I do think that maybe during the year Ilya's still in Boston, he has three days off (amazing) but Shane's gone on a roadie (devastating) and Ilya does drive up to Montreal anyway just to sleep in Shane's bed.
Shane's version of this is that when he's flying back to Montreal from a sponsorship shoot Yuna booked him for pre-cottage, he changes his flights so that he's connecting through Boston. Even though it's just ninety minute layover he can't leave the airport for and adds five hours to his travel time.
I do think that maybe during the year Ilya's still in Boston, he has three days off (amazing) but Shane's gone on a roadie (devastating) and Ilya does drive up to Montreal anyway just to sleep in Shane's bed.
AUs where David never saw them at the cottage are so delicious to me. Because there's still the love, the plans, the commitment. It's so private and they have so much fun and no one knows. But also there's no support system, no advice. No Hollander family dinners. No scrutiny. No questions about loyalty and nice men in Montreal. No audience to say "lovers" or "boyfriend" in front of. No relief of having the hurdle of coming out to Shane's family overcome.
Ilya goes back to Boston and there's not a single soul who knows that things are irretrievably different for him and Shane now. No one knows where they disappear to whenever they have two days off in a row. No one knows Shane's spare glasses live in a bedside drawer in another country. No one knows Ilya draws little hearts in the steam on a shower door in Montreal so they'll be there for Shane to see when he showers later with Ilya already back on the other side of the border.
No one knows that Ilya should be kept in the loop if Shane gets injured again. No one knows Shane would drive all night to be there for Ilya if he needed him.
It's the truest thing in their lives. To every single other person on the planet, it doesn't exist.
AU where Ilya wins his Stanley Cup and gets the email by way of his agent: would he be willing to present the sportsmanship award together with Shane Hollander? Saying yes is smart. It's playing nice with the League. It's raising his profile. It's giving him something to do at the most boring event in history. But it also feels like the universe giving him permission.
Six months distance from that night Hollander's bed, nearly as much from the hard words he'd spat at him in Sochi, and he's still thinking of Hollander every time he closes his eyes and takes himself in hand in the shower, after waking up wanting, when he collapses onto a shitty hotel mattress after another fucking away game. Surely he's proven himself now. He won't be letting Hollander with his beautiful freckles and his worried brown eyes and his tender, lovely mouth turn this into something it can't be.
Maybe Hollander won't want him anymore. A self-cleaning mess. But if he doesâif Ilya can tempt him back into his bedâ
Well, he'll keep his head this time. If he can conquer the MLH, he can conquer himself.
But backstage at the awards, in his tailored tuxedo and dress shoes, the show runner tells him hurriedly about a change of plans.
"The skit we had planned won't make sense with just you, but the new script will be on the teleprompter, so just stick to your lines and everything will go smoothly," she tells him. "Mr Hollander wasn't able to attend after all, so we've had to improvise a little. Your cue isâ"
"Hollander isn't here?" Ilya interrupts before he can stop himself.
"No," the woman says briskly. "A knee injury he was medically advised against flying with, I believe. I suppose the League does want him skating his best next season more than they want my script intact, so we're the ones left scrambling. As I was saying, your cue is...."
Ilya presents the Lord Talon. He receives the MVP award. He does the rounds at the afterparty, meets a pretty girl at the hotel bar. Takes her back to his rooms. The smile feels stiff on his face when sees her out of his penthouse in the small hours of the mourning.
Vodka and a cigarette. The pillow that smells of her shampoo gets thrown on the floor, too distracting. More vodka. If it's later than four, he may as well not sleep at all and just start getting his shit together for the airport. Call it acclimating to Moscow Time early. He checks his phone.
A text from Jane.
Congratulations on MVP.
He lights another cigarette. He doesn't text back.
Injuries are always scary when your body is your whole career. Being told to keep your knee joint totally immobile is frustrating when you're used to moving with easy strength and live in a third story apartmentâwith more stairs inside. Having your parents visit for the week to look after you while you're pretty much bed-bound when you're used to the adult independence of restaurant lunches and separate houses is just one more way the ground can shift out from under you at a moment's notice.
Shane was built for hockey. He wasn't built for this.
