Chapter Text
As Shane has learned in his weeks of settling in on the team and feeling the absence of a C on his chest like a physical thing, there is one benefit to not being the star of the Ottawa Centaurs the way he was for Montreal.
Namely that his newly-frequent panic attacks usually fly right under the radar.
It’s hard to feel grateful for it right now, though, too busy telling himself to knock it the fuck off, a desperate refrain of Not here. Not here. Not here. Not here. Not here. pounding in his head on repeat as he waits on the bench, too caught up in his head to even really appreciate watching his husband on the ice, usually his one consolation prize for not always being first string anymore.
Not that that’s a bad thing right now, of course, not when it means Ilya is thankfully too busy doing his fucking job to watch Shane struggling to do his.
C’mon, he tells himself, forcing his chest to rise and fall in slow, even movements even as his ears ring faintly, his heart pounding loud enough that it’s the main thing he can hear. Don’t do this. Don’t fucking do this.
Like most of the ones he’s been getting recently, he doesn’t even really know what’s causing it, doesn’t know what stupid, random thing has him feeling like he’s about to have a heart attack. He’s painfully aware of the cameras, of course, painfully aware of the commentary of the people watching those cameras, painfully aware that the A on his jersey is little enough to commend him after a hard reset of his entire fucking career, painfully aware that a good quarter of the audience of this game probably pities him and the other three-quarters probably enjoy watching Shane Hollander knocked the fuck down, painfully aware-
“Head in the game, Hollander. You’re up soon.”
He flinches at the pat on his shoulder from his coach and nods, sharply, hoping it was a “atta boy” pat and not a “get your fucking shit together, you embarrassment to professional hockey” pat.
He doesn’t dare actually look at him to find out which.
He doesn’t actually usually play on a different line from Ilya these days, not after it became clear that they’re almost always better playing together. It’s gotten them plenty of snickering and side eyes and jokes on Twitter, but him as center and Ilya as wing on a line is a thing of beauty, weird as it might seem on the outside to put the two best players together instead of spreading them out. No one else can really keep up with them, not like the other can, and the moments they share the ice are Shane’s single point of consolation when it comes to hockey these days. It’s nice, getting to turn his brain off, knowing Ilya will be right where he needs him to be, knowing he’ll be right where Ilya needs him to be, knowing that no matter what he doesn’t have anymore, he still has this, the ability to put on a good show and make goals. There are YouTube compilations of it even, stupid videos with titles like “Ten Times Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov Shared a Brain.” Ilya likes watching them, always gets teasing and cuddly and playful when he plays them on his phone and shoves it in Shane’s face, usually when they’re in bed together, like it’s his own weird and hyper-specific form of foreplay.
Shane usually rolls his eyes and smiles and tries not to let his attention flicker down to see what the comment section has to say.
*
Shane scores two goals in the game.
All he can think about, even as his team slaps him on the back and jostles him with bright approval, is if it’ll be enough to maybe temper the people still rejoicing at his fall from grace, if it might be enough to start clawing back some semblance of what got taken from him, if it might somehow serve as the foundation to rebuild his career on from scratch again.
(He knows it won’t be.)
*
“Maybe we just kiss and give them something else to do besides ask annoying questions,” Ilya whispers into his ear before they take their places before cameras that night, clearly an attempt to make him smile.
He obliges and pretends like he manages to fool his husband into thinking he was successful.
“Shane! Shane!” Calls a woman who has a microphone in front of his mouth before he’s even accepted her interview. “How does it feel to be playing a season under someone else as a captain after so many years?”
Like shit, he thinks, still keeping a perfect, polite smile in place through long years of practice in front of his bathroom mirror. Still feels just as bad as the first time someone asked me that question, thanks. Still feels like the punishment it is for the audacity of being gay. Still feels like I’m forgetting something every single time I put on my fucking uniform. Still feels like I worked my ass off for that C and got it taken away anyway.
“I’m just here to play the best season I can,” he says, perfectly even, perfectly polite. “Anything past that isn’t worth thinking about.”
“Ilya,” another reporter crowds in to ask, wielding their own microphone and almost hitting Ilya in the mouth in their eagerness, stopped only by Shane grabbing it at the last minute, Ilya giving him a quick little wink of thanks for the save.
Shane just tries not to think about how many people are going to try and spin it into something it’s not, cut the moment so it looks like Shane was trying to take the microphone and not save his husband from a busted lip, twist it until-
“-best at what he does,” Ilya is saying, and Shane hopes the way his face heats will be excused by the way he’s still sweating when he realizes he was so busy in his own head that he missed what the actual question was. Hopefully it doesn’t end up needing a comment from him. “No, is no problem. Our marriage stops at the door. We pick it up again when we leave.” Ilya winks at the camera, and there’s a little scatter of appreciative, approving murmurs, people glad for a good soundbite.
“Shane,” another reporter says, “there’s been a lot of talk about a lacking performance from you so far this season.” Shane’s chest goes tight and his ears hot, anger and humiliation flaring at once, equally bright. It’s not the first time he’s gotten this question, but he can feel the anticipation from the press around him, like sharks sensing blood in the water, like being openly gay means he’s going to sit in front of cameras and cry about his feelings now instead of continuing to be a fucking professional. “What do you have to say to the fans at home?”
