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It’s still early in the day, practice skate doesn’t start for another 30 minutes, but Shane figures the earlier the better. He hadn’t come with Ilya today; his husband left the house an hour ahead of time, and Shane didn’t want to change his morning routine just to carpool with Ilya. He loved the man more than life itself, but Shane had always been persnickety about his routine. It was no secret that big changes usually soured his mood heavily.
The moment Shane enters the Centaurs' locker room, he feels a shift in the team’s usual attitude— not so noticeable that he freezes and wants to turn around but clear enough that something is different.
The room isn’t completely packed given the time and those inside are speaking in a hushed tone. Leaving whispers of hanging words all around him as he makes his way through the door.
Neither Ilya or Zane is in the room, most likely doing captain duties elsewhere at the request of Coach, and for a moment, Shane feels a bit like he’s been strategically trapped. Slowly, he walks over to his stall as all the eyes rake over him. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but it’s freaking him out now that no one has said a word directly to him. He can’t think of anything that would warrant this behavior, he’s been on great terms with the whole team, and the season hasn’t even started to give the locker room added tension. The off-season scrimmages have been going well enough, he’s still first line for a reason, right?
Maybe he missed something in the group chat, or someone’s birthday, or there was another gossip rag posted about him. The options were endless, and he wasn’t willing to try to guess.
He opens his mouth to ask why the fuck everyone is acting like he’s not worth a basic greeting when Troy beats him to the punch.
“Did you see the themed nights calendar Harris sent out?” He’s rushing his words, they almost slur together. “It’s finalized and we wanted to ask you about it.”
What happened to hello?
“Uh,” Shane eloquently replies. That’s so off-base from what he thought Troy would say. He takes a stab anyway trying to guess what is happening here. “Is this about a lack of Asian-Heritage or Pacific Islander Heritage night? You know only some of the American teams do that right, and none of the Canadian teams.”
Hand on his heart, he tries to not let it get to him, but he is still the only Asian-Canadian to play in the league so it makes sense, even if it hurts, for Ottawa to not do the theme. Montreal never did, and they didn’t even do a black history theme despite JJ’s advocacy for it. Distantly he wonders if he’ll retire still being the only one— there are a few more Asian-American players now yet no one quite like him— before he’s pulled from his melancholic thoughts.
“What? No,” Troy says as if the idea of the night would be ridiculous. Ah, of course he wasn’t thinking about that barely anyone does. Wyatt, watching Shane’s face fall, wacks Troy squarely in the chest. “Ow what the hell— fuck. Shit. Not what I meant dude—“
Wyatt takes the reins before Troy can continue failing to have a comprehensive conversation. “We meant the autism spectrum acceptance night, did you see that?
It’s hard not to realize how wide everyone’s eyes go at the words ‘autism spectrum’. Everyone seems to lean in, waiting to hear what his response will be.
“Obviously,” Shane blinks slowly and puts his hands on his hips, growing irked suddenly. What is really going on here? “I am the one who suggested it. I planned it.”
“Huh, really?”
“Yeah, and the charity we are partnering with that night is run by autistics for autistics so it seemed like a great choice. A lot of the other organizations I found are run by neurotypicals looking for a cure for it when that isn’t really appropriate at all. Very offensive actually,” he rambles on, thinking about the detailed document he shared with Harris about which charities and non-profits absolutely had to be avoided.
The room is clearly shocked by this revelation. Almost every team did an autism awareness game, Ottawa should be no different.
Shane scrunches his nose up in thought and hums for a moment before asking the question that’s been weighing heavily on his mind. “Why is this making you all act weird? Do you guys have a problem?”
Shane honestly hadn’t expected this; he thought the team would be more mindful about this sort of stuff— about ableism and inclusivity, given Harris grew up physically disabled and wasn’t shy to share it— but thinking about it the organization is still in the MHL and the MHL still had too many cultural problems to count. Maybe his faith had been misplaced.