It turns out, he wasn't built for casual sex, either.
Reflexively, he pulls up his texts with Lily. The damning string of four unanswered texts from the last six months. He'd been so determined to leave it be, but when Rozanov won MVP (as close to a forgone conclusion as these things came, after the season he'd had), it had felt safe. If they had nothing else, they had professional courtesy, surely.
Professionalism. Something he should know better than to look for in a sexual relationship with his infamous arch rival, probably.
"Are you sure you won't come with us, honey?" Mom asks. "Your father can help you with the stairs at home. He used to carry you up to bed all the time."
"There was a lot less of you back then, but we can make it work," Dad jokes.
"I'm sure," Shane tells them. "The doctor and PT here are already up to speed, and a little time in the ground floor unit might give me ideas for finishing the renovations."
His parents kindly don't bring up that Shane's primary reason for buying the other three units in his building was the neighbour who took a little too strong an interest in his comings and goings back in his first apartment. A whole houseâespecially one with the kind of security Shane needsâis just too much space for one person in the city. Apartment living makes more sense, except for the neighbour problems. But as long as the bathrooms tiles aren't fixed yet and the kitchen windows need to be replaced, new tenants are a distant consideration.
Shane's never spent any part of the summer in Montreal before. There's been a flash of rain every morning for a week now, always clearing up in time for the beating sun to bake the streets dry by evening, when the whole city seems to come pouring out into the streets to enjoy the slightly cooler air and the long daylight hours. He always knew Montreal was popular with tourists, but the uptick in out-of-towners for the festivals is crazy. Downtown is always flooded with students, but the pictures JJ texts him make the rest of the year seem calm by comparison.
"You should come out with us tonight, Capitaine," JJ cajoles him. "Don't let your knee make you joyless for the off season!"
It's something Shane appreciates in the abstractâthis conviction of JJ's that Shane can and will be fun, if only he can be coaxed into showing up. It makes it hard to turn him down now, when the Metros locker room is full of people who appreciate Shane more than they like him.
Well. His knee is a built-in excuse to leave whenever, if it comes down to it, and the PT said he was good to go for light activity, so long as he kept the brace on and didn't push it.
"What's this party again?" he asks, relenting.
Rose is funny and friendly and just about the same level of tipsy as Shane.
"I know people don't have very high expectations of comic book adaptations," she tells him earnestly. "But I think it's going to be something special! I knew as soon as I read the script that it wasn't just some soulless cash grab like Underdark turned into after the studio axed the original ending, you know? Oh my god, please don't tell anyone I called Underdark a souless cash grab!"
"My lips are sealed," Shane laughs.
"Well, I guess I'll trust you," she winks. "So, filming is crazy, but we're doing nightshoots next week which means I get some daylight hours to explore the city. I've tried Fairmount and St-Viateur and come down on the St-Viateur side of the bagel war. I spent some time at the Jazz Festival. I went the the MBAM and La Ronde and I climbed Mount Royal and I've been to like a million clubs and restaurants. If I've done all that, what's something I can't miss about summer in Montreal?"
"I'm a bad local," Shane confesses. "I always go away for the summer. When people ask, I usually say they've got to see a hockey game, but, uh, that's not really an option right now."
She laughs. It's nice, he has to admit, to just talk to someone who isn't constantly measuring the gap between his eye-grabbing presence on the ice and his more lowkey presence off of it. Someone he can just be Shane to.
"There is one thing. Out by the Olympic Stadium, there's a huge botanical garden. I've been a couple of times with my friend and his family and it's beautiful. It's supposed to be incredible in the spring and summer, but I've only ever been in the fall."
"Mm. Sounds like you should come with me and we can see for ourselves."
There's an undercurrent to her words that makes Shane look up and meet her eyes, a sinking feeling in his chest that he doesn't want to think about.
Rose catches it right away.
"Fuck," she says. "I read this really wrong, didn't I."
"Sorry," he says. What else can he even say. "You'reâI like you a lot. I like talking to you."
"I didn't think I was that off base," she grins at him. Thank god. And he does like her. He doesn't want to leave her thinkingâ
"I was, um," his voice instinctively drops to a near whisper, even though everyone else in the restaurant is too busy being loud and drunk to hear a word. "I was kind of seeing someone. And it went badly enough that I just don't think it's a good idea to...."