“I’d invite them to take a look at my stats and compare them to my past seasons,” he says, light and easy and like he doesn’t want to just walk away, find an empty room, and scream until maybe his chest feels less unbearably tight. “Joining a new team always means an adjustment period, but I’m delivering the same performance I always do.” He cuts himself off there, knowing anything else will just seem defensive.
“But what about the fans who say you just aren’t skating the way you used to?” Pushes another reporter, because apparently they’re all determined to be a pain in the fucking ass tonight. “Does it have anything to do with-”
“All of these questions and only for my husband?” Ilya interrupts, feigning offense. “I am also here, yes? I do not get to answer anything?”
The reporters turn to him at once, playfully conciliatory instead of hungry for a crack they can dig into.
Shane tries to pretend that he doesn’t notice the difference in treatment.
Just like he tries to pretend his chest isn’t getting tighter at the way he can already hear headlines being written about Ilya’s interjection, people making guesses and assumptions about their marriage and what tension may or may not be there and Shane Hollander being a diva and stealing the spotlight from hi-
He breathes, in and out, slow and steady, forcing his breath to remain normal and unremarkable, thumb pressing to the body-warm silicon of the wedding ring he wears during games, a matching twin to the one on Ilya’s hand.
This is fine, Shane tells himself sternly as he shoves his mouth into a smile and answers another question on autopilot and another and another and another. This is fine. He’s fine.
He’s so very fucking fine.
*
“Jesus,” Ilya complains when they’ve finally been released, scrubbing a hand through his sweat-limp curls and then pressing it to Shane’s face just to be disgusting, grinning when Shane bats him off. “It would kill them to ask actual good questions?”
“Apparently,” Shane says, and it doesn’t come out as light as he wants. He resists the urge to make a face when he sees Ilya notice it, sees his expression shift from the corner of his eye.
“They don’t-”
“Hey, cap!”
Shane doesn’t turn at the call only through the practice he’s put in, but Ilya extends a hand, touching his elbow lightly to try and make him stop, too. Shane shrugs him off.
“I need a shower,” he says, not quite meeting Ilya’s eyes. “I’ll meet you in the car, okay? I have a headache.”
“Shane-” Ilya starts, but the C on his chest means he stays right where he is as he turns to answer whatever Bood needs to ask him.
Shane knows he’s going to try and bring it up again later, try to talk things through the way he has before, like anything they can say between the two of them can materially change anything. It’s only going to end in a fight or silently hurt feelings or Shane plastering on a smile and pretending any of this has gotten any easier.
He resolves to give Ilya a blowjob so good it hopefully makes his short term memory disappear.
*
This far into his career, meet and greets and photo ops aren’t new to him.
The way his chest feels tight and his neck feels hot and his head feels full of cotton is, but there’s nothing he can fucking do about it, so he sucks it up and gets the fuck on with it. The press has enough to say about him these days without him adding “lost his shit at a team meet and greet for no reason” to the list. Him making a face at a fan already caused enough of a stir on Twitter a couple of weeks ago. The fact that he’d only made the face because the fan had asked him to sign his dick hadn’t come up in the process of people picking it apart, and it’s not like he could volunteer the information without making it all so much worse. Rose had thrown words around like “sexual harassment" on the phonecall they’d had soon after when she’d asked about it, and Shane had felt cowed under the weight of it, of words like that said about something he experienced, doing his best to brush it off and then to redirect when Rose had refused to let it go.
He hadn’t known how to tell her that he’d been relieved that at least it had been a genuine request and not another dig at him being gay.
She hadn’t really seemed in a place to hear it, anyway.
He hasn’t been asked to sign anyone’s genitals today–small fucking blessings–but he still can’t shake the tightness in his chest he gets at events like this now, especially with the way it’s expanded to his stomach today. He managed to get breakfast down and keep it down today, but it had taken enough effort that Ilya had noticed. They hadn’t talked about it because they’d just had a fight the night before about Ilya talking about getting a second dog and Shane internally deciding that a second dog might actually be the thing to fully break him right now and externally saying no fucking way, but he’d caught a concerned look that had been immensely annoying, and he’d taken his shake with him to choke it down elsewhere.
He tries to distract himself now, tries to focus on anything that isn’t the press, isn’t anyone’s facial expression, isn’t anything that’s going to make him wonder what’s going to be written about him later, what sins are going to be caught and held against him, what little looks are going to be sharpened into weapons to get him with later. Following that train of thought just makes his breath harder to get into his lungs in a way that makes Ilya send him annoying little side glances, and he makes himself focus harder on the crowd milling around them, kept back for now while they organize everyone into lines.
Including the random lady with a dog that Ilya is apparently determined to be obnoxious with.
“Prekrati,” Shane hisses under his breath the third time the dog gets up and pulls to the end of its leash to try and get to them. It’s perhaps overkill, switching to Russian just to tell his husband to knock it off with whatever he’s doing, but there are too many cameras around them for him to feel comfortable in English.
“I am not doing anything,” Ilya says just as quietly, his tone at odds with the smile he still manages to give the reporter who looks their way at the sound of his voice, quiet as he tried to be.
Shane tries to give the man a smile as well, but it doesn’t feel quite as successful.
