Chapter Text
At the tender age of 21, Shane Hollander decided that strategically it was the best time to lose his virginity. This is how he approached all rites of passage, finding a place to carefully schedule them amongst other milestones to optimize his career.
If he waited any longer, he might let the pursuit distract him too much and that could push him off his plans. If he waited any longer, he'd have to figure it out in the middle of his rookie season, which would distract him and potentially shorten his chances at earning the Calder or his first Conn Smythe. He wouldn't understand the locker room talk around him, which his teammates would notice, and it could become his thing. The thing they chirped him over and formulated his first nickname around, which was hugely important and could really set the tone for the rest of his career.
Up until this year, his sole focus from the time he turned 3 was hockey. He would play at every conceivable level because Canada had the good sense to treat hockey like the holy covenant it was. He was drafted at 18 by the Montreal Metros but delayed his jump to the NHL because he had read several studies that well developed players, collegiate players, went on to perform better and longer into their careers in the NHL. He also knew a body could only last so long in this sport and an education would be easy enough to earn while playing on Boston College's team, the Eagles.
So far, he had stuck to that careful plan he and his mother had agreed on, with a dogmatic obedience. Everything he put in his body was in service of making him a better player. Even when he allowed his teammates to get him shitfaced on his birthday, it was to make them a better unit, to feel camaraderie. Chemistry and trust helped them score goals and scoring goals was the whole fucking point.
Even his roommate had a place on the path to Shane becoming the best hockey player possible.
He and Ilya Rozanov were teammates, and for the last year, roommates. He wouldn't say they were friends exactly, but they could be friendly. They didn't fight often, only sometimes over dirty dishes and noise. They bickered constantly though. It rarely had any bite, and usually was very stupid or funny, and genuinely just how they communicated with one another.
He'd also been drafted at 18 like Shane, but by the Boston Bears. He would stay in Boston eventually when he was ready to jump to the NHL. They both had some "development" as players to work on and their teams had felt it was best for them to play at the collegiate level a bit longer.
Maybe they also had an ‘each other’ problem on the ice. Neither of them were lacking in talent, which was unfortunate for anyone forced to coach or play on a team with them. Had they just been mediocre, kicking them down through the leagues would have been an easy decision. He and Rozanov were generational talents, but they were both too sharp around the edges at 18. Both too gifted in so many ways that naturally parts of them remained woefully underdeveloped. Rozanov was told he could come off undisciplined, careless, and Shane too disciplined, rigid. It was easy to see why their trainers from each team and Boston College coaches threw them at each other. ‘Iron sharpens iron' one trainer had mumbled with all the joy of someone complimenting a tragedy.
Maybe their coaches had also seen a bit of what they discovered themselves, eventually: Rozanov needed stability and structure, and Hollander needed to get out of his head.
When he and Rozanov first met at Boston College, they were instantly at each other's throats. Shane couldn't even remember what got them going the first time, but they'd dropped gloves during a face off and had to be benched for the rest of the day. Eventually, he and Rozanov had come to a shaky truce and upgraded their beef to professional rivals since they'd be playing for teams with a well documented hatred for one another.
They had both put up a good fight when their coaches went as far as rooming them together in the campus apartments over last summer, but they'd survived it, and hated to admit that they were improving each other's games. Rozanov made him a much better player, and no one else on their team was even close to as good as they were.
What shocked him most about living with Rozanov was how normal he seemed to be? Like sure he was a pain in the ass, and listened to movies way too fucking loud, and drank soda like someone was going to ban it any day now. But overall he was clean, kept their spaces neat, and seemed to only relish fucking with Shane at times with the most potential to annoy him. He never really seemed to want to upset him seriously, not intentionally, and so they co-existed mostly peacefully. And over the past year, with Ilya staying in Boston more over the holidays, they'd even become—dare he say—friends.