"You don't have to explain," Rose says gently. "I can always use more friends, if you'd like to go anyway."
He doesn't know why he said it like that. Like he'd been dating Rozanov. A few hotel meetups, two years of sporadic texting, and one poorly conceived, unforgettable night with Rozanov in his bed doesn't add up to a relationship. It wasn't anything, not even a friendship. Rozanov had been very clear about that in Sochi.
But he doesn't know what else to call bruised feeling he gets thinking of Rozanov. The hurt that started small and anxious when Rozanov said he had to leave and had grown louder and more impossible to dismiss with every passing week of no reply from Lily, no word at all, and come to a head at the Olympics. He doesn't know if there's a more applicable word than heartache.
The stupid knee injury might even be a blessing in disguise. He read the script for the award show skit he and Rozanov were supposed to do and he isn't sure he would have been able to stand it.
And it's still so close to the surface that he can't even hold it back from Rose, who he'd met three hours earlier. Can everyone see it on him?
His PT approves him for extended walkingâstill in the fucking braceâand gives her blessing on a trip to the Botanical Garden. ("I'm jealous," she tells him. "My husband's working weekends this summer and my kids won't leave the damn PlayStation alone long enough to drag them out there or I'd be thinking about going myself.")
It's a clear day, not quite so hot or quite so humid as usual, so the garden is packed, especially with kids. Hats and sunglasses are sensible rather than ostentatious, so they mostly manage to go unremarked. He gets approached three times, then Rose gets recognized twice, then they both get recognized at once by a young mother and her daughter.
"Will you be in a movie? Or will you play hockey?" the little girl asks very seriously.
"We have to share?" Rose asks, grinning.
"Sharing is important. Mommy says."
There are huge topiary figures that Shane's never seen during his fall visits with the Pikes. He likes the alpine garden best regardless of the season, though the crab apple trees in the Japanese garden are lovely. Rose is most enamored by the concept of the little poison garden.
"I do like the rose garden too," she assures him. "Always have to root for the home team."
They decide to make a loop through the quieter walkways of the arboretum, and Rose broaches the topic of his someone who he had been kind of seeing. He probably should have known she'd have questions, but it surprises him how desperately he wants to talk about it. The story stumbles out of him. He's careful. He always says Lily, instead of Rozanov.
But there are parts he doesn't have a substitution ready for. He never thought he'd talk about this with anyone. There's no easy way to explain why they were so secret. So far apart. Why they've known each other for years and keep meeting whether they want to or not. Why none of his friends can know. And, he uncomfortably acknowledges to himself, it probably stands out that he can't hide the fact that he was the one who was pursued and then ignored. That's not the usual role taken on by the straight male athlete.
"I don't want to put you on the spot," she says. "You can tell me I'm wrong and I'll believe you, and I'd never, ever say anything to anyone else no matter what. But some of this feels like maybe it makes more sense if Lily is another guy?"
He isn't proud of needing Rose to quickly guide him out into the trees to have privacy for his panic attack.
They don't talk about it again, not for a few weeks. He can't get used to the idea that someone knows. He's always known in the abstract that it could happen without ruining him, but all the ways that it definitely would ruin him loom too large for it to have seemed plausible.
Same secret, Rozanov's voice says in his memory.
This is so different.
Rose invites him along for more of her museum and restaurant explorations, and even persuades him into a few clubs, though he doesn't dance much and limits himself to one drink. She comes over to his place to watch an unmissable movie she jokingly scolds him for having, in fact, missed, and laughs at his rough and ready set up in the ground floor apartment before showing him a internet forum with posts about 'male living spaces.' He defends his honour by sending her to look at his real apartment up the forbidden stairs ("Give it another week," the PT had told him mercilessly).
"So," she says when they get to the credits. "My brother is in town next week. John."
It seems like a leading comment, but he isn't sure where he's being lead. "That'll be nice for you," he tries.
"It will be," she smiles. "I'd like to introduce you."
"Okay?"
