which was for the best. Shane wasn't sure when the statute of limitations would run out on Hayden being able to criticize other people's questionable decisions, but it definitely hadn't happened yet.
"Yeah, Ilya got us tickets." Not the tickets that would have already been allocated to him as a player, though. Because, apparently, he arranged at the start of every season to have those tickets automatically donated to the families of kids at the children's hospital. And he'd never mentioned it before, in a way that was extremely charming and very Ilya.
"So, uh, you talked to anyone else since Monday?" Hayden didn't say who, but Shane knew who he meant.
"Nope." Shane had talked to J.J. over the weekend, in a way that felt stilted but headed in the right direction. He hadn't heard from anyone else, and he didn't think the guys who hadn't reached out to him yet were going to start blowing up his phone after he made an appearance at the Centaurs game tonight. He knew exactly how it was going to look, he'd just decided that he didn't give a fuck.
Hayden chuckled in that dumb way he did sometimes, already laughing in advance of his own joke. "You gonna wear a WAG jacket?" he asked.
Jackie had been organizing the Montreal WAG jackets since Hayden had gotten the A. And Hayden had thought it was hilarious to suggest every year for the last three years that she should hand off the responsibility to Ilya. Shane had given up trying to get it through his head that no one in his relationship was wearing a WAG jacket. There was no WAG. That was kind of the whole point.
Shane glanced out the living room window, seeing the gate swing open and his parents' car pull into the driveway. "Fuck off, dude," he said. "I gotta go, my parents are here."
"Okay, well … try to have fun tonight."
Shane said goodbye and ended the call, shaking off the familiar irritation of being misunderstood.
Having fun watching one of Ilya's games wasn't the issue. He was excited about that part. And, for fuck's sake, it had been a couple of years, but it wasn't like this was the first time he'd watched Ilya move forward in the playoffs while he was still smarting from his own defeat. It wasn't even the first time he'd been knocked out directly by Ilya's team. Everyone was acting like this was something new, but it was just new to the rest of them. Pushing and pulling and winning and losing against Ilya was the story of Shane's entire life.
**
Shane gave Anya one last scratch behind the ears and went out to meet his parents in the driveway. Just like she always did, Mom got halfway out of the front passenger seat and said, "Do you want to sit up front, Shane? I can sit in the back."
And just like he always did, Shane waved her off and said, "No, I'm good."
Dad said something about how traffic shouldn't be too bad, and then Mom kept up a steady stream of chatter on the way to the arena.
She told him that they were still getting a lot of small individual donations through the Irina Foundation's website, apparently because of a social media trend that had started after Shane and Ilya confirmed their relationship. Then she talked about how strong Andersson had been in the net for the Admirals. "And in his first season as the full-time starter, too," she said. "He's been really impressive." After that, she moved on to a story about the neighbor who kept inviting herself to her weekly pilates class. "Of course, she never listens when the instructor suggests a modification for beginners," Mom complained. "I just want to tell her, 'We all know she's talking to you, Birdie.'"
Shane hummed in reply at what he hoped were the appropriate intervals. The donations were nice, Andersson should have been starting for New York full-time last season, and he'd gone through a pilates home video with his mom a couple of times, but he was pretty steadfast about how yoga had more scientifically proven health benefits. He couldn't remember if Birdie was the annoying neighbor who never shoveled or the weird one who ran a cat rescue out of her basement.
"You know, I was thinking," Dad said as he steered them into the parking garage. "I can't even remember the last time we all went to a Centaurs game together. You were probably eleven or twelve, right?"
"Probably, yeah." That was around the time Shane had gotten too busy with his own playing schedule to go to very many of Ottawa's games. Also, by that age he'd already been treating the prospect of getting drafted as an inevitability, and so that had meant distancing himself from rooting for a team like a fan, because the pros didn't do that.
Mom twisted around in her seat to look back at him. "Are you worried about tonight?" she asked.
Shane shrugged. "I mean, I'm worried that Tanner Dillon can't find the offensive zone with two hands and a flashlight, but there's probably not anything they can do about that now."
Mom rolled her eyes. "Tanner Dillon should sign himself up for one of the foundation's camps this summer, he might learn a few things."
As they were getting out of the car, Shane's phone buzzed with another incoming picture from Ilya. It was a selfie with Wyatt and Boodram shoving themselves into the frame on either side of him, all three of them dressed in their pads and jerseys and making exaggerated kissy faces. Shane smiled and reacted with a heart before tucking his phone back in his pocket. He'd figured out by now that Ilya had been sending pictures all day because he knew Shane was probably in his head a little bit about showing up at the game, and this way Shane wouldn't have to hold up his end of the conversation. Ilya knew him pretty fucking well like that.
The three of them walked in through the players' entrance, flashing passes from an email on Shane's phone. He tugged his ball cap down further over his eyes, but the security guard definitely recognized him. In between the concourse and getting to their seats, he got stopped twice to take selfies with a fan. He wasn't thrilled about it, but he tried not to be a dick about that kind of thing, especially not with young kids. The second kid looked about 10, and Shane smiled when he noticed he was wearing a Rozanov jersey.
The kid said, "They're gonna win, right?"
Shane's smile spread into a wide grin. "Hell yes." He patted the kid on the shoulder, well aware that it was only a matter of minutes before this selfie or the other one got posted on social media. He knew people were going to have all kinds of bullshit to say about him being at the game, that a lot of them were going to think that he--
Well, people had been thinking they knew a lot of things about Shane lately. Ilya would say that maybe it was time for people to remember who the fuck they were dealing with.
Once he and his parents took their seats, Shane looked around at the crowd. He was in a sold-out arena of people cheering for Ilya, and for the first time, he was going to be one of them. Of course, Shane wished that he was the one still playing right now. Obviously, he would shove his own mother out of the way to trade places with Ilya on the ice, and Mom would dust herself off and tell Shane to go get 'em. But of all the ways that everything could have ended up, this wasn't so bad.
Dad bumped their shoulders together and said, "You ready?"
Shane nodded, rubbing his hands over his kneecaps and then bringing one hand up to touch his ring where it hung on the chain under his shirt. "Can't wait."
Before this series, the last time he'd watched one of Ilya's postseason games was in 2018. That was another season the Voyageurs had been knocked out in the first round. Tampa had been a buzzsaw in the playoffs that year, dispatching Montreal, going on to eliminate the Bears 4-1, breezing through the conference finals and winning the Cup in a lopsided matchup against Colorado. He'd watched the first game of that series with his parents at their cottage. "Is it hard now, watching him?" Mom had asked, and Shane had said, "No, that part's always been easy."
Out on the ice, Ilya and Scott Hunter bent down to take the face-off, and Shane could see that Ilya was jawing at Hunter non-stop. He couldn't tell what Ilya was saying, but it wasn't hard to imagine a string of chirps about whether Scott was going to retire before or after the end of the first period and if they'd had to call the fire department when they put all the candles on his last birthday cake.
Then everything else fell away, and Shane leaned forward as the puck dropped.