“O, sobaka prosto-prosto-” His brain stalls out, already stretched by the way so many eyes around him are making him hyper-aware of himself and the space between him and his husband. Fuck it. He turns slightly, moving to pick imaginary lint off of Ilya’s shoulder for the excuse of hiding his mouth from any cameras (hopefully). “We argue about getting another dog, and now another dog keeps trying to come over here?” He says, voice low but scathing. “Just happens to want to come right over to you?”
“She has good taste,” Ilya says, sounding just as biting despite the way he’s managing to keep his face mostly neutral. “Unlike some people.”
Shane wonders in a part of his brain that does nothing for the tension he feels in his chest if this is just always going to be their new normal, at odds with each other, sniping each other with comments, chasing little moments of sweetness and togetherness that then still always get replaced with this weird, awkward tension between them as soon as anything that isn’t the safety of their house enters the equation. He thinks about divorce statistics and how much someone can stand. He thinks about Ilya getting fed up and deciding to cut his losses.
He thinks about how it would feel to truly lose everything.
“Luch-Shane,” Ilya says, catching himself only at the last moment before he breaks their no pet names in the workplace rule. “Why don’t you get some air, yes? We can-”
Shane’s anxiety takes a quick backseat to annoyance once more, at being handled like a child instead of a grown man, like he hasn’t been doing this just as long as Ilya, like he needs someone to tell him when to take a break.
Like he deserved to have everything taken away from him because he couldn’t handle it to start with.
“I’m fine,” he says, voice icy.
The step he takes away is too big, farther than he meant to get from Ilya’s side, and the air between them feels both charged and icy.
He isn’t quite bold enough to try and fix it.
*
Shane oscillates between bored and riding the edge of a panic attack for most of the rest of the event, smiling on autopilot and posing for pictures and saying things he forgets as soon as they’re out of his mouth. His chest is tight and his head hurts and he can’t help but mentally write headlines the entire time, wondering which of his smiles will be picked apart, which little gesture is going to get torn apart on Twitter tonight as being “so obviously fruity, guys, how did we all miss it?”
Busy dissecting whether the way he pushed his hair back looked gay or not, he almost misses it when the woman with the dog finally comes forward, tuning in just in time to hear Ilya ask if it’s alright if he says hello or not. The eagerness with which the dog is pulling against her leash says clearly that it was indeed Ilya doing something to try and call to her the entire event-
-or it would, if she didn’t immediately yank herself past Ilya to get to Shane, nosing at his hand urgently.
Reflexively, he yanks his hand back, realizing far too late what that probably looked like from the outside and wondering exactly how many news sites are now going to run that he’s a dog hater in addition to an overhyped fag-
“Sorry, sorry!” The woman says. “Rosie, heel.” The dog–Rosie–doesn’t seem too keen on listening, though, straining towards Shane with even more urgency before her owner finally puts a hand on her butt and pushes until she sits. “Sorry,” the woman says again, looking up and shoving her glasses back into place where they slipped down her nose. She gives him an apologetic smile. “She’s still in training as a service dog, and we’ve clearly got a lot of work left to do.”
“Oh, a professional in training?” Ilya says to the dog, voice nearly a coo, clearly delighted. “What a smart girl. What are you learning to be, huh?”
“An anxiety service dog,” the woman responds cheerfully.
Shane goes very, very still, a rabbit in front of the fox that is Ilya’s sudden, pointed attention.
“Wow,” Ilya says, and now there’s a tone in his voice that Shane knows no one else will pick up on despite how very clear it is to him. “So she knows when someone is not okay? Even if they say they are?”
Shane grits his teeth.
“Kind of,” the woman says, busy trying to keep the dog in place as she whines and tries to shuffle towards Shane again, almost vibrating in place with her eagerness. “Dogs are really good at picking up on things, so she’s training on how to pick up on anxiety and panic attacks and then task to-”
Shane doesn’t stick around to find out everything else Rosie the Narc Dog is learning, mumbling an “excuse me” and slipping away.
He feels Ilya’s eyes on him his entire way out of the room.
*
Shane finds an empty conference room and lets himself in, keeping the lights off. The hum of so many people in a building still comes through, but it’s at least a little easier to breathe in here, with the sound muted by the walls, and he slides down the wall to crouch down, trying to breathe through the tightness in his chest enough to loosen the knot of it, to clutch the frayed edges of his nerves back together enough to make his husband stop giving him annoying, worried looks.
He’s almost managed to do it when the door opens and the goddamn fucking dog walks through, her handler close on her heels.
Because where else would they go but right where Shane is trying to get his shit together?
“Oh, shi-shoot, sorry!” The handler says, juggling her bag and the leash and a water bottle all at the same time. “I’m so sorry. I was trying to find a place for Rosie to take a little break, and the other rooms are locked. We didn’t mean to disturb you, I’m so sorry, we can go look for-”
“It’s fine,” Shane forces himself to say. “Seriously. Most of the other rooms are locked.”
It’s why he’s here, after all, he thinks, managing to only be slightly bitter about it now.
“You’re sure?” The woman asks. “That’s really-oh! I’m Gina, by the way. I don’t know if I said that before.”
Shane shakes her hand and tries to figure out if there’s a polite way to get the hell out of here without making it obvious that it’s only because of her and the dog that he’s leaving. He’s not sure, but it feels rude to let someone know they’re the reason you’re leaving somewhere, even if they are.
