Chapter Text
The week after Shane came out to the room felt, in technical terms, like absolute shit.
It was not that anyone said anything outright.
It was the way conversation shifted when he walked into it, like someone had yanked the cord on a lamp and left the room dimmer. It was the way two of the younger guys, who had previously thought nothing of changing in the middle of the room with all the shame of Roman emperors, suddenly started clutching towels around their waists like Victorian maidens protecting their virtue and jokes which died half-born when he was in the vicinity and how his presence seemed to make everyone aware of their own limbs.
Shane hated it.
He hated that he noticed it and couldn’t stop noticing it. Hated most of all that the whole thing had not even happened according to plan.
There had been a plan.
A good plan, actually. A foolproof, Shane Hollander plan, which meant it had spreadsheets in his head and projected outcomes and an acceptable margin of emotional catastrophe.
He and Ilya had discussed timelines and scenarios in whispered conversations with the sheets tangled around their legs. There had been strategy, patience and intent.
Then one of the defensemen had laughed in the locker room after practice and said something ugly about Scott Hunter kissing Kip on the ice at the end of last season, something sneering and small and mean, and Shane had felt the floor tilt under him.
He remembered the exact sensation of it of heart slamming, skin going hot and every instinct he had screaming at him to stay quiet and stay safe and do this later....
....and then another instinct, older and fiercer and far less reasonable, had ripped through him.
“Yeah?” Shane had snapped, voice like a knife. “You saying that also insults me, so fuck off.”
The room had gone silent, so much they could hear the Zamboni in the rink beginning it's solo dance on the ice and as if the whole world had inhaled and forgotten how to exhale.
The player had paused, looking dumbfounded and not fully certain he relied on his hearing. “What?”
Shane’s pulse had roared in his ears. His hands had been shaking, which was humiliating, so he shoved them under his arms and made himself stand there.
“I said,” he had replied, every word clipped to death, “if you’ve got a problem with gay players, congratulations, that includes me. So maybe keep your Neanderthal bullshit to yourself.”
He had not waited around for the aftermath. He had walked out on legs that felt half-borrowed and locked himself in a bathroom stall and stared at the metal door while his body remembered how panic worked.
That had been seven days ago.
Seven days of sideways looks and weirdness. Seven days of feeling as if he had somehow become nuclear and radioactive.
He told himself he was imagining half of it, that it was panic and anxiety and his brain doing those bastard tricks.
It and he was not.
By Friday, he was wound so tight he thought one more awkward pause might make him actually burst into flames.
Practice had been brutal, bag-skate adjacent, and by the time they all dragged themselves into the locker room, the air was heavy with sweat, damp gear, and the low-grade suffering of professional athletes pretending they were not exhausted.
Shane sat on the bench at his stall and unlaced his skates with quick, sharp motions. Around him, conversation sputtered in weird little starts and stops.
He could feel it again.
That subtle awareness every time he moved. Every time he spoke or he looked up and someone abruptly looked somewhere else.
He wanted to scream.
Instead, he yanked off one skate and was reaching for the other when someone across the room said, far too loudly, “Hollander.”
Shane looked up automatically.
And instantly gagged.
It was not dignified, or subtle but a full-body, visceral recoil of horror.
Because there, standing in the middle of the room like a sacrificial idiot, was Mathieu Bouchard completely naked like the day he was born.
Just naked. There was no towel on the floor that suggested incident or a slip, no otherworldly excuse for just why Bouchard was currently cursing Shane in every way with that.
Shane made a strangled, choking sound and clapped a hand over his face as he wordlessly tried to stop himself from gagging further. “What– Jesus Christ– what is this? Put it away!”
Then somebody, from the back, muttered, “Oh my God.”
Mathieu was still standing there. Still naked and somewhat under the impression that this had been a good idea.
Shane peeked between his fingers just long enough to confirm that yes, unfortunately, the situation remained exactly as terrible as he had first assessed, then covered his eyes again.
“Bouchard,” he said, voice climbing, “if you do not put some fucking clothes on right now, I’m going to march you and your dick to HR!”
Mathieu, sounding offended, said, “You gagged.”
“Yes,” Shane snapped. “Because you’re naked in front of me!”
Half the team started wheezing on laughter whilst he other half looked like they wanted the floor to open up and swallow them.
Hayden, who had been toweling off two stalls down, sat down hard on the bench with a snort and buried his face in his shoulder to muffle himself.
Mathieu, to his credit, at least had the decency to look uncertain now. “It was just– we were just trying to–”
Shane dropped his hand from his face and stared at him in disbelief. “Trying to what?”
Nobody answered. Which, in retrospect, was answer enough.
Shane looked from one face to the next. At the guilty expressions. The badly hidden curiosity. The one guy who had the nerve to avoid eye contact as if that somehow made him less involved.
Then understanding hit, and with it, something hot and ugly in his stomach and he genuinely had to fight down the urge to vomit for real.
“Oh my God,” he said flatly. “You were testing me.”
No one denied it.
Mathieu crossed his arms over himself, which was frankly too late to be useful. “We just wanted to know–”
“How noble.”
“–if you were, you know. Looking.” he finished, lamely, embarrassment already high on his cheeks.
Shane stared murderously, and here was a rare moment in his life when language failed for half a second. Then it came roaring back.
Marc Beaulieu, displaying the survival instincts of a pigeon, offered, “You can understand why we’d wonder.”
Shane turned his head with terrifying slowness. “Can I?”
The room was quiet and tension awkward.
“No, really,” he went on, voice going silkier and more dangerous with every syllable. “Explain it to me. Take me on that journey. Because I’m dying to hear how you all managed to land on because Shane is gay, Shane must obviously be lusting after every mediocre man within a ten-foot radius.”
“Whoa,” muttered one of the defensemen.
“Oh, don’t whoa me, I’m just getting started.” He folded his arms once more, eyes blazing. “Please, enlighten me. Walk me through the brilliant hockey-bro logic that led you geniuses to this conclusion.”
Down from him, Hayden was no longer even pretending to be normal. He had a towel over his mouth and tears in his eyes darting between Shane and the others.
Mathieu rallied badly. “That’s not what we meant.”
“No? Because from where I’m standing, it sounds very much like you all decided that me being gay means I’m predatory.” Shane said with a sneer. “Congratulations on the Olympic-level homophobia, by the way. Very progressive.”
“That’s not–” J.J. finally piped up, before faltering when Shane turned on him.
“Isn’t it?”
No one spoke further and Shane’s chest felt tight again. Underneath the fury was hurt, stupidly raw and painful.
Because he knew these men. Or had thought he did. He had bled with them and won with them and sat on flights half-asleep with his head knocking against their shoulders. And apparently one overheard confession and a week later they were holding a bizarre naked tribunal to determine whether he was secretly objectifying them all.
He laughed bitterly. “Let me simplify this for you. Do you find all women attractive?”
Mathieu blinked stupidly. “No.”
