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“Hollander?”
“Barrett.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Trying to check in.”
“Not the hotel, Tampa?”
“Ah, yeah, that’s not a question I can answer right now. Can you do me a big favor and not tell anyone I’m here?”
“Not even Roz?” an eyebrow went up.
“Why would Ily… Roz need to know I’m here?” Shane Hollander was not good at obfuscating. Panic was written all over his face.
Troy Barrett did that annoying thing he did where he didn't say anything but just stared at Shane, arms crossed.
“I mean, of course that includes Rozanov. He doesn’t know I’m here. Why would he know I’m here? Never mind, just don’t tell anyone. If I can, I’ll find you later and tell you myself why I’m here, in Tampa, which is totally an unremarkable reason. It’s not even that big a deal. Ok, it’s nice seeing you Barrett. Take care of yourself. I’m sorry you went through that whole plane thing.”
Troy continued staring as Shane slunk away. It took a little while for Troy to remember he had ice cream that needed to get to a certain social media manager before it melted.
In the elevator Troy toyed with the idea of letting Harris Drover know who he’d seen in the lobby. As much as Troy liked Harris, Harris was still a social media manager, not the sort of person one normally shared confidential information with. Hollander’s business was his own. Troy may be bursting at the seams with this knowledge, but he hadn’t gotten where he was in life, and the closet, by having loose lips… though perhaps not going to use that particular idiom any more. Sinking ships were waaaaay too close to crashing planes.
Shane got up to the presidential suite he’d reserved quickly. He hadn’t told Ilya that he was coming to Tampa. Shane was hoping Ilya had not yet collapsed in bed. He needed a few minutes before he texted Lily the room number of the suite.
Ilya had not collapsed in bed. He was far too keyed up to sleep. In fact, it was a miracle he hadn’t seen Shane arrive at the hotel. Ilya was walking circuits around the hotel. Sometimes being an elite athlete was more bother than it was worth. Walking around the perimeter of a five star bay front resort was not something most tourists are really capable of doing much more than once, if that many times. Ilya was on his tenth circuit and wasn’t feeling anything close to fatigue or physical discomfort.
What shocked Ilya was that he’d managed to keep his cigarette consumption down to two in this span.
During circuit eleven Ilya’s phone went off. He was tempted to ignore it, but then realized his lock screen said “Jane”.
Jane: 2600
Lily: ????
Jane: [click to view image]
Ilya clicked on the image. It was a door with a small plaque to the side that said “Presidential Suite”. Ilya recognized it as a slightly more florid version of the door to his very much not a suite at the hotel.
Ilya was enough of a seasoned luxury traveler to know he couldn’t just get to the 26th floor and knock on that door. Approaching the front desk he was immediately greeted by the manager on duty, “Mr. Rozanov, we have a message for you.” The manager slid an envelope with his name on it to Ilya. Inside was a particularly opulent looking keycard and a piece of paper that said “мой выживший (moy vyzhivshiy)” [my survivor].
Ilya was directed to a lone elevator, away from the main bank of elevators, shielded from view of the general lobby. It had a card reader in it and only one button which was labeled “Penthouse Level”. He scanned the key card and pressed the button.
The ride up felt like it took forever.
When Ilya was deposited on the 26th floor he decided knocking on the only door in the hall was the better option than using the key card again. He was pretty sure who he was walking into, but the what of it all still mystified him. He didn’t want to spook Shane by walking through that door unannounced.
The door quickly opened. Shane was wearing an obscenely tight-fitting terrycloth robe emblazoned with the hotel’s logo. Like many things in this world, even luxury hotel amenities are not designed with the shoulders, arms and asses of elite athletes in mind. His shaggy, tousled hair was a little damp from the shower Ilya imagined he’d taken very shortly after getting to the room. Shane did not like the musk of air travel to linger on him.
Shane had a sexy smirk on his face and, of course, the freckles were turning Ilya on. “Hello stranger. Fancy meeting you here.”
“I think that is my line.” Ilya was having trouble keeping his hands from removing Shane's robe.
