Chapter Text
In the low-lit tropical thrum of the Wynn Hotel conference area, Shane Hollander stared at his phone to avoid the conversation happening over his head. Jacques Bélanger, who'd been a legendary goalie in the 90s and MHL Commissioner Crowell droned about how surprising the Calder award was that year. Shane knew if he let himself participate in the conversation he’d have Dallas Kent and Luc Marchand’s stats as well as their respective teams’ performance this year deconstructed in detail to explain to them how perfectly wrong they were about Kent’s win being unexpected. But he had learned many years ago that people, especially those who thought themselves more important than him, did not enjoy being corrected, even when they were wrong. Being unable to properly contribute to the conversation without breaking his mom’s strict rule of “do not correct your seniors even when they’re wrong” had him falling back on his usual tactic of just staring at his phone like he had a thriving social life which needed tending.
During this particular party this served the double purpose of making sure he did not miss Rozanov’s text with his room number and code to enter. Shane stared at the very presumptuous “Penthouse 1” and tried to control the waves of feeling roiling through his lower body. Six months ago, he would have been shaking out of his skin in anticipation of what awaited him in a room with Rozanov in it. He would still be nervous and utterly aghast at his own stupid want for the unfairly beautiful Roman statue of a man that was Ilya Rozanov. But the want and the anticipation and the certainty that he would get what he wanted would have been absolute and he would be counting the seconds until he could go to Penthouse 1. But this night was not six months ago and mostly he felt defeated. He took a sip of his drink, which was unpleasantly warm now. He looked around to the room of people socializing with what looked like much less effort than it took him.
Only two hours before, Rozanov had cornered him in a backstage bathroom and had told Shane, after six full months of no contact, to “ask him nicely” to suck his cock. And Shane fucking had. Because his brain got all fuzzy when that man stood in front of him like that and it had felt like maybe having him on his knees on a filthy bathroom floor in Las Vegas could’ve maybe served to soothe his bruised ego about being ghosted. So he’d said “please” not once but thrice and with tears in his eyes. And then Rozanov had said “no”, and made it into a competition about who would win MVP then would get to call the shots. Which was fucking stupid because obviously the captain and star forward of the team that had won the Stanley Cup was going to win MVP. The competition was not even close and Shane had lost already. The whole thing was more about Rozanov flexing on Shane how much better he had been this season, and how much control he had over Shane. And the worst part is that Shane knew he would still fucking be there in Penthouse 1, eating the fucking crumbs of attention like a starved puppy with no self-control. Pathetic.
As his throat was starting to clog from his thoughts, a new notification popped up:
Chris
June 15, 2014 at 9:39 PM
hey. so. i know we haven’t talked in like 3? 4 years? time is fake and all that. but I really need a friend rn. no worries if you’re too busy, i know your life is crazy and all that
Shane blinked several times as he processed. There was a time when Chris and he had talked every day for hours. They'd practice late in his basement—she'd play whatever music she was into, go on about the history behind each song while trying to block shot after shot, while he focused on accuracy and speed. And then she'd listen to him explain how insane it was for that Russian kid to be so fucking accurate on bank passes.
Shane bit the inside of his cheek at the unpleasant reminder of just how long he’d been obsessed with Ilya Rozanov. Then, a tinge of worry. Last he’d seen in social media, Chris was living in Paris doing something corporate and prestigious. Needing a friend at 5 am in a foreign country and texting someone you’d lost contact with years before felt distinctly near emergency status. He cleared his throat and swiftly excused himself from the two men who had long stopped waiting for him to contribute to their discussion. He weaved around people to make his way out to the lobby, carefully avoiding Rozanov’s eyes as they followed his movement from across the room. The lobby gave way to the loud and overbearing casino and Shane power walked through it trying to look like he knew where he was going while casting his eyes around for somewhere private to make a call. As he reached the far end of the casino and the closed doors to the pool area, the calm darkness out there pulled at his frayed senses. Not letting himself think too hard about the “CLOSED” sign on the glass door as he pushed on it and found it miraculously open.
