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Shane’s not not celebrating.
The Centaurs are definitely celebrating. They’d beaten Vancouver that afternoon, their first road game of the season. Final score: 4-3. Within regulation. Shane had scored, twice, and an assist, and that was with only a few months of practice with his new team and with the lines in flux to boot. A hard-fought, well-earned win. After that, with the night free and the next day off, there was no way the Centaurs wouldn’t go out.
Someone had found a bar near the hotel—a sports bar with a well-worn rainbow flag in one window, which Shane will not feel weird about—and the team had taken over half the booths and a pool table. There’s been a few rounds, of pool and drinks and congratulations. There’s been the retelling of old stories for the benefit of the wide-eyed rookies—and for Shane, who politely doesn’t mention he’s heard half of them from llya already but with only half the same details. There’s even been some dancing on the bar’s small dance floor, nothing crazy. As appears to be the norm for the Centaurs, it’s a very calm celebration.
And Shane is celebrating! Really! He’s had his ginger ales and played a bit of pool and held his own in the conversations and hasn’t had to duck out for air once. Even as the hour ticks towards late, he hasn’t felt the gnawing need to leave, not like the worst of the Montreal afterparties. Instead, he’d commandeered a small booth in the corner with Troy Barrett—who has been notably quiet all night—and Shane, somehow, wonderfully, is having a quiet, good time. Nearly a perfect time, even.
Well, almost.
Because Shane misses Ilya.
Missing Ilya isn’t new. If he thinks about it, Shane’s probably spent most of his adult life missing Ilya. When he wouldn’t admit it to himself, he was missing Ilya. When they were dating, he still spent so much of it missing llya. Shane is the expert in missing Ilya. Best in the world, even. So good that he’d let himself get used to it, living with the wrongness in his life. The empty space where Ilya could, should have been.
But this is different. Because now Shane’s missing his husband, and somehow it’s almost worse. They’re teammates and out and married and the whole point of it all—the media, the circuses, the bullshit—is that Shane shouldn’t have to miss Ilya. Ilya should be in his rightful place by Shane’s side. Not sick with a fever, stuck back home with Shane’s parents fussing over him. Leaving Shane with a brand new team, alone.
Shane had offered to stay behind. He’d claim sick too—it wouldn’t be a stretch, they were constantly sharing germs—and skip the road trip, even though it would have been an objectively terrible idea for both of the Centaur’s ridiculously expensive star centers to be off the ice. He’d said it anyways, meant it. Ilya, wrapped in a blanket cocoon, had given him a look that was so… everything that Shane had felt he was seconds away from melting into a goop. Becoming physically unable to leave. But then Ilya had cough-laughed and told Shane to win the road trip for him, and well, Shane could do that. Is doing that. Two goals and an assist. Seattle in two days. Tonight, a few texts with a loopy Ilya, and then the bar and the celebrating and the corner booth nursing drinks and talking hockey with Troy Barrett.
Troy Barrett, who has just cut himself off mid-sentence to stare over Shane’s shoulder.
“Fuck.”
“What?” Shane asks as Troy hunches himself further back in the booth, eyes wide. “Did something happen?”
“No, nothing,” Troy says, after a beat of something. “Just—for a second I thought I saw someone I know. But there’s no way it’s actually him.”
They’re friends, Troy and Shane, Shane is reasonably sure. They’ve hung out over the summer, a lot of team barbecues and the hockey camps and two whole double dates with him and Harris. After the first one, Shane had gone on Twitter to find there had been paparazzi pictures posted online. Like, a lot of pictures. He had kind of wanted to crawl in a hole and never be perceived again, except for that Ilya had been so clearly secretly pleased that Shane had instead texted Harris about setting up the second one. They’d practiced together, played together. And with Ilya sick, Troy and Shane had been linemates against Vancouver, and it had worked. They’d traded assists. So, friends.
But beyond all that, Shane doesn’t actually know Troy too well. Not well enough to pry. Definitely not well enough to know if Troy would want him to anyways. So he redirects the conversation right back to hockey—always hockey with you, teases the Ilya ever-present in his thoughts—and Troy relaxes just a bit.
Success, Shane thinks, and nearly forgets about it entirely until, easily over ten minutes later, Troy freezes, beer bottle halfway to his mouth. It lands back on the table with a thud, too loud, and for a second, it looks like Troy’s about to flee the booth entirely before his expression retreats back to its usual flat nothing.
“Are you Shane Hollander and Troy Barrett?” asks an almost familiar voice and Shane turns to see Adrien Dela Cruz and Justin Green standing in front of their booth. Mega-celebrities, hand in hand in a random Vancouver maybe-gay sports bar, waiting expectantly. Just another ordinary fan interaction, even if Justin Green also makes esoteric arthouse films for Netflix that Shane never quite manages to fully appreciate beyond the cinematography. He keeps giving them 3.5 stars on Letterboxd, and those ratings always feel generous.