“No?” Shane echoed. “Interesting. So you are capable of understanding that being attracted to a gender does not mean being attracted to every single member of that gender? Groundbreaking. Truly revolutionary stuff. I’m so proud.”
A couple of guys looked at the floor. J.J. nodded, biting his lip.
“It’s just different,” someone muttered, Drapeau if Shane heard the tone right.
Shane swung toward the voice. “Different how? Different because it’s me? Because now suddenly you’re all imagining I’ve been leering at you in the shower? Cataloguing your sad mediocre asses? Please.” Shane spat with a scoff. “Spare me the fragile egos. None of you are that special.”
A scandalized cough came from somewhere by the tape table.
Shane pressed on with the righteous fury of a man who had finally found a target worthy of his irritation.
“For one thing, none of you are my type.”
This landed like a live grenade and several heads came up at once.
“What?” Mathieu said, affronted enough to forget his nudity entirely.
Shane laughed, this time with genuine disbelief. “Oh, now that’s the part you care about? Not the part where you treated me like a predator, but the part where I wounded your delicate little hockey-boy vanity?”
“You just said none of us–” J.J said, looking insulted.
“Yes,” Shane cut in. “None of you. Not a single one. Not even on your best day with perfect lighting and a following wind.”
“Come on,” said Louis Koch, one of the wingers, looking genuinely stung. “None?”
“Would you all like a PowerPoint?” Shane asked. “A pie chart? A rubric? Maybe a participation trophy for effort? I could rank you if that helps your delicate feelings. How about flashcards for the slow ones to enable you to keep up?”
Hayden made a choking noise behind his towel.
Comeau, far too invested now, said, “So what is your type, then?”
Shane opened his mouth to say nothing you need to know and then stopped.
Because if they were going to make him suffer, maybe they could suffer too.
He tilted his head.
“Well,” he said, with the deadly pleasantness of a man about to commit verbal violence, “if we’re doing this, let’s be accurate. My standards are actually quite high.”
“Oh my God,” Hayden whispered to no one.
Shane began ticking points off on his fingers.
“I like a man who is tall. Actually tall and not five-eleven and loud about it. Broad shoulders. Strong and competent. Preferably with a face that could ruin lives and a body that could bench-press your entire ego.”
Several Metros straightened unconsciously, then immediately looked annoyed at themselves for doing it.
Shane kept going, voice dripping with scorn.
“Dark blonde hair. Good hands. Very good hands, the kind that know exactly what they’re doing. Intimidating presence. Terrible personality at first glance, but in a compelling way that makes you stupid. Capable of shutting me up, which is rare and apparently beyond all of you. Smarter than all of you combined on your best day. Meaner than all of you when it counts. Better cheekbones than should legally be allowed. And ideally he should be able to look at me like he wants to kill me, kiss me and fuck me at the same time without needing a team meeting about it.”
The room had gone eerily still.
Hayden slowly lowered the towel from his face. His expression was ecstatic.
Shane, now fully committed to the bit and also perhaps exorcising several private demons, continued with the serene cruelty of a saint in designer athletic wear.
“He should also be able to keep up with me intellectually, physically, and emotionally, which already disqualifies most of this room on all three counts.”
A wounded “Hey” came from the back.
“I’m not finished.” Shane flicked his hand. “I appreciate discipline. Precision. Someone who can actually dress himself without looking like he lost a fight with a sporting goods store. Someone with depth and mystery and emotional repression so severe it circles back around into eroticism. You know actual fucking substance.”
Hayden doubled over laughing.
Mathieu, still somehow the main casualty here, said weakly, “That’s very specific.”
“Yes,” Shane said. “Because I’m a specific person with actual taste, unlike whatever this collective midlife crisis is.”
J.J. frowned. “So you like muscle, then?”
Shane looked him up and down in a way that conveyed disappointment. “Not yours. Yours look like they’re for show. I prefer the kind that actually deliver.”
Mathieu finally grabbed a towel and wrapped it around himself with the dazed air of a soldier returning from war. “Jesus Christ, Hollander.”
Shane picked up his shower bag.
He could have left it there. He should have left it there.
Instead he paused at the door, looked back over his shoulder at the collection of deeply offended, increasingly competitive professional athletes staring at him, and delivered the final blow.
“Oh,” he said lightly. “And I require, at minimum, nine inches.”
He held up both hands to demonstrate the length with chilling precision.
Then he smiled a calm and beautiful smile and walked out.
Behind him, the locker room dissolved into pandemonium.
In hindsight, Shane should have known that humiliating a room full of heterosexual hockey players and then informing them that none of them met his standards would not end peacefully.
He had assumed foolishly that shame would make them drop it.
Instead, it made them insane.
By Monday, the weirdness had evolved.
He walked into the room to find three of the defensemen doing push-ups shirtless before practice.
Not unusual in itself. What was unusual was the fact that they kept glancing up to see if he was watching.
Shane stopped in the doorway.
One of them, noticing him, did the hockey equivalent of fluffing his feathers and said, “Morning, Hollander.”
“Why are you doing push-ups in jeans?” Shane asked.
The player paused.
Hayden, already in his stall and taping his stick, did not even look up. “They heard you like muscle men.”
Shane turned. “Hayden.”
Hayden’s face was the picture of innocence. “What?”
By Wednesday it had somehow gotten worse.
One of the goalies, Mitty, started bringing him coffee.
Another defenseman held doors open for him with the focused intensity of a man trying to win a scholarship. Two forwards got into a disagreement over whether being “sensitive” meant talking about feelings or just saying the word vulnerability in a husky voice.
Hayden stoked every single flame.
It became his life’s work.
“Shane appreciates acts of service,” he said over lunch, just loudly enough for the nearby half of the room to hear.
Shane looked up from his salad. “I am sitting right here.”
Hayden nodded. “And?”
Across the table, one of the rookies immediately reached for Shane’s water bottle. “Need a refill?”
“No,” Shane said.
“Too late,” the rookie replied, and sprinted off with it.
Shane stared after him in horror.
Hayden beamed. “See? Flourishing.”
“You are a bad person.”
By the end of the week, the room had split into factions.
The Muscle Men, who had decided Shane obviously preferred a physically imposing type and therefore spent alarming amounts of time flexing in the vicinity of his stall or proving their strength by lifting and carrying things past him with huge grins.
The Soft Boys, who had somehow concluded from Hayden’s meddling that Shane wanted tenderness and emotional intelligence and thus started speaking to him like they were auditioning for an indie film.
And the Flirts, who seemed to think confidence was the deciding factor and had begun winking at him with catastrophic results.
“Morning, handsome,” Comeau said as he passed Shane at the tape table.
Shane looked at him for a long moment. “You look like someone whose mom still irons his bedsheets.”
Comeau looked confused. “What does that mean?”
“It means no.” Shane said with an eye roll.
Another time, J.J. dropped into the seat beside him after practice and said, in what he probably believed was a seductive voice, “You know, Hollander, I am actually very emotionally available.”