They still kept up a mask of icy indifference around their teammates. And on the ice, they never ever let up on each other. Ever. And Shane respected that about his roommate. Despite their bickering and uneasy truce, he never seemed to punch down with Shane, and always recognized him as an equal in their sport. He'd tease him, sure, for his allegiance to drinking sludge each morning and calling it "breakfast" or the certain way he liked their mugs organized and towels folded, but never in front of others, and never to hurt him. In fact, one time Rozanov overheard Shane's best friend Hayden giving him shit about something low stakes and came to his defense rather aggressively. Shane assumed it was something lost in translation and he explained that Hayden didn't mean anything by it, that they always joked that way. It didn't seem to matter to Rozanov. He'd backed down that day, but never really gave Hayden another chance after that. He generally seemed to tolerate him only for Shane and even then just barely.
He would have never imagined, when he was first complaining to his parents about the living arrangements, that a year later Rozanov would always arrange the dishes and fold the towels exactly as Shane asked. Or that through what he would claim was excessive coercion, Shane would find out which value meals he liked most at McDonald's, Wendy's, Taco Bell, and Raising Cane's.
People were unpredictable, and as much as he tried to factor in a level of uncertainty, he had his blind spots, naturally. Rozanov had always been a big blindspot.
With his play steadily improving beyond what his trainers had hoped for, he knew he’d be ready for Montreal soon and Rozanov would be ready for Boston. It had to be now. And he told himself, this goal too was still in service of his one true savior: hockey.
First, however, he had to figure something out.
Shane had a suspicion that he wasn't entirely straight. He'd fooled around with girls, and had no shortage of women who talked to him, stopped him after class, touched his arms and hair and laughed at things he said that were not meant to be funny, but he wasn't always sure what they really wanted or their motives. He knew they were attracted to him, he was not sure he was fully attracted to them.
When he jerked off, to release that pent up pressure that came no matter what, he didn't always think about women. He tried to, their smiles and touches, the drunken fooling around he'd done a few times, but it felt creepy to him to try and imagine their naked bodies the way other guys said they did. He watched porn once or twice and that felt like an intrusion too, and the women didn't look very happy to be there, not really. The guys were okay though, they seemed to be enjoying themselves, their bodies were impressive and it made him think of that stretch of skin from shoulder to hip on other men he'd seen in locker rooms. None of the bodies that came to mind were specific teammates or had names, most of the time not even faces, just flexing muscles, cascading soapy water running down chests and stomachs and...
In the showers, everyone's eyes dart around a bit. They all look, but you're not supposed to linger. You can glance, you can size other men up, but you're not supposed to enjoy it. So that's what he had, snapshots from quick glances, that didn't match up to any names which would make it weird and personal. And before he knew it, he was unspooling, the pressure released and a mess to deal with, but he could think again, focus.
He researched his sexuality, because that's just what he did when something was confusing. He read about it and thought maybe he was asexual, but then there was his best friend in secondary who he really really liked and sometimes stalked on Instagram now. That made him think maybe he just hadn't put the right amount of energy toward it, so he knew he had some things to figure out.
First, he'd have to find a girl that met three criteria: 1.) She had to be kind 2.) Would help if she was patient with him 3.) He should probably find her attractive in some way. Like her hair or her smile or hockey knowledge.
That last one narrowed the field to really good personalities. There was a girl in Social Psychology, Bethenny, who was the only other person in class who matched his tendency to finish assignments early. He thought they would probably get along okay. They liked some of the same things, and she had nice...hair and stuff. Shane thought she seemed to like him, might even be attracted to him. Sometimes when class was over, she took her time putting her books away and lingered by the door like she was worried she'd forgotten something. And sometimes Shane would ask her if she was okay, and help her look for whatever she'd lost. And usually, they never found it, but they always ended up talking about their other classes or hockey. Bethenny was a Flyers fan and from Philly, but he tried not to hold it against her. She had always been excited for him to be joining the Metros. Her brothers played hockey too, so she'd understand the demanding schedule of a player, which was definitely a plus.