And unimportant, here at this encounter. Shane will be playing this one cool. He smiles, confirms he is, indeed, Shane Hollander. That Troy, still frozen on the other end of the booth, is Troy Barrett. That they are aware of who is speaking with them—hard not to be, he doesn’t add. Annoyingly, Troy doesn’t contribute a word. Oddly, neither does Dela Cruz, Justin Green’s enthusiasm apparently enough for the both of them.
“Such a great game tonight. That goal in the second? Incredible. Can’t believe you made that!”
“Thanks,” Shane says. It had been a pretty goal. Clean, right over the goalie’s shoulder into the net from a weird angle. In the split second between making it and Bood crashing into him, he’d looked towards the bench, expecting to see Ilya. Had been forced to make do with the press of the ring on his chest instead, the thought dampening down the glee. Not that Justin Green and Adrien Dela Cruz would have seen that. “Were you at the game?”
“Even made the Jumbotron,” Justin Green says with a laugh. “Can’t believe we’ve ran into you guys here. We’re such huge fans.”
“Oh, you are?” Troy asks.
“Just the hugest. Hockey’s so fun to watch, all the skill and passion and drama on the ice. It’s incredible,” Green says. “And, you know, we’re always going to support queer athletes.”
He smiles at them. Troy takes a drink, long and entirely unhelpful. Shane thinks not because we’re good?, and then don’t be a dick and then follow the script.
“Thanks,” he says, a beat too late and a touch too awkwardly. “Means a lot to hear that.”
“Of course,” Green says easily, politely ignoring whatever is wrong with Shane, before shooting a look at his fiancé that makes Shane miss Ilya all over again. “And, you know, without hockey, who knows where Adrien and I would be?”
“Probably just at a different bar,” Adrien Dela Cruz says, smiling back at Green. “I’m sure you would have found another excuse to talk to me on the set of our movie.”
Green laughs, and the two of them exchange another round of looks, distractingly soppy enough that Shane nearly misses Troy rolling his eyes. Green clearly does, beaming when Troy then asks, all causal, if hockey’s how they got together. The question’s politely curious. Entirely innocuous, just like Troy is on the ice, baiting his opponents into starting the fight. A trap, except they aren’t playing hockey, and if there’s another game here, Shane can’t make it out.
“Yup!” Green says to Troy, just as oblivious. Next to him, Dela Cruz has stopped smiling, face gone eerily blank. “When we first started filming The Sword of Loneliness, Adrien was always watching hockey in his trailer. I told him I was a fan so I’d have an excuse to hang around and flirt, and well, long story short, it worked.”
He holds Dela Cruz’s hand up to show them the massive ring, clearly giddy for the excuse. Troy’s outright frowning now—does he have something against marriage, shit, should Shane be warning Harris?—but Shane gets it. His ring’s not as fancy by comparison, just a black band for the outside, but Shane’s been wearing it for half a year now and is still continually amazed by its presence. Constantly finds himself touching it, whether on its chain or his finger. Wanting to show it off—with the chain, he’s been wearing a lot more partially unbuttoned shirts lately—show off that he’s taken, that he’s Ilya’s. It’s a feeling he hopes he never gets used to. And because Shane is maybe a bit tipsy off the win or missing Ilya, he hopes this for Adrien Dela Cruz and Justin Green too.
“Congratulations,” Shane tells them, sincerely, and then, route followup, “How’s the wedding planning going?”
Troy shoots him a look, entirely incomprehensible. Dela Cruz relaxes, leaning into Green’s side as his fiancé beams, clearly glad for the excuse.
“To be honest, it’s been kind of a nightmare,” Green says. “Just settling on a date took months.”
“All the venues were dreadfully unaccommodating,” Dela Cruz adds. “Totally unwilling to be flexible with our schedules.”
“We did manage to sort that out, the only thing we have gotten settled, even after months. There’s just so much to decide on. Catering, music, seating arrangements…And don’t get me started on the decor.”
“We could still hire a professional to figure it out for us. I still have the number of that guy from Vogue Weddings.”
“It’s our wedding. We can’t outsource,” Green retorts, all fond, clearly a well-worn debate. He turns back to Shane. “Back me up here. You planed your own wedding, right?”
“We didn’t really plan much, to be honest,” Shane tells them. “We had the wedding in our backyard with the friends and family who could make it. Put up some lights and ordered a bunch of pizzas and cleared out a grocery store for drinks and just, you know, got married.”
It had been the best day of Shane’s life. It had been so easy. Shane hadn’t needed to think about or stress about or convolute a single thing. Hadn’t even wanted to. He had just married Ilya, and everyone important to them had been there, and that had been all that mattered. They’d forgotten about chairs and Shane, somehow, hadn’t given a single shit. The realization had been freeing.