Shane did not look up from unwrapping his stick. “You threw a tantrum because they changed the ketchup brand in the players’ lounge, try again.”
The Soft Boys were possibly the worst.
One of them brought Shane a protein bar and said, “Just thought you might need fueling up.”
Another touched his shoulder after a bad drill and murmured, “You’ve got this, man. Proud of you.”
Shane recoiled like he’d been splashed with acid. “Why are you talking to me like I'm damaged goods?”
The player looked wounded. “I’m being gentle.”
“I don’t need gentle,” Shane said. “I need all of you to develop shame.”
It did not help that Hayden kept changing the criteria.
“Actually,” Hayden announced one afternoon while they were stretching, “I think Shane likes mystery.”
Three heads snapped up.
“Really?” asked Marc, already looking around for a pen as if to take notes.
Hayden nodded sagely. “A quiet intensity. Hidden depths. Could also be flirting, though,” Hayden added thoughtfully. “He likes banter. Bit of bite. Push and pull.”
One of the Flirts sat up straighter.
“Though,” Hayden continued, because he had the soul of a pyromaniac, “acts of service are still huge. Real huge. And I do think competence matters to him. Probably wants to feel challenged.”
“Hayden,” Shane said in a hiss that should have killed him where he stood.
Hayden ignored him. “And softness. Don’t underestimate softness. Shane likes people who act all hard and then turn out to be secretly sweet underneath.”
Now the whole room was listening.
Shane looked around at the gathering attention, at the dawning determination on several faces, and felt a genuine flicker of fear.
“This is how cults start,” he informed no one in particular.
No one cared.
Over the next few days, the peacocking escalated into what Shane could only describe as psychosexual community theatre.
The Muscle Men started staying late after practice to lift where he could see them.
The Soft Boys got really into checking in on his emotional state.
The Flirts sharpened their game until every trip to the coffee station felt like surviving a low-budget dating show.
J.J. offered to carry Shane’s bag to the bus.
Another casually mentioned he volunteered in the offseason.
A third leaned against the doorway of the trainer’s room and asked, “So what are you into, like, on a deeper level?”
Shane stared at him. “Peace. Quiet. The sweet release of death.”
The guy laughed as if that were flirting.
It was not.
And the worst part, truly the most humiliating part was that Shane couldn’t even be properly angry anymore because the whole thing was too absurd. Offense and bafflement kept tripping over each other inside him until all that was left was exhausted disbelief.
A week later he was tugging his hoodie over his head and reaching for the clean compression shirt laid out in his stall when Hayden dropped into the seat beside him wearing the smuggest expression known to man.
It was game day.
Montreal versus Ottawa.
Which already meant the room had a different kind of energy to it with every movement edged with anticipation. Equipment bags were open. Jerseys hung ready. Guys were stripping out of practice gear and into game prep layers, pads and compression shirts and the rituals they never admitted were rituals. Music thudded overhead. Someone was arguing with the trainer about tape. Someone else was spraying entirely too much cologne like the Centaurs were going to be defeated by upper notes of bergamot.
Shane, for his part, was trying very hard to behave like a normal person.
This was made difficult by the fact that he had spent the previous night being thoroughly, catastrophically ruined by one Ilya Rozanov.
His lower back still ached in a way that was both deeply satisfying and profoundly inconvenient, and there were fingerprints of that satisfaction all over him if one knew where to look. Which, in Shane’s defense, he had not.
He had showered and had dressed, looked in the mirror but he had not exactly craned around to inspect the back of his own shoulders, because unlike some people, he did not begin every day assuming he was the aftermath of an erotic wildlife attack.
Apparently he should have.
Hayden sat there for a moment, watching him with the serene delight of a man holding a live grenade and waiting for the right time to pull the pin.
Shane narrowed his eyes. “What.”
Hayden’s smile widened. “Nothing.”
“Hayden.” He warned.
“Well,” Hayden said, “Marc wrote you a poem.”
Shane closed his eyes. “I’m sorry?”
“A poem. Left it in your stall.” Hayden said, eyes alight in glee.
Shane looked down and there was, in fact, a folded piece of paper tucked by his gloves.
He opened it.
Roses are red
You are quite neat
I, too, have depth
And impressive cleats
Shane let out a pained moan as Hayden shook beside him, a genuine tear falling down his cheek.
“Oh my God,” Shane whispered. “I hate this.” His cheeks felt warm, the blush rising fast. It was sweet if not verging on cringe.
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” Shane admitted, folding the poem back up with terrible care, and absolutely promised himself he would stash it somewhere dark, unknown and away from Ilya purely for the concern of Marc's welfare.
The whole thing was getting ridiculous and Shane knew they had hurt him. They had been idiots and made him feel strange in his own skin for a week, and then somehow managed to overcorrect so hard they’d launched themselves into performance art.
But they were his idiots.
And maybe this was their graceless, mortifying way of trying to prove that nothing had changed except now they were all painfully aware that Shane Hollander had standards and they did not meet them.
Hayden nudged his shoulder. “For what it’s worth, they don’t think you’re predatory.”
Shane cringed. “No. Now they think I’m a judge at some deranged pageant.”
“You absolutely are.” Hayden grinned. “And for the record, your little speech ruined them. Half of them have been spiraling for days.”
“Good.”
“Mathieu googled whether cheekbones can be improved naturally.”
Shane let out a snort of amusement.
“J.J. asked me if emotional repression can be learned.”
That got another helpless laugh out of him and Hayden’s grin softened, just a little. “They were stupid.”
“Yes.” Shane said with a small sigh.
“They didn’t know how to act.”
“That is not my problem.” He replied, a little defensively.
“No,” Hayden agreed. “But they’re trying now. Very badly. Hilariously. But trying.”
Shane looked down at the poem in his hand.
Across the room, one of the Muscle Men was pretending not to flex while rearranging tape. A Soft Boy was helping someone fold towels for later with the solemn focus. One of the Flirts caught Shane looking and immediately winked so aggressively he nearly dislocated something.
Shane shuddered and Hayden burst out laughing again.
“You did this,” Shane said.
“I improved it.” Hayden replied innocently.
“You weaponized heterosexual insecurity.”
Hayden placed a hand over his heart. “For your amusement.”
Shane shook his head, but he was grinning now despite himself.
Then, from the other side of the room, a voice called, “Hey, Hollander.”
Shane, against all better judgment, looked up.
Drapeau straightened, softened his expression as if trying for mysterious tenderness, and asked, “Do you want the last yogurt from the team fridge? I saved it for you.”
Before Shane could answer, another voice cut in.
“No, no, he likes confidence,” said J.J., shoving Drapeau aside. He flashed what he clearly believed was a devastating grin. “Shane, after the match maybe you and I–”
A third interrupted, flexing. “He said he likes broad shoulders.”
Bouchard snapped, “He also said depth, dumbass.”
Shane sat frozen on the bench, bottom gear half-on, staring at the chaos unfolding in front of him like he had somehow slipped into another dimension.