He wonders how fast she’d take the story to Twitter, and the thought makes his chest feel as tight as it did before he got five fucking minutes of peace in this room before it was taken away from him. He breathes through it, but the dog tilts her head like a tattletale and pulls against the leash, pulling Gina with her until she plants her feet, the dog’s attention fully on him as she whines, low in her throat, straining forward, ears perked up and alert.
“Can I ask you kind of a weird question?” Gina asks.
Shane wonders what she would do if he just said no.
“Yeah,” he says, forcing his best approximation of a smile. “Sure.”
“You can totally say no,” Gina says, “seriously, it’s no problem, but, um, if you don’t mind, would you mind letting her practice tasking with you?”
She must see Shane’s absolute bewilderment before he gets the chance to hide it, hurrying to explain.
“Like I said, totally cool if it’s a no, seriously, I get it, 100%, but she’s kind of riding the edge of not making the cut for her program, and it would be good for her to practice tasking on command, you know? And she already seems so excited to meet you, and it’s kind of not what she’s supposed to be doing, going up to a stranger, but she also hasn’t gotten to task in-”
At a certain point in the onslaught of words, Shane’s brain shifts from confused to just wanting to make the flood of noise stop. In an uncharitable part of his brain, he wonders if Gina knows that it seems like she might also benefit from Rosie’s “tasking,” whatever that means. Out loud, though, he remains polite, too well trained over the years not to be.
“Sure,” he says. “What do you, uh, need me to do?”
Gina smiles with what seems like relief, breathing in heavily at the break in her flow of words.
“Have you ever heard of deep pressure therapy?”
*
Shane’s not totally clear on how he got here, laying in a dark conference room with a random golden retriever laying across him.
In a way that makes Rosie shift and nose at his neck, he wonders if this is just his life now, condemned to never controlling what happens to him ever again.
“Just be chill, okay?” He tells the dog, gently pushing her nose away from his face. If she minds that Gina stepped out into the hall to make a phone call and left her with a stranger, she doesn’t show it, apparently content to lay on top of Shane and get dog hair on his outfit. She breathes in a way that moves her whole ribcage, exhaling like a sigh and getting even heavier on top of him.
Annoyingly, it is kind of…soothing, sort of.
“I make my husband do this sometimes,” he tells her, idly moving to scratch behind one of her ears. “He’s a lot heavier than you, though.” He smiles faintly. “You guys are both blondes, though, so there’s that.” Rosie breathes heavily again. Shane moves his hand to stroke along her back, relieved that she’s clean enough that it doesn’t leave his hand feeling filmy the way some dogs do. He’ll still want to wash his hands after, but he doesn’t feel gross from touching her. “You really have to learn about not sharing people’s secrets with other people, you know. You kind of put my shit on blast out there.”
If Rosie is sorry about it, Shane can’t tell.
He just lays under her warm weight until Gina decides he’s free to go, even politely offering him a lint roller to get the fur off of his outfit.
“Thank you, seriously,” Gina says when he hands it back. “I know it’s kind of a weird ask, but-”
“It’s all good,” Shane says, forcing himself to smile. It comes a little easier now, like laying in a dark conference room helped alleviate some of the tension in his chest, and he’d rather not risk it by setting Gina off again.
“Say bye Rosie,” Gina says, and looking down at his outfit to make sure he got all of the hair off, he doesn’t think twice before he’s obeying on autopilot.
“Bye, Rosie,” he says.
He looks up when he hears Gina giggle, and she covers her mouth with her hand, embarrassed.
“I was, um, I was actually telling Rosie to say bye,” she says. “You know, kind of, a joke?”
A joke like his entire fucking life is now, Shane thinks, mortified.
He takes his leave then, saying goodbye to Gina and pointedly not saying goodbye to Rosie again.
*
“There you are.”
He turns at the sound of Ilya’s voice, his husband jogging down the hallway to catch up.
“I was looking everywhere for you,” he says, giving Shane a quick up and down that Shane desperately wishes was flirtatious and not diagnostic.
“Needed some water,” he says, waiting only long enough for Ilya to fall into step beside him. “They wanted us both for an interview with that magazine, right?”
“Yes,” Ilya says, and Shane can tell from the careful tone of Ilya’s voice that whatever he’s going to say next is going to piss him the fuck off. “But it’s been a long day. If you want me to take it-”
“You want a solo feature?” Shane asks. “What, you don’t want to share a story with your boring husb-”
“Shane,” Ilya interrupts, and Shane shuts his mouth, forcing himself to breathe.
It feels a little bit easier than it did earlier, and it also makes it easier to stop being an asshole to his husband when he can recognize objectively that Ilya is just trying to do something nice for him.
(Even if it’s subjectively insulting that he feels the need to do it in the first place.)
“I’m good, okay?” He says, not bothering to force a smile because Ilya would see through it anyway. “I just have a headache.”
“Again?” Ilya asks, moving forward automatically to rub at the muscles in his neck, well-used to it courtesy of all of the tension headaches Shane has been getting recently.
It turns out having your entire life and career explode in front of you is pretty stress-inducing. Who fucking knew.
“I got some Tylenol,” he lies, shrugging out of Ilya’s hold, aware as always of how easily someone could catch them and spin even the most innocent touch into something vile.