“Wow,” Adrien Dela Cruz drawls, “That sounds very quaint—”
“It was the best wedding I’ve ever been to,” Troy cuts in out of nowhere, the edge to his voice a little like gloves hitting the ice. “A really beautiful celebration of real love and commitment. Just what a wedding should be. You know.”
Green’s frowning, more confused-looking than anything else, but Dela Cruz actually flinches before pasting that same warm smile back on.
“Oh, of course. It does sound lovely,” he says, the response reminding Shane of doing media after a nasty loss. Too rehearsed, generic. Insincere. But before he can be pressed further, he’s leaning over to whisper in Green’s ear.
It’s a quick whisper, barely enough time for Troy to roll his eyes yet again, and then they’re making their apologies. That they are so sorry to cut this lovely meeting short but they really do have to be heading home. They offer another round of congratulations for the win, specifically Shane’s goals and assist. Wish them luck for the next game—and with that, they’re off without even waiting for an acknowledgment. Hand in hand, departure as abrupt as their arrival. Extremely like a sudden press conference emergency. And really fucking weird.
Shane turns to raise an eyebrow at Troy—what the hell was that—just in time to catch him thump his head on the tabletop hard enough the whole table rattles in protest.
“You want to talk about it?”
Troy doesn’t say anything. God Shane wishes Ilya were here. He’d know what to say or not say. Definitely know what to do. But Shane—Shane’s never been a natural at off-ice crises. Even in Montreal. Not that he was bad at it. As Captain, he’d do his best when the guys wanted his support off the ice. It just hadn’t been often. They respected him, enough for three cups, but he’d been aware of his non-hockey reputation, had heard all the ostensibly lighthearted locker room jokes. Had known what they hadn’t let him hear, that he wasn’t white and was a buzzkill and later, even worse, was gay. Hadn’t let himself care, not when he was still Captain on the ice. When he was winning games with them.
In retrospect, he thinks he’d cared too much.
But Troy still hasn’t said anything and Ilya’s not here and the Centaurs aren’t Montreal. Troy’s definitely not. They are friends. So.
“Troy?”
“Sorry. Give me a moment,” Troy says, more to the table than to Shane. “Still trying to wrap my head around ending up at the same gay sports bar as my ex-boyfriend.”
”What? Wait—Adrien Dela Cruz?”
“Fuck. Was I that obvious?” Troy asks, pulling himself off the table to face Shane, voice on the verge of panicked.
“No. Not until you told me,” Shane says, and Troy’s shoulders relax just a bit. “I’m guessing it ended badly?”
“Fucking nightmare,” Troy says with a snort. “We met at a party, dated for two years in secret, and then he dumped me over the phone three days before announcing his engagement to a man he’d fallen in love with ten months before.”
“Jesus.” Way to understate. Two years and then a coming out/engagement that had gone so viral that even Shane had heard about it. Had felt a bitter twinge of jealousy about, quickly stamped down. Told himself it was just because he was missing Ilya, their schedules at the time all misaligned—wait. “Wasn’t that around the time you got traded?”
“Days before, yeah. Hell of a week.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, shit. I haven’t even talked to him since and then he and his fiancé show up out of nowhere to talk fucking hockey. I got him into hockey!” Troy sighs. Takes a pull at his beer. “And now it’s part of their stupid love story. Total bullshit.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“And cause a scene? No thanks,” Troy says. “We’re celebrating a win. And what if it blew up on the internet or something? I don’t want Harris dragged into dealing with Adrien’s bullshit.”
“I really don’t think Harris would mind.” Shane tells him. Actually, Shane has a suspicion Harris would enjoy the opportunity. Even if he had to be professional about it. “You’re not the one who did anything wrong.”
“I guess,” Troy says, although he sounds entirely unconvinced. “But it doesn’t seem worth it. I mean, it sucked, but whatever. I’m not about to publicly dredge up my old hurt for a relationship nobody ever even knew about.”
“Nobody? Not even friends or family?”
“You’re the second person I’ve told, after Harris,” Troy says, and Shane’s face must do something stupid with shock because Troy laughs, just a little. “No, really. It was—we weren’t even friends because we were so busy being paranoid about being found out. We weren’t ready. Or at least I thought we weren’t, until, you know, turns out he was. Surprise!”
Despite himself, Shane snorts out a laugh. It’s not funny. It’s a story out of one of his worst nightmares. When he’d be alone in his suddenly too-big bed in Montreal and have nothing better to do than loop through the same stupidly unfair insecurities. About his now husband, ready, and finding someone easier, braver, better, to be ready with.
