Chapter Text
Nobody stops him on the way to the locker room. Shane kind of wishes somebody would, so he would have to explain that the team invited him, so he could stop feeling like this is some weird fucking fever dream. Back in November, in the hospital, he'd had to claw himself back to reality sometimes, after drifting off with his mother's hands clutching his and the TV volume just loud enough to invade his subconscious; she'd only watched hockey when she thought he was asleep.
The room is exactly as it has always been and will always be. His treacherous legs take him to where he always used to sit, but there's a different name on the cubby. The letters have only started to look a bit blurred around the edges, the first tentative signs of wear. Shane will have to move when the team gets in, so—he cranes his neck—Schimanski can take his gear off. He got called up from the AHL a couple of months ago, he's been playing well, but not well enough to make any waves. Solid, but unremarkable. Shane thinks that he is probably being unkind but, well, sue him. He'll say this and worse on TV on Sunday.
Just after he has fished his phone from his pocket to check the Ottawa score, the Voyageurs burst into the room in a cacophony of shouting and helmet-banging and back slapping. Shane can’t help but smile as he moves out of the way as best he can, uncomfortably at sea until Hayden finally saunters in at the back of the group and waves him over to sit in his spot and be in his way instead.
“Fucking great to see you,” Hayden beams, sweaty and keyed-up from a satisfying win, and ruffles Shane’s hair like he's one of his kids.
Shane laughs and bats his hands away. “Almost worth the drive, with a score like that.”
“Don't flatter me, dude. You still coming out with us?”
“Of course.”
He talks to people: they come drifting over to him in ones and twos, in various states of undress, men he's known for years and men he only met at the start of the season and star-eyed rookies whose names he doesn't remember. They say it’s good to see him and they pretend they're not looking at his brace and his crutch like they might bite.
“Aren't you sick of Ottawa yet?” Comeau asks. “I'd be bored out of my mind.”
Shane shrugs. “I grew up in Ottawa. My family is there.” He grins. “They have a hockey team that's going to the playoffs.” His phone is hot and heavy in his hand.
“Aw, not fair, come on,” Comeau whines. “You left a pretty big hole in the roster.”
Shane thinks, but does not say, that they should have patched that hole by now. He used to say it was a team effort, to the microphones and the cameras, and he'd mostly meant it, and he'd pretended he didn't agree when Ilya said the Voyageurs would be fucked without him, and he doesn't actually know how to feel about what Comeau just said. He probably meant to be nice. It is demonstrably true. It's kind of embarrassing that it's true, and also fucked up.
He doesn’t register that his phone is buzzing until J.J. says, “Capitaine, why the fuck is Troy Barrett calling you?”
And unfortunately Shane knows exactly why Troy Barrett would be calling him ten minutes after the end of a game and it's not a call he wants to take in a locker room surrounded by his former teammates, but there is also no way he can wait to answer until he's hobbled out of here and found a room with a door he can lock, so.
“How bad is it?” he asks Troy in lieu of a greeting.
“Not bad! Shit, bud, that's why I'm calling, it's fine—yes, I'm on the phone, give me a second—did you not see?”
Aware that half the team is trying to eavesdrop, Shane says, “I'm in Montréal for the game.”
“Oh.” There is a pause that goes on too long.
“So?”
“Right, sorry. Stick to the chin halfway through the third, bled like hell but he’s fine. He's getting stitches and can’t talk so I'm calling you so you don't lose your shit.”
Which is very kind of him, and makes sense, and Shane still feels sick to his stomach. “Okay. Thanks. I'll, uh, call him later.”
Hayden nudges his shoulder and tilts his head at him. Is he okay?
Shane gives him a jerky half-nod and fires off a text in all lowercase. “Sorry. All good.” He doesn’t know how to explain what just happened so he doesn't. He asks about Drapeau’s kids, and praises Mäkinen’s assist in third period, and waits for Hayden to get back from the showers and into his suit so they can get out of here. There are probably journalists in the building who would love to catch him for a soundbite but he knows this place better than the back of his hand; he's not letting himself be caught like that a second time.
In Hayden's passenger seat on the way to the bar, he calls Ilya. FaceTime connects to a crooked view of Ilya's chest, in his UnderArmour, the chain with his mother's cross and Shane’s ring resting between his pecs. “Nuh-uh,” Shane says, “show me.”
Ilya makes the noise that accompanies him rolling his eyes. “Is fine, Hollander, you are a mother hen.”
“If it's fine, let me see.”
The camera tilts upwards and yeah, okay, it's not a pretty sight. Ilya’s chin and neck are streaked with drying blood that's been perfunctorily wiped away and there's a row of bristling stitches running up from his jawbone to just below the corner of his mouth. Shane is glad Troy called before he could see the video of the hit because it must have been a bloodbath.