Hayden leaned in close and said, with the deep satisfaction of a man watching a carefully nurtured fire take down an entire forest, “This is the best week of my life.”
Shane looked at him, then back at the Metros, who were now actively arguing over whether acts of service trumped banter.
Then down at the truly terrible poem still in his hands.
And because his life was a cosmic joke and because he missed a certain dark blonde rival so badly some days it felt like a bruise, and apparently this was what his coming out had become, not rejection but a roomful of baffled idiots trying to be wanted.......Shane laughed.
He laughed until his stomach hurt, relief and joy flooding through him.
Across the room, the noise faltered and everyone turned to look at him.
Shane stood, clutching his hands to his chest, and took in the lot of them with all the fond exasperation of a man uniquely cursed by God.
“You are all deeply embarrassing,” he informed them.
Then Mathieu, brave in the way only the terminally stupid can be, asked, “But like… in a promising way?”
Shane stared at him with soft disdain.
“Bouchard,” he said at last, “if you ever get naked at me again, I will kill you myself.”
Mathieu blushed as jeers echoed around the locker room and Shane turned once more to face his stall, finally pulling off his shirt and reached for the clean black compression top in his stall.
It should have been normal. It was normal.
Right up until J.J. glanced over, froze, and said, “Holy shit.”
Shane paused, one arm halfway into the compression shirt. “What now.”
No one answered immediately, which was ominous, and Hayden made a loud gasp and slapped a hand over his mouth.
Shane went still in his place, eyes widening and feeling anxiety creep in at just what they were reacting to.
Across from him, Louis was staring openly now. So was Mathieu. So, with all the subtlety God had denied him, was Marc. Their expressions moved in a wave from confusion to realization to something like scandalized awe.
Shane’s stomach dropped.
“What,” he said again, slower this time.
Hayden took a breath, failed to compose himself, and wheezed, “Oh my God.”
Shane turned to him. “Hayden.”
Hayden pointed helplessly at the back of Shane’s shoulders. “Your–”
Then he dissolved, bent double on the bench, laughing so hard he nearly inhaled a mouthguard.
Shane’s eyes narrowed to slits. “If you don’t start using nouns immediately, I’m going to kill you.”
One of the younger guys, still standing there holding his jersey, said in the tone usually reserved for natural disasters, “Dude.”
Mathieu, who had not learned nearly enough from his previous public humiliation, stepped closer and squinted. “Are those hickeys?”
Shane whipped around so fast he nearly strangled himself in the compression top. “Those are not–”
“They are absolutely hickeys,” Marc said, scandalized and delighted all at once.
“No,” Shane snapped.
“Yes,” said three people in unison.
Hayden made another awful, strangled noise of joy. “Oh my God, they’re all down the back of your shoulders.”
“Hayden, I will end you.”
“Um, someone,” Hayden gasped, clutching his ribs, “apparently tried to consume you from behind.”
The entire room lost it. Even the guys who had only been half-paying attention swung around now. Heads turned and conversation stopped. Every Metro with functioning eyesight immediately became invested in the situation.
Shane, with all the speed of a man trying to outrun his own body, yanked the compression shirt over his head and dragged it down hard.
It was too late. Far too late.
“Oh my God,” said one of the defensemen.
“That is a lot of surface area,” someone else observed.
“Was he angry at you?” another asked.
“No,” Hayden said before Shane could speak, tears streaming down his face, “that man was enthusiastic.”
Shane turned on him with murder in his eyes. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t,” Hayden said, still shaking. “Also, wow.”
Shane grabbed his jersey and began pulling it on with the tight, clipped movements of a man hanging onto dignity by his fingernails. His face was on fire. The back of his neck, apparently also on fire for additional reasons prickled under the fabric.
This was horrendous in the way the room had already spent two weeks spiraling over the fact that Shane had standards and they did not meet them, and now there was visible, physical evidence that those standards were not theoretical.
The room knew there was an actual man.
An actual man who had Shane Hollander in bed and apparently treated him like a five-course meal.
“Wait,” Marc said, sitting up straighter. “Wait. Your type.”
Shane's jaw clicked as ice trickled into his veins.
No. Absolutely not.
But the room had reached the conclusion before he could stop it.
Mathieu looked as if the heavens had opened. “Oh my God, that’s why he was so specific.”
J.J. pointed at Shane like he’d solved a mathmatical equation. “You described your boyfriend.”
Hayden was no longer even trying to be a decent person. “Oh, he absolutely did.”
“I did not!”
“You did,” Hayden said cheerfully. “Tall, broad shoulders, terrifying face, dark blonde hair, good hands, emotional repression so severe it circles back into eroticism–”
“Please stop talking,” Shane pleaded.
“–mean at first glance, smarter than all of us–”
“I mean that part was obvious,” muttered someone.
“–and capable of shutting Shane up, which frankly should’ve been our first clue.”
Shane, now half inside his jersey and half inside a stress response, looked at Hayden with profound betrayal. “You are not my friend.”
One of the rookies, eyes wide, said, “So your boyfriend is actually the guy who did that.”
He pointed vaguely at Shane’s back, then immediately lowered his hand when Shane’s glare cut toward him.
Mathieu frowned. “Okay, but that narrows it down how?”
“It narrows it down a lot,” J.J. said slowly, eyes still fixed on Shane in growing horror. “Because whoever did that is not, like, an accountant.”
“Maybe Shane likes accountants,” Marc said.
Shane gave him a look of 'please'
Marc nodded. “Okay, no, he does not.”
“He said broad shoulders,” Louis said, ticking it off on his fingers now. “Good hands. Competitive. Terrible personality.”
“Could be a gym guy,” Drapeau suggested. “Like a trainer.”
“Not a trainer,” Marc said, squinting at Shane. “He said smarter than all of us.”
“Trainers can be smart,” Comeau objected.
“Not the point. Shane was insulting us while describing someone specific. That means someone like us...but not us....or like hockey-adjacent.”
Then the room collectively seemed to realize what he had said.
Hockey.
Shane’s heart dropped straight through the floor.
“No,” he said immediately.
Nobody listened.
“Another player?” Mitty asked, voice climbing with scandalized joy.
“No,” Shane said again, wildly.
“Someone in the league?” Louis said.
“No.”
“Someone close by?” J.J. asked.
Shane should not have reacted.
But his eyes flicked, just once, toward the concrete wall that separated Montreal’s side of the building from Ottawa's end.
It was tiny, barely a movement but unfortunately, he was surrounded by professional athletes whose careers depended on noticing tiny movements.
Hayden saw it first.
His entire face lit up like Christmas morning.
“Oh,” he said softly.
Shane’s blood went cold. “No.” he repeated, each time the No appeared weaker and more desperate. Shane didn't even know what else he could say. His brain was going fuzzy and his skin was beginning to itch.
Mathieu looked toward the wall. Then back at Shane. Then toward the wall again.