“And the worst part was that I was thinking about maybe coming out for him. I even asked Scott for advice, sort of.” Troy says, snapping Shane back to reality. He twists his wedding ring around, the metal cold and comforting, as Troy continues, grimacing. “Awkward as fuck. Conversation was mostly me being terrified to admit to anything and Scott being way nicer about it than I deserved, considering. I should apologize for that, actually.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Shane tells him. “I sent him a roundabout email after the NHL awards. And Ilya actually went and talked to him. He’s probably used to awkward conversations with closeted hockey players at this point.”
“Like a rite of passage,” Troy says with a hint of a grin. “He’s probably sick of us.”
“He’s too nice for that,” Shane says. Tells him about Scott Hunter’s incredible enthusiasm for gay honeymoon destination suggestions. Takes a drink of his long-neglected ginger ale. And then, because if he doesn’t, it’ll eat at him, asks. “What changed your mind? About coming out for Adrien?”
“I didn’t, not really. It just never came up? I never actually offered and he never asked.” Troy says. “Honestly, we weren’t—we didn’t really talk about those things. Probably should have.”
It’s his turn to remember his drink, draining the rest of it in one solid gulp.
Shane grimaces in what he hopes looks like sympathy, and pushes down any thoughts of him and Ilya and nearly four years of dating in secret while not quite talking about it. Not quite knowing how to talk about it. And it’s stupid anyways—they’re married now and actually working on communication and this is not a road he should be spiraling down, especially not now, with Troy, staring at the bottom of his bottle like it might have answers. But—
“Do you regret not asking about it?” Shane asks, because maybe Troy does want to talk about it. And because Shane—he’s a glutton for punishment, really.
“No,” Troy blurts, eyes going wide like he wasn’t expecting the suddenness of his answer either. “I don’t? Shit. I mean, yeah, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we had came out together, but I don’t think I’d choose that life. I couldn’t possibly have been happier—I wouldn’t have met Harris.”
He’s blushing, the way he only seems to be capable of about Harris. It’s obnoxiously sweet, Troy Barrett, asshole-on-ice extraordinaire, going a faint splotchy pink any time his boyfriend is mentioned. Or any time said boyfriend just happens to show up in the locker room, which happens often enough that, weeks ago, one of the guys taped a “Drover” sign over the nameplate of Troy’s locker as a prank. Troy has yet to take it down.
So, yeah. Shane too cannot imagine a Troy Barrett happier without Harris.
“And in retrospect,” Troy continues, “I think Adrien might have been right when he dumped me. I mean, most of it was total bullshit, but a big part of why we got together was because it was convenient. We were just two closeted gay guys lucky enough to find someone in the same situation. And I did love him, but I don’t know if we would have gotten together in the first place if we hadn’t been so desperate to find literally anyone. Or if we would have stayed together once we stopped sneaking around.”
“You think you would have broken up anyways?”
“Maybe? He’s kind of a pretentious dick,” Troy says. “I mean, I wasn’t any better back then, but still. You met him. Did you like him?”
“Well—“ Shane starts, then reconsiders. “Not really, no.”
“Imagine dating him. Hell, thinking about it, the fact I never suggested coming out feels like a sign, like I subconsciously knew the relationship wouldn’t have been worth it.”
“Right,” Shane says, and knocks back whatever he would have said with the last dregs of his ginger ale. Finds safer ground, marginally. “Being in Toronto didn’t factor in?”
“Yeah, okay, that too,” Troy says with a grimace. “Coming out while as a Guardian would have been a nightmare. I mean—well, I guess I wasn’t willing to be that brave.”
“You probably dodged a bullet.”
“Maybe, but—“ he pauses, glancing away towards the pool table, where Bood, Hayes and Young appear to be playing three-way pool. Beyond that, various groups of Centaurs are chatting, including Haas in very close conversation with a man Shane doesn’t recognize. A miracle team, in more ways than one. “—I guess I wish I’d known there were better guys out there earlier.”
“Same,” Shane admits, and waits for Troy to ask.
The obvious questions, the same ones running through the media. About Montreal, about the years of rumors that Shane Hollander was gay, started by someone Shane had trusted enough to tell. He still doesn’t know who. At the time, he had just been relieved that it hadn’t been worse, not when there was hockey to play and a relationship to figure out and a foundation to start. It has been uncomfortable, but uncomfortable was fine. All the cut-off sentences and awkward silences were fine. It was all just another thing, another addendum to being a hockey player, building the gulf between him and those that just got to play. He’d tolerated it, because that was what Shane Hollander did.
And because the long game was worth it. Ilya was worth it. The Centaurs have been worth it.
But Troy doesn’t press it, thankfully. Because he already gets it
“Thanks,” he says instead, and Shane frowns at him. “For listening to all my shit, I mean. Not much of a celebration.”
“I’ve been to worse,” Shane says and Troy snorts. “Really. I didn’t mind.”
“Well, thanks anyways.”
“Anytime,” Shane tells him, and means it. Friends.