The cool air blew through the sweaty strands of hair near his temple and he inhaled the scent of chlorine and night. The pool’s lights were still on, filling the whole space with a soft blue light that illuminated the folded white lounge chairs lined along the edge. Shane looked around, making sure no staff had noticed his transgression and then made his way to the farthest lounge chair. He pulled the top part back to sit comfortably and hit the call button. It rang five times before he heard a voice that was still familiar, even after so much time.
“Shane?! Hi, oh my god. I’m so sorry I didn’t think you’d actually call!” Chris sounded too cheerful, her voice dimmed slightly by wind hitting the speaker. She was probably outside as well.
“Hey. Yeah. I figured if you were texting that at 5 am you probably needed more than a text back,” he said, letting his fancy designer shoe scrape against the textured edge of the pool and enjoying the vibration it sent through the sole. Chris sniffed a bit on the other end and her next words sounded watery.
“Were you busy? Did I interrupt anything?”
“I mean, yes, but not really. I’m at the MHL awards.”
“What the fuck, dude? You’re calling me from the fucking MHL awards? Why are you even checking your phone?! I’m so sorry. Oh my god. Did you win anything?” She gasped in horror and Shane got a flashback of the exact way her face moved when she was being dramatic, her thick eyebrows shooting up as her mouth went wide. He smiled at the memory.
“No, I didn’t win anything. I did present an award, though. The actual awards are done now. It’s just the after party. Bunch of wound-up players and the corpos waiting to be sucked up to. I’m not missing much, I promise.”
“Fuck. Okay. Thank you for calling. I still think it’s mad you’re skipping on the MHL after party,” she said, sniffing again. Shane shook his head even though she couldn’t see him.
“So, um, what do you need to talk about? Are you okay?”
The line went quiet but Shane could still hear the wind and some vague city noises on the other side, maybe he could hear water running in the distance.
“Chris?” He prompted.
“Sorry. I just… I think I fucked up and I need to not be alone right now.”
Shane bit his lip and looked down at his watch: 9:51. He tried not to feel guilty about the pull towards Penthouse 1. Rozanov was still at the after party anyway. He had time.
“I’m here. You wanna tell me about it?”
Chris sighed and after a couple of false starts finally let go and caught Shane up on her life in the last five years. She had graduated high school with good grades. Then decided to move to Paris and her parents had agreed to pay for it as long as she was studying something that would actually make money in the future. So she’d decided to go to HEC, the most prestigious business school in Europe, because she thought it would for sure give her a good career path. But to get there she had to do 2 years in a prépa, a post-high school program to prepare students to apply to major schools. And she’d killed herself those two years to prepare for the insane standards of the concours. And she’d gotten in on her first try. And now she was on her third year and hated every second of it. She’d hated the whole thing but pushed through and through until this final year when pushing stopped budging anything at all. She hated the idea of managing a bunch of people. She hated the math. She hated the Excel sheets. But most of all, she hated the people there.
“And you know we grew up surrounded by pretentious rich people. But this is on another level. Everyone here is related to a politician or like actual nobility. Don’t ever let a French person tell you there’s no nobility in France anymore because these fuckers fucking kept track and they still emphasize the “de” in their last names.” Shane smiled, enjoying the image she painted of absolute detachment to real society. He felt like he was trapped in a similar bubble, though at least he had hockey. It sounded like Chris didn’t have that outlet anymore. He wondered if she ever went to a rink and skated until the wind took away all the noise like they did back then. Did she ever have time to draw?
“And they’re French so they don’t even have the decency to be openly bigoted. They just make me feel like shit about how I dress and they act like it’s so fucking quaint when I’m dating a woman—”
She stopped.
Shane let out a small breath, trying to be quiet in his surprise.
“I mean,” she started and then groaned. “Fuck, that’s not—”
Shane tried to un-stick his tongue from the roof of his mouth but it wouldn’t budge.