Shane moved away from the doorway beckoning Ilya in. What Ilya saw beyond Shane took his breath away. Almost every flat surface in the 2,200 sq ft suite was covered with the twinkling lights of votive candles. Shane mistook Ilya’s look of awe as one of concern. “Don’t worry. They’re all electric. I was very specific in my instructions.”
“How?”
“How what?”
“How did you get here so fast? How did you set this up?”
“So, it turns out that when you have an Amex Black Card you can get just about anything done and done quickly. As soon as I saw your text after the game I called an air charter company and went straight from the arena to the airport. While I was heading to the airport I called the hotel, reserved the presidential suite and arranged for,“ Shane made an expansive gesture encompassing the room as a whole, “this.”
Shane had long ago come to terms with having the kind of money that made obstacles to what he wanted disappear. It helped that the vast majority of what he wanted in life was to either play hockey or fuck Ilya Rozanov. The former other people paid for. The latter, while often annoying, was, for the most part, free.
Which all meant that when he really wanted to do something… extravagant, there were piles of money lying around making it possible.
When Ilya’s gaze returned to Shane after taking in what the hotel staff had accomplished in almost no time he realized Shane was down on his knee, holding a small box.
Shane gazed up at him, his expression steady and determined, and said, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.” Ilya swallowed. Why was it so hard to swallow? It was like he had no saliva at all.
“We’ve wasted so much time,” Shane continued. “Years of denial, then years of hiding what we are to each other.”
“Shane—”
“Could you not interrupt?” Shane said with a teasing smile. “For once in your life?”
Ilya pressed his lips together.
“I don’t have a plan for anything beyond this,” Shane confessed, “but I know what I want. There’s nothing in my life that matters to me more than you, Ilya.” He slid his hand into his pants pocket again. He had to lean awkwardly to one side to fit his fingers inside.
Then, Shane was holding a ring, pinched between two fingers, in the space between himself and Ilya.
“Shane,” Ilya said again, unable to stop himself.
“I choose you, Ilya. I promise I will always, always choose you.” Shane’s eyes began to shimmer. He took a deep breath and said, “Ilya Grigoryevich Rozanov, will you marry me?”
Ilya wasn’t sure how much time had passed before he realized he hadn’t said anything. He hoped it had only been a second or two, but judging from the fear in Shane’s eyes, it must have been longer. Finally, in a tight, trembling voice, he said, “You know my middle name.”
“It’s on Wikipedia. I kind of fell down a rabbit hole learning about the Russian tradition of using the father’s name to—”
“Yes,” Ilya interrupted.
“Sorry. I’m babbling. You know how Russian names work.”
“No,” Ilya clarified. “Yes.”
Shane stared at him with obvious confusion. Ilya nodded to the ring.
“Yes,” Ilya said again. “I am saying yes, Hollander.”
“Oh.” Then Shane’s lips spread into a wide grin. “Yeah?” He scrambled to his feet and into Ilya’s arms.
They kissed, and Ilya said, “Yes.” They kissed again, and Ilya said, “Of course.”
They kissed some more, and Shane said, “I love you.” By the time they finished kissing they both had tears streaming down their cheeks.
“Is this because I almost died?” Ilya teased.
“No. It’s because I almost died.”
They lapsed into a comfortable silence, holding each other close until Shane remembered why he was there. “The ring.”
“The ring. How did you get a ring in all this?”
“Yeah, Amex Black again. They have concierges who will get jewelry stores opened for you after hours if you're willing to spend enough. Mom’s getting a ludicrously expensive and very sparkly necklace she’ll never wear because they didn’t have any men’s rings that met the limit.”
Shane took the black ring with a gold interior and attempted to put it on Ilya’s finger. It was a bit too small. “I didn’t know your size.”
Ilya’s eyebrow went up.
“Your ring size, pervert. We can go back tomorrow when they’re actually open and exchange it.”
“And get one for you too?”
Shane hadn’t even gotten that far in his planning. He was so focused on getting to Ilya and, not to put too fine a point on it, putting a ring on it, that he hadn’t thought about Ilya wanting to do the same. “That’s a tomorrow problem. Right now I’d like us to be wearing a lot less clothing and doing a lot more fucking.”
