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Shane knew it would happen, and it means something, doesn't it, that he decided to visit Rose as she suggested instead of passing on her invitation to a week-long meet-up in Europe?
The door closes quietly behind him and locks out the drizzle and the cool evening air. Inside, the restaurant envelops him in the kind of old-style, dignified comfort that upscale dining locations have, all dim lightning, low-voiced conversations and the quiet clinking of cutlerly. Having spied the table Rose is waiting at, he blows past the waiter - how rude of him - and sinks into the chair opposite her.
Her welcoming smile slips. She's horrified, but trying to hide it. Her fingers on his cheek are cold and so very gentle. He shivers back from her.
"Now I know this is not from your last game," she whispers. "What happened?"
He left the house and boarded the plane to Zagreb hiding the bruise under concealer. He's spent enough time with make-up artists during various brand shoots to know exactly how to apply it. He's sure there's at least one or two pictures of him at MacDonald-Cartier Airport, but he's equally certain none of them show even a hint of what he's been hiding.
He cleaned his face with a tissue in the cab. Wiping everything off hurt. The Croatian driver didn't say anything.
He swallows. Coming here means he's already made his choice. Keeping quiet now would prove he's a coward.
He's not.
"I'll tell you.“ He tries to smile. His face throbs. "Just let me--"
He pauses, swallows. Starts again.
"After locker clear-out, I went to Coach Wiebe. The team had been talking in the group chat about who'd be getting the second 'A’ next season. Ilya suggested, and the rest agreed, that it should be Barrett. I wanted to hear it from Wiebe."
Rose is strangling her napkin and is mutely looking at him with huge eyes.
"I laid out to Coach that I've been doing a lot of the work of an alternate last season. Organizing practice, running drills, mentoring the rookies. I told him I deserved the 'A‘ and that I wanted it. That I hadn't insisted on a letter upon signing with the Cens because I wanted to show to everyone that Ilya's and my relationship wouldn't have an impact on the team, that I could still lead, that I wanted the responsibility after proving to myself and everyone on the team that I could handle it." He stops and grits his teeth. Not a good idea with his incipient headache.
"Wiebe laughed. He said that making Barrett an alternate was already a done deal, that he and Ilya agreed. That I might be a vet, but that I wasn't leadership material. When I told him that former homophobe and racist Barrett sure as hell wasn't leadership material, and that I might have signed at a steal in order to play with my husband, but that that didn't mean I had turned into a has-been overnight, not with my stats last season despite playing second line minutes, Wiebe--"
“Wiebe said that he wasn't responsible for my old issues with Barrett, and that there were two years remaining on my contract, and that I should finally realize that I no longer had - and never would have again - a letter, and that I should learn to shut up and play."
"Like Crowell," Rose whispers.
"Like Crowell," Shane confirms. "I told Wiebe that I wanted a trade, that I had no intention of playing for yet another team who was only too happy to send me out to score, but didn't have my back and wouldn't spit on me if I was on fire."
Rose snorts.
"I was angry as fuck, so sue me," Shane grins at her, pained. "I told him the GM would hear from my agent, and then I left. Yes, I slammed the door on my way out."
They share a reluctantly amused look before Shane continues: "Then--"
Their waiter arrives. Rose apparently speaks enough Croatian to ask him to come back later for their order - at least that's what Shane assumes she told the man. He vanishes silently.
"When I came home, Ilya was waiting for me in the kitchen. We—"
Damn it. Shane will happily tell Rose word-for-word (as far as he remembers, anyway) what Wiebe said, but how can he--
"He hit you." Rose hisses. She looks ready to claw Ilya's eyes out.
Shane looks down. Moving his head even an increment feels monumental. He nods. One of his hands is in his lap, the fingers digging into his stomach through his shirt. The other locks onto the edge of the table.
Rose reaches out to him, dislodges his hand from the table and squeezes it tightly.
