Chapter Text
Shane's life was a dotted map of little obsessions.
His mother would say that the first had been sorting and re-sorting the 24-pack Crayola crayon box, but this occurred somewhat before he'd gained any meaningful semblance of sentience, so at most he could only vaguely recollect the plastic smell of those crayons and the phantom sensation of waxiness on his fingers.
His first real obsession had been untangling the tassels of his mother's favourite silk pashmina scarf that she had bought at a flea market in Mostar, Bosnia during a trip with her two best friends in their last year of college. He liked the feel of the silky strands between his fingers, he liked gently rubbing them between thumb and forefinger, then raking through them with all four fingers to unravel any knots.
The sensation of the tangles separating made a shk shk shk sound in the back of his brain.
At five years old he discovered that sliding his hand into the white rice stored in the komebitsu in a cupboard under the kitchen counter raised the fine hairs on his arm and made the muscles of his cheek ache in the best way. The polished white grains whispered kuru kuru kuru khhh when they softly tumbled into the spaces his hand made and the gaps between his knuckles.
The container of raw chickpeas didn't feel the same. Neither did the bags of sugar or salt, because they were in thick, harsh-sounding plastic that made him bite his tongue.
When his father found Shane on the kitchen floor, forehead screwed up in discomfort with both his hands buried in the two newly-opened bags that he'd bought just that morning, his father had laughed himself silly and picked him up - because Shane was still small enough back then - and held him, uncaring when all those millions of tiny white grains made a mess all over the tiles that would take three separate vacuum sessions to clean up.
At six Shane discovered the ice.
He discovered hockey.
He discovered hockey on the ice.
It had always been in the periphery of his existence because his parents would watch it on TV and Shane would watch with one eye on the screen and the other on a drawing, on a collection of buttons he was glueing onto an A4 piece of paper, on a Casio scientific calculator whose rubber buttons were equally satisfying and frustrating to press.
But one Saturday morning he'd held his mother's hand as she'd walked him into the rec centre. At six, Shane hadn't developed a strong concept for size yet, because everything was big to him. The wide, curved outer walls of the centre looked like any other shopping mall or supermarket. The parking lot was generic: tarmac and empty this early in the morning.
But then he walked through the doors to a gust of cold air.
Damp.
Black rubber flooring that made his shoes stick and squeak.
Damp damp damp.
Wet air in his nose. Rubber air. Damp rubber.
Like clean wet tires but not tires in winter.
When he sucked in the air through his mouth it burned down his throat and into his lungs like a whooping cough.
And the sound.
The sounds.
He barely noticed when his mother shook hands with a man in a crinkly matching blue waterproof jacket and pants. Didn't realize that the crinkly man was walking funny because of the blades on his feet.
The gate was open and beyond was an expanse of white and cold air and the scrape scrape scrape of metal on ice.
The skhh skhh shik shik krhh krhh and sssssssss carved their syllables into the walls of his ears, echoing like the the most resonant chamber music and landing heavy and solemn behind his eyelids. The sounds made shapes on the convex side of his skull — swirling, spinning, sharp-edged, serrated, segregated, skipped shapes.
And the colour.
The colour.
Was gold.
A billion snowflakes and scatterings of shaved ice glistening in the sun on his irises, unseen, inaudible to everyone.
Except him.
Shane took to the ice with all the determination of a child unafraid, incapable of embarrassment and determined to carve connections into solid water because he wanted to listen to the sounds he could make with his new skates, with the hockey stick that reminded him of an upside-down candy-cane, and the weighty puck that snapped so satisfyingly when it dropped.
Three months into minor league and his mother exasperatedly - proudly - called it an obsession.
His father fondly called it love.
Neither were wrong.
The rec centre became his second home for a time and even on non-training days, Shane would ask whether either one of his parents could drop him there for a few hours of solo practice. They agreed on most occasions, and on the occasions where they couldn't, Shane would have a quiet, internal meltdown that one or both his parents would have to sit with him through.
Sometimes he twisted old receipts between his fingers until they were stiff as wires. Sometimes he would go out into the garden, pick up a stick or a rock and scrape away at the ground until the sound it made was as close to blades on ice as he could hope to achieve.
Other times he quietly closed his door of his bedroom — because the one time he slammed it shut the sound had surprised him so much he'd thrown it open again, eyes already wet, and his father had to pick him up and hold him while biting back his own amusement — lay on his bed and closed his eyes, imagining how different plays made different shapes on the ice.
As he grew older his coaches started paying him more attention.
They said he had an intuition for the game that most kids didn't develop until they were older, if at all.
As he grew older still they started calling him other things.
Phenomenal.
Ahead of his peers.
Rookie material.
A once-in-a-generation talent.
At twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, Shane practically lived in his hockey gear.
Home games, away games, tryouts, prospect games, training boot camps, invitation-only camps, provincial and regional championships. The fun, dirty, painful pipeline to professional play.
The training was different during these years. The games were different. The stadiums and the players were different. The crowd was different. The pressure was different.
But the ice was the same.
The sounds were the same.
And the colour was still gold.
So Shane pushed. He pushed and he reached and he won the face-offs, shook off the checks that were getting increasingly aggressive and violent, ignored the chirps that were growing meaner and crueler as was the way of growing boys, and he played hockey.
And he played it really fucking well.
The food thing came first, unintentionally instigated by his mother.
Shane didn't count. He didn't like to count. Numbers were not kind to him in that way — they chattered and chittered and snickered under their breath, hanging off the branches of his neurons while they tugged unpleasantly.
"But Thursday is Ramen Night," Shane said, standing barefoot behind his usual chair at the dining table, towelling his damp hair and staring in puzzlement at the six cuts of baked salmon in the center of the table.
His mother then laid out the rice-cooker at the edge of the table and popped the lid open.
Shane blinked, uncomprehending.
"Since when do we eat brown rice?"
"Since you've got that game against the Titans next week. I thought we'd up the protein and the fibre and reduce the sodium a little. I made nameko-jiru, so you'll still get your soup, just without the noodles. I just thought since you're playing elite hockey now, your diet should be elite too."
Shane blinked again, the words landing somewhere soft and mushy in his brain like little pellets. Like frozen peas dropped from a not insignificant height onto the tender top layer of a key lime pie.
As he ate dinner that night he missed the ramen — the saltiness, the richness, the way sweat would accumulate on his upper lip as he slurped the noodles and drank the thick, heady broth — but he continued to mull over his mother's justification.
Elite hockey.
Elite diet.
Elite hockey.
Elite diet.
Elite body.
Better.
Faster.
Stronger.
After that it was ridiculously easy.