“Shit, so I guess now you know. It’s not like secret or anything but I’m not out to my parents yet so…”
Shane finally squeaked out: “It’s okay.” Chris let out a little flustered laugh.
“Yeah. I know it’s okay, Shane,” she said and he cleared his throat to try again.
“No, I mean, it’s okay. I’m not going to tell anyone,” he finally got out. He could hear her take a deep calming breath and attempted the same. “So, you have a— you’re dating a—”
His stomach twisted in and he covered his face in mortification even though no one was there to judge his incompetence.
Chris huffed a bit before she kept going. Shane wasn’t quite sure if the change in her tone was annoyance or embarrassment.
“No… Not right now. I was until a few months ago but she also got tired of my bullshit when I had my third panic attack in a week from missing deadlines,” she said and the awfulness of that pulled Shane right out of his own discomfort.
“Oh, fuck her then!” he exclaimed. “What do you mean she left because you were having panic attacks? That’s awful.”
Chris’s laugh sounded like it had been surprised out of her.
“Yeah, well. She wasn’t wrong. I was a mess. I am a mess. That’s kinda the whole problem. My grades are in hell and there’s no way I’m graduating this year. She didn’t have to deal with all that and honestly I didn’t really want her to.”
“If you say so, I guess.” Shane said, curious about the whole story and this other world where being with someone of the same gender was not the whole problem. He looked down at his watch. 10:46. They had been talking for almost an hour. Rozanov was probably either making his way upstairs or there already. But it was okay. He could fucking wait.
“So you’re failing the year then?” he pressed.
“Yeah. Just got the official notification today. They suggest I repeat the year so I can graduate. Which means telling my parents I need money for another year. Which means telling them I did fuck all this year. And then it means going through this hell for another fucking year and I don’t think I have it in me, Shane. I think it might actually kill me.”
The last bit could have been a joke, but the break in her voice let him know that it wasn’t even remotely close to one. His heart squeezed in worry.
“You can’t do that then,” he said quietly and was startled by the sob that broke out of her. He didn’t know what else to say as she sobbed with the growing noise of cars and a waking city behind her. She slowly came out of it, blowing her nose and apologizing, which Shane dismissed quickly, and then they sat in silence for a while. Shane’s eyes burned in sympathy.
“Where are you exactly? Where are the MHL awards? You don’t sound like you’re in a party,” she asked shakily. Shane sniffed quietly.
“It’s in Vegas, the Wynn hotel. I’m at the hotel pool area. It’s closed so no one’s around,” he admitted.
“Shane Hollander the rebel! Never thought I’d see the day!”
“The door was fully unlocked. I didn’t jump a wall or anything,” he protested, but he was laughing. Her laugh was tinged with sadness as it dissipated.
“Describe it to me, please. What does this fancy Vegas hotel pool look like when naughty hockey players are breaking into it?”
Shane scrambled for words, looking around.
“Um, it’s a pool,” he started and smiled self-deprecatingly at her snort. “Right, well, the main lights are off so the only light is from the pool itself, which is really nice. The lights at the awards were killing me.”
Chris hummed in encouragement.
“And it’s so much quieter. It’s close to the casino so I can still hear the machines but it’s far away and mostly you can just hear the water, it’s gentle. Can you hear it?”
“A bit if I try, yeah,” she murmured.
“The sky is clear-ish but I can’t see any stars at all. I think it’s the light pollution in Vegas. But it’s still nice. I always love being outside at night. It smells like chlorine but also like… warm summer? Um… there’s like… lights from the hotel and the casino coming in through the windows. Mostly orange lights, and they’re reflecting on the water and it’s really pretty.”
“That sounds nice. Well done,” she said wistfully.
Shane glanced at his watch 11:03. He shifted on the lounge chair, noticing that the roughness of the outdoor fabric had been pressing on his skin through the thin material of his suit.
“I’m sitting by the river Seine here,” Chris said. “Proper Parisian scenery with beautiful little historical buildings and all the city lights glinting in the water. I’m next to this beautiful arched bridge. And it’s fucking sunrise as well. You couldn’t ask for a more beautiful scenery to have a mental breakdown.”