“See?” Ilya says, dropping his phone down again. “Is not bad. The scar will be very sexy, I think. Piratical.”
“Where the fuck did you learn that word?”
“That is what the nice doctor said when I asked if there would be a sexy scar for my beloved to admire.” There is a rustle as he presses the phone to his chest and a snatch of conversation, then the tinny sound of a PA system.
“Ilya.” The fingers of the hand not holding his phone dig into his thigh. “Why are you still at the hospital?”
By the time Hayden pulls into a space behind the sports bar, Ilya has more or less convinced Shane that the X-ray is just a precaution and his jaw doesn’t even feel sore. Shane kind of wants to text Barrett to ask if he’s telling the truth, but he’s pretty sure that would cross some sort of line. He’s not entirely sure which one. Ilya promises to text him the verdict and tells him to go have fun with the guys, and Shane takes a deep breath and reminds himself that Ilya is a grown man who has been getting punched in the face on the ice on a regular basis for his entire life.
“Capitaine!” J.J. booms when he and Hayden walk into the private room at the back where the Voyageurs are toasting their victory. “Come, come, sit with me.”
J.J. has pulled over a chair to the end of a booth and shuffles down the bench as Shane sits down, offering space for him to prop up his leg. Hayden slides in opposite. Somebody has ordered pitchers of beer and there are platters of finger food on every table, wings and nachos and onion rings gently sweating in their batter. The room is warm and loud and familiar, even though Shane hasn't been out like this since the injury.
It takes J.J. until the bottom of their second pitcher to ask: “So, capitaine, any nice men in Ottawa?”
Shane puts his glass down a little too hard. “Sure,” he says, and kicks himself for it.
“Must be hard to date when you live with your parents,” Mäkinen says, grinning. “Your mom is fucking scary.”
“Actually,” Shane says, suddenly audacious, “I moved in with my fiancé. And my parents love him.”
Across the table, Hayden coughs into his soda.
J.J. stares at Shane with his mouth open. He looks like his brain is rebooting; he looks like he can’t decide whether to hug or hit him. He looks like Shane dropped a bomb on him, which, Shane can admit, he did.
“When the fuck did you get a fiancé?” Mäkinen asks.
“Couple months ago.”
“You’re engaged to a guy you met a couple months ago? That’s insane. Wait, is it different for gay guys? Who proposes if you’re both dudes?”
Hayden jerks his head like he wants to say something but doesn’t. He asked Jackie to marry him on their four month anniversary. Shane is starting to regret some of his life choices.
J.J. has decided against both hugging and hitting and instead takes a long swig from his glass. “Shane, mon ami,” he says, his voice low and intense. “Are you sure this guy isn’t taking advantage of you?”
He can’t help it: he has to laugh. “Very sure, yeah.”
“I’m just saying. You are still”—J.J. waves a hand expansively—”rich, famous, a fucking legend. Dudes can be gold diggers too, I’m pretty sure. What if he, like, seduced you just so he can get half your shit in the divorce.”
Ilya is going to love this. He is going to laugh so hard he tears his sexy new pirate stitches right back open. He has called Shane his trophy wife at least once per day since they got engaged.
“I promise you, guys, he does not need my money.” Do not worry, прищепечка,1 I will take care of you. “And we’ve been together…a while. Years. It’s not recent.”
“You never said you were in a relationship.” Mäkinen pokes at Hayden's shoulder to make him get up and let him out. “Could've brought him ‘round some time. When's the wedding?”
Shane grimaces. “July, probably. After the playoffs.” They’re not planning for anything big or extravagant, just close friends in the backyard. It would be easier to just go to the courthouse, of course, but they had realised that actually they want there to be a champagne toast and photos of the two of them kissing and a stupidly expensive cake. Not because either of them cares about cake but because they want people to know. How disgustingly in love they are. How happy they are. How everything has led to the two of them, together, out in the open. They want incontrovertible, undeniable proof.
Mäkinen laughs. “Only Shane Hollander would plan his wedding around hockey when he's not even playing anymore. I gotta piss, dude, but good luck with all that.” He claps his big hand on Shane’s shoulder as he passes, tilting a bit on his way to the men's.
J.J. is staring down into his beer with a furrow between his brows. Face-down on the table (by habit, for years now), Shane’s phone buzzes three times in quick succession.
Ilya has sent the X-rays and added an obnoxious amount of arrow emojis pointing to the radiologist's all-clear. You can see how many teeth he’s missing on the scans; between that and Ilya's new scar and Shane’s peg leg, maybe piratical is a good word after all.
“You could have told me you were seeing someone,” J.J. says. “I kept trying to set you up!”
“To be fair,” Hayden offers, “he kept saying no.”