(If he never has to see another fucking online petition to make seperate locker rooms for gay players “for player safety,” it’ll be too fucking soon.)
“I’m good,” he lies, and in an attempt at distracting Ilya from calling him on the lie, he bumps against him, a rare offer of physical touch outside of their house. “C’mon, if we don’t hurry, it’ll look bad and they’ll write up a thinkpiece about how the T in LGBT should stand for Timely.”
Ilya’s laugh isn’t as bright as Shane was hoping for, but he’ll take what he can get.
These days, it’s usually the best he can fucking do.
*
It’s their second game against Montreal, and Shane resolutely ignores the lingering looks he gets from his current team. He says he’s fine because he is. He gets ready to take center because he’s center. He faces off because he’s supposed to.
He ignores the slur Comeau hisses at him because he has no other fucking choice.
“Watch it,” snaps Ilya from his right, close enough to hear.
Shane bites back the way he wants to tell him to shut up, to ignore it the way Shane has to because if he has to play nice, everyone around him should have to do the same.
“Aw,” Comeau says, “he’s afraid I’m gonna hurt his puck bunny’s feelings.”
Shane grits his teeth around his mouthguard so hard it makes his molars ache. He knows this game. There’s nothing he can say that would ever make this stop. Giving him any reaction at all is just fuel on the fire, and if he starts a fight about it, he’s going to be painted as the problem. He’s fine. This is fine. They’re just words. It doesn’t matter.
“Shut your fucking mouth,” Ilya growls.
“What?” Comeau asks, clearly delighted at the reaction he’s getting. “He doesn’t let you fuck him if he gets his little feelings hurt? Not so sweet when-”
Shane wins the puck.
He wishes it felt better.
He makes the first goal of the game.
He wonders when it stopped feeling like a victory and started feeling like the only way he can defend his right to be on the ice in the first place.
*
“Stop reacting,” he tells Ilya before they take their places again.
Ilya first looks surprised and then upset.
“Shane, he does not get to talk t-”
“He does,” Shane corrects. “He does, and so does anyone else who wants to say that shit. You think anyone actually gives a fuck?”
Ilya half-winces, like Shane aimed a blow for his face. He starts to reach out, and it’s only Shane giving him a look that makes him stop, lips thinning as he presses them together, clearly unhappy. Shane’s mad at himself as much as he’s mad at Ilya. It’s not Ilya’s fault any of this is happening, and he can recognize even in the heat of it that it’s not fair to take it out on him.
It’s just unfortunate that he’s the one target Shane can take aim at without consequences beyond damaging his own fucking marriage.
“It just makes it worse,” Shane says flatly, kicking Ilya’s skate lightly to get him back into motion when he starts feeling the weight of eyes from people waiting for them to line up again. “It doesn’t make my life easier when people think you’re my fucking-fucking body guard or something. I can take care of myself, Ilya.”
Ilya doesn’t respond, just gives him a tight, unhappy nod.
Shane lines up again, feeling angry and hurt and frustrated and increasingly looking forward to checking someone into the boards just for the relief of it.
As opportunities to take his feelings out on someone go, hockey isn’t the worst option, after all.
*
Shane makes a second goal, and he almost manages to feel proud of it when Hayden whistles under his breath as he passes, tapping his shoulder affectionately with a, “Jesus fuck, buddy, sucks to watch you do that on this side of it.” Shane manages a half-smile, and he bumps shoulders with Ilya, which makes him fully smile as they line up for the puck once more.
And then Gilbert Goddamn Motherfucking Comeau hits him so hard in an illegal check that he gets airtime, elbow catching on the edge of the boards as he comes down, wrenching his shoulder in a way that sends out a loud, sickening pop that sounds like it should carry all the way up to the stands with how loud is sounds to him.
Face pressed to the ice, trying to breathe through the mind-fuzzing pain of it, he hears a distant roar of rage that he knows is Ilya before he even puts a name to the voice, and then there are echoing roars all around him as the ice descends into chaos as people pair off in fights.
For his own part, he’s currently a little busy trying not to fucking puke.
“Christ, capitaine,” he hears JJ say, the man himself appearing in his field of vision a moment later, “you know how to go down with style, eh?”
Given how sparse their texting has been after everything went down the way it did, the shock of JJ actually talking to him in public is almost enough to distract him from the shrieking pain in his shoulder.
Almost.
“You know me,” Shane tries to joke, but there’s an edge to it that slips out before he can stop it, and it makes JJ hesitate, just for a moment, emotions flickering across his face too fast to track. Shane half-thinks he’s going to about-face and skate away, but he just shakes his head like he’s clearing it of something and then kneels, helping Shane sit up. Shane’s made it to his knees when Hayden manages to make it through the fray, wincing with sympathy when he sees the slack way Shane’s left arm is hanging.
“Well, shit, buddy,” he says cheerfully, and unexpected understatement that it is, it actually manages to get a small laugh out of Shane, which he regrets immediately when the motion makes the pain in his shoulder flare up like a hot poker jabbed into the joint, leaving him closing his eyes tight and breathing through it until his ears stop ringing. He flinches slightly when an arm goes around his back, but Hayden’s voice, quiet but close enough to his ear for him to hear it, lets him know who it is, and he doesn’t have it in him to fight the help, not when he does indeed seem to need it based on how unsteady he feels.