"But I don't want to ambush you either. You don't seem to be a person who enjoys ambushes."
He isn't.
"John is just a couple of years older than me, you know? And he played college hockey before he started working as an agent." She holds up a hand to ward off an imaginary objection. "I promise I'm not trying to get you as his client! Your agent sounds great! Not trying to fuck with that. But here's the thing. John's dated men before."
He starts to see where he is being lead now.
"Should you be telling me that?" he asks, voice cracking a little. He knows college sports can be a little less intense than professional sports leagues but he's never heard of a men's locker room that would embrace that sort of information.
"Oh, he's private about it, but he told the family to use our own judgement about telling people, so I'm not like, outing him here. I know you wouldn't say anything, when you're in the same situation, you know?"
Same secret, Rozanov's voice whispers in his mind again.
"I feel like I'm coming at this badly," Rose says. "I'm not trying to set you up with him, but I'm also not not trying to set you up with him?"
"Oh my god," Shane says, and hides his face.
"I wouldn't say anything to him about you, not ever unless you asked me to. And you don't have to say anything to him either. But even if it's just to have a friend who has a more firsthand understanding of what you're dealing with, I hope you'll talk to him. And also if you did hit it off, I can offer the little sister guarantee that you won't be ghosted, because I know where he lives if he treats one of my best friends like that."
It's more reassuring than it maybe should be to hear Rose classify him as a best friend. She's become so important to him so quickly, and likes being around people so much more than he does. It would be easy for for her to matter more to him than he does do her, but she doesn't let him feel it.
He can try to appreciate this for what it is.
"So this isn't plan B for seducing me away to Detroit?"
Rose laughs. "They could use the help, that's all I'm saying! We haven't made the playoffs in a million years, ugh."
A week later, John Landry arrives in Montreal. Shane joins him and Rose and some of her costars a couple of times for dinner or for drinks, and he does like John. He doesn't say a word about what they have in common. But things with Rozanov didn't exactly need words to get started either.
John is handsome, fit but no longer in hockey shape. He's more serious than Rose, but shares her sharp sense of humour. He loves talking about the industry and how things could be better. He's steadfastly atheist but he loves churches for the architecture. He notices Shane looking and he looks back.
It isn't, What's your room number?
It isn't, I might knock.
It's, "Maybe I'm reading this all wrong, and we can forget I ever said anything."
It's, "I really like you, Shane. Can I see you again? I'd like to see you again."
He has a new number in his phone that he enters as "J L" with shaky fingers.
He brings up his contact card for Lily.
He stares at it for a long minute.
He hits block.
Ilya spends the summer avoiding hockey. Sveta takes turns being disgusted with this, hockey being her favourite subject, and approving, since winning the cup already involved enough showboating and parades and general ego-feeding.
Being back in Boston means taking hockey back too, means that a BOS vs MTL game is lined up on a schedule he'll have to look at soon.
He brings up his messages with Jane. It's been itching at his mind, since he landedâthey never said see you next season. There's always been a see you for them. The IPC, the draft, the next game, the next season. Always.
Jane said, Congratulations on MVP.
Before that, Jane had said, It was a great game. You deserve it.
And before that....
Finally, he types out, See you in October.
The message doesn't send.
He tries again.
Oh.
Knowing but needing to be sure, he does something he's never done before, and calls Jane.
For a split second, he thinks it will connect, and he'll have to come up with a reason for calling that doesn't make him sound crazy, but the call fails an instant later.
His first instinct is to be angry. Because where does Hollander get off, with all the messy heart-on-his-sleeve caring too much too obviously bullshit just to block Ilya? And simultaneously, with full awareness of the contradiction, the sex is so good why does he have to take it so seriously, why not keep a good thing going? Why complicate it?
But there was also the knee injury, wasn't there? Sex and hockey are the only things he and Hollander have between them. If it isn't the sexâ
He googles "Shane Hollander injury" and finds Metros social media posts congratulating Hollander on his full recovery and anticipating his return to the ice in the fall.
He also finds gossip articles discussing picture after picture of Hollander spending his summer with a pretty up-and-coming movie star. And Ilya's spent the better part of the last year telling himself he was in control of this thing with Hollander. He could end it, which meant that he could keep it, because he wouldn't let it go anywhere. (He wouldn't let Hollander go anywhere.)