J.J.'s eyes narrow. “Did you know?” He whips his head around to glare at Shane. “Did you introduce him to your man but not me?”
Shane nudges J.J.'s thigh with his foot. “He guessed,” he says. “I probably wouldn't have told anyone until—well, for a while. It's—it's complicated, alright?”
“How complicated can it be? You call me and you say J.J., my friend, I want you to meet my man, and we sit on your nice couch and drink bad beer and I tell him not to fuck it up or he will regret it.” He leans back in his seat, crosses his arms. “You could have brought him tonight.”
The mental image of Ilya sitting in this bar, surrounded by Voyageurs, sends a shiver down Shane’s spine. He’s making a mess of this and he knows it. The last glass of beer—his third, maybe—churns in his stomach. He really needs some air. He shouldn't have fucking said anything. “It wasn't safe. For either of us, okay? Still probably isn't. Fuck. I shouldn't have said anything.”
“No, capitaine, come on, explain it to me.” J.J.’s glass is empty again. He grabs a limp onion ring and uses it for emphasis. “You are my friend, I’m happy if you’re happy.
“I am happy.” It comes out petulant, like a child insisting they’re not tired.
Nodding, J.J. swallows the onion ring. They’ve known each other too long for Shane not to recognise the shift in J.J.’s face: Shane is being weird and J.J. has decided not to push. “That is all I want, okay?”
“Okay.”
And that could have been the end of it. But J.J. laughs and adds: “I gotta say, it’s a bit of a relief. I used to think you had a crush on Rozanov.”
The room was already too hot when Shane arrived and now it feels like all the oxygen has been sucked out of it. He’s going to pass out. He’s going to throw up. As if through a fog, he registers Hayden choking on his Sprite. “Rozanov?”
“Yeah, man, I don’t know. You suddenly announce that you two are friends and then you always got that look in your eyes when you’d watch his games, and you kept watching him goof around with the kids at camp? When you told us you’re gay I was like, oh shit, he’s in love with a straight dude.”
Across the table, Hayden is mopping at his shirt with a shitty cocktail napkin, eyes wide, completely fucking useless.
Shane heaves his leg to the floor and fumbles for his crutch. “I’m not doing this here.”
It’s fucking cold outside after the sweaty funk of the booth and he’s had too much to drink to be handling this. He shouldn’t have fucking said anything. Harris had offered to come over tonight, but then they would’ve both been sad sacks missing their boyfriends and Shane was supposed to get out of the house more. He hadn’t seen the Pikes in months and he’d missed Montreal, the city he had won three cups for, the city that had loved him so fiercely because he had given it everything he had until he couldn’t anymore.
J.J. finds him leaning against Hayden’s car where at least the wind can’t get at him. Side by side, they take in the view—potholed asphalt and fast food wrappers and the neon lights of a gas station on the other side of the street. “Since when?”
Shane’s knee hurts. It’s not real pain, he’s pretty sure, but it hurts. He wants to lie down. He wants to hotwire Hayden’s car and drive all the way to Pittsburgh and break into Ilya’s hotel room and let Ilya fuck him so hard he forgets his own name. He wants to hit something fragile so hard it breaks. He takes a deep breath of freezing air and watches his exhale turn to fog in front of his face. “The entire time you’ve known me.”
“What the fuck, Hollander.”
Shoulders squared, jaw clenched. “You can just say it.”
“Did you ever lose for him?”
“What the fuck?”
J.J. laughs and it’s a horrible sound, hollow and a little manic. “Did you?” He barely reacts when Shane’s fist meets his jaw.
“Fuck you,” Shane spits into the cold and shakes out his hand. His knee fucking hurts. “I can’t believe you just fucking asked me that.”
“I can’t believe you’re fucking Ilya Rozanov,” J.J. spits back and Shane flinches in the empty parking lot. “Out of all the—”
“We’re not doing this.” He pulls out his phone and almost stumbles when he puts his cane down on a crumbled bit of asphalt. J.J. grabs his shoulder to catch him and lets go immediately, like he burnt himself. “Tell Hayden I’m taking a cab.”
And he’s pretty steady on his feet now, has learned to trust that his leg will support him, but right now he is so fucking angry and still he has to be careful about every step and try not to drop his phone and he can’t fucking believe—
He’s quiet as he lets himself into the Pikes’ house because he doesn’t want to wake anyone. His knee still hurts. He makes it up the front steps and into the foyer and out of his coat and then he’s standing there, considering the act of removing his shoes like it’s a ledge to jump off, when the light in the den turns on and Jackie turns the corner, looking soft and warm in one of Hayden’s Voyageurs sweatshirts over a nightdress that just skims the tops of her knees.