He would ask Bethenny out on a date, and if that went well a second one, and then several more. Then eventually, when he felt safe and she felt ready, he'd reveal that he was inexperienced and would like to have that experience for the first time with her. She would totally appreciate the clear and open communication, and if she wasn't interested, well at least he'd made a new friend and maybe a study partner.
That was the plan.
That is not what happened.
He forgot to factor in one extremely important variable: People are not equations.
Shane managed to ask her out, which was a little awkward but nothing life ruining. And he managed to take her to a really nice restaurant he'd researched for their good reviews. Dinner went okay, he thought. She'd asked him if he wanted to come back to hers, and his gut instinct was to say 'no' because that wasn't part of the plan, but he was so new to this. He didn't want to make her feel bad or offend her, she might not give him a second date and he'd be back at square one.
He was a bit tired, and it was approaching his bed time, but she asked if he wanted to watch a movie. She seemed to know the movie she wanted to see, so luckily his input was not needed. Things started to go southward when she cozied up to his side on the couch, and Shane froze. She sensed his hesitation and sat back to look at him.
"Do you not wanna...cuddle?" She asked, her voice low. It wasn't that he didn't want to, he just wasn't expecting it. This level of physical touching wasn't supposed to happen until 3rd date, minimum. But he could adapt, just like on the ice, when your opponent surprises you, you adjust and you play the players, not the game.
"No, yeah I do, I just wasn't ex–totally, I want to," he smiled and took a deep breath to clear some of his stiffness. He rested his arm along the back of the sofa while Bethenny curled up against him. It wasn't so bad, he realized. She was warm and she smelled really nice, especially her hair. He wondered if he could get a peek at what shampoo she was using when he used the restroom.
Over the course of the film, her hands found different places to rest. First around his middle, on top of his stomach, then eventually she was rubbing his outer thigh, and then his inner thigh. He wasn't sure why she decided to do that, it seemed worrisome to try and focus on a movie she really liked while also rubbing his leg—
And then everything snapped into focus as her hand moved up much higher on his thigh. At the same time, he felt her shift against him and her breath tickle his neck, then a feather soft kiss. A question she was answering for him already.
Shane tensed up again, his heartbeat speeding and panic starting to creep up on him. She was kissing his neck and he was thinking that this was definitely not a first date level of touching. Maybe his research had been off. He knew he should have fact-checked that fucking Reddit post. But he could adapt right? Just because the plans had moved up exponentially in the past half hour, didn't mean this couldn't still go well. This was good, that she was very obviously interested, it certainly took the guessing out of things. And at the pace she was moving, he probably wouldn't have to do much of anything. She was on his lap now, straddling him and he gave up trying to watch the movie around her.
Bethenny held his face and he finally made eye contact, hoping the nerves he felt were normal first date nerves. She leaned in to kiss him and he was relieved when his mouth responded without much thought. He was a virgin but he was far from virginal. His first girlfriend in secondary, Lauren, had taken the time to teach him how to kiss properly and well. He often wished they'd stayed together long enough to lose their virginity together. They were kissing and Bethenny was moaning softly. Shane was thinking about how she couldn't have picked a worse time as tried to listen to the climax of the film.
When she pulled back, he stupidly thought that it was over, until she reached for his belt...
When he got back to their shared apartment, Rozanov was in the living area watching an action movie. It was loud and flashy, and visually fucking overwhelming, exactly the way he liked them and Shane hated them. But tonight, it could work to his advantage. He didn't know how he felt about how the night went yet, and he certainly didn't want to dissect it for the first time with Rozanov...right?
No, definitely not. He felt embarrassed and a little sad for reasons he couldn't name yet, but mostly just exhausted. Dating was going to be exhausting if he kept this up. There had to be a better way, but he'd worry about that tomorrow. For now, he just had to get to his room so he could decompress alone and maybe cry or jerk off or read, he couldn't tell yet.