Salad with dressing on the side, never mind that he'd been the sort to drown his salad in rich and creamy dressings prior to this.
Convincing his mother to buy rice bran oil instead of the usual sunflower when she wanted to make tempura.
Dark chocolate if he felt particularly decadent. He liked the ones with the sea salt flakes and told himself it was just a way to keep his electrolytes in check.
Pea protein smoothies — because whey and dairy disagreed with his stomach — packed with antioxidant-rich frozen fruits and large handfuls of kale or spinach.
His mother's ginger-turmeric-carrot-lemon-black-pepper booster shots every morning because they woke him up, lit a warm fire in his belly, and just started becoming part of every pre-game routine.
Ginger ale was the only soda allowance because he liked bubbles and the way they popped and crackled in his mouth and fizzed against his soft palate.
And because it had ginger in it, and ginger was healthy and good for the gut micro-biome, and therefore good for the brain, and therefore good for hockey.
He also kept Honey Cheerios because they were gold and had a good crunch, but he reduced it to a half portion, and the other half was a healthy, organic, gluten free granola with five kinds of nuts and seeds and dried apple bits.
There was the weight as well. Not the weight on the scale, but the weight of perfectly consumed nutrition as it settled in his belly. If it felt too heavy. If it felt too light. If it made him bloated and uncomfortable. If it sloshed around when he skated because there was too much liquid. If it made him sluggish afterwards. If it made him hungry an hour too early or if it kept him full an hour too long.
Shane would adjust and tweak and perfect and remain conscious of any changes.
And when the weight was just right and his body felt nourished and strong and fast, and his reflexes were on beat, the sound would be the whooshing of air past his ears, a gentle swish around the back of his head and a dollop of peace tucking itself under his helmet, right in the occipital.
It sounded like the gentlest of taps on the puck, and the softest of slides past the goalie and into the net.
Sheup.
When it was wrong, that little nook at the back of his head remained empty and a billion flies buzzed in his ears, crawling over his skin like they were crawling over rotting food.
He played angry when that happened. He played mean and impatient and tightened the reins on his teammates that had his coaches raising their eyebrows, only not in disapproval but because he was right but never cruel.
Captain material one day, he'd heard them murmur.
Name's certainly getting out there, he heard them say.
The body thing came next.
Not as an extension of the food thing but naturally — the gradual awareness of one's body that resulted from hours spent moving said body, feeling what felt right and what felt wrong and what felt risky and what felt easy.
He started seeing Mayumi Ulep twice a month.
The first time Shane met her, the words tumbled carelessly from his mouth before he could stop them.
"You aren't Japanese."
She laughed and it was warm and kind. "The name does usually throws people. It's actually Filipino but not a common one. Now, what brings you into my humble little office today, Shane?"
Shane straightened, face still burning from his slip. "I just…I play hockey," he said lamely.
Mayumi nodded, motioning for him to continue.
"I just…" He frowned, shifting in the chair. "I train every day, so I'm sore almost every day. But some days I'm not sore or I'm…less sore. But I didn't play less. And I warmed up and stretched as I usually do. Nothing was different. But my body felt different. I need to know…" He trailed off, frowning again. "I mean…I want to know how to take care of my body. I intend to play hockey until I can't anymore and I hope that's a really long way away so I need to…I need to…condition…is that the right word? I'm…not sure."
She watched him closely, curiously, but not in the way that his teachers sometimes did, like he was a whole new species of bird they were trying to categorize, and not like his coaches or teammates whenever he accidentally vocalized an observation that was intended solely for himself.
"So just to be clear, you're not injured in any way that you know of?"
"No."
"Good. Well, what I'm hearing, Shane, is that you're interested in injury prevention and management, return to active play, body conditioning, that sort of thing." She smiled, appraising. "Most athletes your age think they're invincible."
"I've seen enough career-ending injuries on TV to know I'm not."
"Awareness. I like it. Hop onto the bed. Let's see what we're working with."
Willingly submitting himself to be touched by another human being was something Shane had been mentally preparing himself for in the weeks leading to his appointment with Dr. Ulep, but it still took him the better part of the forty-five minutes of their appointment for him to stop cringing every time her hands landed on any part of his body.
She didn't seem to mind, though, and never pointed it out, save for a casual "relax this arm for me" or an "okay, let's loosen this up a bit" whenever she manipulated his limbs and muscles and made him contort into positions he wasn't aware a non-gymnast's body could contort into.
He also wasn't aware the human body was meant to crack this much either.
When she whipped out the y-strap and secured it around his neck and head and told him to just breathe deep, he had not been prepared for the release that zinged like electricity from the soles of his feet to very top of the crown of his head.
He stared at the ceiling, wide-eyed and blinking, body looser, longer, relaxed in a way he had not realized it could be. It was like seeing the world anew; everything had a haloed glow and it was clear and bright and light.
His brain crinkled like snow crunching beneath his feet.
"Oh my god," he breathed, and Mayumi's grinning face came into view.
"Life-changing, huh?"
He nodded slowly, cobwebs stretching and clearing away in every corner of his mind.
"Just stay there and relax. You'll know when you're ready to get up. I want you to test out how you feel on the ice until I see you next. Everyone should build full awareness of their bodies, especially athletes. Every move and motion you make — catalogue it in the moment and after. How's your nutrition?"
"It's good."
"Good. You're still growing so you can afford to be less strict about your diet but it's better to get into good habits early. When you're ready we'll do some x-rays and we'll schedule you in again in two weeks so we can go over what we've found and what you've noticed."
Mayumi became a solid fixture in his life over the next year and a half and his body learned to trust the surety and confidence of her touch.
She taught him recuperation exercises, the best way to stretch for flexibility — "thirty seconds each muscle, no bouncing, stretch not pain, Shane" — how and where to massage his traps, calves, thighs and feet, and how to protect his knees and hips on and off the ice.
The first time she did dry needling on him, he eyed the needle, unsure and doubtful.
"Is it the needle or is it the 'alternative medicine' thing that's bugging you?"
"Both," he answered truthfully, feeling awkward and hypocritical, but he liked that she asked, because it was never defensive, only ever honest, and that made him honest in turn.
"I won't lie, it's not typically pleasant, but we'll start slow. And dry needling isn't acupuncture — though I do that too, here but you don't need it for now — it's to reduce tension and stimulate blood flow and healing to the area. I'll move it around for a bit, in and out around the knot. Thirty seconds max."
She worked the needle in the muscle of his left shoulder and Shane closed his eyes the entire time. It did hurt and it was unpleasant, but it was also…the sound of a violin being strung. The D-string specifically. The way the ridges bumped over the wooden bridge, were rolled around the peg and tightened with a staggered dut dut dut.