Troy, with a perpetual foot in his mouth, says, “We didn’t know you knew about autism.”
This time, it’s not Wyatt who hits him but Lucas.
“Sorry, Hollander,” the Swiss says, sounding truly apologetic. What a good kid he was. “We don’t know what Harris sees in him, he won’t stop talking.”
“Hey, stop hitting me,” Troy complains, only to be smacked again. He doubles over clearly this blow hurt. Atta boy, kid.
Shane grimaces, “I’m literally autistic, Barret, of course I know about autism.”
The locker room explodes in a cacophony of confusion, surprise, and laughter. Someone screams out, “You know?” and Shane tilts his head, perplexed by what that could possibly mean. People are still chuckling amongst one another minutes later as they all get on the ice for practice.
He really doesn’t get what’s so funny.
—
“Autistic?” Ilya asks when they are on the ice for practice. He skates around Shane like a koi in a fish pond.
Shane scowls, he hates it when his husband talks during practice about unrelated things. “What are you talking about?”
“You say you are autistic to whole team but not to your husband who has known you for so long?”
Following him with his eyes Shane asks, “it wasn’t the whole team it was whoever was there early. Also, Ilya, what are you talking about?” He’s making no sense and the drill is about to start again so he needs to focus.
“We talk at home,” Ilya promises and skates to the other side of the ice ready to start the drill again.
—
Shane changes out of almost all his gear in record time, aiming to bustle out of the locker room and ignore everyone, when a hand taps him on the shoulder. He glances back to see Boodram smiling gently down at him, where he sits on the bench.
“Can I help you?” He grunts out.
“I just wanted to apologize on the guys behalf, including Rozy, I think we were just surprised you were autistic when there isn’t any public confirmation about that, yeah?”
Shane lets out a deep breath. “Is it going to be an issue, Brood? You guys can handle a gay guy married to his captain in the locker room, but an autistic one is where you draw the line? Is that progress now?” He knows he sounds overly crotchety, but he doesn’t care.
Brood shakes his head vehemently. “No, hey, no, you know Cassie, my wife?”
Shane shrugs. Of course he knows her. What does she have to do with whether or not the team is about to give him hell over something he thought they already knew?
“She’s autistic too. She thinks maybe Milo is too, but he’s still a bit young to get tested so we want to wait until he’s four, maybe. I know it can start at eighteen months but that seems so young, you know?”
Now that’s a pleasant surprise. Shane gives a closed smile at that admission. He loves hearing about other people on the spectrum finding love. He knows it’s hard sometimes, and men definitely don’t make it easy with their mixed signals.
Brood takes the smile as a cue to continue, and he’s right to do so. “Cassie does the masking thing well, she says it’s her uh special interest or something. Human interactions and communications, I don’t fully get it, but she loves it. Just know that even if you weren’t married to our Captain, I would have your back in the locker room.”
“Yeah?”
“Of course man, and hey I don’t mean to tell you what to do in your own marriage but I think talking to Capt. would be good. He seemed a little off today at the news. Almost like he didn’t know.”
What? That has to be the most ridiculous thing Shane has heard in his life. His own husband, not knowing about him being autistic, is as unlikely as the sun not setting in the evening.
“What?”
Brood gives a pointed look and a half-hearted shrug before turning to his own stall and getting ready to strip. That was all he was getting, it seemed from him.
—
Despite leaving the arena before his husband, Shane finds himself arriving home later than Ilya, most likely due to him actually obeying traffic laws. He enters the house and doesn’t hear Anya’s scuffling paws, so he knows instinctively that she’s cuddled up with Rozy on the bed or perhaps the couch. She never wants to move when she’s with him. Shane understands the feeling completly.
He walks past the living room and sees Ilya with the dog laying across his lap, she’s content as usual.
“Why do you not tell me you are autistic?” Ilya huffs from the couch, arms crossed as he glares. Anya doesn’t stir. “You tell whole team this secret and you don’t tell me, your one true love. You not love me is that it?”