After a spectacular hour or so of carnal bliss, Shane’s thoughts wandered back over the last few hours that brought them to this place. “Speaking of tomorrow’s problems, I should probably mention I ran into Troy Barrett in the lobby when I was checking in. He asked why I was here. I told him I couldn’t tell him that and asked him not to let anyone know. Uh, he said something about not even you, so I think he might have an idea of what’s going on.”
Ilya grinned. “I suspect by now he’s being very distracted by something else.”
“Something or someone?”
“Something attached to someone.”
Shane, ever the planner, asked, “So what happens tomorrow morning? I suppose I can slip out. I do need to get back to Montreal. If I miss our next game, I’m definitely going to have to explain some things to some people who have not given any indication that they’re going to be cool about it.”
“Pike is indeed a pain in the ass.”
“Not Hayden, Theriault. Or we could go down to breakfast and see what your team has to say about it.”
Ilya couldn’t keep the surprise from his face. “You would do this? I know how much you don’t want this getting out while we’re still playing. I cannot ask you to do that.”
“You wanted me to come to the Boxing Day party, why not breakfast?”
“If you’re sure. What do we tell them?”
“That we’re engaged. I think that will kinda fill them in on the rest.”
“There will be questions.”
“They’re your team. Answer however you want,”
Early the next morning Ilya’s phone buzzed. “Is Hayes. Some of the team are going to IHOP. Are we doing this?”
“We’re doing this.”
Shane and Ilya walked into the IHOP near the hotel holding hands. They figured that would accelerate the situation.
Wyatt Hayes was the first to see them. He nearly choked on a bite of pancake, which drew the attention of Luca Haas and Harris Drover who were with him at the table. They saw something in his eyes and followed his gaze.
Luca’s eyes got very wide. He’d played against Hollander at this point, but he hadn’t ever actually talked to him. Ilya realized they were going to have to go through another of Luca’s starstruck episodes.
Harris picked up his phone and texted Troy.
Harris: 911
Harris: Get here now! We’re at IHOP and you need to be here.
Harris considered Troy’s response to waking up next to him that morning.
Harris: This has nothing to do with us. Just get here.
He closed the phone, but left it face up on the table.
Ilya and Shane proceeded to the table and sat down at an end next to each other.
“Good morning” Harris was going to be completely normal about this.
Luca was not. The blood had drained from his already very pale face. He looked like breathing had become something of a chore.
“Breath, Haasy. Breath. Is ok. Is just Shane Hollander,” Ilya reassured him.
“Yeah, Shane Fucking Hollander.” Wyatt was very visibly amused.
Harris decided he was going to have to be the gracious host here. “Hi, Shane. I’m Harris Drover, social media manager for the team. What brings you to Tampa?”
“Proposing to my fiance. He said ‘yes’.”
Ilya beamed.
Luca made a slight choking sound. Wyatt pushed a glass of water at him.
“Congratulations!” Harris was determined to not take the bait Ilya and Shane were obviously dangling.
Ilya seemed almost disappointed at Harris’ aggressive normalcy.
Shane, on the other hand, was relieved that no one seemed to be upset about the situation. Sure Luca Haas seemed a little… impacted, but from what Ilya had told him about the rookie, he was pretty sure it was just surprise, not him being upset.
Before any of this had happened, Hayes had sent a message out to the team chat letting everyone know they were doing breakfast at the IHOP for anyone interested.
Zane Boodram was the next one through the door. Shane’s back was to him, so Zane didn’t realize who was at the table until he was already sat.
“Hollander, good to see you. Is Montreal playing Tampa next?”
Wyatt laughed. “This is going to be a long morning.”
Another message went out to the team chat.
Hayes: Come to IHOP. Don’t ask any questions. Everything will be explained once when everyone is here. If you are not here in the next 30 minutes, nothing will be explained to you at all.”
“You’re an asshole, you know that Hazy?” Bood realized he wasn’t going to get any information until the team was there.
The next Centaur through the door was Troy, perplexed and very sweaty. Seeing where Harris was sitting, Troy went to the other end of the table.