“No fucking way,” he whispered.
The room went electric.
“Ottawa?” Drapeau said.
Shane couldn't even find words now.
Hayden made a sound like a teakettle reaching its final form. “Ottawa.”
“Shane,” Louis said, horrified and thrilled. “Your boyfriend plays for Ottawa?”
Shane paled.
“Your face says Ottawa,” Marc accused.
“My face says I hate this conversation.”
“No, no, wait.” Mathieu lifted both hands, suddenly businesslike. “We can figure this out.”
“Do not figure this out,” Shane said, his tone pained.
They ignored him with the unified focus of men who had found a puzzle and had absolutely no respect for privacy.
“Hayes?” Comeau suggested.
Someone immediately scoffed. “Hayes is the goalie.”
“So?”
“So Shane said good hands, not catching glove.”
“Also Hayes is light blonde,” J.J. added.
“Too blonde,” Louis agreed.
“And married,” Marc said.
“And straight,” Mitty said.
“Also,” Hayden added solemnly, “Shane would never date a goalie. He has standards.”
“Thank you,” Shane said before he could stop himself.
The group all snapped toward him.
Shane closed his eyes, mortified and kicking himself mentally.
Hayden pointed. “Interesting.”
“Okay, not Hayes,” Mathieu said, dramatically ticking him off on an invisible list. “What about Haas?”
“Haas?” Marc repeated. “Luca Haas?”
“He’s pretty,” someone said.
“He is twenty,” J.J. said.
“Shane isn’t exactly one to rob the cradle,” Louis added.
“Also too small,” Mathieu decided.
“And short,” Marc said.
“He is not short,” Shane said automatically, because he was pathologically fair even when under interrogation.
The room turned on him again.
Shane grimaced. “I hate myself.”
Hayden was shaking. “So not Haas, but thank you for defending his honor.”
“Wyatt Hayes is out,” Mathieu said, now fully committed. “Luca Haas also out. Who else?”
“Dillon?” Louis suggested.
“Tanner Dillon?” Mitty made a face. “Again, goalie, not to the standard.”
“Chouinard?” Drapeau tried.
Mathieu looked personally offended by the idea. “No. Shane said intimidating presence. Also are you colour blind? His hair is black.”
“LaPointe?”
“Too French,” J.J. said.
Everyone stared at him.
J.J. shrugged. “What? Shane’s already in Montreal. If he wanted French, he has options.”
“That is deranged logic,” Shane said.
“But not wrong,” Hayden said.
“And anyway,” Marc cut in, waving a hand. “None of them match the description exactly.”
Except....
There was only one guy on Ottawa anyone in this room would call that guy and Shane watched in real time as it all fell into horrific place.
Across the room, a few expressions shifted at once. Pieces clicking together. Games against Ottawa. The sharpened edge that sometimes came over Shane in those matchups. The way he and Rozanov moved around each other on the ice like magnets with a grudge, specificity of Shane’s so-called standards and the fact that the bite marks looked less like the work of a casual lover and more like the aftermath of being claimed by an apex predator.
Oh no.
Oh, no.
“No,” Shane said flatly, because denial was all he had left.
Hayden looked at him with delighted sympathy. “Shane.”
One of the defensemen frowned, thinking hard enough to be dangerous. “Wait.”
Comeau slowly said, “Rozanov’s, like… what, six-three?”
Hayden made a little see? gesture.
Shane wanted the earth to split.
“Dark blonde hair,” said Mathieu.
“Terrible personality,” added Marc.
“Good hands,” said someone else, and then winced as the implications settled over the room.
“Broad shoulders,” Mitty supplied.
“Intimidating presence,” said Louis, with the careful tone of a man describing a large predator through reinforced glass.
“Shuts Shane up,” Hayden finished sweetly.
It was as if someone had detonated a bomb as the group exploded all at once.
“No fucking way,” Mitty said.
“Rozanov?” Bouchard barked.
“Rozanov?” J.J. echoed, voice cracking.
“Shane, are you kidding me?”
“That’s your boyfriend?” Drapeau demanded.
“That psychopath?” J.J. said.
“That explains so much,” Marc breathed.
“That explains literally everything,” Louis said.
And because apparently humiliation still had layers, the first wave of shock gave way almost instantly to outrage of a very specifically Montreal variety.
“Wait,” Marc said, sitting up straighter with the expression of a man who had just remembered treason existed. “Wait, wait, wait. You’re sleeping with Ottawa’s captain?”
Shane stood up so fast the bench squealed. “You have all become intolerable.”
“No, because actually answer the question,” Mathieu said, pointing at him like this was now a congressional hearing. “Since when?”
“That is none of your business.”
“Since before he got traded there?” one of the younger guys blurted.
Shane stared viciously.
The rookie paled. “Not that it matters. Obviously. Just, timeline-wise–”
“Terrific,” Shane said. “Now I’m being audited.”
Hayden was in tears. “Keep going. This is incredible.”
Marc ignored him. “Did you sleep with the enemy as, like, a bit? Is this espionage?”
That got a horrified level of gasps.
“Oh my God.” J.J muttered, shaking his head.
“Shut up, Marc.”
“No, I’m serious,” Marc insisted. “Was this tactical? Did we have an asset in Ottawa and nobody told me?”
Shane looked at him with withering disgust. “Yes, Marc. I seduced a top-line center for intelligence purposes. I endured world-class cheekbones and an overdeveloped sense of possessiveness and got dicked down in service of the franchise.”
Mathieu jabbed a finger toward Shane. “Okay, but don’t act like that’s impossible. You are petty enough.”
“I am not sleeping with anyone for organizational gain.”
“Not even for standings points?” Louis asked.
Shane made a face like he had just smelled roadkill. “Especially not for standings points.”
That should have been the end of it.
Naturally, it was not.
One of the defensemen squinted. “Did you ever let him win?”
Shane turned slowly.
“What.”
The player, having perhaps not understood he was approaching the lip of a volcano, pressed on. “I’m just saying, if you were, you know. Together. Did you ever go easy on him?”
The silence that followed was so total it felt upholstered.
Then Shane laughed once, with zero trace of humour. “Oh, that is offensive.”
“Shane–” Hayden began, suddenly sounding less delighted and more wary.
“No.” Shane held up a hand, eyes still fixed on the idiot who had asked. “No, I want to be very clear, because apparently some of you have lost what little sense God gave you.”
The whole room shut up.
“I have never,” Shane said, each word sharp enough to cut, “let anyone win anything against me. Ever. Least of all him.”
No one moved, no one dared breathe.
Something fierce and immediate had come into his face now, embarrassment burned away by insult.
“I don’t care who I’m dating. I don’t care who I’m sleeping with. When I’m on the ice, I play to win. Every shift. Every puck battle. Every faceoff. Every game. If Rozanov beats me, it is because he earned it, and if I beat him, it is because I earned it. You do not get to cheapen my game because you’re too stupid to understand I can fuck someone and still want to bury him professionally.”
