Referring to someone as your “partner” sounds as if you are deliberately obscuring their gender and may subtly out you. “My ex”, however, is entirely unobtrusively gender-neutral. #breakupallrelationships
You know all those Ilya dies during the plane crash, travels back in time and gets a do over fics? What if it's Shane who gets to travel back in time and gets the do over after losing Ilya in the plane crash?
(I have no idea where to go from here. This isn't even a whole fic I think? Idk maybe it is? I don't know if I want to put it on ao3 like this but I needed to share it somewhere.)
The Centaurs’ plane goes down and there are no survivors. And Shane breaks. Holes up in Ottawa in their house and sleeps in Ilya’s unwashed hoodies that still carry his scent. Cuddles with Anya who doesn't understand why Ilya isn’t coming home, why Shane is here when Ilya is not. Only eats when his parents come over and remind him he has to. He can’t even grieve publicly because no one knows. The league takes a week off, and holds a tribute to the Cens. Ilya as the Ottawa captain and the 2014 Boston Raiders cup winner captain receives special honors. Boston retires his number. For the rest of the season, all players wear a black armband.
Shane forces himself back to Montreal. He goes through the motions. Sometimes he plays well, sometimes he doesn’t but he’s not there, not really. The only people who know are his parents, Rose, Hayden and JJ (when JJ tried to comfort him thinking Shane had a crush, Shane couldn’t hold it in. Not when Ilya was dead.) Hayden and JJ try to be sympathetic but they never liked Ilya. They didn’t know him like Shane did. His parents try to be there for him. Rose tries too, even takes a week off to come visit him.
Not that it helps. Ilya is dead and Shane can’t grieve. Not even because people don’t know. Because Shane doesn’t deserve to grieve. Ilya was the best thing in his life and Shane hid him, and for what? Shining trophies on a shelf? A sport that can’t fill the hole in his heart?
Shane’s been so stupid.
(He gets drunk about it, on the fancy vodka Ilya bought, and that doesn’t help either.)
During the summer, Ottawa will get a rebuilding draft. Pick players from every team in the league to rebuild the team. Some people think it’s tacky, too soon, but the show must go on.
Shane tells his team he doesn’t want to be protected. Considering how he’s been playing, the GM and the coach don’t disagree.
Shane hasn’t been playing like himself, but he’s still Shane Hollander. He’s Ottawa’s number one pick.
It’s penance. It’s honoring Ilya’s memory, his sacrifice.
Shane says so during the first press conference he gives in a Centaurs jersey.
“Sacrifice?” a reporter asks.
“He came to Ottawa for me,” Shane says, and it’s suddenly the easiest thing he’s ever said. The words come just pouring out. He needs to say it, the world needs to know. “We didn’t want to do long distance anymore and I couldn’t move, but his contract was up. So he came to Ottawa for me.”
There’s stunned silence, no one daring or knowing to ask more.
So Shane talks.
“We’ve loved each other most of our adult lives. But we weren’t in a position to be open about it. Not when we were young. When we hadn’t proven ourselves to the league. Not when Ilya still needed to go back to Russia. And then, after Scott came out… We thought we’d take the time to do it right. Change the narrative. Bury the rivalry, start the Irina Foundation, become friends. And then I was scared. I don’t even remember of what. Because I would give it all up to get him back. I would quit hockey. I would—everything. It would be worth it to have him back. But I can’t. So I am here, at least. Where we wanted to build a home eventually. Where my family is. His family now too. It’s too late, I should have been here saying this a long time ago, but I am here now. The only place I can be.”
Shane goes back to the cottage for a few weeks, to escape the media and to rest before the first training camp.
He sits out on the deck and when the loons call, he calls back. Ilya pretended to hate the stupid Canadian wolf birds, but he did get a loon tattoo.
A loon lands on the deck with Shane. It looks at him as if it’s asking him why he’s making such sad loon calls.
“The love of my life died,” Shane says. “And I would give everything to have him back. To have him be alive.”
The loon tilts its head. Everything?
“Everything.”
The loon makes a short low sound. Even hockey?
“Even hockey.”
The loon jumps a few steps back. But you wouldn’t have met him without hockey.
“But he would be alive,” Shane says. “And Ilya, he believed in soulmates. He told me that he thinks he will always be with me. So I have to believe that too.”
The loon lowers its head, raises it again. It spreads its wings. Then it takes to the air. It flies out over the lake where it’s joined by other loons. Like a dark moving blanket they circle across the lake. Their haunting cries fill the air.
Shane has never seen anything like it. Then they turn, as one, and fly straight at him. Shane is too stunned to run or even raise his hands. The loons fly toward him and everything goes dark.
Shane wakes up in pain. Everything hurts but his shoulder especially. He’s in a hospital. He’s woken up like this enough that he knows where he is. He just doesn’t know how he got here. It’s the off season, he hasn’t played a game. Then he remembers the loons.