“Barrett, over there.” Ilya pointed to the seat next to Harris.
Troy shot Harris a look, as if to ask “Is this ok with you?”
Harris patted the seat next to him.
Troy leaned into Harris and whispered, “Sorry I’m a little ripe. I went for a run, but your message seemed… urgent. I didn’t want to go back to the hotel to change first.”
Harris made it clear he did not mind at all.
As Troy sat, he noticed Shane Hollander at the table. “I gather Roz found out you were in town?”
Shane blushed. Ilya beamed. Harris looked confused.
Depending on who you were and when you got to the table, the 30 minutes passed very fast or very slow, but they did eventually pass. By then the majority of the team was there.
“Did anyone tell Coach?” Luca realized an important person wasn’t there.
“We will talk to him privately after this,” Ilya reassured him.
Ilya stood up. “Hello, my beloved team. We have gathered here because I have important announcement. I know this will shock most of you, but I ask that you keep an open mind. I have been keeping very big secret…”
“Ilya, cut to the chase.” Shane really wanted to get this over with.
“Right, мой обломщик (moy oblomshchik) [my buzzkill],” Ilya pressed on. “This is my fiance, Shane Hollander. He came here last night to propose marriage. I said ‘yes’. When we have wedding date, you will be informed.” Ilya sat down.
There was dead silence at the table for precisely five seconds, then there was an explosion of questions. Most of them were either verbatim, or some version of, “What?”
Once that didn’t get any answer, the chorus of “How long?”s started.
Shane wasn’t going to get in the middle of Ilya and his team. He sipped his ginger ale and watched it all unfold in front of him.
Ilya finally got control of the conversation. “Everyone gets one question.” Ilya pointed at Bood. “You are alternate captain. You go first.”
Bood thought for a moment. “You two have been rivals since before you were drafted. Was that real?”
Ilya looked offended. “Of course it was real. It is real. You will see. We are not, what is it they say?” Turning to Shane.
“Chill, Ilya. We are not chill.”
“Right, we are the opposite of chill. We are very, very heated.”
Ilya pointed at Evan Dykstra.
“I mean you’re in love, right? What else is there to ask?”
“Do not waste one of our questions!” Wyatt was indignant.
“Thank you Dykstra. You are correct. Two down.” Ilya smirked at Wyatt who looked like someone had kicked his puppy.
Ilya pointed at Troy.
“I don’t have a question. I have a statement. I’m gay.” Troy put his arm around Harris’ shoulders.
“No questions for Troy. If he wants to be center of attention, he can host his own pancake breakfast,” Ilya insisted.
“You heard him, Roz’s paying. Order the good stuff!” exclaimed Bood.
Wyatt looked like he was about to explode. “We’re at IHOP. Millionaires picking up tabs at IHOP is not an accomplishment.”
“Hazy, we’re all millionaires. He’s just more millionaire than the rest of us. Let us have this.” Bood was very excited about free pancakes.
Wyatt continued to glower at the rest of the table.
“Fine, Hazy. What is your question?” Ilya skipped ahead to the goalie before there was an actual explosion at the table.
“I have one question in four parts.” Wyatt had not misspent his youth at con panels grilling comic book creators and sci-fi actors for nothing. “Seeing as we know that Roz has had a reputation for… entertaining the ladies, and seeing as Hollander was in a very public relationship with film star Rose Landry, and seeing as Roz has told us nothing about any of this til now, and seeing as…”
“Are you seriously going to filibuster brunch?” Shane was born and raised in Ottawa, his parents were government employees. Wyatt was not going to let Wyatt take over this conclave.
Wyatt looked sheepish.
“Look, is simple. Hollander and I were hooking up since before rookie season.”
“Just before,” Shane added helpfully.
“We were not…” Ilya paused looking at Shane. “Эксклюзивный (eksklyuzivnyy)?”
“Exclusive.”
“Right, not exclusive until 2017 All Star Game.”
Wyatt was locked in. “Weren’t you dating Rose Landry then?”
Ilya’s face went dark.