And no matter how much he knows there’ll probably be vile things splashed all over Twitter about this later, speculations about if Hayden is fucking Shane, too, if there’s a gay love triangle with-
“Alright, here we go,” Hayden says, tugging him up with him, JJ surprising him by helping on the other side and then skating ahead of them, pushing people out of the way to get them a clear path through. Halfway through, a bloody-nosed Dykstra disengages from his own brawl to help in the effort, and Shane tries very hard not to imagine what people must be saying about poor, delicate Shane Hollander needing a whole fucking entourage just to get off the ice.
He only resists pulling away from Hayden because he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t let go if he tried, and a struggle between them would just invite further questions.
Still, it’s a relief when he gets handed off to the medics, tossing a thanks over his fucked shoulder and then blessedly moving out of range of cameras and witnesses and everything else that’s going to come back to haunt him later.
*
When Shane wakes up, groggy and disoriented, it takes him a long, long moment to place why his sheets are suddenly scratchy and his pajamas are so bad-feeling and his bedroom smells so hospital-y.
As it turns out, it’s because he’s in a hospital. Go figure.
“Hi.”
When his brain has had enough time to register the word, he turns his head to find Ilya sitting in the chair next to him, looking tired. He lifts his eyebrows at the bruise Ilya is sporting across his cheekbone, and Ilya smiles faintly, tilting his head to give Shane a better view.
“Is fine,” he says, still letting Shane reach out with clumsy fingers to touch it, like just touching will let him know if it’s anything to worry about or not. Ilya winces when he presses a little too hard, but the bone doesn’t give, and Shane decides to call his investigation good enough. He rests his arm back against the mattress, and Ilya takes his hand in his own, holding it in his palm like something precious.
Or something fragile, Shane thinks, wondering exactly what headlines have made it out by now.
“Makes me extra-handsome, yes?” Ilya asks with a wink, and Shane wishes he had it in him to flirt back. As it is, all he can think about is what pictures everyone must have gotten, what they’re saying about them now, how many people are congratulating Comeau on a job well done, how many people are hoping Shane took a hit that will knock him out of hockey for good, how many-
It’s not until Ilya rests a hand on the top of his head and kisses him in the way he does when he’s trying to snap Shane out of a spiral in his head that he realizes what his husband kept glancing at was the machine next to him telling Ilya exactly how fast his heart started beating.
“I’m fine,” he says, before Ilya even pulls back.
“Hm, yes,” Ilya says, clearly doubtful as he shifts to sit on the edge of the bed. “The machine telling me you are having heart attack is making that very clear.”
“Can’t help it,” Shane says, managing to recover enough to try and do damage control. “My husband’s hot as fuck. It’s not my fault if looking at him gets me going.” He winks, and he resists the urge to make a face when Ilya’s expression stays soft instead of going playful, like what Shane’s saying is pitiable instead of flirtatious.
“They said you can sign out in a few hours,” Ilya says, clearly trying to make a guess about what exactly was upsetting him.
Shane makes a conscious effort to remember that it’s love making Ilya try to manage him, not pity.
It’s harder than he would like it to be.
“Then I get to take you home and spoil you until you feel better,” Ilya teases, touching his nose playfully.
Shane isn’t proud of how immediately it stabs right at the painful, angry thing in his chest, but he also can’t fucking help it.
“I don’t need to be spoiled,” he says, voice hard despite his attempts to make it not be.
Ilya seems thrown by the heat of it, tilting his head slightly as he tries to work out what’s happening.
“I’m fine, Ilya,” Shane says. “You don’t have to stay here. You can-”
“I am going to not stay with my husband when he is in hospital?” Ilya asks in disbelief.
“You should go get some sleep,” Shane says. “Our stuff has to get packed up anyway, and you always throw your shit everywhere.” He doesn’t want to fight with his husband. He doesn’t want to be saying these things. He doesn’t want to send Ilya away.
But he needs to not feel like he’s something delicate Ilya has to wrap in tissue paper.
“I don’t sleep well without you,” Ilya says, leaning down to kiss him. “You know this. I will wait until we are home and in our bed.”
“That’s not the-”
“Shane,” Ilya interrupts. “Why are you fighting me right now? What is happening?”
Shane looks away, shaking his head slightly, and he makes a noise of complaint when Ilya nudges at him, pushing him carefully into sitting up and then climbing in the bed with him, slipping behind him and settling him between his legs, pulling Shane back to rest against him like he’s a sentient recliner.
“Someone’s going to see us and-”
“And know I love my husband, who is hurt and trying to fight with me for some reason,” Ilya says, kissing his cheek, his ear.
Shane exhales, unsure what he’s even really annoyed with right now, but his body is too attuned to Ilya to resist it when his muscles start relaxing from the contact even without any conscious effort from him. Ilya leans to the side and takes gentle hold of his chin, pulling him into a kiss, sweet and soft.
“Talk to me,” he breathes against Shane’s mouth. “What’s wrong, dorogoy?”
“Nothing’s-”
“I cannot fix it if I do not know what hurts,” Ilya says, and Shane tries to pull his chin back, wound up by the words again in an instant, sweet as they are and gently as they’re meant. He makes a frustrated noise when Ilya refuses to release him, and he’s glaring when he looks up at him.