He tries to sit up but groans in pain and falls back onto the bed.
“Shane.” That’s his mom’s voice. “Don’t try to move yet.”
Shane looks at her and—she looks different. It takes him a moment. Less wrinkles. No gray hairs.
“Mom? What happened?”
“Oh honey.” She visibly steels herself. “You got checked hard into the boards. Your shoulder. You’ll need surgery. You’re out of the Prospect Cup.”
The Prospect Cup. Shane closes his eyes. This is impossible. He’s dreaming.
But then his father is there too, younger again by a decade at least, and a doctor and nurses and his arm is in a sling and he needs to go into surgery and everything is bright and loud and real. Impossible, it’s real. Despite the pain, Shane smiles.
Ilya is alive.
The surgery doesn’t go well. Shane knows enough about this kind of injury to read between the lines of the doctor’s post-op talk.
“The doctor says you’ll have a long recovery ahead of you, but it is possible to regain full mobility,” his mother says, as if Shane didn’t understand. As if Shane doesn’t know.
But Shane does know. He knows he won’t recover. Hockey is the price for Ilya alive.
He still looks him up when he gets home, frustrated with the slow tech. But no, Ilya is really, truly alive. Won the Prospect Cup with Russia. There is a clip of it, and Shane watches, heart singing and happy for the first time in months, how a young Ilya tears across the ice and scores a goal.
In this new (old) world, Shane never even talked to him. He never introduced himself outside of the rink, never awkwardly told him not to smoke there. Shane got hurt in the first game, before he could ever introduce himself to Ilya Rozanov.
Ilya doesn’t know him at all. Probably never thinks about him. But he’d told Shane once, that the first time he’d seen him, he’d fallen in love with his freckles.
Shane wonders, if maybe he can find a different way. If he doesn’t have to give Ilya up. If he can still make it work. If giving up hockey is enough.
Whatever happens, I am with you. Safe in your heart. I believe it.
Shane has to believe it too.
Shane does his physical therapy. He does everything the doctor tells him to but he’s not surprised when one of his ligaments tears again. And again.
No more shooting a puck. No more hockey.
His parents think he’s in shock, is not processing right because he’s too calm about it. But Shane knows it’s the price. No Shane in Montreal, no Ilya in Ottawa. No Ilya on that flight. No Ilya dead.
So Shane watches the draft from home, Ilya the uncontested first draft pick, the incredible Russian phenom destined to rise to the top alone.
“You should have been up there,” Yuna says.
“Yeah,” Shane agrees. His hands still itch to hold a hockey stick, his feet still ache to skate. “But I think it’s better like this.”
His parents stare at him uncomprehendingly.
And well, Shane already knows they’ll love him. And there’s no image to protect now, no impossible standard to set because he’s the only Asian player in a predominantly white league and can’t be gay too.
“I’m gay,” he tells his parents. “Not really something I could be in hockey.”
His mother blinks in shock and his father’s face softens.
“We love you, Shane,” his dad says.
“Yes, of course, so much honey,” his mom says and then they both hug him and Shane hugs them back. And he cries. He cries because Ilya was supposed to be here for this. He cries because he loves a man but he can only tell his parents that he loves men.
Shane still wants to do something with hockey. He still knows hockey. He could scout or maybe even coach? He wasn’t a great coach at their hockey camps at first, but he thinks he got better. He can learn. A skill to practice like any other. And he could set a different locker room culture. Not that he knows if they’d give him a shot without all his trophies, but he can try. Maybe become a physical therapist as a back up. That could still get him into the sport. Close to Ilya.
He finishes high school with decent grades and then goes to McGill. Sports science. He still skates, sometimes, but people keep approaching him, complimenting him. A couple of times, guys try to invite him to their beer league.
Eventually, he starts coaching a junior league. Enough people in Canadian hockey still remember his name. It’s just something on the side while he goes to college, but it heals something in him. Maybe it is his future path.
And Ilya was always so good with kids, Shane remembers him playing in the pool at All Stars or with the Pike kids. Shane thinks Ilya would like him coaching kids. Shane isn’t a natural at it like Ilya is, but it helps, with the longing.
He misses Ilya like a limb. He watches all of his games, all interviews.
He pays half his monthly allowance for Montreal Boston home game tickets just to be in the same building as him.
Shane doesn’t really make friends, but he has acquaintances. He misses Hayden, misses Rose. He watches her movies as they start coming out and tells his study group she’ll make it big one day.
(He realizes, he could absolutely Back to the Future this. Game outcomes are largely the same. Shane doesn’t even think about it. This is not why he’s here.)
He doesn’t really date. He’s too in love.
He knows Ilya is sleeping his way across North America and is regularly hooking up with Svetlana, but Shane can’t really bring himself to do the same. In Montreal, he tries a few times, just to scratch the itch, to forget, but like before, they just don’t compare. Every encounter leaves him hollow, unsatisfied and—most times—crying in the shower.