“We try not to bring up Rose in this context if at all possible, and, no, she’d told me I was gay by then. Look, the timeline is messy. It took us a while to figure out who we are to each other. We know that now, and we’re going to make it happen.”
Wyatt was a dog with a bone. “I’m going to need you to go back to ‘Rose Landry told me I was gay’.”
“Yeah, not one of my finer moments. Let’s just say, for her privacy’s sake, I’m not the first man she had to explain that to.”
Wyatt nodded sagely. “Theater school.”
Shane smiled a bit. “Theater school.”
“Are there any other questions?” Ilya was now done with the conversation.
Harris put a hand up. Looking intensely at Troy, “What exactly is going on here?”
“What do you mean?” Troy’s innocent face wasn’t his best look, but it wasn’t entirely unconvincing.
“This morning you didn’t want anything to do with me. Now…” Harris shrugged his shoulders, nearly dislodging Troy’s arm.
“Ah, that.” Troy’s attention turned to the other men around the table. “Yeah, I’m gay. Mostly I’m gay for Harris. Also, I kinda want to apologize to everyone for what I was like when I got here. I was not in a good place. You know about my very public, um, spat with Dallas Kent. What you don’t know about… I mean none of you know about, not even you,” Troy gestured with his head to Harris. “Right before the, um, incident with Kent I was dumped by my boyfriend of two years over Skype. So if I wasn’t really nice to you back then, it wasn’t you. It was me. I was the problem.” Troy looked like he might throw up.
Ilya laughed. “Ok, you can ask Troy questions now, but he’s paying half this tab.”
Harris was feeling protective. “You may not ask Troy any questions right now.” But not that protective. “He will, however, split the bill.”
Wyatt smirked. “Harris, this makes you a WAG. Don’t start by doing the most stereotypical thing you can, spending your man’s money for him.”
Troy brightened up at the thought of finally having a WAG. “It’s ok. I’ll pay it. One, I feel better just having said that aloud. Two, it’s IHOP. How much can it be?”
“You want to challenge a team of professional athletes who just survived a midair emergency to eat as many pancakes in one sitting as they can? Are you insane?” Nick Chouinard had three children and knew from whence he spoke. He also ordered another short stack.
“You know, this also makes Shane a WAG. The WAG chat is going to go insane over this. I should probably let Cassie know. Is that ok?” Bood realized halfway through speaking that he was proposing to share information none of the people involved had consented to be shared.
The two couples looked at each other and communicated silently for a few seconds. Harris eventually spoke up. “Can you give us a little time to discuss this? I also think we need to loop Wiebe in before anyone else finds out. If you could hold off on telling anyone else until we have a communication plan it would be really appreciated.”
The rest of the team took that as an invitation to finish their meals, which took a while since they’d all just ordered more in honor of Ilya and Troy’s largesse, and then leave the two newly revealed couples to hash out the details.
“I’m going to have to start drafting some statements. Theresa is going to have to sign off on all this and my laptop’s busted. Did any of you guys think to bring one?”
Shane emerged from deep in thought. “What if we didn’t put out statements?”
“What do you mean? There’s going to be a huge feeding frenzy when this gets out. We have to control the story.” Harris had been in the wars.
“Does the team normally put out press releases when players get engaged?”
“Not as such, no.”
“Right, so what’s happened here? Ilya and I got engaged. You guys started dating. What if we do what everyone else does, make it social media official and let that speak for itself?”
“You guys are going to get absolutely bulldozed by the press in every interview.” Ilya and Troy realized they were very lucky Troy had fallen for a PR professional. “All three of you need to run this by your representation. But now we have to go find Wiebe and let him know you people are about to blow up his life, ‘cause he’s not going to go unscathed by this fallout.”
And that was the plan: find Wiebe, contact representation, kick every other can down the road.
After a lot of back and forth with teams, PR departments, agents and the three players at the center of all this a plan was agreed upon.
First, Shane got on a plane to Montreal. He was back with plenty of time to not only make the next game, which would be at home, but even the practice before it. He was already out to the team, so finding out he was engaged to a man didn’t create too many waves. Which man caused a tsunami, but Shane was pretty sure he could endure that now that he had a solid foundation with Ilya.