“Oh, baby,” she says and wraps her arms around him and plants her feet to take some of his weight. “Hayden texted—”
“Can we not? Sorry. I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”
“No, baby, you’re okay. Come on, let’s sit down.” Jackie undoes his shoelaces and lets him lean on her as she takes his shoes off. He is so pathetically grateful for her. She follows him to the guest room because Shane won’t get back up if he sits down now, so he’d rather sit down somewhere he can sleep, and she doesn’t say anything as he removes his brace and starts digging his fingers into the meat around his fucked-up joint.
Finally: “Hayden’s going to be here in ten minutes.”
Shane looks up at her. She’s sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed with her phone resting where the fabric of her nightdress is pulled taut across her lap. Judging by her hair, flatter on one side than the other, and the slightly blurry edges of her face, she’d definitely been asleep already.
“I thought,” Shane says and stops. What did he think? “This is why we had to be a secret, you know? Because everybody loses their fu—their freaking mind when they find out and then it’s a whole thing and I just—”
“You don’t want it to be a whole thing.”
“I just want him.”
Hayden doesn’t comment when he tiptoes in and his best friend is lying with his head in his wife’s lap, her hands stroking his hair like he’s a child seeking comfort after a nightmare. He sits down on Jackie’s other side, which is a tight fit on a double bed, and Jackie leans into him and the three of them stare at the opposite wall for a while. It’s a different colour than the last time Shane stayed over, a bland sort of not-quite-white, because Jackie’s brother’s wife’s tanning lotion exploded all over it at Christmas.
“You didn’t have to leave,” Shane says at some point.
Hayden scoffs. “I did if I didn’t want to start a fight with J.J.,” he says, “which I would have lost.”
“You didn’t have to start a fight, either.”
“Yeah, man, I would have. He was being an asshole.”
Shane sits up so he can glare at his friend. “Do you think I ever lost on purpose?”
“What the fuck? No. That’s stupid. We won three cups.”
“Right. But you still hate Ilya.”
“No, I—”
“Boys,” Jackie warns. They both duck their heads in apology.
“I did hate him, yeah,” Hayden admits. “I still think he’s an asshole. But the first thing he said to me when I came to the hospital was ‘thank fuck you’re here’ and he looked like I felt when Jackie had an emergency C-section while we were on a plane from Tampa Bay and I thought, okay, I get it.”
Shane doesn’t remember Hayden visiting him at the hospital while Ilya was there. After the first surgery, once they’d established that he had not hit his head and was in full possession of his faculties (and understood that his career was over, that his life had ended just like that), they’d kept him on a steady dose of drugs that dulled the pain and sat heavy in his bones and brain. That first week is all bits and pieces in his memory: his mom’s quiet tears as she sat by his bed, the pink-haired nurse with the crinkles around her eyes carefully tucking an extra blanket over his shoulders when he woke up alone shivering in the middle of the night, the endless cups of soup he drank because everything else came right back up.
He does remember that flight and the panicked drive from the airport after, Hayden freaking out in the passenger seat of Shane’s car because Jackie’s mom wouldn’t pick up the phone. Shane had just sort of been caught up in the rush and nobody had stopped him; they made it all the way up to the hallway outside Jackie’s hospital room before Hayden suddenly turned a very alarming shade of green and Shane had to wedge himself under his arm so he didn’t crack his head open on the edge of the nurses’ station.
Jackie says: “We’re really happy for you, Shane. You know that, right? We care about you and we want you to be happy and anybody with eyes can see how much Ilya loves you.”
“J.J. will come round,” Hayden says. “I told him to get his shit together.”
“Is he going to tell everyone?” If he and Ilya are headlines tomorrow, Harris’ unhinged spreadsheet will be wasted. At least Ilya will be here tomorrow afternoon; the plan was to pick up a couple of boxes from Shane’s Montreal house from storage and drive back to Ottawa in time for dinner with Shane’s parents.
Hayden shakes his head. “He’s not that stupid.”
“Sorry for ruining your night. It was a good win, you should have celebrated.”
“Doesn’t feel the same without you, buddy.”
Sitting on the toilet lid and brushing his teeth, Shane pokes at the tangled mess of emotion that is clawing at the inside of his ribcage. He misses hockey so much it hurts, every day, every minute, a constant ache that’s gone dull with familiarity, and also he can’t remember the last time hockey felt good, just genuinely and uncomplicatedly good like it used to, and tomorrow night he will be back in bed with the man he loves and they’re getting married and he could not have that if he still had hockey. Would he have made that choice? Ilya had offered to quit, for him, and Shane doesn’t think he could have done that if their roles were reversed. He doesn’t think Ilya could have done it either, really, but he had offered.
He texts Ilya: I love you. There isn’t a reply yet when he falls asleep half an hour later, which is good: Ilya has an early flight.
- little clothes peg [ ▲ ]