He hummed under his breath in understanding and realization. His muscle and the needle and his mind working together. The conscious loosening of his shoulder. The fascia releasing. The final puff of tense air leaving his lungs the exact moment the needle left his skin.
"It'll be sore for a couple of days but it'll be mobile. Take an anti-inflammatory. Or something with ginger."
He had his second ginger-turmeric-carrot-lemon-black-pepper booster shot for the day when he got home. Then at dinner he added gari to his seaweed and tofu salad and had a ginger ale for good luck.
And the next morning he was sore but his shoulder was, in fact, more mobile than the day before and he didn't have to overcompensate a turn with his hip.
As much as Mayumi took care of him over the course of the next eighteen months, she made sure he knew how to look after himself. Three months into seeing her, Shane had an entire sports bag full of equipment including two lacrosse balls taped together that he loved using for his upper back, a foam roller, a foldable yoga mat, the metal scraper gua sha thing that Mayumi taught him when and how to use on all the body parts he could reach, a wooden massage stick and an acupressure mat that he hated but used anyway for three minutes before bed.
He brought his equipment everywhere, much to the amusement — sometimes light-hearted, sometimes unkind — of the other kids, and the bemusement of his coaches.
But the scrape of the gua sha against his neck, the press of the acupressure mat into his bare feet and the dig dig dig of the pointy end of the wooden massage stick into his hips drowned out the snide chirps and the eyes rolling like marbles and the "acts more like a goalie"s.
He wanted friends. He'd tried for friends all the way up to AAA but they didn't seem to want him back, no matter how much he tried to open up, to sound funny, to be fun. It wasn't always bad. Shane was reliable both on and off the ice. And his current team was an actual team. Defence had his back, their goalie was a beast and the forwards were quick and scrappy and in-tune with each other and, most importantly, with Shane.
But off the ice Shane found himself distinctively, sometimes painfully, alone.
Painful in a way that didn't always make sense to him.
He received the customary invites to birthday parties and joined them for celebratory dinners, splurging their allowances on burgers and fries and milkshakes and ribs. He laughed at their jokes, just a fraction of a second off-beat, not enough to be noticeable most times. He picked at the food they ordered, scraped away the heavy barbecue sauce and filled himself with sad side servings of dry salad.
But outside of customary post-game and birthday gatherings he wasn't invited to other things. Like hanging out on the weekends to play video games or to the cinema or to go hiking or to the mall.
The part that stung — which stung less now and more so felt like quiet resignation, the press of a thumb into an old bruise — was that while before they were a little more gracious in talking about their weekend plans in private, they seemed to have taken his silence up until now to mean that he was fine and would extend their invites to each other within earshot.
Because for all that he wore the A — Captain being given to charming and charismatic and chronically chauvinistic Charles Chilton — and allegedly had the highest hockey IQ amongst all twenty boys and they listened to him, Shane was also just a fifteen-year old boy who felt unsteady on dry land without his skates.
And it would've been nice. It would've been nice to be liked for reasons other than hockey the way that everyone else seemed to be liked.
Then, deep into the autumn months of his U16 year at a training camp for draft-eligible players, he met Hayden.
Hayden Pike who, after the first few warm up games, ended up the left-winger to Shane's centre due to sheer chemistry and an instinct for one another that surprised the both of them.
He was easy-going, smiled and chirped at everyone equally, and Shane liked him because he let Shane take the bottom bunk they shared so that he could reach into his sports bag and grab his gua sha and massage stick or start foam-rolling on his yoga mat whenever he wanted.
It was day-two into the camp and they were in the locker room after the mid-morning scrimmage when Hayden posed the question.
"What's the metal thing for?"
Shane's brain stalled and he blinked at Hayden for approximately five long seconds, feeling the inexplicable tell-tale heat of embarrassment creep up his neck in unison with the rising of his shoulders to his ears.
"It's a gua sha," he said quietly.
Hayden just smiled patiently, guilelessly, expectantly but also kindly, so Shane continued.
"It helps break up knots and…myofacsial adhesions. It helps release muscle tension and reduce pain. I like it. Helps my body recover faster."
Hayden nodded, still smiling, not a hint of misunderstanding or judgment. "Cool. Can I try?"
Shane's brain stalled again but Hayden continued to sit there patiently. It had been a long time since anyone other than his parents had been…patient with him.
Shane nodded, wiping the gua sha off with his towel, then handed it, together with his half-used jar of Tiger Balm, to Hayden.
"So I just—" Hayden made a scraping motion in the air by his neck "—put the spicy stuff on and start scraping?"
Shane hesitated for just a moment. "Do you want me to do it for you?"
And as soon as the words were out he wished he could take them back. Because fuck, what if that was weird? What if that was gay? Gay the way the guys on the AAA team liked to spit out, laughing, the sound like a plastic container of pills being roughly shaken.
Gay in the way that half his classmates had scrunched their noses up when a substitute teacher had made them watch My Own Private Idaho.
Gay in the way that Shane sometimes found himself looking at charming and charismatic and chronically chauvinistic Charles Chilton—
"Yeah, could you? Should I turn around? Does it hurt?"
And…huh.
Shane watched as Hayden turned around, straddling the bench, and he continued to talk, like a chittering bird. Like a grey, northern mockingbird, but without the mocking. Just…background noise. Comforting, settling, cotton. Grey and brown cotton that made the softest and crunchiest noise when squashed or rubbed against his earlobes.
And Shane had never really…willingly…touched another human being like this before. Shoulder punches and casual back claps were one thing. This was intimate.
And Hayden made it seem so easy.
"You have to tilt your head to the side," Shane found himself saying, taking the gua sha and Tiger Balm back, straddling the bench behind Hayden and shuffling closer. "And try to relax the muscles as best as you— yeah, like that. I won't go too hard. My physical therapist worked me up to it. And don't freak out if you get all these red splotches. Those are called petechiae. It just shows where the injury is under the skin, that's all. It'll disappear in a few days."
On himself, he would swipe a blob of Tiger Balm onto his own neck, but he didn't want to be over familiar, and instead used the gua sha to smear it on the curve of Hayden's tilted neck before he started in with long, slow, tentative scrapes.
Pink bloomed beneath pale skin, like fog settling across a lake, the breathy hrrr of translucent white landing on blue. Soft grey and brown cotton in his ears.
His own shoulders relaxed, softening—
"Oh my god."
—only to tense right back up again, metal stuttering against Hayden's skin, a toe pick catching on uneven ice.
"Should I st—?"
"Man, that feels so good. We should do this after every game. I'll pay you in assists. Magical hands, dude."