Shane smiled and made a noise of acknowledgement. Chris paused for a second.
“Do you need to go back? You probably do need to suck up to some people there, right? Or maybe even have some fun?”
“No, well—” Shane started.
He looked around the pool area. Making sure he was indeed alone. When the thing with Rozanov started Shane had known instinctively that he would never breathe a word to anyone about it. That it would be a horrendously perfect indiscretion he would take to his fucking grave. But here, with his friend from before wanting even became an issue… A friend who would not judge, who could even understand… the temptation to be witnessed was profound.
“I don’t like parties much and I was kinda ready to leave anyway. It’s just… Um—”
“You can go anyway, Shane, it’s all good. You were so, so helpful. I guess I just needed to rant a bit. But I don’t want to keep you if you—”
“I am—I was gonna meet someone. But I think maybe I shouldn’t and I should just talk to you some more,” Shane said, cutting off her exit speech. He looked down. 11:08.
“Oh? Really? This sounds unbearably juicy,” she said. “I’m gonna need all the details.” Shane smiled faintly.
“Remember the Russian kid I analyzed all the time back then?”
There was a pregnant pause and he could almost hear her jaw unhinging.
“No,” she breathed. “No fucking way.”
“Um— well… way?”
She let out a bark of laughter.
“Look at us go,” she said through an audible smile. “Gays finding each other through the magic of the closet.”
The word hit Shane like a physical blow to the stomach and he tried to stifle the noise of distress it elicited.
“No, no. I don’t— I’m not—” Shane squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the world for a second.
“Oh, sorry!” Chris hurried to interrupt him. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed!” She paused for a second, then: “But I am right that you were planning on meeting Ilya Rozanov tonight, yeah?”
Shane breathed in and out slowly once and opened his eyes once more, willing his heartbeat to steady. He made a noise of confirmation.
“Okay. Wow. How’d that happen?”
“I was— I mean— Um—” Shane struggled. “This time or the first time?”
The noise that came out of his phone receiver was akin to a strangled duck. Not that Shane knew what that sounded like, but he felt it probably sounded like that.
“Let’s— Let’s start with the first one!” Chris said, voice scratchy.
Shane tugged on his eyelashes softly, using the pain to ground him.
“It was um… 3 years ago now. Fuck. We did a shoot together for this sports brand, CCM?”
Chris made an impatient little sound in agreement. Urging him to continue.
“It was his idea as well, because we were supposed to shoot individually but he contacted them and told them to do it together. Because of the whole rivalry thing. And that’s already crazy, right? We’d met maybe 3? 4 times before if you don’t count me spying on his practices. I’d introduced myself to him before and he was so dismissive and cool with his fucking cigarette so obviously I made a mess of it and was super awkward. And then he won first overall draft months later so I ended up in the gym because I couldn’t sleep and he was there too. Nothing happened that time, really. He just winked at me while we were cooling down and I thought about that wink for the next six months.”
He stopped to take a breath, realizing the words had started to pour out with ease now. Chris was chuckling.
“Incredible,” she said. “And then? He manipulated events so you two could meet again? That cute as hell!”
“I know! Well, I don’t know if it was cute, but like it was something!” Shane said, luxuriating in the feeling of knowing he wasn’t fucking crazy because someone else also shared his reactions to Ilya Rozanov. “And then, in the showers, he comes in and takes a shower like two down from mine. Mind you, there’s like 15 available showers. And, Chris, you have to understand, I shower with other naked men all the fucking time. It doesn’t even register, right? But fuck if none of them even come close. Like, in looks, I mean. Though also not in skills. I’m not sure why that’s relevant but it really fucking is.”
“What like, for your dick?” The blush that spreads through Shane at those words could probably warm the whole pool.
“Yeah, I guess,” he finally squeaks and Chris laughs and laughs. “Well, I could’ve told you that Mr. ‘Look at the angle of his blade on this tape I made my coach get from Russia.’”