The room held it for a second then Hayden nodded. "You're absolutely right, the stats speak for themselves, if anyone here actually believes that then–”
Mathieu rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay. Yeah. Fair.”
“More than fair,” Marc muttered. “That question was insane.”
“Yes,” Shane said flatly. “It was.”
The defenseman who had asked went pink. “I didn’t mean–”
“I know,” Shane cut in. “That’s what makes it worse.”
For a second, no one said anything.
The room still had that same stunned, upholstered silence to it, but it had changed shape now. It was not only embarrassment anymore. Not only the collective realization that they had stepped too close to a line. There was something else under it, something Shane could feel even through the heat in his face and the bite of anger behind his teeth.
They knew, suddenly, that this was bigger than locker-room gossip.
Shane swallowed and his hand tightened around the edge of his jersey.
“And while we’re apparently saying every insane thought out loud today,” he said, quieter now, “this does not leave this room.”
The shift was immediate.
Even Hayden stopped laughing.
Shane looked around at all of them, one by one, until every pair of eyes was on him.
“I’m serious,” he said. “I am not out publicly. He is not out publicly. Nobody knows about us, and it stays that way.”
Mathieu’s face sobered first. Then Marc’s. Then J.J.’s, Louis’s, Drapeau’s. One by one, the amusement drained down into something steadier.
“Shane,” Hayden said softly.
“No, I need to say it.” Shane’s voice did not shake, but it wanted to. He could feel the tremor trying to climb up the back of his throat. “Because I know this is funny to you. I know all of this is–” he made a small, helpless gesture, encompassing the hickeys, the peacocking, the entire ludicrous nightmare of the last two weeks, “–whatever this is. But if this gets out, it’s not funny.”
Nobody interrupted.
“If the press gets it, they won’t treat it like a joke. The league won’t. Fans won’t. Agents, sponsors, management, none of them will. It becomes headlines and cameras and questions neither of us agreed to answer.”
He forced himself to breathe.
“And for him, it’s different.”
There it was.
The part that made his chest hurt and made this more than inconvenient. More than uncomfortable and of Shane’s carefully managed fear of public opinion and losing control of his own life.
“It’s Russia,” he said, and the word landed cold. “ It’s his home country. It’s a whole part of his life you don’t know anything about, and neither do I, not all of it. But I know enough. I know enough to know it is not the same as me standing in front of a few reporters and saying I’m gay.”
The room had gone very, very still.
Shane looked down for half a second, then made himself look up again.
“So yes,” he said, voice going sharp again because it was easier than letting it break. “Make jokes. Be weird. Be whatever horrifying version of supportive this team is apparently capable of being. But if any of you breathe one word of this outside this room, if one person hears it from one of you, if one text gets sent or one drunk comment gets made or chirp gets too clever on the ice, I swear to God I will not forgive you and I will destroy you professionally, legally, mentally and physically.”
No one moved.
Then Marc said, quietly, “We wouldn’t.”
Shan fixed him a look of wary disbelief.
Marc’s expression was still a little horrified, still a little offended because apparently even mortal stakes could not fully override the fact that it was Rozanov, but beneath it was something solid.
“We wouldn’t,” he said again. “Not that.”
Mathieu nodded, jaw tight. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Room is locked,” J.J. said.
“Vaulted,” Drapeau added.
Hayden, gentler now but still Hayden, lifted a hand. “Stupid vault. But vault.”
A tiny, unwilling laugh escaped someone.
Shane did not laugh.
One of the rookies, looking pale and earnest and about twelve years old, said, “I’m sorry. About earlier. About all of it. We were being–”
“Idiots,” Shane supplied.
“Yeah,” the rookie said. “Idiots.”
Marc rubbed both hands over his face and exhaled. “Okay. So. No one says anything. Not to wives. Not to girlfriends. Not to brothers. Not to trainers. Not to former teammates. Not to anybody.”
“Not even if they guess?” Mitty asked.
Shane’s stomach tightened.
Hayden answered before he could. “Especially if they guess. You become stupid immediately.”
“That won’t be difficult for some of you,” Shane said automatically.
Mathieu pointed at the room. “Phones?”
Everyone stared at him.
“What?” he said defensively. “I’m not saying anyone did anything. I’m saying phones.”
That was enough to send a new kind of discomfort through the room.
Not suspicion, exactly. More like the sharp collective awareness that in their world, privacy could die in half a second because somebody thought something was funny enough to record.
Shane’s skin prickled.
Hayden stood first.
He pulled his phone from his stall and tossed it onto the middle bench. “There. Mine.”
J.J. followed immediately. Then Marc. Then Mathieu. Then Louis. Drapeau and Comeau. One by one, phones appeared on the bench in an ugly little pile of proof.
Drapeau leaned back against his stall, arms crossed. “We’re idiots, Hollander. We’re not cruel.”
It hit harder than he expected.
Maybe because a week ago he had not been entirely sure. Maybe because the silence after he had snapped in defense of Scott Hunter had felt too much like rejection and the towel-clutching and the staring and the naked insanity of Mathieu Bouchard had made Shane feel like a specimen under glass.
Maybe because hearing them say it, plainly and without making him ask, loosened something tight in his chest.
“We’re also not outing Rozanov,” Louis said, grimacing slightly as if the name still tasted bad. “Even if he is, you know.”
“A hostile foreign power,” Mathieu muttered.
“An enemy combatant,” J.J. added.
“An Ottawa Centaur and ex Raider.” Marc said darkly, as if that were the most damning one.
Hayden nodded solemnly. “Truly the greatest sin.”
Shane stared at them and despite himself, snorted.
The whole room seemed to breathe again.
Mathieu pointed at him immediately. “Do not mistake this for approval.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“I still hate him.”
“That is your right.”
“I may hate him more now.”
“That’s also your right.”
Marc lifted a finger. “But privately.”
“Exactly,” Shane said.
“Professional hatred only,” Drapeau agreed.
“On-ice hatred,” J.J. said.
“Regulation hatred,” Hayden added.
“League-sanctioned hatred,” Mathieu finished.
Shane closed his eyes for a second. “You all need help.”
“Yes,” Hayden said. “But you’re safe.”
Shane opened his eyes.
Hayden was looking at him steadily now, all the wicked amusement softened into something that had been there the whole time, underneath the arson.
“You are,” Hayden said. “With us. He is too, by extension, unfortunately.”
Marc groaned. “Do not say unfortunately like we’re adopting him.”
“We are not adopting Rozanov,” Mathieu said.
“No,” J.J. agreed. “We are accepting a hostile custody arrangement.”
That broke the tension properly.
A laugh rolled through the room, uneven at first, then louder.
Shane shook his head, but the pressure in his chest had eased.
Not gone. It would not be gone for a long time. Maybe not ever. Not while there were reporters outside and phones everywhere and a league that could polish rainbow tape into a marketing campaign while still leaving players to rot under the weight of what coming out actually cost them.