And Shane couldn't help himself.
He laughed. A startled, slightly high-pitched sound. An embarrassing giggle. Not timed, not premeditated, just perfect execution of honesty.
From this angle behind him, he could see the way Hayden's cheek lifted in a matching grin.
They exchanged numbers as soon as Shane was done and both sides of Hayden's neck were sufficiently scraped and red and blotchy, the both of them smelling like Tiger Balm, sweat and wet rubber.
It became their evening ritual over the next five days of camp; Shane broke out the goods and taught Hayden how to use each one. They'd sit in their sweatpants and t-shirts, post-shower, on Shane's bottom bunk, Shane demonstrating with precision where all his pressure and trigger points were, pressing his thumb and fingers into the sorest of spots just below Hayden's elbow, halfway down his back, a little to the left of his spine, the arch of his foot and the base of his ear.
"What the fuck, how'd you even know it was there? Fuuuuck, that hurts!"
"I could see it just looking at you."
"What does that even mean, dude?"
The expression of horror on Hayden's face the first time he tried stepping on the acupressure mat, hands holding the metal rungs of the top bunk in an attempt to lessen the amount of weight he put on it, made Shane crack up. It caught the attention of some of the other guys, and soon four other boys had accepted the challenge for who could stand on the mat the longest.
Shane didn't mind and for once he wasn't bracing himself for sharp remarks spoken through too-wide smiles.
He did disinfect the mat three times before rolling it up and putting it away, though.
But he never did it when it was just him and Hayden because it didn't feel right to, and if he was able to share something as intimate as bacterium with another individual in this lifetime, even if they never spoke or saw one another again after camp, Hayden Pike seemed like the kind of person to share it with.
Hayden would never truly know — Shane himself wouldn't realize until later — how that one week built more than a friendship that would affect the rest of Shane's life.
It happened on a Thursday in January.
Shane stopped at the red light, hands on the wheel at two and four.
His dad had allowed him to borrow his car for the day.
His hockey gear was safely stowed in the trunk for practice after school.
The roads weren't particularly icy this morning having been heavily salted the night before.
The light was still red.
He blinked.
It was green.
His foot gradually pressed down on the gas and he made a gentle turn in the middle of the intersection.
There was a loud honk, a screech, the sound of metal tearing.
Later, much later, he would struggle between knowing, knowing, knowing what was about to happen, and not knowing at all.
Because how could he possibly know that the heavy pickup that was meant to stop at the adjacent red light would skid? How could he possibly know that although the man had slammed his foot down on the brake and jerked the handbrake that his tires were worn just a little too smooth and he'd taken off and forgotten to put the chains back on that morning?
How could Shane possibly know that had he driven a little faster, or if he'd lingered just a few moments longer when the light turned green, that the pickup — red, with chipping paint — wouldn't have spun, gained momentum, and slammed into the side he was driving on, the door crumpling into his left ribs, his head ricocheting off the window, hard enough to crack a spiderweb into the glass and knock him unconscious?
And yet in the second before it happened, Shane had closed his eyes and exhaled once, the breath leaving him like a grey wave, heavy with grief.
He thought of four people in that moment.
His father was planning to introduce raised beds to the garden.
His mother thought this was a terrible idea but requested he plant some shiso.
Hayden had texted him that morning with a series of ecstatic emojis confirming he could come and visit Shane for a five days during March break.
Mayumi. He'd need Mayumi. She'd know what to do.
Mayumi could fix—
The airbag deployed.
Three fractured ribs.
A dislocated left shoulder.
Multiple lacerations; stitches required.
Grade II whiplash.
Concussion.
A bad one.
Symptoms included frequent headache, brain fog, short-term memory loss, anxiety, fatigue, trouble sleeping, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light, sound, noise, colour, people, talking, voices, screeching, tires, honking, glass breaking, metal crumpling, bone cracking, his head smashing against the window—
When Shane first woke, pumped full of morphine, his parents were next to his bed. His father's eyes were red and swollen. His mother's expression was haunted and she gripped his uninjured hand like a lifeline, mouth thin and lips trembling.
Shane knew immediately.
"How long?"
And his parents knew he wasn't asking how long he'd been out.
"Eight weeks," his mother whispered. "At least."
He nodded slowly, something silent and dead, a hand wrapped in a black rubber glove, squeezed his heart in his chest.
"Can we still have Hayden over in March?"
His father let out a watery chuckle, motioning vaguely to a huge hamper sitting in one of the empty chairs that Shane hadn't noticed before.
"According to the note he says you can't stop him from coming. He called your phone a few times and we picked up and told him what happened. He's been really worried."
The rubber glove loosened its grip just a little.
And with its release, the first wave of emotion rose up in his throat.
His eyes burned and his parents became blurry and he swallowed thickly around nothing and everything.
"Shane," his mother said, voice cracking. "Shane, honey—"
"I need— I n-need M-M-Mayu— I need her— She needs to fix— She needs to fix me— Mom!"
He sobbed, heavy, loud, aching sobs that wracked his whole body and heaved gulping breaths in and out of his lungs and not even his parent's arms holding him as carefully but solidly as they ever had could contain the fear, the terrifying, overwhelming fear—
"She knows, Shane, she knows. We'll fix this, okay, kiddo, we'll fix this, I promise you, we'll fix this. You're gonna be okay, shh shh shh, we've got you, we've got you."
Shane cried and cried and cried until he became aware of the throbbing headache and the ringing in his ears. He cried until the doctor came in, calm and reassuring but measured and uncompromising about how long she expected him to take it easy.
No intense exercise for four weeks — not that he'd have been able to with the state of his ribs and arm.
No contact sports for eight.
"Skating isn't intense exercise," Shane had tried to argue weakly through a heavily congested nose and throat. "It's just sliding."
Dr. Shetty was unmoved. "You'll be unbalanced and that means you'll be overcompensating on one side. And if you fall…" She let the threat linger in the air for a while. "Shane, this is not a minor concussion. You're going to be feeling it for a while. I don't need to tell you that any injury so soon after could have very long-lasting consequences."
Of course he knew. He'd been methodical in his research over the years. He knew concussion protocol and he knew how a knock to the head could take a pro out for a quarter of a season.
He just never thought it would happen to him, especially not before he'd gone pro.
And it wasn't even hockey that took him out.
It felt like a very unfunny joke, no matter that most jokes were unfunny to him.
But because he was Shane, and because he knew his body and knew his body well, and he knew nutrition and rest and recovery were all the things that would bring him back to hockey the fastest, his concussed and addled brain was already contorting itself into the new routine that he would find himself in for the next two months.
