Archive of Our Own

It’s a nice day, when the story breaks. Post-playoffs, pre-Canada Day. A beautiful early summer morning, the sun rising behind the cottage and coffee brewing in the kitchen. Shane’s phone buzzes once, and then twice. Typically only Ilya double texts him, and Ilya is upstairs asleep, so that’s the first sign that something is wrong.  

And then his phone buzzes again, and again, and again, rattling off the counter and plummeting to the wood floor before Shane can lunge to catch it.  

And Shane’s summer, in much the same way, shatters. 

Of course, at the exact moment that it happens, Shane doesn’t know what’s actually wrong yet. He has a sinking dread in his stomach, because people aren’t historically trying to get ahold of Shane in the summer for positive reasons, but he’s got one hand on the blender lid and he kind of wants to postpone finding out, anyway, because once he knows –  

Well. Whatever it is, it’s not going to be something that he can unknow.  

He turns off the blender and then he bends over to pick his phone up, examining the crack across the dark screen, and he thinks very clearly to himself, this is the last second I have before things change.  

And then his screen lights up with an incoming notification – his agent, having triple texted – and the rest of his notifications are there, too, stacked up neatly. Missed calls from his agent, and also from his mother. More texts from his mom.  

So: hockey. Not family.  

Stupidly, Shane relaxes. A hockey story, he can handle. Has handled before. In fact, what secrets does he even have to keep anymore about hockey? It’s all fucking out now.  

Before Shane can open any of the notifications, Ilya comes into the kitchen. The expression he’s wearing tells Shane that his phone has been blowing up, too, and that it probably woke him up – he looks both worried and a little dazed, and his hair is still bedhead in a way that he normally tamps down first thing in the mirror.  

“What – ?” Shane asks, and it dawns on him for the first time that maybe it’s Ilya he should be worried about, something that happened with Ilya, something –  

Ilya holds up his phone. He says, “who is Grant Deter?”  

... 

Shane was fifteen years old when he moved to Sarnia.  

It was literally half a lifetime ago, now, and Shane honestly doesn’t remember it all that well. He thinks he probably was nervous, because he has always been nervous about new things. His parents were probably more nervous. Shane remembers his mom being very intense about the whole thing in a way that he found incredibly embarrassing, interviewing billet families and sternly reminding Shane when they dropped him off that his behavior reflected on all of them – on his parents, on his team, on the city of Ottawa and now on the city of Sarnia and on his billet family and on his community – which probably meant the Japanese community although she didn’t ever say this out loud and so Shane has never really been certain – and above all, on himself.  

She’d held him so tightly before they drove off that Shane’s shoulders had bruised. His dad had promised that they would be back for his home opener. He’d been excited for Shane in the same way that his mom had, but it had manifested in softness, instead. He’d been teary-eyed, which had also been embarrassing, even though Shane’s billet parents had gracefully excused themselves from the front hallway of their massive house and there was nobody there to see.  

Shane was the youngest one on the team that year. In fact, Shane was the youngest one in the league, because the OHL had granted Shane exceptional status. He was also vaguely embarrassed about this. Not enough to not want to play in the O, but he already understood at that age that what exceptional actually meant was different, and he definitely already understood that the worst thing a hockey player could do was be different.  

And Shane was already different from all the other kids. Asian, of course. But also – better. Parents on the other teams sometimes shouted at him at his hometown rink, more hurtful than the way their kids chirped him on ice because Shane was always taught to listen to grownups just like he was always taught that the best way to handle bullies on his team was to ignore them and pretend like it wasn’t happening until they got bored and went away.  

So Shane wasn’t nervous about the hockey – he was definitely outskating all the boys in his old league, and he was excited for the challenge – but he was nervous about the team, because he knew he’d be the youngest and he knew that he’d be the best and he’d heard a lot of stories about juniors. He remembers that much, the gut churn of the first practice.  

Shane wasn’t the captain that first year, of course. The captain was Joey MacDonald, who went on to have a very respectable AHL career for himself but only saw the show for about a game and a half. Mack was a good captain, though. He didn’t let the boys get away with a lot of shit. The normal stuff, sure, but not the really bad stuff. Not like the stuff Shane started hearing about from some of the other boys when he started going to World Juniors and the OHL All Stars and later in the NHL.  

The second year, Mack had aged out and Shane was the captain. Shane understood then as he understood in Montreal years later that he was given the C because he was the name and the face of the team, the best player, and not because he was the best leader. Shane was always a little baffled by the captain thing. Like, what was he supposed to do exactly, make the other guys better at hockey? Either they were good or they weren’t, and it really wasn’t Shane’s problem either way.  

But that’s not a thing that he could ever say, obviously, and being captain was an honor, so it wasn’t like he was going to turn it down. Shane was captain, but he wasn’t captain like Mack had been captain. He didn’t really do the group stuff, or the party stuff, or lead the locker room stuff or make speeches or anything like that. He always figured that keeping his head down and playing his best hockey was the best way to set an example for the boys, so that’s what he did, and he was still one of the youngest guys on the team so he mostly let the older guys handle all the extraneous shit.  