But then he remembers. Ilya rarely slept with men, but sometimes he did. And he always loved Shane’s freckles.
Shane had a vague plan, get a job in hockey, meet Ilya that way, but Montreal has clubs. And Ilya and the Boston guys always go out after a win. It’s their first season back in play-offs contention even though they won’t win the cup yet, but they’re winning a lot. They’ll definitely win against Montreal without Shane tonight. Shane just has to find the right club.
He finds Ilya in the second club he tries. And there Ilya is, wearing one of his flashy club shirts.
Shane’s heart beats out of his chest. He looks so good. So happy. So alive.
Without really planing it, Shane walks up to him. It’s how they met the first time. Now that Ilya is here, within touching distance, he can’t think straight anyway. He’s running on instinct. Like on the ice, when he sees the opening and takes it, the play unfolding without him having to actively think about it.
Marleau is next to Ilya, but he’s already looking down a girl’s shirt and she’s smiling at him in a way that means Marleau will be on the dance floor in five seconds. Miraculously, Ilya is alone at the bar, waiting for a drink.
And then Shane is next to him. The music drowns out the sound of his heart beating, but he can feel it hammering away in his chest.
“Ilya,” he says. “Rozanov,” he adds.
Ilya turns to him. His eyes are curious. “Have we met?”
His warm voice fills the cold chasm in Shane’s chest.
“Almost,” Shane says. A lie. “A long time ago.” The truth. “I’m Shane Hollander.”
Ilya looks Shane up and down. “Shane Hollander. Canadian hockey phenom. How is the shoulder?”
Shane shrugs the shoulder in question. “Alright. Not good enough to shoot a puck, but it doesn’t bother me otherwise.”
“I’m sorry,” Ilya says and he sounds like he means it. “You were very good.”
Shane just wants to touch him. Kiss him. Feel the heat of his skin, the warmth of his breath. Feel him alive.
“It’s alright,” he says, needing it all out there.
Ilya can probably tell anyway, always so perceptive, can see the hunger in Shane’s eyes.
But Shane needs to make it clear. “Like this, I can be myself.”
“Be yourself?” Ilya repeats.
“I’m gay,” Shane says. “Not an easy thing to be in hockey.”
“No,” Ilya says slowly. “So you are just going around telling hockey players?”
Shane looks at Ilya, can’t pretend to be anything else but desperately starved for him. “I don’t buy into the stereotype that every hockey player is a homophobe.”
“I have a reputation as an asshole though,” Ilya says. There’s a playful glint in his eyes.
Shane’s smiling, like a lunatic probably. “That’s not the same as a homophobe.”
Ilya laughs, loud and bright. Then he looks at Shane, really looks at him. He’s probably, hopefully, looking at his freckles.
Shane licks his lips.
Now Ilya is definitely looking at his mouth.
“My place isn’t far from here,” Shane says.
Just for a moment, Ilya hesitates.
Just a few men, he’d said, a different life ago in Ottawa. A rare treat.
Shane is pretty sure he’s going to be the rare treat tonight. And then he’s going to make sure it’s not going to be rare at all.
He sees the moment Ilya makes his choice. Risks it all. Like he always does. On the ice. In communal showers after CCM ad shoots. Like Shane knew he would.
“If you take me home with you, I can prove to you that I am not a homophobe.”
Shane grins at him. “As long as you’re still an asshole.”
Ilya’s eyes burn into Shane’s. “Yes, I thought you might like that.”
Shane drags him out of the club into the cold Montreal night. He doesn’t know how it will go this time, doesn’t even know for sure if Ilya will fall in love with him without the rivalry, without hockey, doesn't know if Shane should or could tell him the truth. Maybe Shane will eternally be Ilya’s hookup, his Montreal Jane, just one of many on the roster.
Maybe, in exchange for seeing Ilya alive, he’ll never really get to have him.
But Shane has to try. And he’ll do better than last time.
the real, actual truth - the truth that shane mentally stomped on every time it dared try to get his attention - was that he wanted ilya to meet his parents for the same reason anyone wanted their boyfriend to meet their parents: he loved him, and he wanted them to love him too.
what i miss most about being a chocolatier (besides the honor of gayest job title imaginable) is we had these massive bars of chocolate for tempering that were 10lbs and we had to break them into smaller chunks. by using a sledgehammer of course. i LIVED for that shit
all the other people in production HATED busting them especially at the end of the shift but i fucking loved it. give me the hammer. i can be trusted with the hammer. And everyone did in fact trust me with the hammer because again they all thought it was tedious and painful. me? i was having the time of my life. even if i had to pick up the slack for other people i would be annoyed for all of five seconds before the euphoria of getting to smash things set in. and the production areas had windows too so customers often just got to watch me beat the shit out of a massive chocolate bar. with a hammer. like a zoo animal. i was getting paid to do that. every day i miss it.