Shane moved quietly through the shadows of the apartment and towards his room. Unfortunately, Rozanov was far too curious to allow him any peace tonight.
"Hollander, you were out late," the observation sounded a little accusatory as he flipped the television off and one of the lamps on, illuminating Shane and his scowl. He reminded Shane a little of the way parents in sitcoms waited up for their kids coming home too late. He knew with certainty that Rozanov wasn't waiting up for him, but he wasn't sure what the real reason was, nor did he care. Usually their roles were reversed, and Shane would hear him coming home with a disembodied laugh or heels clicking down their halls and probably making divots in the original hard wood floors. It was odd for him to be home alone on a Friday night, but not odd for him to still be awake.
"Yeah? I'm allowed to fucking go out, aren't I?" There was no need for him to be that sassy about this, but he was in a raw mood, overstimulated so much that his teeth itched. So, he took a deep breath and shucked off his coat. He was home now, he could relax, he told himself. As long as Rozanov didn't poke at anything soft.
"Yes, but you don't. Not this late, at least. And it wasn't with team, or I would have been there," he shrugged, unbothered by the attitude.
"I had a date," he started, unsure if he could get away with not saying more than that. Hell was still hot so there was no chance of Rozanov allowing that.
"A date? With who?" He didn't even try to hide his surprise.
"Bethenny Uster...she's in my Social Psychology class," he caved way too quickly, sounding dejected and dropping into the chair across from Rozanov. He let his head fall back and sighed, closing his eyes. Rozanov was being uncharacteristically quiet about the revelation until Shane's second sigh, like a prompt.
"Must have been pretty good date if you come home and zipper is still open, hm? Why are you being so...dramatic? Noisy breathing."
"Shit!" Shane sat up immediately, reaching to zip his fly, just as he thought the night's humiliations were all outside the walls of his apartment. "It wasn't good, not in that way. It wasn't good at all, actually."
"I never see you with girls, you don't bring any home. She must have been special to get a date. So, what happened?" He sounded casual, and his face was unreadable outside of a passive interest in the night's events. Shane knew he could just tell him to fuck off and go to his room, and try to forget about tonight, but something twisted harder at his stomach and felt almost relieved to have someone to talk to about it. Except he was really fucking bad at talking about things like this. It went so badly, and all he wanted was for it to go well, normal. Like everyone else. A stupid story to tell and he would be just like everyone else in that respect. Fucking unremarkable, and all anyone would focus on then was his hockey..
"Do you get hard when you kiss girls?" Shane blurted out suddenly, leaning in and resting his elbows on his knees, like he was discussing a hockey play. Rozanov blinked once and then twice.
"What the fuck, Hollander?"
"Well, do you? Cause I don't and I don't think I ever have," he breathed, airy and thin. Shane tried to recall the last time he got hard with a girl being the focus of that hard-on. A pretty blonde last year got very close, on her knees at a frat party. She’d led him up to an empty bedroom and like Bethenny, seemed perfectly happy to be driving the entire interaction. They kissed, but he was still thinking about the way one of his teammates had pressed against him in the packed little house earlier. He could feel the outline of his half-hard cock and Shane couldn’t stop wondering why he was hard in the first place. This poor girl had no idea he was thinking about grinding his ass against his teammate's cock, but he was hard and she was happy.
"Hollander—"
"And tonight I should have had something going on down there while Bethenny was on top of me," he confessed, his voice pitched up and breathy by the end of the sentence. He had always disliked how small girls were. That they couldn’t really throw their weight on him the way a hockey player could. The way a defensemen could fucking lay him out was comforting in some weird way. He was getting bigger each year, putting on more muscle, and it seemed to bring even more girls around than before. They were so pretty and delicate, like flowers, and he was so huge comparatively, it gave him anxiety. It was easier to let them be on top, too afraid he would crush or make them uncomfortable if he moved the wrong way.