Oh, he’s being utterly ridiculous right now. A total drama king.
“It’s not a secret,” Shane tells him, a little miffed by this whole ordeal. “I thought you knew I was— I folded our clothing before we had sex for the first time! I thought you knew!”
At the yelling, Anya’s eyes open, she glances between her humans, not entirely sure what they are saying, but sensing the budding atmosphere change.
“I am a Slavic man from Moscow born when the USSR was still unified,” Ilya says bluntly as if that explains everything. Annoyingly, it kind of does. “I just thought you were, I don't know what word is, quirky?”
“Quirky?” He can’t keep the disbelief out of his voice. “Really, Ilya?”
“I did not know! Then I google, some time long ago, and find out you match up with this term called Autism Spectrum and I thought you did not know this because you never told me.”
“I have an official diagnosis from age six,” Shane sighs. He hasn’t had to tell his diagnostic history in a long time and he forgot how exhausting it was to repeat even the short version.
“I got diagnosed with anxiety and mild Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder at fifteen. I’m not on meds for anything, though you know that. And there are no medications for autism anyway.” He adds the last part as a bit of an afterthought, not sure if Ilya is uneducated enough to need that disclaimer. He seems like he’s learned a lot in silence, though Shane isn’t sure how much. He knows plenty of resources online do more harm than good for autistics, and he wants to make sure Ilya has the record straight.
Ilya doesn't know how to react, he had no idea his husband had OCD, and he didn’t say anything. It had been around two decades now that he was diagnosed with it, and he wasn’t sharing that information? Was that healthy? Was Ilya a bad husband for not noticing? Ilya honestly wasn’t sure he knew what OCD really was, and he made it his mission to immediately look up and find everything about it. Shane keeps speaking to fill the void as Ilya remains silent in thought.
“Ilya please, you have met my mother and my father; they are both diagnosed as well. I don’t know why you would think I wouldn’t know I was autistic I know myself decently well.”
Ilya rolls his eyes. “You did not know you were a homosexual until we had been having sex for over half a decade—“
“Wait!” Shane screams in embarrassment. What a low blow. “Hold on, that’s not fair!”
“Also, you do not let me talk about your eating.”
In a low, warning voice Shane says “Ilya not now.”
“Like that, yes! One day we talk about it, though! One day! And honest,” Ilya continues ignoring Shane, “I thought David was just…“
“Just quirky,” he offers.
“Yes!”
Shane lets out a groan as if this entire talk is an unbelievable inconvenience to him. He wants to hit his head on a door repeatedly. “Ok, and as for my mother? What was the excuse there?”
“Yuna is so perfect I thought she was er,” he shakes his hands around as if reaching out to grasp the word he wants to use. “Enlightened. I thought she was just enlightened about hockey and Canadian culture like how ‘Lana is— minus the Canadian things.”
Considering this, Shane nods his head along. “They are similar in how intense they get.” He had never considered Svetlana to be neurodivergent in any way, but maybe he had been overlooking some traits of hers. He’d have to ask her next time they talked.
“Yes, see, nothing bad with Yuna or Svetlana.”
Shane feels the hair on the back of his neck rise, “There is nothing wrong with me either.”
“Hm?” Ilya seems disordered in his thoughts for a moment before his poor wording clicks to him. “Of course not, no. Not what I meant, I just don’t know how to say it.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being autistic,” Shane knows his tone is turning unpleasant, like nails on a chalkboard, but he’s not willing to back down about this. His chest burns at the thought of Ilya thinking something is wrong with him for being the way he’s always been. Perhaps he’s wrong to be so overly defensive, but experience has told him to keep his guard up always.
Earnestly, Ilya replies, “I know Shane.”
“I’m serious Ilya there is nothing wrong with me or anyone else, and if you think that, you can leave.” He feels sick as he says it but it has to be said. What is it that Brood and JJ both always say? Standing on business?