Shane groaned. Pulling his knees closer to his chest by planting his feet on the lounge chair.
“Okay, so you hooked up in the showers at this shoot that he orchestrated to get you. Got it. What happened then?”
“No, actually. That’s just when it was like… obvious that we both wanted something, I guess. But then he asked for my room number and then… yeah. We have to be so careful. If anyone finds any of this out it would be the end of both of our careers. So. Not the showers.” Chris made an understanding sound so Shane continued. “I fully intended for it to be a one time thing, you know? It wasn’t even like, you know, full on or anything. It was wild and surprising and kind of lovely but so so dangerous. So that was it. I didn’t think it would ever happen again.”
“But it did?”
"Yeah," Shane sighed. "And then we were both at All Stars a few months later. Things went further than they had at the shoot—further than I'd planned, honestly. I wasn't ready to... go all the way when he asked. I didn't want our first time to be in some hotel with players on the other side of the wall and those awful scratchy sheets, you know?"
Chris made a soft sound of understanding.
"So we exchanged numbers. We said we'd meet up properly soon. But then we didn't. We just... texted. For two years. He'd send me these insanely inappropriate messages when we were playing against each other, and I'd tell myself I wasn't going to respond. But then I did."
"And you never met up?"
“Not for those two years. But he kept asking and I never really stopped replying and I wanted him so fucking much. So eventually I gave in. I brought him to my Montreal apartment through the service stairs at the back… after I also bought the apartment next to it so there were no neighbors on the other side of the wall to the bedroom. I told him I was going to rent it but I never did…”
“Wait. You,” she started, then paused and retried. “You bought a whole other apartment next to yours so you could fuck him and not worry about your neighbors hearing?”
“… Yeah”
“Jesus Christ, Shane. You’ve never been chill about a single thing ever, have you?”
It didn’t sting like it would from other people. Shane was well aware of his… quirks. He did the verbal equivalent of a shrug.
“So,” she prompted. “How was it? Worth the two fucking years of waiting?”
“Yeah,” it came out automatically, viscerally. “Fuck yeah. Hottest thing that has ever happened in history, probably. But also because he was great. Kind. Patient. Checked in with me the whole time to make sure I was enjoying it. Left me like a little pile of satisfied goo and kissed me goodbye when he had to go. Twice. He kissed me twice before he left.”
“Awww, okay. We love that. That’s a lovely first time in the ass,” Chris cooed. Shane huffed in amusement, which quickly dissipated as he remembered:
“And then he ghosted me for six months.”
“WHAT?” Chris practically screamed. “I’m sorry, what the fuck?!”
Vindication surged through him at her outrage. And he used it to tell her about the bathroom. The searing brand of Rozanov’s hand down his back while they presented the awards. How he tried to resist and fucking folded the second he could feel the other man’s body heat. How he’d said please three times while holding back tears. And how Rozanov had teased him about the MVP as though it wasn’t a done deal. And how Shane hadn’t even been angry anymore. He’d fallen into the fuzzy, flowing feeling, enjoying how fluent Rozanov’s English was getting and the fact that he knew the word “genetic.” And then he’d stepped out of the bathroom. And went back to the Encore theater like he’d been told to do. And slowly the fuzziness went away and all that was left behind was humiliation and the need to see him again as soon as possible.
“Shane…” Chris said, just as his phone pinged with a message.
Lily
June 15, 2014 at 11:25 PM
u coming?
“He’s asking if I’m going to his room now…” Shane whispered, the pull so strong he had actually gotten to his feet to start walking. He was ridiculous.
“You still want to go? After all that? He drops you like a hot potato after you give it to him, which he begged for for two years! And he makes you beg, makes you cry in a public bathroom. And now you’re running back because he said a big word? Come on, babe, you have to stand up.”
Shane, already standing, clutched at the back of the lounge chair with all his might, hoping it was strong enough to hold him there.
