Chapter Text
The Wrapper
Nine days before the game in Montreal, Shane eats a Snickers.
He doesn't plan it. He's standing in line at a gas station, looking at the candy rack by the register, thinking about the schedule — Montreal, away, seven p.m. — and suddenly realizes he's already chewing. The last time he ate a Snickers was after Hayden's video came out and his relationship with Ilya went public. He remembers, because he was ashamed then too. He stuffs the wrapper into his jacket pocket like evidence.
At home he acts like everything's fine. He's good at that — years of practice.
His mother is worse at it. Yuna Hollander calls every evening and talks about contracts. The new sponsor, the watches, the sneakers, how advertisers in Ottawa reach out more often than they did in Montreal — "Can you imagine, Shane, more often!" — percentages, deadlines, anything but Montreal. Shane listens and says "mm-hm." They both know what she's doing. They both pretend they don't.
Ilya says nothing.
Nothing at all. Not about Montreal, not about Shane's old team, not about how the Metros are playing like sleepy flies this season. Ilya, who usually comments on everything at breakfast — the standings, the weather, Shane's oatmeal — now eats in silence. As if this game isn't on the calendar.
That evening he pulls the wrapper out of Shane's jacket pocket. Shane sees it from the kitchen. Sees Ilya study it — for a long time, like a detective — then fold it neatly in half and drop it in the trash.
And say nothing.
Ilya Rozanov, who last Thanksgiving did half an hour of stand-up about a single slice of pumpkin pie. Nothing.
Shane doesn't know what to do with that. Then he decides: this is support. Ilya gets it and isn't pushing. This must be what marriage is.
He's almost grateful.
That night, without waking, Ilya hauls him close by the waist like a pillow and buries his nose in the back of Shane's neck. Also without a single word.
Pike
Two days later Ilya is in the shower, and his phone is lying face up on the bed when it suddenly lights up.
"Pike."
Shane looks at the screen. Hayden Pike. His best friend. A man who, to this day, calls Ilya "that Russian of yours" every chance he gets. Texting Ilya. At ten-thirty at night.
No preview. Ilya turned previews off ages ago, back in the Lily and Jane days, and never turned them back on. Just the name and a small number: one new message. Then two. Then three.
What Pike could possibly want from Ilya at ten-thirty at night, Shane can't imagine. He tries to imagine it — and quickly stops.
He reaches out. His fingers have almost touched the screen when a voice behind him says:
"Reading my messages, Hollander?"
Ilya is standing in the bathroom doorway — in a towel, hair wet, a smaller towel around his shoulders.
"Why is Pike texting you?"
Ilya doesn't answer. He crosses the room — slowly, very slowly, drops falling from his hair onto the rug — and picks his phone up off the bed. Holds it to his chest.
"Pike and I are having an affair," he announces. "A secret one. Just don't tell Jackie."
"Ilya."
"What? He is very handsome. For a Canadian."
"Ilya Hollander-Rozanov!"
"Then I will take yours," he says, unbothered, as if his husband hadn't just full-named him with an angry-kitten face. And takes Shane's phone off the nightstand.
And Shane's phone immediately buzzes in his hand.
"Oh," Ilya raises his eyebrows. "Let's see who is texting you…"
Shane yanks the phone away before Ilya can glance at the screen. Too sharply. Too fast.
"Fine, whatever," he mutters, already at the door. "Pike's my friend anyway."
On the stairs his heart is pounding like he just played a shift in overtime. His fingers are shaking. He knows what it says. He doesn't have to open it. He opens it.
Unknown number. Familiar words. The same as always: what they think of him in Montreal now, that people like him don't belong in a locker room, and something about Rozanov that Shane tries not to think about. These messages have been coming for three weeks — from different numbers, at different times, but with the same habit: three dots after every sentence. As if the writer pauses meaningfully every time.
Shane knows a few people in the Metros' locker room who write like that. He can't prove anything. The numbers are new every time.
He deletes the message and stands on the stairs for another minute, staring at the wall.
Ilya can't see this. Ilya won't call the league. Ilya will drive to Montreal. Find them — in the locker room, the parking lot, a bar, wherever — and then Shane will have to explain to his mother why her son-in-law is in prison.
The last thing he needs is his husband getting locked up.
Saturday
For the weekend they move in with his parents: the pipes are being replaced at home, and his mother has been saying for ages that nobody sleeps in the guest room anyway.
Shane wakes up in the middle of the night because he's cold. Half the bed is empty and already cool. The clock on the nightstand says 3:12. From the living room come rustling, tapping, and a sound he doesn't recognize at first: the sound of people trying very hard to whisper and being very bad at it.
He comes out, rubbing his eyes, and freezes in the doorway.
On the floor, at the low coffee table, sit his mother and his husband. Between them: a huge sheet of poster paper, scattered markers, two mugs of cold tea, and a desk lamp someone dragged in from the study. They're drawing something. And, by the look of it, fighting.