“I’m not something for you to fix,” he says, voice hard. “I’m your fucking husband.”
“I am aware,” Ilya says, voice losing some of its gentleness, replaced by frustration. “You think I do not know this?”
“I think you think I’m some fucking-fucking damsel you have to save,” Shane says, the painkillers managing the ache of his shoulder but also taking his already-limited filter with them, mouth moving faster than his brain can moderate. “We do the same fucking job, Ilya. I’m not-” He cuts himself off, tugging his chin free and looking forward again.
“You’re n-” Ilya starts to repeat, but Shane really and truly just cannot fucking do this here.
“I’m sorry,” he says, tilting his head enough to press his temple against Ilya’s jaw in apology. “My shoulder hurts and it’s making be an asshole. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t take it out on you.”
“Hm,” Ilya hums, consideringly, and Shane can tell he doesn’t quite buy it. “Do you want me get a nurse? To give you something more?” His fingers brush lightly over the sling holding Shane’s shoulder still.
God, and isn’t that just what he needs, even the medical staff at this hospital thinking he’s too fucking weak to handle his own pain management.
“No,” he says, leaning back a bit more to let Ilya hold more of his weight. “This is good.” And it is, really, Ilya warm and solid and steady behind him, his one unmoving thing in a world that got yanked from under his feet and still hasn’t fully settled months later.
(It’s possible the drugs are also making him maudlin in addition to grouchy at his husband for no reason.)
“I really love you,” he tells Ilya quietly.
“I love you, too,” Ilya says, voice just as soft. He presses a lingering kiss to Shane’s head. “Sleep now, okay? I will go back and pack things up later. I will even pair socks together correctly. Just for you.”
“Wow,” Shane says, unable to keep from smiling. “You are planning to spoil me.”
He drifts off to sleep once more to the sensation of gentle fingers moving across his skin and a chest rising and falling beneath him, slow and steady.
*
Shane hasn’t actually thought about Rosie The Narc Dog since the day they met.
Not until Ilya far-too-casually brings up that the organization reached out through Ilya’s DMs when they didn’t get an answer through Shane’s to say that Rosie can not only not mind her business, but she also apparently can’t pass service dog school because she can’t mind her business and won’t reliably focus only on one person.
“Okay…?” Shane trails off slowly, glancing at Ilya briefly. “And what does her flunking out of dog school have to do with us?”
“Well, she can’t go to the person who would have gotten her,” Ilya says, casually enough that Shane knows he’s given this conversation extensive thought. “And they know we already have one dog and the resources to have another. They thought maybe we would want to take her.”
“And why would we want to do that,” Shane says, flat enough that it fails to come out like a question.
“I thought maybe you would want to have her here, with us. Maybe.”
“And why,” Shane says, slowly and carefully and neutrally because he’s an adult and can talk to his husband without getting pissy over a stupid dog, “would I want to have her here with us?”
“I thought maybe it would help,” Ilya says, tone even in a way that's immensely irritating, as if Shane is some fragile fucking wild animal who needs to be handled gently. “Anya was good for me. Maybe Rosie will be good for you.”
“And what exactly is a defective dog supposed to help me with?” Shane asks dryly, knowing there's more acid in his voice than there should be but unable to help it.
“She's not ‘defective,’” Ilya says, as if the stupid dog is here and would be able to understand him even if she was. “She's-”
“She can't do the fucking job she was trained for, so they're getting rid of her,” Shane says. “What else should I call her? She's defective.”
“Shane-” Ilya starts, and his tone takes scissors to Shane’s already-frayed patience.
“Don’t say my name like that,” he snaps, reaching for protein powder in the cabinet so he can finish prepping his stupid breakfast for the week and escape this conversation or maybe just fuck his husband until he feels something other than annoyed and frustrated.
He’ll decide based on whether Ilya drops this stupid conversation or not.
“Like what?” Ilya challenges, crossing his arms across his chest and leaning back against the counter.
“Like you’re afraid I’m going to fucking-fucking break or something,” Shane bites out, measuring out scoops of protein powder with a care he knows is going to make Ilya give him a look, as if it’s unreasonable to want to be able to accurately log his food so he can be sure he’s hitting his caloric and nutrient needs. It’s the reason he stopped weighing things out on a food scale, his husband’s Looks.
(...when Ilya’s around to witness it, at least.)
“I’m fine,” he says, tapping the scoop and depositing a small mound of powder into one container of oats before moving to the next, having to carefully tilt the container and tap it down to shift the powder to one side before scooping with his one functional arm because he’s getting to the end of the canister. He can only hope it’s going to last this mealprep.
It might actually make him do something that isn’t going to seem okay if it doesn’t.
“Yes,” Ilya says, and the clear doubt in his tone makes Shane clench his teeth. “You have said. Many times.”
“What are you getting at, Ilya?” He asks, ripping the bandaid off because he doesn’t have the patience right now to play these stupid games of his husband trying to invent problems where there aren’t any.
“You like hiring people for everything,” Ilya says, and Shane can feel his eyes on him like a physical thing. “Maybe you hire someone to make sure you are fine.”
“I don’t need to be in therapy, Ilya,” Shane scoffs before he actually thinks about it, too focused on making his husband see he’s fine to consider that there was maybe a better way to phrase it.