"Hollander—"
"But I was totally soft, and oh god—she reached into my pants and it was like fucking marshmallows.” Their touch was always too soft, too gentle. It’s not like he wanted them to punch him in the dick, but maybe he wanted to feel a little worried they would.
"Hollander—"
"I think I somehow got softer when she touched me, fuck!" He was deep in his spiral now, his hands covering his face and rubbing it vigorously until his skin was flushed.
"Hollander, you are having panic attack. Calm down, take deep breath," Rozanov sounded genuinely concerned so he must look insane, he thought. He tried to breathe, a shaky inhale and halting exhale. Then another, and another, until they came easier and he sat back again. After that display, he was sure Rozanov would have a lovely time teasing him for the next century. He wasn't expecting what came next instead. "So, girls don't do it for you, no big deal. Now you know."
"But she was supposed to be the one I lost my virginity to. I made a plan and I just want to get it over with,” he groaned. Rozanov seemed to take in this information with a curious expression, but didn't comment on the revelation. Maybe he already knew, or guessed, or both. He was sure he had never gotten caught looking at anyone on his team, or someone would have said something already.
"Then you make new plan with someone else. Is simple." Rozanov shrugged. Of course he could and would make a new plan, but this one would have been so much more convenient. If he just liked girls, he could lose his virginity and be like everyone else. Then maybe one day, once he was retired or close to it, he’d figure out the guys part of things. Maybe.
But he wasn’t like everyone else. He had to go and be different. Again.
"You never answered my question," Shane reminded him suddenly, even more curious about the answer.
"Yes, Hollander. Kissing girls makes me hard sometimes, because I like girls," he told him with a heavy sigh.
"And I don't like girls." It was the first time Shane had thought it and said it out loud, and with an audience.
"It seems you do not, no." Shane must have looked even more dejected at this confirmation, because quickly after that Rozanov amended his statement. "But now you can go out with guys you do like, da? Boston is big place. 'Plenty of fish in the city', like they say."
"Do you mean 'plenty of fish in the sea'?"
"Boston is not a sea, is on land."
"Yeah, it's an idiom it means—never mind. I never said I liked guys. I might not be gay."
"No, you might not, but...you might be. Is not big deal, I like men too. I like both," he said casually, lightly, but Shane could tell he was waiting for a reaction. He was surprised, but also something else. A small pulse of warmth settled in his stomach at the thought, pleasant and even a bit like relief. He didn't have to guess anymore if his roommate would be okay if he turned out to be into men. This fucker never ceased to amaze him.
"Oh. You've been with guys before? Here at university?"
"Yes, but no. Back home in Russia, my coach's son."
"How did you figure out you were into men?"
"I always had a feeling I was. I got curious about Sasha, and we experimented," his eyebrows waggled suggestively, making Shane roll his eyes. He was surprised that he could imagine it easily. Rozanov, after training, in a locker room across the world, sweaty and muscled and…curious. He couldn't imagine any man saying no to him.
While most of the bodies in the locker room didn’t have faces or names, Rozanov’s had been identified by proximity. Seeing it again at home, now he knew which torso he was and he didn’t want to think about how often it made an appearance in his fantasies.
"So I need to experiment, hmm." Shane got lost for a moment in the thought of conducting empirical research on his sexuality in the pursuit of losing his virginity. It made perfect sense. Why shouldn't he be thorough and treat his own self discovery with the care it deserved.
"Yes but...not in the way you do experiments for class. You have that expression you get when you're studying at the table. I am worried now."
"Well, experimenting can happen for any topic, you just have to define the parameters and monitor the results. That's all I'm going to do. I'll start a journal to record my results, methods and various data points and enter them into a spreadsheet, and by the end of it, I'll know exactly what I like and what that person will be like, look like, smell like. It'll make finding partners much easier going forward." Somewhere in the middle of his spiel he stood up and began pacing, gesticulating with his hands. The crease in Rozanov's brow grew deeper and deeper.