Shane can't make out the words. Just loud, furious whispering, like under the blankets at summer camp. His mother draws a long line across the paper. Ilya immediately crosses it out with one of his own. His mother takes his marker away. Ilya grabs another one. His mother smacks his hand with a cap. Ilya, without looking, pulls the lamp toward himself — and his mother immediately pulls it back.
His father sits on the couch in his robe, a newspaper on his lap, watching all of this like it's Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.
"Yuna, you're on his half," he remarks quietly.
Whispering. Furious, unintelligible. Shane catches only "David" and, possibly, "traitor."
"Ilya, that's her marker," his father reports. "Green is hers."
More whispering. His father raises his hands.
"I'm just commentating."
Then he turns his head, sees Shane in the doorway, and says very loudly:
"SHANE! YOU'RE UP!"
His mother and Ilya jerk upright at the same time. At the same time they grab the poster paper — each by their own edge — and at the same time they pull.
The paper tears in half with a loud rip.
For a second the living room is silent. Then his mother crumples her half into a ball and hides it behind her back. Ilya crumples his and sits on it.
"Good night," Shane says. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing," says Ilya.
"Playing Scrabble," says his mother.
They exchange a look.
"Playing Scrabble," Ilya confirms.
"At three in the morning?"
"Scrabble doesn't care what time it is," his mother informs him with dignity.
Shane looks at the coffee table. There's no board. No letter tiles. Just markers and a shapeless ball of paper behind his mother's back.
"Then what's the poster paper for?"
A pause.
"There weren't enough words," says his mother.
"Yes," Ilya nods, very seriously. "We need new words."
His father lifts the newspaper higher.
"Dad?"
"I didn't see anything," David says from behind the newspaper. "I'm reading."
"Your newspaper is upside down."
"It's the international section."
Shane looks at them one by one: at his mother with her suspiciously straight back, at Ilya enthroned on a ball of paper, at his father with the upside-down Ottawa Citizen. And decides it's too late for this. Or too early. He turns around and goes back to bed.
Behind him, someone whispers: "Bear." Someone whispers back: "Takes one to know one."
Rose
On Sunday Shane comes back from his morning run and realizes the day has barely started and he's already out of energy.
He's sleeping badly. The messages haven't stopped. Now they come by email too, and in the comments — under his posts and under the Centaurs' posts where he's even just in the background. Sometimes he catches himself counting them. Old habit. A bad one.
He wants to tell someone. And he knows that's exactly what they want: for him to tell. For it to become news. For everyone to talk about something other than hockey before the game. For Ilya to find out — Ilya especially. And making Ilya angry before a game like this is the last thing Shane needs.
Maybe Rose. Rose knows how to just listen. Rose won't go beat anyone up.
"I need a new wardrobe," he says at breakfast. "Rose is in town, she's shooting something. She offered to help."
And waits for the usual. The eye roll. "Your actress again." A joke about how Rose has better taste than Shane, which isn't hard. Ilya is always a little jealous of Rose — not seriously, a homey kind of jealous, the way you're jealous of somebody's old desk mate.
"Okay," Ilya says, and pours himself coffee. "Buy something blue."
Shane waits. Ilya drinks his coffee.
"That's it?" Shane can't help himself.
"Yes." Ilya raises his eyebrows. "What?"
"Nothing."
"Have fun," Ilya says, and goes back to his phone. "But not too much."
Shane stands there with his car keys in his hand and can't figure out what's wrong. Then he decides: nothing's wrong. This is support. Ilya isn't pushing.
Fine. He'll keep pretending nothing is happening.
The Coffee Shop
Rose listens. They walk down Sparks Street, her arm through his, something pumpkin-flavored in her other hand, and she doesn't interrupt him once. Then she says:
"Screenshots. Everything. Every message, every comment — with the date and time. And don't delete another one." She raises a finger. "Numbers are disposable. People aren't. People make mistakes. They write from their work email at three in the morning. They use their favorite emoji. There are lawyers who do exactly this. I'll give you a number."
Three dots after every sentence, Shane thinks. There's the mistake.
And then he sees them.
A coffee shop on the corner, big window. At the counter: Hayden and J.J. Both in ball caps, both in Ottawa, even though they live and play two hours away. Buying coffee. J.J. is saying something, grinning at someone behind a pillar whom Shane can't see, and rubbing his hands together like a cartoon villain.
Then his gaze slides across the window — and lands on Shane.
J.J.'s eyes go round. Shane can guess what he looks like right now: Ilya has described this look plenty of times. "Angry kitten." A kitten who's just caught someone touching its bowl.
J.J. shouts something without taking his eyes off Shane. Hayden, without even turning around, grabs someone behind the pillar by the shoulder and in one motion shoves him through the restroom door.
They're hiding someone. From him.
"Is that Pike?" Rose asks.
"Yeah. Give me a second."
By the time Shane reaches the door, Hayden and J.J. are already on their way out — with their cups and the faces of people who stopped in for coffee and nothing else.