He listened to Dr. Shetty; he came in for his regular checkups and x-rays for a few weeks after he was discharged, took his prescription painkillers, rested, tried not to jostle the arm in the cast, was careful about how he got up from chairs and lay down in his bed, and he sat down in the bathtub when he showered and waited for all the water to drain before attempting to rise, just to make sure he wouldn't slip and fall again.
He walked circles around the house, did gentle, body-weight only squats, ate all the collagen-rich, brain-healthy foods that his parents prepared and drank his smoothies.
As soon as the cast came off and his ribs were unwrapped he went straight to Mayumi.
His mother had emailed all of Shane's results and scans in advance so Mayumi already had a recovery plan that involved daily strength and muscle maintenance, low-impact so as not to jostle his brain but intense enough that his muscles would be shaking by the end.
Mayumi apparently had special certifications when it came to both concussions and whiplash.
"No needles in or around the neck until the eight weeks are up," she said, leaving no room for discussion. "First we need to ensure your posture, strength and that you've got sufficient range of motion. We can needle the shoulder, though. It'll help with mobility. How are the ribs?"
"Tender. It aches to get up from bed or lying down."
"That's normal. Remember to roll over onto your uninjured side and push yourself up with your arm first. It'll take some of the pressure off your ribs. We'll do some deep tissue massage on the muscles around the ribs. We stop if it hurts."
"Okay."
She cut a sharp look at him with her dark brown eyes.
"We'll stop if it hurts."
He sighed, shoulders sagging. He wasn't sure what his face was doing but it might have been a sulk.
"Okay."
She nodded once, firmly, satisfied.
"How're the headaches?"
"Consistent. Sound and light make it worse. School is…loud."
He didn't tell her that there were times where he had to brace one palm against a wall as he made his way between classrooms because of how the noise tilted his entire world. He didn't tell her how shrieks of laughter spiked the throbbing in his skull and made the blood make whoosh whoosh whoosh sounds in his ears.
He didn't tell her he was afraid that he'd forgotten how ice felt beneath his feet.
Or, the even worse fear, that the ice might have forgotten him right back.
He didn't need to; he knew she saw it in the tired hang of his head, the unconscious twist of his mouth and the aborted jerk of is hand as it reached to clutch the hem of his t-shirt for support, only to let it fall back into his lap.
"Okay," she said, ever patient, ever competent. "We'll work on that."
That was his life for the next two months.
Wake up thirty minutes earlier than usual, do Mayumi's exercises, shower, breakfast, smoothie, ginger-turmeric-carrot-lemon-black-pepper booster shot, school, do Mayumi's exercises a second time on gym-class days since he still couldn't participate in any of the ball sports, home, homework, healing and recovery session with his stash of tools, evening stretches and balance work, dinner, watch past hockey matches, sleep, two-hour sessions with Mayumi on Saturday mornings, hospital check-ups with Dr. Shetty every second Tuesday, rinse, repeat.
Every day became an exercise in optimization.
Ensure his meals were sufficiently nutritious. Add more collagen and fewer carbs where possible.
More antioxidant-rich foods.
Frozen berries because they were picked at the peak of ripeness.
Increase the pace of his walks around the house to work up a sweat. It was still cold so if he worked up a sweat he knew he was pushing just enough.
He wore ankle weights to school under his jeans.
Sneak in a stretch session during a free period.
A knob of ginger in his smoothies.
Balance work as he walked between classes.
Temple massage with the massage stick whenever the headache lingered a little too long.
Analyze games whenever he could just to make sure he wouldn't forget how to skate, how to shoot, where to position himself, how to play.
Hayden came to visit just as the weather warmed up in March.
They caught each other's eyes the moment the automatic doors slid open.
Hayden grinned, wide and bright.
And even with the silicone earplugs blocking out all the noise, the soft, crunchy crinkle of grey and brown cotton settled behind his earlobes, tension easing out of a phantom too-taut string in his chest.
Shane smiled.
They hugged, Hayden keeping his touch light and careful initially, until Shane said,
"I'm fine, Hayd."
Hayden huffed, squeezing tighter, just once, before letting go.
By that point Shane's shoulder only twinged sometimes, his ribs only when he did anything a little too jarring, and his head maintained a consistent low-grade headache that he could sometimes forget about.
He'd also graduated to swimming at the public pool by that point, doing slow, alternating laps of breast stroke, freestyle and backstroke.
It eased the dull ache in his skull and the ringing, whooshing, ringing, whooshing in his ears wasn't as prominent when his head was underwater.
When Shane told him this, Hayden suggested they go swimming in the lake near his parent's house.
"It'll still be freezing this time of year," Shane pointed out, but he wasn't entirely opposed to it.
"So, I saw this thing online about cold plunges…"
Shane was pretty much convinced when Hayden showed him actual articles about the benefits of cold water submersion.
Shane's schedule remained essentially the same, apart from the school hours, and Hayden was happy to partake. They added lake swims, slow jogs on only the flattest paths, movies and two-player video games to fill up their days. Shane showed Hayden how to do reflexology on his feet, and took sadistic pleasure digging the knuckles of his thumbs into particularly tender trigger points on Hayden's big toe, watching him bite back curses and squirm and try to wiggle away, pleading for mercy.
No matter how loud Hayden got — and he did get loud, particularly when he was key-smashing at the PS2 controller and fighting the final boss of Kingdom Hearts II on Shane's behalf because his left thumb was still a little weak — it encased him, gentle and musical, the incessant chchchchchchc kurrr kurrr kurrr of a particularly offended northern mockingbird.
And at night as they slept side by side in Shane's queen-sized bed — because it was just so simple to welcome Hayden into his space, which just felt bigger with him in it instead of smaller — the chittering was more of a soft chirrup, a soothing coo as they talked in low voices and whispers, snickering under their breaths like schoolboys younger than their age.
"Lemme know how your first day back goes," Hayden said on his last night, eyes already drifting shut.
It was something he'd tried to avoid thinking about in the eight weeks since the accident. His return to the ice. The inevitability of stepping back onto the rink after weeks of his body changing. Wondering how far behind he'd fallen. Whether he still deserved the 'A'.
Knowing that every edge, every switch, every play would be scrutinized and eternalized into a scratch on a clipboard in black ink.
"I will," he told Hayden, finding comfort in the grey and brown cotton cocoon around his brain for a little while longer.
Hayden left.
There was another week off school.
And on a Saturday morning, he stepped through the doors of the rink that had been a second home to him for the better part of a year and…felt like a stranger.
The day started out fine. He did his morning Mayumi routine, ate his breakfast, drank his smoothie, threw back a ginger-turmeric-carrot-lemon-black-pepper booster shot and let his mother drive him.