“Because it's bad to be in therapy?” Ilya asks, tone less gentle now. “Because there is something wrong with it?”
“That's not-” Frustrated, Shane slams the container of protein powder down, misjudging it enough to make it topple over the edge of the counter and sending a cloud of artificially sweetened chocolate all around him as it falls.
It certainly does nothing to fix his mood.
“Don't put words in my mouth,” he snaps, moving to grab a dishcloth.
“Then put them there yourself and talk to me.”
Ilya intercepts him on his way back to the mess, taking him by the shoulders–immediately moving to the bicep of his injured one–and just holding on tighter when Shane tries to shrug him off.
“Shane, I am not trying to fight with you,” Ilya says, and Shane resists the hand at his chin that tries to demand eye contact, keeping his gaze focused firmly just past Ilya’s left ear.
“Then don’t,” Shane says flatly.
“I am worried, moy lyubimyy,” Ilya says, squeezing him gently. “I know you are ‘fine’-”
“Then there doesn’t need to be a but like you’re about to say,” Shane says, making a frustrated noise when Ilya still doesn’t let go of him. “Drop it, Ilya.”
Now he does look at his husband, keeping his expression hard. It almost breaks against the clear worry in Ilya’s, but he holds firm, white-knuckling his irritation because it’s the easiest thing to feel.
The only thing he can let himself feel.
Finally, Ilya sighs, and Shane grumbles but allows it when he’s tugged forward, wrapped up in a hug that’s far too gentle. He barely returns it, his good hand resting at Ilya’s waist but not wrapping tight the way he usually would.
“I love you,” Ilya says, softly, squeezing him once. “You know this, yes?”
“I know,” Shane says, toneless. “I love you, too.”
The way Ilya holds him tighter for a moment says he didn’t find it very reassuring.
Shane doesn’t have it in him to try again.
*
Driven to it by Ilya being unable to leave him alone or not, he does feel bad about their disagreement after he’s cooled off from the heat of it. He knows therapy has helped Ilya, and he would never want to make him feel bad about going or like Shane doesn’t fully support him doing what he needs to do to feel okay. He’d attempted to make his apologies this morning with words and a blowjob, but he still gets the feeling that Ilya still hasn’t fully let it go.
So.
Now there is a service dog school dropout in his backseat, the process of acquiring her made even smoother by the home check Ilya apparently did without telling Shane he did it.
Motherfucker.
“I hope you get along with other dogs,” he tells Rosie as he makes the turn towards their neighborhood. “Because Anya is basically Ilya’s biological child, so if you don’t get along with her, you’re going to be out.”
Rosie seems unconcerned, sitting happily in her assigned seat, harness connected to the seatbelt with the safety strap he originally bought for Anya after reading horror stories about dogs in car accidents when he was doing research after Ilya first got her. He makes a mental note that he’ll need to buy a second one now, wishing he’d thought of it before he placed the Chewy order earlier for food and another bed.
“And you’re his dog,” he tells her firmly. “I don’t really like dogs. I’m sure you’re…fine or whatever, but Ilya is the one who likes dogs. Not me.”
A huff of breath is his only response as Rosie continues looking out the window, like she’s taking stock of her new home.
“And I’m serious about you getting along with Anya,” he tells her, needing to drive the point home. “I think he’d even get rid of me if I didn’t play nice with her.” It’s only halfway a joke. “So if you try to-I don’t know, be dominant or whatever dogs do, you’re going right back until someone else can take you. You got it?”
Rosie sneezes.
Shane chooses to take it as a yes.
*
“Ilya!” Shane calls the next day, when he’s already regretting the defective dog he brought home who won’t get the fuck off of him. “Ilya, get your dog!”
“Anya is already here with me!” Ilya calls back from the kitchen.
“No, the other dog!” He yells back, trying to push Rosie off again only to have her somehow manage to flop over him even heavier. He could try and push her off, but he’d feel bad if he hurt her while doing it.
And Ilya would also probably be pissed about it.
“She won’t get off of me!” He yells. “Call her.”
His fatal mistake had been needing to take a knee when an email from his PR firm had come through to let him know they wanted to schedule “a talk” with him, like that wasn’t the most ominous fucking thing they possibly could have asked to do. With Ilya in the other room, he’d thought he was safe to just ride the panic attack out privately and get his shit together with no one needing to know about it.
Until this stupid dog all but tackled him to the ground and then climbed on top of him.
“Ilya!” He calls, impatient now and ready to get the fuck off of the floor.
Ilya appears around the doorframe, lifting his eyebrows and looking amused as he takes in Shane’s plight. He approaches, Anya at his heels, quirking her head from side to side like she’s trying to figure out what game they’re playing. Ilya smirks.
Shane glares.
“Get your stupid dog off of me,” he demands.
“Hm,” Ilya says thoughtfully before shrugging. “She looks comfortable, Hollander. Is rude to disturb a lady.”
“Ilya-” He starts, speaking through his teeth.
“Take a nap or something,” Ilya says, sounding way, way too fucking happy. He leans down, but just to scratch behind Shane’s captor’s ears. “Good girl, Rosie.”
Rosie’s tail thumps even as she remains a heavy, unwieldy weight over him.
“Bad girl, Rosie,” Shane tells her.
All the comment gets him is a wet nose to the mouth.