"'Ollander! Ben là!" J.J. throws his arms wide. "What a surprise! Small world, hein?"
"What are you doing in Ottawa?"
"Drinking coffee," says Hayden.
"In Ottawa."
"The coffee here is excellent, voyons. Everybody knows." J.J. elbows Hayden. "Dis-lui. Tell him."
"Excellent coffee," Hayden confirms, with the face of a man who has never had a cup of coffee in his life. "Well, we'll get going. See you on the ice, Hollander."
"And expect no mercy, mon chum!" J.J. adds cheerfully, already backing away. "We will… comment on dit… beat you!"
"Terrifying," says Shane.
They leave. Almost at a run. Shane watches them go, then walks into the coffee shop, past the counter, and pushes open the restroom door.
Three stalls. He bends down and looks under each door. Empty. No feet, no shoes — nothing.
What the hell.
He walks back out. Rose is waiting on the sidewalk with her pumpkin cup and a very serene face.
"Well?"
"Nobody." Shane shoves his hands in his pockets. "Listen, this is probably paranoid. But Ilya's been off all week. He's not joking. Not one word about you, and he always has something to say about you. Pike texts him at night. And now Pike and J.J. are drinking coffee in Ottawa and hiding somebody in a bathroom."
"Maybe he's just nervous about Tuesday," Rose says lightly, straightening his collar. "By the way, he's right — blue really does suit you."
Shane freezes.
Ilya said the thing about blue at breakfast. Rose wasn't there.
"How do you know he told me to buy blue?"
"What?"
"You're in on it."
"I don't know anything," says Rose, with the face of someone who doesn't know anything, nominated for Best Actress.
"Rose Landry!"
"Shane Hollander!"
They stare at each other in the middle of Sparks Street. Rose doesn't even blink.
"Fine," Shane says. "Don't tell me. I'll figure it out myself."
"Will you tell me when you do?" Rose asks innocently.
Still pretending. She really is a good actress.
Boring
On Monday, the meeting with the lawyer — the one Rose recommended — ends early, and Shane gets home an hour sooner than he said he would.
Ilya and Svetlana are sitting on the couch in front of the TV. On the screen: ice, somebody's jerseys, paused. Shane doesn't get a chance to look closer: Svetlana spots him in the doorway, says something quickly in Russian, and the screen goes dark.
Ilya gets up and crosses the room to him. Kisses him — for a long time, as if Shane has come back not from a lawyer's office but from a war.
"Hi," Shane says against his mouth. "What were you watching?"
"Nothing. Just. Boring."
"And you are early," Ilya adds. "I did not have time to hide my lover."
"I'm sitting right here, you know," Svetlana says from the couch.
"See?" says Ilya. "Did not have time."
Svetlana says something in Russian. Ilya answers briefly, without turning around.
"Shane," Svetlana gives him her most gracious society smile from across the room. "How are you? How are you feeling before the game? Nervous?"
Ilya whips around to face her and says something in Russian — fast, low, and very angry. Svetlana raises her palms: I surrender.
Thanks to Duolingo, Shane understands a fair amount of Russian by now. He doesn't understand a single word of that sentence. Probably for the best.
"I'm fine," he tells Svetlana. "Thanks."
That night he lies awake and thinks: ice. They were watching hockey. Ilya was watching hockey and turned it off when Shane walked in. And for some reason that makes him calmer instead of more anxious. Even though it should be the other way around.
Game Day
Montreal greets him with wet snow and boos.
The booing starts during warm-ups. And when the announcer reads the Centaurs' lineup and gets to his name, the arena where Shane belonged for twelve years rises and roars.
Not all of it. Shane can see that: not all of it. In the upper rows there are a few rainbow flags. A sign: "WE STILL LOVE YOU, SHANE." A girl of about twelve in his old Metros jersey: the team name taped over, and across it, in marker, "CENTAURS."
But enough of them are booing. Enough to make his ears ring.
The visitors' locker room smells different. For twelve years he walked into this building through a different door and never once set foot in here — the locker room for strangers.
Before they head out, Ilya catches him in the hallway. Takes him by the chin and kisses him — quick, in front of everyone: the team, the coaches, the Centaurs' camera filming everything for social media.
"What are you up to?" Shane whispers.
"Me?" Ilya widens his eyes. "Nothing. I am a pure angel."
"Ilya. I'm serious. I don't want you to get locked up."
"Nobody is getting locked up." Ilya straightens the collar of his jersey. "Go. You are very handsome tonight. Montreal will cry."
Over his shoulder, Bood gives Shane two thumbs up. Luca does something like a salute. Troy winks. The goalie taps his stick on the floor twice, as if signaling someone.
Ilya turns to the team and winks at all of them at once.
Something is going on. Something is going on, and everyone knows except him.
Shane skates out to the boos of twenty thousand people and thinks only one thing.
Damn. Damn, damn, damn.
I can do this. I'm brave.
I CAN DO THIS.