Wet rubber.
A perpetually damp floor.
White fluorescent lights.
Blue plastic seats, empty save for a few parents. Maybe a scout or two. His mother, tapping away on her phone, one eye on the ice.
Cold air in his lungs and nose.
A comforting smell that he had yearned for these past two months.
Coach Perrier gave him a gruff shoulder-squeeze when he saw Shane.
"Good to have to back, Hollander. Gear up. Nothing fancy today."
The guys in the locker room welcomed him back, clapping him on the back, crowding around him but not quite close enough to be stifling.
Charles Chilton sent him a thumbs-up and a wink. "Lookin' good, Hollz."
Shane smiled and ducked his head to hide the heat that had spread up his cheeks.
Skates on. Laces double-knotted. Gear and helmet fastened. Stick taped. Mouth guard in.
No headache this morning. His balance was steady. The lights weren't too bright and the sounds weren't too loud or distracting.
His body felt good. Fresh. New.
But beneath it all, beneath the chest protector, the shin guards, the breezers, the compression top and the thin singlet under that…a sound began to hum, deep in his ear canal.
Low and quiet, barely noticeable. His heartbeat was louder.
But the hum was there.
He ignored it.
He sat on the benches while Assistant Coach McDuff told them the rules of the obstacle course for warm up.
The ice was there, just beyond a thin, plastic barrier.
The hum was there too.
He ignored it.
McDuff blew the whistle.
Pain spiked behind Shane's left eye, quick as a neuron firing, before it vanished. He barely had time to wince.
The ice was there now, beneath his skates.
The hum grew a little louder.
He ignored it.
The first push of his skates. The familiar skhh skhh shik shik beneath metal. The krhh krhh and sssssssss carving out beneath him.
It felt good. It was the sinking of his hands into a container of rice, a knot of pashmina silk coming neatly undone. A physical manifestation of the weight and movement of him in the external world.
His body knew what to do. It had done it thousands and thousands of times before.
Nothing hurt.
Stick-handling the puck as he weaved in and out of orange and yellow cones and other obstacles, the entire team in a single file around the rink.
Joy. It was joy.
It was relief.
He was back. He was back and he could do this.
He'd make the juniors draft, then the big one in two years' time.
He'd get to play hockey.
He'd—
The sharp shrill of a whistle.
He winced, closing one eye.
Thwack!
The first player in the line — Charles Chilton, of course — had whacked his puck into the goal.
The hum in his ear rose to a ringing. There but not an interference.
Shane was fifth in the line.
Number two went next, aiming for the upper corner. It hit the net. Not as strong as Charles' but a decent shot.
Sweat dripped down the back of his neck. He imagined if his skin had taste buds it would taste bitter and salty — bittersalt, why wasn't that a thing?
Number three skated in, rearranged himself for a slap shot.
Sharp light flickered in the corners of Shane's vision. He blinked and it was gone. A camera flash?
Number three scored.
His breaths were coming in harder now.
The ringing was in both ears.
He grunted, trying to clear it. Shook his head, wondering if the helmet was too tight.
He almost lost the puck doing so, but managed to snag it back.
Number four was next. He aimed. His stick scraped the ice before it met the curve of the puck.
Nausea surged violently up Shane's stomach. Another camera flash assaulted the right side of his vision. There was no flash photography allowed. Who the fuck even used flash these days anymore—
Number four missed the goal by five centimetres and the puck hit the wall of the ring with a hollow thud.
Number four groaned and went behind the goal to get his puck.
The ringing was loud now, muting out the world around him.
"Hollander, you're up! Take your time!"
McDuff's voice sounded flat. Far away. Like Shane was in a box made of thick, clear plastic, and the entire world was outside of it.
Still. Still. He could ignore it. He'd ignore it. He just needed to ignore it—
He moved, skating towards the empty goal, puck dancing in front of him.
He aimed for the right. Nice and easy. Perfect backhand.
And it was.
It was perfect.
Probably one of his best shots to date.
And the puck hit the upper right corner beautifully.
"Nice one, Hollander!"
"Hollzy's back, baby!"
"Fucking ace!"
"Beautiful shot, Shane!"
It was beautiful.
It was perfect.
He skated in to fetch the puck, heart hammering in his chest, camera lights flashing all around him, acid roiling in his belly, sweat drenching him all the way from his compression shirt to the chest protector. The silicon of the mouth guard stuck to the insides of his dry mouth.
Gloved hands patted his back, rattling his skull, and a wall of players closed around him, hot and cold emanating off of them in equal measure.
Shane tried to smile. He tried to laugh. Years of practice told him that was the appropriate response.
But it came out a wheeze and the muscles in his face tightened. He felt his eyes going wide, as the flashes narrowed his vision down to a pinpoint. His breaths came quicker.
The ringing in his ears became a screaming, screaming, screaming—!
McDuff's shoulder nudge turned into a door crumpling inwards, cracking at the metal, plastic and leather, digging into his side.
The cheers of his teammates morphed into tires screeching and metal impacting on metal.
Just like before, he knew what would happen the beat before it did.
A breath left him, soft and grieving.
Like heartbreak.
His eyes blurred and one last, quiet cry tore from his throat.
Shane fell to the ice and right into the biggest and longest panic attack of his life until the world disappeared and ceased to exist.
He tried again.
Of course he did.
The ice was all he knew. And the ice knew him back. It wanted him, it loved him.
It had loved him since he was six years old.
He had to try.
He tried for three weeks.
Sometimes he only managed to get through the warmups.
Other times he made it all the way to a scrimmage before his head would hit the side window and the impact of the door would dislocate his shoulder.
And some days he got in early, before anyone else, and had the rink to himself.
Those were the best days when his skates would sing and the pain in his head didn't exist and the puck was like an eager dog, scuttling between the swipes and cuts of the blade.
But hockey wasn't a solo sport and eventually every body that filled it became another vehicle and all Shane could do was brace for impact.
When he walked in one morning, emotions already pulled taut, the ice beckoning with the same intensity as it terrified him, Coach Perrier was already there, craggy features softened into something that looked like regret.
"Son," he said, stepping in front of Shane, hand on his shoulder. "Let's talk in my office."
He knew then it would be the last time he'd set foot here for a long time.
"Sometimes these things take a lot more time to ease up, Shane. Even when we physically feel fine," Dr. Shetty told him gently, eyes warm and apologetic. "The headaches, dizziness, nausea, the tinnitus, they won't last forever. But the other things, Shane…I want to refer you to a colleague of mine."
She went on to say things like persistent post-concussive symptoms and neurological after-effects and trauma.