It's just a photo. Two beautiful people smiling at each other, laughing. But looking at it makes him feel like he's missed a step on the stairs, only he isn't hitting solid ground, the feeling only growing. Some soft and warm thing he'd told himself didn't exist has been ripped out of his gut, and its absence is overwhelming.
He never did conquer this at all.
Fuck, he texts to Jane.
The message doesn't send.
(Not 100% sure where things would go from hereâhonestly I was planning on a lot more brief summarizing. If you're wondering why I changed how things go between Shane and Rose, I think post-Sochi Shane is very wounded, whereas post-tunamelt Shane is in complete denial, get me out of this emotional tailspin mode. Pretty different headspaces. I think he probably does imagine he might be bi still, but being in an explicit relationship with another man would make that a theoretical issue.
Why John instead of Miles? I like Miles, but I don't think he and Shane would really connect beyond maybe hooking up based on what we see of him and his personality and, tbh, his lack of enthusiasm for hockey. He's also Rose's new costar rather than her trusted older brother, so she probably wouldn't venture to risk Shane's privacy with him at this point. Why is John queer suddenly? Maybe he's queer in canon too, but he's married by 2017 so Rose wasn't offering him as an option.
I don't know how it would all play out, but these are my vague thoughtsâShane and John continue to date for a few years. There's a weird situation where the Landry family knows Shane dates men but Shane's parents think he's just strangely coy about his relationship with Rose. One day, John asks Shane if he'd want to get married someday, not proposing, just like normal couple what-does-the-future-look-like conversation. And suddenly there's a pit in the bottom of Shane's stomach and he feels like he fucked up. Bad. Because he loves John, they're happy together, but the idea of getting married makes him want to bolt.
Rose is like maybe it's the closet, maybe it's your understandable commitment issues after been pursued and then dropped, maybe it's that it's your first ever serious relationship. But Shane realizes fuck, no, it's Rozanov. The origin of the commitment issues himself.
Where has Ilya been in all this? Well, now that they aren't having sex, the hockey-is-sex thing between them gets weirdly intense. For a game or two Shane manages to withhold eye contact and maintain distance but that fucks up his game for some reason. So he lets himself play the kind of hockey they used to again. It's the biggest relief of Ilya's life; it's ruining his life. Because inside of every I'm-going-to-win there's a quiet little do-you-remember.
The kinds of awkward, charged conversations they have at all stars and league events do not bear thinking of.
Ilya goes back and forth between I don't need Hollander, hardcore party boy life, and I would give anything to just talk to him, can't stand the idea of other people. But he gets to have the hockey still, and with Hollander, that means there's something between them that can't be denied.
So yeah, a lot of angst on both sides, but I think they'll figure it out in the end. I don't know if I've seen an AU where they failed to reconcile at the 2014 awards, and I wanted to spend some time with the idea)
So you know how there's that thing where Ilya is lowkey attracted to Scott and likes to needle him, but Scott simply does not enjoy being needled so things between them just wouldn't ever go anywhere?
For reasons of narrative symmetry, I need Kip to be very weird about Shane in some equally DOA manner. Scott's the love of his life, he doesn't want anyone else, and at the same time he can't be in a room with Shane and be normal about it.
I know Hayden is meant to be Shane's Main Friend and Jackie and the kids are more of an extension of them being best buds, but I love the idea of Jackie's obsessed with being the first WAG to feed you being the prelude to Shane and Jackie bffism. Jackie's always had a sense for kindred spirits and through Hayden's funny work stories and the brief interactions she's had with Shane at social functions, she just knows.
Beyond that, I love any exploration of them as Metros Captain and default Head WAG. Maybe the invitation is an understanding: if Shane and JJ are still single next year, then Jackie's probably going to have a lot on her plate. She wants to make this work, not be at cross-purposes.
