Chapter Text
If there’s one thing that Shane Hollander has learned to really hate in his decade-plus as a celebrity, it’s walking into a room and having everyone immediately stop talking and stare at him worriedly. He’s so used to it by now that the panicked roiling of his stomach has settled into a dull ache of dread.
“What?” he sighs. He just wants an immediate gauge of how bad it is; how long he’s going to have to avoid the internet for this time.
His mom plasters on a fake smile. “It’s not a big deal…” she starts, not meeting his gaze as she minutely rearranges a stack of breakfast plates on the cottage’s kitchen counter.
Shane’s looks over to his husband, who is leaning against the wall with his arms folded. Ilya’s eyes snap to his immediately and he says, bluntly, “Voyageurs talking shit.”
It could be worse, of course, but it’s still a stab to the heart, even without knowing the specifics yet. Things had ended badly with Shane’s old team, but up until now they’ve at least had enough professionalism to keep their comments behind closed doors.
His name is trending when he opens up social media (another thing that Shane has come to dread). He quickly finds the video: TMZ shoving a camera in the faces of a few of his former teammates as they stumble merrily out of a bar, and asking for their reaction to the news that Shane has signed with Ottawa.
Drapeau is among them, and his mouth twists into a bitter sneer as he shoves his face toward the camera to answer.
“We’re just happy Hollander came out of the closet. Turns out he’s been playing for the other team for years.”
There’s a bray of obnoxious cackling behind him even as hands land on his shoulders to pull him back. Someone says with a nervous laugh, “dude…”
“How do you feel about your chances against Ottawa this year?”
“Pretty good now we have a captain who isn’t fucking sabotaging us,” Drapeau slurs.
“Oh my god, dude…”
Drapeau gets dragged away and the clip ends, but the cruel, taunting expression on the Montreal goalie’s face is burned onto Shane’s brain. The pain in his fingers suddenly registers and makes him realize how tightly he’s holding his phone. He doesn’t know what his face is doing, but whatever it is draws his dad over to wrap an arm around him and squeeze his shoulder tightly.
“Ignore them, bud,” David says in a falsely jovial voice. “They’re just trying to get a rise out of ya.”
“Right,” Shane says, his blood thundering in his ears. He gives his parents a tight, fake smile, and then walks out of the cottage before his face can falter. He deliberately leaves his phone behind, not wanting the temptation of checking what people are saying on Twitter or – god forbid – the temptation of posting a response.
He walks down to the dock, because looking out over the lake often helps with perspective when Shane is getting tunnel vision. Something to do with the vast expanse of the water, unchanged for centuries, and the way it reflects the sky above with a whole universe behind it. It makes hockey drama seem so small and petty.
But this isn’t just hockey drama. This is personal. Those guys were like Shane’s brothers, and now they seem to genuinely despise him. He doesn’t know if they truly believe he was going easy on Rozanov – a claim that’s factually absurd, given the number of times he’s kicked Ilya’s ass on the ice – or if that’s just a convenient channel for their feelings of betrayal and anger. Either way, the whole situation is ugly, and now it’s been aired for everyone to see.
Shane’s tempted to take his shoes off and dangle his feet in the frigid water to distract himself, but the edge and underside of the dock is lined with a gross, slimy green skin of algae. Just the thought of it touching his bare skin makes him shudder. He sits down cross-legged instead, like a kid, and looks out over the water, nursing the ache in his chest.
After a few minutes, he hears Ilya padding barefoot down the dock. His gait is imprinted on Shane’s senses now: the swaggering, slightly frustrated steps of a man who feels more at home with skates on his feet and ice underneath him. Shane can sympathize; after a day swooping smoothly around the rink, the act of walking always feels so slow and plodding. It must be even worse for the fastest skater in the league.
Ilya folds his long limbs down onto the boards of the dock next to Shane. He doesn’t look at him; just stares out over the water, giving him space. After a few long seconds he reaches over to smooth his hand over Shane’s back, squeeze his shoulder, bury his fingers in Shane’s loose hair and then gently guide his head down to rest on Ilya’s shoulder. He smells like maple syrup, something that wouldn’t even be in the cottage if Ilya wasn’t here. (Shane’s dad loves cooking disgusting unhealthy breakfasts for Ilya almost as much as his mom loves micromanaging Shane’s macros.)
They don’t talk. Ilya doesn’t rush him to feel better, or press Shane for ways to cheer him up. Ilya himself has said that sometimes feeling like shit is just something you have to live with. He once told Shane that one of the best things he ever did for his depression was to let go of his urgent need to be fixed.
Shane feels an extra flutter of anxiety in his chest as he suddenly wonders how badly Ilya has been affected by this, if at all. It’s so hard to tell. Ilya has spent most of his life masking his emotions – from his father, from his brother, from the press, from the fans – and now he’s terrifyingly good at it. Even after all these years, Shane still struggles to read him.
But Ilya isn’t badgering Shane for a status update on his feelings, so Shane won’t either. Instead, they just sit in silence on the dock and feel like shit together.
That night, Shane can’t sleep, not even after Ilya spends an hour slowly and tenderly fucking his brain into mush. As soon as the post-coital glow fades, Shane finds his body tensing up again, his hands curling into fists, his teeth grinding so hard that he can hear it. So he slips out of bed and goes to do the only thing he feels sure of.
He plays hockey.
OK, it’s a plastic rink, but it’s good enough for practicing his stick handling and firing pucks viciously at targets does expend some of the brimming, furious energy inside him. It helps to picture every one of the targets with the faces of his former teammates, glaring at him coldly the way they did after that video of Shane and Ilya leaked. Not even giving him a chance to explain, and dismissing the explanation out of hand when he did give it.
Shane misses a target. “Motherfucker!” he spits, slamming his stick against the smooth surface of the rink.
Suddenly a puck whips past him out of nowhere and slams into the target, dead center. Shane whirls around and sees Ilya Rozanov slouching casually behind him with a cocky, infuriating smirk on his face.
The years fall away all at once, shedding like an old skin. Suddenly they’re kids again: young, dumb, and full of… ego. Burdened with superstardom before their brains have even fully developed and thriving in the fire of it. As the night sky rolls over their heads, they tease that old competitive spirit out of each other until they’re furious, exhausted, laughing, shoving each other against the boards.
Shane pants hotly against Ilya’s neck, relishing the slide of damp curls on his forehead. “Fuck,” he manages at last. “I needed that.”
“The practice? Yes, you definitely needed it,” Ilya rumbles mischievously in his ear.
“Fuck you,” Shane laughs breathlessly.
“Too much soft spring water, I think.”
“You’re dead, Rozanov.”
Ilya responds by putting him in a headlock and aggressively planting kisses in his hair. Shane grabs at him, trying to turn the tables, but the struggle fades into a tight embrace. He looks out over the chaos of stray pucks before them.
“I think I know what I want to do about the Voyageurs,” he says, calm at last.
Ilya tenses a little behind him. “Please tell me you’re not going to, ah, ‘clap back’ on Instagram,” he groaned.
Shane shakes his head. “No, I’ve got something better in mind.”
“Oh?”
There’s no humor in Shane’s voice. It’s cold, hard, determined. “When we meet them on the ice next season, I want to fucking destroy them.”
After a moment, he feels Ilya nod thoughtfully behind him.
“Is good plan. Let’s fucking destroy them.”