Shane filed this things away, then got them out and laid them on the table at the first meeting with his therapist, a Dr. Jillian Brosseau.
He'd ignored the potential diagnosis that had been crawling around the corners of his awareness up until now.
But when the word PTSD spilled from her lips, all Shane could feel was anger.
"Other people get into car accidents all the time," he snapped, glaring at her, fists shaking in his lap. "The MLH is full of guys who've had their brains rattled so why is it only affecting me like this!?"
"Are how would you expect yourself to be affected by this, Shane?"
"Like any other normal person! Just— accept that it happened and move on. I didn't die. My ribs are healed. It was just a concussion! I'm fine! So why am I not fine?" His voice cracked on the last word, an uneven skid across jagged ice, a cavern-like hole opening up in his chest, too big for his body to contain.
Late, once he'd calmed down, he'd be embarrassed and apologetic about the outburst.
But for now, he was just a sixteen-year old boy who had put everything he had into hockey and a pickup truck had careened into him on what should have been a straight and clear road at daybreak, the rest of his life unfolding in gold with the rising sun.
Now all he saw was grey.
The days lost the familiar shape that his body had traced with immaculate precision up until now. Previously solid lines erased themselves where hockey had once etched itself out with such stark clarity. Sharp corners blurred and disappeared altogether, and every previously occupied moment became an aborted surge towards order only for Shane to realize that the reliable borders that held his life together no longer existed and there was nothing to reach for.
He lost months to the fog.
Months that, years later, he wouldn't be able to recall at all, save for a vague sense of loss and an edge of terrifying emptiness that his brain attempted to shield him from.
He moved through the rest of spring like a low-lying cloud, dissipating at the edges, eyes half-closed. He woke at the same time. He ate the same food. He went to school and did his homework. He went to the rink closest to his house, with his skates, his stick and a puck and no other gear.
The ice spoke back to him but quietly, soft as a whisper, like an apology.
As soon as the ice got busy, he left before the ringing could start in his ears, before the flashing lights could impede his vision, and before that itchy, persistent, breathless feeling, like a furious scribble that had fallen off a page and was attempting to crawl up his spine, could send him to the ground.
As summer arrived, school let out and so appeared another blank space in the routine of his life, the calendar collapsing without enough pillars to hold it up.
But…
But when order was all one knew, when routine was so intimately embedded into the muscles, the body had no choice but to move, to carry the host even when consciousness and emotion were inflated so intensely that the brain broke under the strain and chose to stop feeling.
The grey continued. The fog continued.
And Shane continued to walk through them.
Wake up, do Mayumi's exercises, shower, breakfast, smoothie, ginger-turmeric-carrot-lemon-black-pepper booster shot, go to the gym — this was new; his parents were glad he was leaving the house at all — solo hockey sessions, go back home, healing and recovery session with his stash of tools, evening stretches, dinner, watch past hockey matches — these hurt beneath the numbness, they hurt they hurt they hurt — sleep, two-hour sessions with Mayumi on Saturday mornings, therapy with Jillian — she told him to call her Jillian — every other Thursday, rinse, repeat.
He texted Hayden in between.
Hayden was devastated for him.
Sometimes, when awareness managed to surface above the heaviness, Shane realized that Hayden, smart, intuitive, understanding, his only friend Hayden, was doing all the feeling for him because Shane still didn't know how to feel it all himself.
Hayden also invited him over for two weeks that summer.
His parents loved Hayden and even Shane could see how grateful they were for him being there.
They went swimming in the lake. They cycled or jogged in the woods. They pitched a tent on the shores of the lake and built a fire and ate smores with actual milk chocolate that Shane could just almost taste. They burned a mosquito coil hoping they'd be able to sleep in their sleeping bags outside and stare up at the night sky, but it didn't help and they had to retreat into the tent.
The next morning they still found themselves covered in bites.
Hayden woke with a crick in his neck so Shane sat behind him, one hand on his shoulder and the other on the side of his head, gently stretching out the muscle the way Mayumi had done to him countless times before.
The air smelled of citronella, Tiger Balm and the hot chocolate they'd made fresh on the propane stove.
"You're really good at this," Hayden mumbled as Shane's thumb found the knot and began manipulating it.
"Thanks."
"I mean it. I was thinking…" He trailed off as if uncertain and Shane felt the muscles of his shoulder tense fractionally.
"Yeah?" Shane said, maintaining the steady strokes of his thumb until he felt Hayden relax again.
"I was thinking…a lot of hockey teams have their own physical therapists. Sports therapists and all."
Shane's thumbs stuttered so minutely that anyone else wouldn't have noticed.
Hayden was quiet for a long moment before he said tentatively, "You're the best hockey player I know. You also know all this stuff about muscle recovery and conditioning and all that stuff with big words I don't even know. But you know them. I just thought…it's a pretty cool intersection."
His hands stilled, palms resting on Hayden's shoulders, his gaze just a little ahead on some indeterminable coordinate on the lake.
It glimmered in the morning light, nothing like the bright flashes that preceded an episode. The sun was warming up, their hot chocolates were cooling down, little rocks and stones were digging into his crossed legs and the sound—
The sounds.
He inhaled sharply.
They were clear in a way they hadn't been for months, penetrating the veil and his ears with a luminosity that left him breathless.
For just a few moments, he had breached the dark water and the clouds had parted just enough for a wink of sunlight to land across his retinas.
"Shane."
Cotton. Soft, grey-brown cotton. He wanted to wrap himself in it.
"Shane, hey."
He blinked and wetness dripped down his face and Hayden had turned around, his face morphing from concern to regret.
"I'm sorry. Forget I said anything, I didn't mean to—"
"No," Shane interrupted, clinging to the brightness of the sounds of life a little longer, hands trying to grip the sunlight like a lasso and tether himself to living and not to sinking. "It's just nice to have someone tell me I'm still good at something."
Hayden smiled, unsure but real, boyish and kind. "Best hockey player I ever met. I mean it." he said with such confidence that it didn't sting as much as it usually did. "Most magical set of hands I've ever met too, Mr. Masseuse."
"Not a masseuse."
"Still the best one I know."
"The only one."
They didn't talk about hockey or about physical therapy or massages for the rest of Hayden's time in Ottawa, even though they did Shane's stretches together every night at the foot of the bed, and Shane still took pleasure inflicting pain on Hayden's big toe by digging his knuckles into the flesh of it.
When Hayden left, he took the soft cotton and a tangible portion of the sunlight with him.
Shane tried the ice again and again and again.
Just to see if maybe today.
Maybe today was the day.
Maybe this time it'd be fine.