Harris coordinated with the Voyageurs’ communications department to make sure the team messagings matched and were supportive. He knew people on staff there he trusted. He also knew people he needed to avoid involving in this.
Theresa was a little more hands on with Harris’ work on this than she usually was, but it did require some high level hand holding across organizations and that’s why she was paid the moderately big bucks compared to Harris’ very medium bucks.
Troy decided to hold his announcement for a while. He was targeting the Pride Night game in February, but was a little flexible about it. Mostly he wanted to make sure the hubbub around Ilya and Shane’s announcement had died down a bit so he wasn’t perceived as either treading on their moment or attempting to coattail his own coming out. The Pride Game was going to be against Toronto, and that meant Dallas Kent was in the mix, but that was a problem for another time.
Ilya and Shane did essentially decide to go with Shane’s idea. Before Shane jetted back to Montreal, the fiances went back to the jewelry store, replaced Ilya’s ring and got one for Shane.
They found a nicely landscaped square nearby and took a picture of the rings on their hands together. Both of them posted the picture to their own Instagram feeds with a caption announcing the engagement, each tagging the other’s account. Of course, they immediately liked each other’s post.
Then they put their phones away for a while and enjoyed their last few moments together before the world detonated around them.
Troy was largely shielded from this mayhem, as he had a game to prepare for.
Harris, on the other hand, was smack dab in the middle of all the excitement. Theresa had sent him to the nearest Best Buy where a laptop much better than the one he’d lost in the plane incident was waiting for him. He started monitoring every social media platform and account he could find. He was relieved to find the overwhelming majority of the response was positive and accepting.
He wasn’t thrilled with the stuff that was neither of those things, but it looked like it would be manageable. A lot of accounts got blocked by Centaurs official accounts, but that’s the price of being a dick on the internet.
Eventually the furor died down. The Centaurs played the two games they came to Florida to play and went home in another sealed metal tube millimeters from death.
Harris instituted the “embarrassing story from your past” strategy to get them through flights without obsessing over the danger they were in.
The league wasn’t happy about anything that had happened. Crowell occasionally entertained dark thoughts amounting to the plane actually crashing would have made his life easier, but it’s not something he shared with anyone. You never know who’s recording you.
But there was very little the league could do. There was some noise about the possibility of collusion throughout Shane and Ilya’s careers, but part of the coordinated media strategy Harris instituted was commissioning an independent statistical analysis of Shane and Ilya’s performance when facing each other versus facing the rest of the league that put any of that conversation to rest
It wasn’t a quiet end of the season, but it wasn’t as cacophonous as everyone feared.
The night of the Instagram posts Hayden and Jackie Pike were dealing with two very disgruntled second graders at dinner.
There were scowls, crossed arms and heavy sighs.
Jackie let it go on as long as she could tolerate and finally gave in. “Why are you two so upset?”
Jade Pike continued to glare and huff. Ruby Pike broke. “It’s not right. They aren’t engaged,” she said, drawing the word out.
“Who isn’t?”
“Uncle Shane and Uncle Ilya.”
Jackie knew better than to simply contradict a grumpy seven year old. “What makes you say that, honey?”
Jade jumped in “They’re married,” extending the word like Ruby had.
“I don’t think it works like that. They just got engaged today.”
The twins sighed the way only seven year olds who know how the world works sigh when their parents are being stupid.
“No,” Ruby insisted. “They’re married. We did it when you spained your ankle.”
It took Jackie a moment to realize they weren’t talking about an ankle that had suddenly changed nationalities. “Oh?”
“Yes. We did the wedding in the living room. They had tucks-ee-does and flowers and everything. They didn’t have rings, though, so we lent them our heart rings. I guess that’s why they’ve got new ones because we had to take ours back.”
Arthur Pike sat silently nodding in agreement with everything his sisters said.
Jackie and Hayden looked at each other over their children’s heads, “We’re never going to let them live this down, are we?” Hayden was going to enjoy having this to hold over his best friend and Ilya Fucking Rozanov.