Shane is dryly funny in a way that takes her by ambush halfway through replying, and he takes himself seriously in a way she admires. She's plugged into hockey enough he doesn't have to edit or explain himself, but removed enough from it that she isn't relying on him the way the guys do, or trying to enforce some kind of no shop talk rule in her home that Shane never knows how to talk around. His parents have always divided up childcare and hockey and household tasks in ways that made sense instead of adhering to the gender roles hockey families often default to, so even though he's very much a Hockey Guy, he doesn't discount Jackie's contributions the way Hayden's AHL teammates were forever doing. She also appreciates that she's never caught him staring down her neckline (another delightful habit of the AHL teammates).
The thing about not being the most socially adept and growing up with a really narrow experience of life is that you learn to read between the lines. You guess at the rules other people just intuit. People reference things you've never heard of and it turns out asking just grinds everything to a halt and makes people uncomfortable, so you interpret. You infer. You improvise. So Shane rolls with it when Jackie starts pushing more into Real Friend territory, and yeah, totally's his way through various conversations about Jackie's yoga friends and childcare and wouldn't a quiet low-key dinner with friends would be nice until he ends up doing at home yoga sessions every morning and being the Pikes' most dependable babysitter when the twins are born and coming over for dinner every Wednesday night.
The friendship just works, but so does their leadership style.
The next year, when Shane is Captain and Jackie's de facto Head Wag, there's always something happening that falls under at least one of their purviews, and they like coordinating their approaches and reading each other in on the State of the Metros. Jackie's good at reading people in a way Shane just isn't, and has helped him untangle a few interpersonal messes before they could show up on the ice, but Shane has a big-picture impression of how things not only feel from the inside but read from the outside that's helped Jackie head off more than one issue on the WAG front that might otherwise have hit social media and blown up in all their faces.
There's a mutual disconnect with being in a position of authority that they align on. Nobody elected Jackie, she doesn't hold any genuine authority, and she's only twenty-three. The reason people come to her for help and abide by her decisions is because she stepped up and then didn't step on any toes.
Shane's only twenty when he's given the C, and the Metros old guard might like winning but they don't like taking orders from a kid. Every team he's ever been on, Shane's stood outâage, race, dedication, social disconnect, and above it all, talent. Always too good not to be crowned with authority he teammates don't like from him. It's trained him up to a particular kind of peer leadership that differs from what's expected from most team captainsâalways leading by example, never raising his voice, mediating between players and staff. It's a double edged swordâhe can carry out his duties as captain without creating resentment or completely removing himself from being one of the guys. He can be exceptional and also be liked in the room. But it's brittle. They can need him, but he can't need them. Every perceived imperfection is an in-joke he has to tolerate.
No one particularly wants Shane and Jackie at the helm, but there will be hell to pay if they don't steer the ship well.
Hayden does his best to be more enlightened than the average hockey player, but he's still grown up in sports and is socialized to not really see male-female friendships, so in his mind, he's the Main Friend, but he's kind of third-wheeling it in his own home whenever Shane's over for dinner, especially during what he calls the Council Meetings. He's a solid A and always ready to back Shane up, but he's more used to enjoying the comradery of a locker room than setting the tone.
He's just happy to have a buddy his wife not only tolerates, but actively encourages inviting over. An AHL teammate got a girlfriend who couldn't stand the team. It had been hard on the guy, and made Hayden determined to strike a balance that made himself and Jackie both happy, especially since she'd gotten pregnant with the twins partway through that season.
Jackie does her own version of this, funnily enough. She loves platonically sharing the throne with Shane so she's petrified of how it would go if Shane got a girlfriend who wouldn't Get It. Not only would she have to step down as Head WAG, she'd lose her bff/babysitter/conspirator/comrade-in-arms against deep-fried everything for dinner. She has to take matters into her own hands and get him a love interest who likes her. He's handsome, he's successful, and he can hold a genuine conversation with a woman. It's a miracle no one's locked him down yet. She has to move quickly!
Years down the line, when the Ilya of it all come to light, she does feel a little silly for never considering that maybe Shane never once checking her out might have been more than just manners. In her defense, all her gay friends are lesbians. She just never really many male friends in high school and uni.
-
Also, I just think it would be very funny if just one time, Shane accidentally introduced Hayden to someone as "My friend Jackie Pike's husband, Hayden."
Hayden buries this memory. He Cannot think about it.