But here, for now, in this room full of idiots, it eased.
“Good,” Shane said, because anything more honest would undo him. “Glad we’ve established the hostage terms.”
Hayden grinned. “Very progressive of us.”
“Do not make me regret trusting you.”
The grin faded just enough to mean something.
“You won’t,” Hayden said.
And this time, no one made a joke.
Still, the sting had gone out of the room. Not fully, but enough that what came next sounded more like bruised loyalty than accusation.
“It’s still Rozanov,” Louis said, as if that alone explained the emotional crisis.
“Yes,” Shane said. “I’m aware.”
“He’s an asshole.” J.J. muttered.
“Often.” Shane replied airily.
“He chirps like he was raised by wolves.” Mitty piped up.
“More or less.”
“He tried to take your head off last season.” Drapeau said, as if the action itself was proof that Rozanov was not a good choice.
“And I cross-checked him in the ribs,” Shane replied. “Your point?”
Hayden, recovering quickly now that the danger had passed, grinned. “See? Healthy relationship. Strong foundation. Mutual attempted manslaughter.”
“Professional antagonism,” Shane corrected.
“Foreplay,” Hayden said.
Shane threw a roll of tape at him.
Hayden caught it one-handed, smug as the devil.
Marc was still frowning. “I just can’t believe it’s Rozanov. Like, of all people.”
Shane arched a brow. “You say that as though I have bad taste.”
“No,” Marc said honestly. “That’s the problem. Your taste is apparently.....that. And not what I expected at all.”
Another player shook his head. “So what, we’re just supposed to be normal about this?”
“You have never once in your life been normal about anything,” Shane said.
“True,” Mathieu admitted.
The younger defenseman who’d put his foot in it earlier cleared his throat. “For what it’s worth, I wasn’t saying you’d throw a game. I know you wouldn’t.”
Shane looked at him for a moment, then gave a short nod. “Good.”
Marc muttered, “Still don’t have to like that you’re dating the enemy.”
Shane’s lips twitched. “It's lucky for you then that you don’t have to date him.”
Mathieu made a sound of outrage. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
“I know,” Shane said, and there was enough dry amusement back in his voice now that the room loosened another inch. “You’re being territorial. It’s very moving.”
“It’s disgusting,” Marc corrected. “You’re one of ours.”
Shane snorted. “I still play for Montreal, drama queen.”
“Yeah, but now when you chirp him I’m going to be wondering things.”
Hayden threw an arm over the back of the bench and sighed happily. “Honestly, I think this is beautiful. The room’s so accepting now they’re moving directly into possessive older-brother fury.”
“We are not his older brothers,” Mathieu said.
“Thank Christ,” Shane said.
“Protective teammates, then,” Hayden amended. “Same unearned entitlement.”
“Unearned?” Marc said, offended. “I’ve eaten airport sushi with him.”
“Deep bond,” Hayden agreed solemnly.
That got a laugh, even from Shane.
Just the Metros being the Metros, accepting in the dumbest possible way, suspicious because it was Ottawa, furious because it was Rozanov, and somehow still circling back to Shane with the graceless loyalty of men who had decided he was theirs long before they knew this particular thing about him.
One of the defensemen let out a long whistle. “Man, no wonder none of us had a chance.”
Chance?” Mitty said, scandalized. “There was never a chance. We were apparently competing against a preexisting national security threat.”
Shane pinched the bridge of his nose. “He plays for Ottawa, not the KGB.”
Hayden looked thoughtful. “Can’t rule out both.”
Shane threw him a glare.
Marc was still staring. “This is sick, actually. All those weeks and you never said anything.”
“You were busy turning my sexuality into a low-budget mating ritual,” Shane said. “I did not feel invited to deeper disclosure.”
The rookie on the end bench frowned. “So all that stuff about your standards…”
“Yes?” Shane said.
“You literally meant him.”
Shane looked at the ceiling. “I have gathered that we all understand this now, yes.”
“No, but like literally him,” Marc pressed. “Not just tall and mean in theory. Specifically him. You walked into that locker room, insulted every single one of us to our faces, and basically gave a scouting report on your boyfriend.”
Mathieu looked wounded all over again. “He called us mediocre while picturing Ottawa’s captain.”
“I was not picturing–” Shane stopped.
Hayden made a victorious noise. “You absolutely were!”
Comeau shook his head, still half-offended and half-impressed. “I can’t get over the confidence, actually.”
“What confidence?”
“The confidence to stand there and tell an MHL locker room none of them meet your requirements when you’ve already got Rozanov at home.”
Shane shut his eyes for a second and wished he could rewind the entire past month.
That, somehow, was what made the whole thing swing back into the absurd. Because yes, apparently that was still what bothered them.
Not Shane secretly dating a rival and apparently getting manhandled within an inch of his life by the Ottawa captain. Not even really several of the traits Shane had listed with such smug acidic superiority were now visibly attached to a real person.
No.
What offended them most was still that none of them measured up. Fucking typical straight man Neanderthal hive mind mentality.
Mathieu folded his arms. “That is unfair.”
Shane stared, a little confused. “What is unfair.”
“That you’re comparing us to Rozanov.”
Hayden, ever helpful, cut in. “To be fair, you were all competing against an established market leader and the blueprint for Shane's preference.”
“Hayden,” Shane said warningly.
Hayden ignored him. “Like, this is not a theoretical ideal anymore. The benchmark is real. The benchmark is Ottawa’s terrifying Russian asshole prince.”
The room groaned as one.
One of the rookies muttered, “How are we supposed to compete with that?”
“You aren’t,” Shane said immediately.
Mathieu looked wounded. “So when you said none of us met your requirements–”
“I meant it.” he said with a proud smirk.
“God,” Marc said, affronted. “At least lie a little.”
“Why would I do that?”
“To protect morale?”
Shane barked a laugh despite himself. “You chose to make my sexuality a team-wide personality crisis. Protect your own morale.”
Hayden pointed at him. “That’s completely fair.”
Mathieu huffed and pointed at the back of Shane’s shoulders again. “Still hate that he marked you up before a game against us, though.”
Shane’s face went hot. “I hate that you can see.”
Hayden grinned like a shark. “Oh, he wanted us to see. That’s a territorial Russian if I’ve ever seen one.”
Shane did not answer, which told the room much more than answering would have.
A collective noise rolled through them.
“That is so obnoxious.” Drapeau murmured.
“Kind of iconic, though.” Mitty said with a shrug.
“Do not say iconic,” Shane snapped.
Hayden leaned in, delighted. “So he did do it on purpose.”
Horribly, traitorously, his mind offered him the answer in full.
Of last night in Ilya's Ottawa house, low lamplight, sheets kicked loose, Ilya above him with that unbearable look in his eyes, the one that always made Shane feel both hunted and held.
He had made the mistake of telling him.
Enough that Ilya had gone very quiet, still and contemplative.
