Chapter Text
Lily: I told you, Comeau is lagging left side
Lily: What do you want to eat? Getting delivery
Lily: Jane
Lily: Jane
Lily: Jaaaaaane
Lily: Fine. Doritos for you.
Shane can’t help but grin down at his phone. Boston just lost against them. Ilya couldn’t even be out of his gear, and yet here he was, giving Shane a hard time-
His thumbs are just prepping a response when his phone is suddenly snatched from his hands. Blinking at the blank air where his phone used to be, it takes Shane’s brain a full second to start sounding an alarm.
By then, it’s too late.
“Who are you making heart eyes at? You’re not ditching us tonight Hollander, we won! We beat Boston!” Hayden is still riding the high of victory against Montreal’s oldest rival, but Shane’s already over it and looking forward to the rest of the evening.
“Hollander’s ditching again? Big surprise.” Comeau gripes, and Shane makes a mental note to work him extra hard on his left side, because Ilya’s fucking right.
“The Captain doesn’t go out to celebrate?” asks one of the rookies, but Shane’s too busy trying to recover his phone from Hayden to pay attention to which one.
“Hayden, give it-”
“I don’t think so buddy!” Hayden teases, sing-song; post game adrenaline making him giddy. “I think if you’re ditching us to go hang out with some girl, we deserve the courtesy of at least knowing what she looks like.”
There’s a general grumbling of approval amongst the team, and fear starts to ice down Shane’s spine.
“No, Hayden.” he tries, desperation growing and grabbing at his friend’s arm. “This isn’t funny, stop-”
With the skill of a man used to dodging the grabby hands of his entire flock of children, Hayden neatly tosses Shane’s phone to his other hand and starts rapidly scrolling up the chain of text messages Shane shares with Ilya. Three other players have swarmed them, including JJ, and they’re peering at his screen with Hayden, effectively blocking Shane from getting his phone back.
He’s deleted all the pictures though, right? Because even if Ilya called him paranoid, he still-
“Here we go!” Hayden crows with delight, and JJ slaps at his back in victory.
“Open it! Let’s see what kind of fish Montreal’s Capitaine has landed!”
More players are gathering, and the sweat on Shane’s skin from the exertion of the game feels simultaneously freezing and like it’s going to burn off into steam any second now.
“She’s gonna feed you chips? You don’t even eat chips. Like, I’ve never even seen you look at a potato.” Drapeau bitches, but he’s leaning in too, just as invested as the rest of Shane’s nosy, no good teammates.
“Doritos are a corn chip, dumbass.” Comeau points out.
“The fuck do I care? It’s still chips.”
“H-hayden.” Shane stammers out weakly, but it’s too late. Shane can see the exact moment that everyone staring realizes that ‘Lily’ isn’t a woman; their heads cock to the side in tandem confusion before Hayden tips the screen into landscape mode.
The following silence is deafening; a total vacuum of sound from a group of burly men that normally couldn’t be quiet if their lives depended on it.
Half of the onlookers immediately recoil away, feigning retching. Smiles fade off the other half’s faces.
JJ looks at Shane like he’s suddenly started speaking in tongues, but it’s Hayden’s reaction that makes tears prick at the corner of Shane’s eyes.
He looks… gutted. Devastated. Like it’s his world that’s just had the rug pulled out from under him.
“Fuckin’ figures Hollander’s a queer. Least you’re good at hockey.” someone says, slapping him on the shoulder in consolation and heading for the depths of the locker room.
“Dude, does this mean you’ve been checking us out in the showers? What the fuck man.” grumbles someone else.
No one swings on him.
He almost wishes they would.
The quiet departure of the rest of Hayden’s onlookers is a subdued kind of silence. Like they know they’ve crossed a line, but don’t think he deserves the courtesy of an apology.
“Shane-” Hayden tries to talk, but his voice cracks and he ends up looking away, handing Shane’s phone back to him like his kids pass over toys that’ve been confiscated. His hands are shaking.
JJ recovers the fastest. It’s why Shane likes him on the starting line up.
“Look at the bright side, hm? Our Capitaine has a beau!”
For all that almost every person in the locker room has tried to set him up on a date with a cousin or a friend of a friend over the last couple of years, not a single person seems pleased with this announcement.
“Right?” JJ asks, bending lower to look into Shane’s downturned face.
His brain is still white noise and static at being outed like this to his team, but a warning voice in the back of his mind that sounds suspiciously like his mother speaks up. If he doesn’t let them think he has a boyfriend already, the team might very well try and set him up on more dates, this time with an entirely untested pool.
Not that they probably know very many gay men, but the threat remains.
“Uh. Yeah. Boyfriend.” Shane shrugs. It’s not like they recognized Ilya from the photo apparently, or they really would have been throwing punches. And even though whatever he and Ilya have going on is far from a relationship, it’s not as if anyone can fact check him against a fake relationship with his league rival anyway.
“...cool.”
Shane strips out of his hockey gear in record time, skips the shower, and heads straight for his hotel to break down in private.