Maybe now—
By the end of summer Shane realized he'd had more panic attacks in a single season than most people had in their entire lives. And each one took just a little bit more from him.
Until one day he realized just how fucking exhausting it all was.
He wanted hockey.
He thought that maybe he'd always want hockey.
But maybe more than that he wanted to always love hockey, because if he loved it, maybe there'd be a chance, no matter how small, that maybe one day—
And maybe that meant finally acknowledging the current of resentment, simmering just below the surface, that seemed to strengthen every time he was forced off the ice.
He hated it. He hated facing it and he hated that it hurt.
And he hated that it felt like letting go.
Like giving up.
Like loss.
A loss he didn't quite yet know how to handle without the foundations collapsing around him.
Or how to rebuild them after.
And maybe the other thing that he had to acknowledge, the thing that made his heart constrict in his chest and his breaths stutter, was that the foundations had already collapsed.
And he was kneeling in the rubble with his hands still raised above him, holding up nothing but a sinking feeling.
It was time to let them drop.
The next time he went to see Mayumi, the world had started taking on a new shape.
"I still want hockey," Shane said, the words unsteady and foreign-tasting in his mouth. "But…I think…" He mulled them, chewing the syllables until they crunched and dissolved on his tongue like rock sugar. "I think I can still have it. In some way. Just…different. It'll have to be different until I can…until I can do it again. I don't know when that'll be but…I have to love it differently until then."
Mayumi was never soft with him; she pushed and she challenged and she was straightforward in a way that Shane had always appreciated.
But right then, the sorrow and fond affection morphed her features into someone he almost didn't recognize.
When she reached across her desk with both her hands, he took them.
Her smaller but strong, capable, reliable hands encasing his larger, softer, unsure ones.
"Okay, Shane. Let's see what we can do."
Shane's life was a dotted map of little obsessions.
Hockey would always be his first love.
But maybe this.
Maybe this.
Maybe his hands could still hold this.
Maybe the sounds could still be his.
Maybe he could still touch gold.
2013 - Fall
"Hey, Roz, you saw the email this morning?"
Ilya flicked a glance at where Marly and Connors were standing by the abandoned cable machine, heads hovering over the Marly's phone.
"What email?" he threw out halfheartedly, legs still pumping the pedals of the stationary bike, sweat dripping down his forehead and into one of his eyes, making it water.
"The one from LeClaire."
"All emails are from LeClaire."
"Yeah, so fucking read them, Captain," Marly snorted, then continued. "They finally found a permanent replacement for Johansson. Permanent permanent. Like not just for the season."
Ilya rested his forearms on the handles of the bike and leaned forward, head bowed and eyes closed as he increased his speed.
"Who the fuck is Johansson?"
"Our ex-PT, man. He's only been with us since your fucking rookie year."
He did remember him — tall, lanky, hairline receding far enough that he ended up shaving his head the year before.
He also remembered his hands were dry as fuck and impersonal — lazy — towards the end and that his ten-minute adjustments and body checks were a waste of time when Ilya could've just had a full-body Thai aromatherapy massage twenty minutes from his house.
"Okay, so we have new PT. Congratulations, Marly; someone you do not have to pay to touch you— oh, wait."
"Fuck you, Roz."
Connors laughed out loud and Ilya grinned towards the floor.
He let the murmur of his teammates and the burn in his thighs and lower abs wash over him, sinking into a faded silence where his brain went pleasantly numb. The bass from the speakers pulsed in time with his heartbeat, which in turn pulsed in time with his legs driving down, sweeping up, then driving down again, repeated, reliable, predictable.
His body was a finely-honed machine and he took as much care of it as was necessary to ensure perfection on and off the ice. He hadn't needed a PT to achieve this level of athleticism before and he wouldn't need one now.
As he continued to pound through his cardio session he forgot all about Johansson and the new PT.
Until twenty minutes later when the din of voices rose, puncturing his bubble of silence.
Ilya lifted his head.
LeClaire was standing at the entrance of their facility's gym, leaning against the open door and talking to someone just over the threshold. Marly, Connors and three other guys were gathered around the door, obstructing them from view.
He could just barely make out a crown of black hair.
It happened in slow motion after that.
Like a lace curtain being blown back by a soft breeze, coming in to caress his face a few delicate seconds later.
The crowd parted, LeClaire moved aside, and his companion stepped over the threshold.
The first thing Ilya saw was веснушки — freckles.
The second thing he saw was a pair of very pink lips and a curiously defined cupid's bow.
The third thing was brown eyes, adjusting their angle slightly and meeting Ilya's head on.
The fourth thing was the monitor of the stationary bike as his right foot slipped from the pedal and his entire face followed the downward motion, his forehead hitting the metal handlebar with a clang that rattled through his teeth to the back of his skull.
"Сука Блять! Fuck!"
He clapped his palms to his forehead, eyes squeezed shut, rubbing circles around the bump he could already feel forming, and groaned another curse under his breath.
There was a surprised exclamation, a scattering of startled laughter and LeClaire's dry, "What the hell did you do, Rozanov?"
Before he could formulate a reply, a pair of soft, warm hands came up to gently pry his away from his head.
And Ilya just let it fucking happen.
He opened his eyes, squinting up in front of him.
"Are you okay?"
Freckles.
Pink lips with a cupid's bow like a crescent moon at the equator.
Brown eyes.
They weren't looking at him, though; they were focused, narrowed in on his forehead. And then his fingers were there, pushing Ilya's curls up and palpating around what felt like a significant bruise.
"You didn't break the skin," the newcomer said, with a serious note of satisfaction. "Ice it when you get home."
Then the guy with the freckles and the lips and the brown eyes dropped to his knees and Ilya took a moment to wonder whether he'd hit his head harder than either of them thought.
Except Mr. Freckles-Pink-Lips-Brown-Eyes had taken a hold of Ilya's ankle and knee and bent him right so, so he could look under his shoes.
And again, Ilya just fucking let it happen.
"The soles are worn. Probably why you slipped." He stood smoothly, meeting Ilya's gaze steadily for one, two beats long enough to add, "Get new shoes."
When he turned around, Ilya's brain caught up with him and he was just about to ask who the fuck this guy was when LeClaire cleared his throat, retracting the tail-end of his withering glare at Ilya, before facing the others.
"I was planning on doing a proper intro to the entire team later in the locker room, but since these guys are here…"
He gestured to Mr. Freckles-Pink-Lips-Brown-Eyes-Zero-Sense-Of-Personal-Space, who stood next to him, arms hanging awkwardly by his side. He raised one hand — just raised it, no wave, just a stiff, open palm.
"I'm your new PT. Shane Hollander. Hello."