Shane remembered that stillness now with exquisite clarity. The way Ilya had paused over him, one hand spread warm on Shane’s hip, eyes gone dark and focused and almost disbelieving.
“You told them this?” he had asked, voice low.
Shane, already half-undone, had rolled his eyes on instinct. “Not you specifically.”
“But this was me.”
It had not really been a question.
Shane had felt heat crawl up his throat anyway. “You are unfortunately for them, the blueprint, yes.”
The expression on Ilya’s face after that had been impossible.
Not soft or smug. Something hotter and hungrier than either.
“Blueprint,” he had repeated, like the word itself pleased him.
Shane had known, right then, that he had made a tactical error.
And Ilya, who enjoyed Shane’s tactical errors more than any decent person should had bent and kissed him slow first, as if he had all the patience in the world, as if he were not pinning Shane open with one broad hand and the weight of his body and that awful, awful pleased attention.
“You talk too much,” Ilya had murmured against his mouth.
“Then shut me up,” Shane had shot back, because he had never once in his life been able to leave provocation alone.
Which had, in hindsight, been another error.
Because Ilya had smiled.
And afterward there had been nothing patient about it.
Just Ilya relentless and intent and devastatingly pleased with himself, driving Shane into the mattress hard enough that Shane had lost all sense of dignity and most of his ability to form coherent language. The room had narrowed to heat and pressure and the sharp drag of breath and the way Ilya kept saying things into the back of his neck in Russian and then in English just to make it worse.
“This what you require?”
And later, rougher, against Shane’s skin–
“Tell me again I am your type.”
And later still, when Shane had made the mistake of arching back into him with a wrecked little sound he would deny on pain of death, Ilya’s mouth had found the slope of his shoulder with sudden, feral purpose.
Possessive enough to leave proof.
Enough proof that Shane, dazed and boneless afterward, had eventually mumbled into the pillow, “You cannot send me back to Montreal looking like I lost a fight with a wolf.”
Ilya, maddeningly unrepentant, had just pressed one last kiss to the marked skin and said, “But you won. Besides, there is barely mark.”
Which had been disgusting, actually.
And unhelpfully hot.
So when the room waited now, all dumb curiosity and bruised outrage and ghastly investment, Shane dragged himself back into the present with visible effort and fixed them all with a glacial stare.
“I am not discussing that with you.”
Hayden leaned back, grin evil and beatific. “That’s a yes.”
One of the defensemen gave Shane an assessing once-over and said, with deep resentment, “So all this time your standards were impossible because you were already sleeping with a fucking supervillain.”
Shane considered this and smiled with terrible sweetness. “Correct.”
A chorus of protests broke out immediately.
“That’s bullshit.”
“That’s cheating.”
“You can’t set the curve at Rozanov.”
Shane’s smile sharpened. “And yet.”
Hayden put both elbows on his knees and sighed in bliss. “I cannot believe this. All this time they were trying to peacock for you and meanwhile you were going home to the final boss.”
He laughed because the whole thing was ridiculous and awful and embarrassing and because the image of Ilya as the final boss was, annoyingly, not inaccurate. He could practically hear the low, smug thing Ilya would say if he knew about any of this. Something in Russian first, just to make it worse. Then some unbearable line about standards.
Across the room, the Metros were still grumbling.
This was offended fascination. Competitive despair and a kind of reluctant acknowledgment that Shane’s impossible, devastatingly specific standards had not been invented to insult them, but formed in the image of one very real man who existed, infuriatingly, somewhere down the halls in their locker room.
Mathieu slumped back against his stall. “I can’t believe the guy who called me mediocre is dating Ilya Rozanov.”
Shane looked at him. “I can.”
Hayden, wiping at his eyes, said, “Do you know what the worst part is?”
Marc, who clearly had not yet exhausted his capacity for emotional self-harm, said, “No, the worst part is that now I’m going to be watching every Montreal-Ottawa game wondering whether there’s, like, that subtext thing.”
“There has always been subtext,” Hayden said.
“There has not,” Shane muttered.
Mathieu groaned. “Great. Fantastic. So every time he runs you into the boards–”
“He is trying to separate me from the puck,” Shane said.
“And maybe thinking fond thoughts?” Drapeau suggested.
Shane looked at him with perfect contempt. “Nothing Rozanov does on the ice is fond.”
“That’s sort of reassuring,” Louis admitted.
“It should be completely reassuring,” Shane said. “Because despite what several of you seem determined to still imply, I do not stop being competitive just because I’m in love.”
The last two words slipped out before he could call them back.
The team froze up again.
Hayden’s face changed first from startled, to then weirdly soft.
Mathieu blinked. Marc’s mouth actually fell open. The others looked poleaxed, stunned and surprised.
Shane felt his heartbeat in his throat. He hadn't meant to say that out loud.
For one long second, no one said anything.
Shane’s face could probably have cooked food. “None of you heard that.”
“Oh, we heard it,” Mitty whispered, scandalized to his core.
Mathieu sat down abruptly on the bench. “Oh my God.”
The rookie clutched his water bottle to his chest. “That’s… kind of nice?”
Shane closed his eyes. “I am going to transfer.”
“You can’t,” Hayden said, still sounding unfairly gentle now. “You’re our gay disaster.”
Shane opened his eyes, glaring just a little. “Hayden.”
“I mean that with profound affection.”
“That somehow makes it worse.” Shane sighed.
J.J., still visibly reeling, rubbed a hand over his hair. “Okay. Okay. I still do not like that it’s Rozanov.”
“No one asked you to.” Shane said, his tone neutrally calm despite his brow raising.
“But,” J.J. said, dropping his hand, “I do like that he makes you stupid.”
Hayden pointed. “Yes.”
“I am not stupid.” Shane protested, insulted in equal measure.
“You just accidentally confessed your feelings to a room full of emotionally underqualified hockey players,” Hayden said. “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.”
Shane considered this and hated that it was vividly true.
Mathieu let out a long breath and shook his head. “All right. Fine. I still reserve the right to hate him on principle.”
“That would be deeply normal of you,” Shane said.
“And,” Mathieu continued, “if he ever hurts you, we’re allowed to help bury the body.”
Hayden put a hand over his heart. “See? Supportive.”
Marc nodded. “Very supportive. Still furious. Still suspicious. But supportive.”
Shane looked around the room then at the idiots, the peacocks, the catastrophically heterosexual overinvested weirdos who had made his life miserable and hilarious in equal measure and felt that same strange, reluctant warmth move through his chest.
“Noted,” he said dryly.
Hayden grinned. “Aw. He’s touched.”
“I am not.”
“You are a little.”
Shane rolled his eyes once more and grabbed his stick. “I’m leaving.”
As he headed for the door, Mathieu called after him, “For the record, still hate the marks.”
Marc added, “Yeah, that was a hostile act against team morale.”
Hayden shouted, “I think they improved morale immensely.”
Without turning around, Shane lifted a hand and gave them all the finger.
Which, given the laughter that followed him out, did rather prove the point.