“I’m not going anywhere, котенок.” He’s actively petting Anya now, running his fidgety hands nervously through her fur. “I just want to know why you never said anything. I thought you trust me.”
An exasperated sound leaves Shane’s mouth before he can hide it. “I didn’t think it was a big deal. Or, I knew it was when I was a kid, but I thought as an adult in the Majors it wouldn’t matter as much. And it doesn’t, the whole world doesn’t need to know.”
“I am not whole world, I am your husband.” It is impossible to ignore the hurt in his voice as he speaks. “All this time I thought of ways to tell you about getting help, a test or something. I thought that maybe I was struggling to help you help yourself, but you already knew? And you did not tell me, why? If it is you it always matters, is always important.”
Shane melts a bit at that, his red-hot frustration cooling into something more akin to regret. “Oh, Ilya I didn’t mean to hide it from you I promise, it’s just hockey is hockey and I figured it would be better to just not mention it as I moved up the ranks. Let people think I’m quirky or rude or weird or antisocial but never let them put a label on it because then they would have more ammunition for chirps and harassment.”
Anya gets up from Ilya's lap and trots out of the living room, sensing her job to comfort her human has been handled. The moment she leaves Shane takes her spot, wrapping his arms around his husband and holding tightly as if he’ll slip through his fingers.
A snort slips from Ilya’s lips then he presses them to the crown of Shane’s head and takes a breath. His hair smells like that horrible 3-1 shampoo he keeps exclusively in the locker room. Gross. Cute. Very Shane.
“You are not rude, weird, or antisocial. Who says these things?”
“No one,” he says before correcting himself to “everyone. Almost everyone from before Juniors. You know I wasn’t the most popular kid growing up on or off the ice, we’ve talked about it.”
“I thought it was because of—“
Shane cuts him off not unkindly but to make a point. “It was because of a lot of things. I was this Japanese-Korean-Canadian kid who grew up in a mostly white sport. I was apparently obviously gay, and noticeably shorter than most boys my age for years, so I got called a cocksucker every time I entered a new locker room. I was autistic and I made the mistake of sharing that with coaches, only for them to tell the whole team. You know how little boys are when someone is different and I was so very different in so many ways.”
“I am sorry,” Ilya says and it doesn’t feel like enough to his ears but he isn’t sure what else he can say. He pets Shane’s hair the way Shane does to him and he hopes its soothing.
“It’s okay I’m in my 30’s and still the best player in the MHL, I think I turned out fine despite the bullying.”
Ilya grumbles at the ‘best player’ comment but doesn’t dispute it. Good, he doesn’t want to sleep on this couch tonight.
Rubbing Shane’s back he goes, “So you did not tell me because you were in the habit, not because you did not trust me?”
Shane nods. “And because I thought you already knew. I know it’s not in my Wikipedia page or anything but you know me better than anyone else in the world, so I knew you would figure it out. And you did.”
Russians do not blush but Ilya is practically fully Canadian now and so he turns scarlet. “You are flattering me. Buttering me up like they say.”
“I am telling the truth.”
Shane closes his eyes as relief floods him. His husband loves him, he loves him, and this will not change anything. They are compatible, they are always going to be compatible. They lay there for a while, Shane isn’t sure how much time passes, holding each other like lifelines.
“I have good, important question,” Ilya says. “About autism.”
“Go ahead,” Shane grants him.
“When we make baby, will they also be autistic?”
Shane tries and fails not to snort at his husband's very ridiculous question. “When? Ilya, you can’t get me pregnant.” Not anymore at least, he made sure of that.
“That does not answer my question.”
“I don’t know,” Shane says as if he's really thinking about it. “It’s kind of genetic, so maybe. If you miraculously get me pregnant.”
Wow, genetic.
Decidedly serious, Ilya tells him, “I guess we will have to find out then.”