“I’m already standing,” he muttered through his clenched teeth,
“No, I mean like metaphorically. For yourself,” Chris clarified and he could hear her hand over her mouth.
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah. I probably should…”
“That really doesn’t sound like you’re planning on not going…”
His body folded in half head lowered next to his extended arm which was still holding onto the back of the chair for dear life.
“He looks so fucking good in that suit, Chris. I can’t even describe it you. And he gels his curls back for these things but it’s so warm here and they were starting to break free when I left…” he trailed off, feeling the words tear through him.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Shane. You’re down bad, aren’t you?”
Shane laughed through the pain, the metal of the chair now warm in his hand.
“Okay, fine, he’s the hottest man in the world,” she said, like she was indulging him. “And he’s great in bed. If you go to his room, you’re gonna get fucked good. Sounds amazing.”
He groaned in mortification.
“Now, you tell me why you shouldn’t go.”
“Well, first, it’s fucking stupid and dangerous to be doing this when it could ruin everything for both of us,” he spat out, angry at himself that it never seemed to stop him.
Chris made a loud sound, imitating a buzzer.
“Wrong, try again,” she said. He bristled.
“What do you mean, wrong? It totally would ruin our careers!”
“Yeah, but that’s because hockey men are stupid and homophobic. Do you know how many lesbians there are in the CWHL?” she spat out and reined herself in. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I get that you can’t be out, and that they’d treat you like shit if it came out. But that just means you have to be careful, not that you shouldn’t do it. You are entitled to be happy and to have great sex regardless of the fact that Commissioner Crowell’s nightmares have naked men touching each other, yeah?”
Shane felt like that cracked a whole wall open in his mind and reeled from it. Not remotely ready to examine that.
“Um— I guess?” Chris sighed but didn’t push it.
“Okay, so why shouldn’t you go?”
“Because… because he ghosted me for six months and then was mean to me and I let him,“ he finally got out.
“Right. He treated you like shit, and that’s not on. Not even for a casual thing. Which like I don’t know who else is begging for two years and buying an apartment and still thinks it’s casual but whatever. It’s even more not on because respect is like baseline, yeah?”
Shane’s body gave up further and ended up squatting behind the lounge chair, still pathetically holding onto its frame with one hand and his phone with the other.
“Yeah, but…” he tried, but couldn’t make himself say it.
Chris waited, then urged him to go on.
“But I… I guess I liked it. When he was mean. He told me to beg and I… I really liked that.”
Shane Hollander, with all his hard earned muscle and broadness was huddled so tightly behind a poolside lounge chair that if anyone were to look at it from the front, they would only see his white knuckles gripping the top. Chris had made a few understanding little sounds, unaware —or perhaps unbothered by— of how deeply she was flaying him open.
“I got that, yeah,” she said. “But that’s meant to be fun, yeah? Like a game. It’s fun when you know someone who likes the same games and you trust them and they know how far they can take it because you’ve talked about it. And then after you kiss and you’re kind to each other to make sure the other knows it’s a game. It’s not fun when someone uses the knowledge of the games you like to make you feel bad and like you could only ever get that from them. Does that make sense?”
It didn’t, fully, but he could see how it explained the awful combination of it being so fucking right but also hurtful at the same time.
“Oh,” he managed.
“Oh Shane, I’m sorry… I wish I could hug you right now.”
Shane thought that if anyone touched him right now he would dissolve into the aether but he appreciated the sentiment.
“I was the one supposed to comfort you today…” he murmured, drained and getting sleepy.
“You did!” she said, “and then you dropped this whole insane lore and I had to orchestrate a rescue and now I am thoroughly distracted from my quarter life crisis. So all in all I do think you did a wonderful job. 10/10, would recommend.”
“I’m glad. Not too sure about your review. I think you took my insides and put them in the wash. 6.5/10 would only recommend in emergencies.”
Chris laughed and started telling him about the pastries she was getting fresh out of the oven from a nearby bakery. Shane imagined it, that other famous city so far away, that life where pleasure was found in early morning butter and dough and the sunrise over the river.