"Of course you would make sex boring before you even have it, Hollander," he groaned, looking disgusted.
"Well, we can't all be as charming and self-assured as you."
"You do not need to be charming, with a pretty face like yours." Said face began to flush again, this time from the inside, a bloom of that warmth that kept happening. Shane swallowed and shook his head to clear it.
"I don't want someone who just likes my face, they need to like all of me."
"To fuck you? No, they do not. And neither do you." And that's when the idea hit him.
He needed guidance, he needed an expert and he was living with "Russia's Greatest Love Machine" , which some of the team called him, affectionately. Not enlisting him in this endeavor would be living with a NASA scientist while trying to build a backyard rocket. Rozanov was a NASA scientist of sex and Shane was planning to have sex for the first time, it felt like the universe was handing him a win after such a terrible night.
"You know a lot about this stuff."
"Hollander, are you calling me a whore?" He laughed.
"No! I mean, you're just...experienced. I meant that you could maybe help me with my...experiment."
"With your boring sex equations," he scoffed.
"With my strategic efforts to lose my virginity. You can help me, you'll be a great source of information!" Shane stood, his mind already moving faster than his mouth could.
"My first piece of advice is that you stop saying 'virginity.' Makes you sound like child."
"Fine, my strategic efforts to get laid. Better?"
"No. I did not agree to this."
"It's just me asking you questions and stuff, it won't be anything difficult." At this, Rozanov mumbled something in Russian Shane wished he understood. "Is that a yes?"
"No, is 'I am doing this under protest because you will keep interrupting my movies with panic attack if I do not,'" he sighed. Shane smiled, looking delighted and in much better spirits than when he came home that night.
"Good enough for me! I'll need to formulate my hypothesis and set up my spreadsheet, and decide which data points would be most relevant. We'll get started in the morning!" Shane gathered his coat and headed down the hall. He left Rozanov in the living room, but heard more Russian grumbling before he closed his bedroom door, which made him smile to himself.
Before he slept that night, Shane took out a new, blank notebook. At the start of each semester, his mom always gave him several of his favorite brand of leather-bound journals. Most of them were used for note-taking, and so would this one, he reasoned. Just a different kind of note-taking. He wrote the date and time then paused, thinking of what the most relevant information of the night would be.
[Written in his journal]
Question: Who am I attracted to?
Research:
Date with Bethenny Uster (dinner at nice place, hang at her place after, attempted hook-up)
Debrief with Rozanov (Full meltdown, confession from him, confirmation of a few things)
Various articles on LGBTQIA+ identitiesObservations:
- I've only ever dated women.
- I've only dated one girl seriously. (10th grade to 12th)
- It ended amicably, we had no sexual activity aside from kissing and hand stuff briefly.
- Sometimes I think about male bodies
- I've never dated any men or kissed any or done anything sexual or romantic with men
- The idea of being with a guy is terrifying, but not repulsive, and not terrifying in the same way as the idea of being with women. Maybe terrifying that I’ll enjoy it and what that would mean for the rest of my life.Hypothesis #1
The Bethenny Uster trial suggests that sexual attraction to women is completely absent rather than delayed, situational, or dependent on familiarity. Further testing is required to determine whether attraction is absent across all genders or merely directed toward men. But we can conclude definitively that I am not straight. This does not preclude friendships with women, as I rather like talking to Bethenny in class. If she ever speaks to me again.Experiment #1
Compare internal response to male attention against the Bethenny Uster trial.
Key indicators
• Proximity: tolerable or magnetic?
• Feeling wanted: exciting or merely pleasant?
• Kissing: obligatory or exciting possibility?
• Physical: does the body respond to the above favorably?
Determine if escalation of physical contact produces anxiety because it is unwanted or very much wanted.
Tomorrow, everything would be better. He just had to figure out where to meet non-hockey guys, safely. How fucking hard could that be? In a city of 330,000 men, roughly 58,000 of them gay. He could handle those odds.