"There was… yelling," Shane whispers. "He finally said out loud what he really thought about me. That I was a shit captain and a shit leader, that I was too emotional, too needy, that I couldn't read a room, that everyone calling me a hockey robot was right, that I should stick to-- stick to--" He swallows a sob. Rose grips him harder. "That I should stick to scoring on the ice and keeping my mouth shut outside of it. That I was a good lay, but that he was exhausted from keeping my ego in check and being considerate of all my idiosyncrasies."
"Wow, does he use a word-of-the-day calendar?" Rose mutters.
Shane sobs out a laugh. "I told him that if that was what he really thought of me, then he should be prepared for a divorce. That's when he… shoved me against the wall. I banged my head on the shelf behind me and shoved him back. I didn't even get to say anything before he-- Hit me. Just--just punched me. Right in the face."
"That's quite the shiner you've got there," Rose observes. Her voice trembles.
He nods. "I grabbed his collar, twisted it. Told him to take a walk. That I was going to see my parents, and that he'd better not stop me. Not unless he wanted the police to show up and end up on TSN as the star of the next domestic violence scandal in the MLH."
Shane can't-- he can't describe how it felt. The pain in his eye, at the back of his head, but both overshadowed by the pure, icy shock at the core of him. That Ilya would hurt him. Not just with words (because, dear God, has he gotten used to Ilya's sharp tongue lashing at him, making him be small, making him be quiet, making him agree to whatever Ilya wanted so long as they didn't have yet another fight like the one on Boxing Day, and--), but with his fists.
That Ilya didn't even look shaken. That he didn't apologize.
Maybe he should have foreseen this. It's not the first time Ilya has put his hands on him in anger, after all. This is not the first time Ilya's shoved him outside the rink. The last time, they've never talked about. Could Shane have prevented this? Is it his fault that--
Aside from the shove, he also remembers the puck shot at his head, the noise as it impacted with the glass. Like a gunshot. Shane has seen the glass panels surrounding hockey rinks shatter in many, many instances, has seen what damage a barely slowed-down puck can do. He should have seen that incident as the warning sign it was.
But, a part of him whimpers, he loves Ilya.
But does Ilya love him?
Just a week ago, Shane would have confidently answered that yes, of course, his husband loved him.
Is that true, however? Or is it just a lie he's been telling himself ever since he moved to Ottawa and their long-distance relationship turned into co-habitation, and their on-ice rivalry turned into Shane being his husband's subordinate on their shared team? When did they stop being equals, and Shane turned into an afterthought in Ilya's life?
Rose giving his hand yet another encouraging squeeze stops him from spiralling further.
"He left. He took his Porsche and-- I think he went to the Drover farm," he finishes. Shane fed Anya (the dog he never wanted, but has grown fond of over time), texted Rose whether her invitation still stood, and grabbed a suitcase. "I packed a bag, booked a flight and left a note that I would be at my parents' for the rest of the week and that I didn't want him to call before tomorrow."
Has Ilya even called in the meantime? Shane doesn't know. He blocked Ilya, blocked his parents, blocked Hayden. Disabled the location sharing on his phone and put it in flight mode.
He'll have to call Farah soon. Or, better yet, get another agent. One he doesn't share with his husband.
"What do you want to do?" Rose's voice interrupts his whirling thoughts. "How can I help?"
"I refuse to play for the Ottawa Centaurs ever again," Shane says and feels the soul-deep conviction rising up with the words he never thought he'd utter. "Either they trade me, or they terminate my contract, or they'll learn of my debilitating injury that I've finally accepted needs treatment during all of next season."
"Core-muscle surgery is all the rage these days," Rose agrees with an innocent look. "Rehab takes three months at least. There's a very good surgeon in Switzerland. He'll write you a note for school." They look at each other and badly bite back a laugh.
Shane gently pulls back his hand and covers his face. He smells Rose's perfume on his fingers. Her foot moves under the table and presses against his leg. He remembers an interview back in 2010, and the contrast between then and now is so harsh and so painful, and--
This is the moment the tears finally come.