I'm just playing with this idea but
What if Shane gets outed super early in his career. Like rookie season or second season. Maybe he misses some important event because he's with Ilya and oversleeps and when he's confronted it all comes out. Something like that. Importantly, Ilya isn't outed but he's involved enough that he is or could feel at least a little bit responsible.
So Shane is outed and forced off his team and out of hockey in general. He's young and stupid and angry with himself and with Ilya so he ends things with Ilya completely. He's kinda mean about it, does it over the phone and furious.
Shane tries to move on with his life. He gets a normal job, meets normal people, dates normal men. But it's always weird and uncomfortable. If Shane washed out of hockey for any of the normal reasons almost no one would remember years later but people remember the first out gay hockey player and what happened after he was outed. I don't really have a strong idea of what Shane does for this period. Maybe he does real estate full time. Maybe he becomes a personal trainer. Maybe the flips houses. What matters is that after enough time, this feels like his real life, and hockey feels like something he thought he was gonna do as a kid.
He would say he doesn't think about Ilya anymore, because why would he think about the guy he exchanged blowjobs with one time at 18, but of course he thinks about Ilya. He doesn't watch hockey, but it's in the air enough that he sees Ilya on TV. And even if he didn't he googles Ilya sometimes at night and binge watches all his interviews and clips since the last time he googled him. Shane tried really hard to hate Ilya after everything and he got pretty close for a few years. He would imagine going back to when he was outed and dragging Ilya with him, or his secret comfort, the fantasy of Ilya coming out in solidarity, the two of them together against the world, in love.
How does this play out? When do they see each other again? Maybe Shane makes a public statement on the ten year anniversary of his outing that triggers Ilya to reach out. Maybe he writes his memoirs. Maybe he wins some award and Ilya is at the ceremony for whatever reason.
I like the idea though that an out gay kid is drafted into the mlh and suddenly Shane is relevant again in a way he hasn't been for years. Maybe he's drafted very high by Boston, where Ilya is still captain.
(Ilya has of course spent the last decade constructing a mental party palace out of his guilt and denial and regrets and hedonism and forgetting and remembering. He thinks about Shane every day. He never thinks about Shane. Was Shane even real or just some strange dream he had? He only thinks about Shane when he's jerking off. He only thinks about Shane when he fucks something else up.
And now he has this kid he's responsible for. He's nothing like Shane. He's swedish or something and so blond he doesn't have eyebrows and he's a strange combination of so straightforward he's almost rude and incredibly cocky. Ilya likes him and Ilya can't stand to be around him. And then they're comparing him to Shane and all these articles are coming out about how hockey failed Shane Hollander and all Ilya can see is that Ilya failed shane Hollander. So he's way too supportive of his new rookie. Borderline inappropriately friendly. It's okay because it's hockey, but Ilya does invite the rookie to all the team veterans get togethers and gives him a really intense whispered pep talk about how Ilya will murder anyone who gives him trouble. Opponent teammate staff person on the street it doesn't matter just let him know who.
It builds up in Ilya and he feels like he's going crazy and at the year end party he ends up drunkenly telling the rookie everything that happened with Shane. The rookie is drunk too and doesn't really speak enough English for this conversation but he gets the main idea. Enough to realize that his captain is coming out to him and has some kind of fucked up lost love situation going on. He flags down Marly for back up but by this point Ilya is incoherent.)
Shane ends up agreeing to one single interview with a gay culture and current events news source. It's the first time he's ever spoken publicly about what happened and his first interview since he was a professional hockey player. He spends a lot of time thinking about what he wants to say, but eventually he thinks, fuck it all, and gives a really biting breakdown of homophobia in hockey and pro sports. He names names. He comes with citations for specific things that were said about him. He comes with his bitchiest face on like armor, but the interviewer is a middle aged gay man with blue sparkly nail polish and Shane has grown up and learned to trust this type of gay to have his back and at the end the guy asks if he can hug him and Shane surprises himself with how much he wants that and how much better he feels after.
The guy asked if Shane knew any other professional athletes who were closeted and Shane took a single shaky breath before answering, just one, and he's still in it. The interview is on video and that question and answer goes viral because of how Shane looks. He cuts his eyes to the side, shuts them, inhales, and flutters his eyes open. Just one. Everyone is asking who was Shane's just one until Shane has to make a statement that people shouldn't take his interview about how awful it was to be outed as a pro hockey player as an invitation to out another pro hockey player.
The only person who has all the info to put it all together, is the gay rookie, who watches Shane's interview over the summer break and spends the rest of the summer making his boyfriend listen to him rant about what he's supposed to do about his gay captain in love with Shane Hollander. And then Shane DMs him something earnest on Twitter like, hey I know it can be a lot, let me know if you ever need to talk. And the poor rookie is slamming his phone face down on the table and thinking about asking to be traded to somewhere less gay actually.
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