One of the only perks was that being captain let him off most of the bullshit that the older guys liked to do, and not being a rookie anymore helped with that, too, so his second season was way better than his first because he had mostly gotten through the worst of it and it all felt very much downhill from there – put in the time, bide the two years until the draft, and then he would be in the NHL and he really would have made it.  

But Shane’s second year, his first with the captaincy, the team looked a lot different. It wasn’t just Mack – a couple of other guys had aged out too. And there were trades, of course. That’s how they got Matty Clark, who was nineteen and undrafted and who had been pretty unceremoniously dumped for not a lot of return by London for something that none of the boys were told about but that Clark made pretty clear was locker room bullshit – fighting his teammates, the rumor went, but maybe just that he didn’t get along with his coach there.  

And then there were the rookies, who were actually all Shane’s age. It always felt weird, because of that, that Shane had to order them around and make them do rookie shit, but that was the way it worked and so that’s what he did.  

One of those rookies was Grant Deter.  

... 

When Shane gets back from his run, his mother is in the kitchen, sitting across the island from Ilya but looking significantly more harried.  

“Hi,” Shane says, somewhat warily. He had texted her back before he left for his run, but he’d figured when he said we’ll talk later that she would have understood that later didn’t mean drive down the road to my house this instant.  

“Shane,” she says. Ilya offers Shane a sympathetic, tight-lipped smile that tells Shane she’s been here for a while – Jesus, she probably did get in the car right when Shane texted – and that he’s been weathering the storm of her anxiety for the duration of Shane’s run and knows that Shane’s in for it, now. “Good, you’re back. Have you thought about a statement?” 

“Mom,” Shane says, “I literally just walked in the door.” 

“Shane,” she says back, in the same tone of voice. “This is important, honey, people have been reaching out all morning. Not just on twitter – real journalists. The story is gaining traction.” 

“Mom!” Shane snaps, edging past Ilya to get a glass of water for himself. Ilya is still wearing the boxers and t-shirt he slept in, Shane notices, and his hair is still matted up in the back. If they were alone – or even if they weren’t but it wasn’t this morning, specifically – Shane would probably smooth it down for him. He doesn’t. “There’s no fucking story!” 

“Coffee?” Ilya offers the room at large. He hates it when they fight, the way they fight. It always makes him go rigid. 

Yuna ignores him. “Have you even watched it, Shane?” 

“No,” Shane says, breathless after gulping down the water. “I haven’t watched it.” 

Her mouth goes thin. “You need to watch it, Shane. It’s... it’s not good, honey.” 

“I need to shower,” Shane counters, “I’m going to –” 

“Shane!” she calls after him. He doesn’t stop.  

... 

There wasn’t really anything specific about Grant Deter. He was a decent forward – he had a good shot of going pro, at the time. Shane doesn’t think that he actually did, but admittedly he hasn’t looked him up or really thought about him at all since he was eighteen, and maybe he went to the European leagues, or something. He was playing a lot worse at the end of their few seasons together than he was at the beginning, that was for sure. Somewhere along the line, he just sort of lost it.   

Shane wasn’t totally oblivious – all the rookies got it bad, but Deter definitely got it worst. And all the older guys gave the rookies shit, because that’s what being a rookie meant, but Clark was leading most of the initiation stuff, filling the leadership void that Mack left and Shane just wasn’t quite capable of filling himself. It came really easily to Clark: the teambuilding.  

Clark was always popular in the room, a hockey guy through and through. That’s probably why he had the career he did – his hockey was mediocre, but he had the intangibles. He could sniff out weakness in a second, and it was as helpful on the ice as it was aggravating in the room.  

Some guys develop that predatory instinct really young. Shane wasn’t one of them. He remembers his first year in the O, the team brought some motivational guest speaker in and that’s what he talked about: what it meant to be a hockey player. The metaphors got kind of muddled, but what it meant to be a hockey player was to be ruthless, bloodthirsty, but also pack-minded. Wolves. Lions. Killers. 

Shane has never been the lion, and he remembers thinking too that male lions were actually kind of solitary, weren’t they, based on the planet earth documentaries that he sometimes watched when he was trying to sleep? But that was when Shane was still blending in, and that was what Shane really had going for himself. He’s no lion, but he’s the best fucking gazelle. He’s made a career out of it. He's an expert at being just one of the guys, smoothing over his differences, avoiding notice. And, of course, he never shows when he’s hurt or weak.  

Even Matty Clark never quite managed to get at the real truth of him, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. 

The thing is – the real, ugly truth is: Shane didn’t even really need to be the best or the fastest to avoid Clark’s attention. Not really. Predators are attracted to things that move. So Shane only ever needed to stay still, keep his head down, and hope that someone else flinched first. In a herd, he only really needed to be just that bit faster than the slowest guy. 

And that year – both of those years – Matty Clark made it really fucking clear that if he was the lion, then Grant Deter was the slowest gazelle.  

... 

Ilya appears in the bathroom while Shane is shampooing his hair. Shane could have locked the door and he didn’t, because he’s never locked the door in his own house, but it irritates him a little bit that Ilya didn’t get the closed-door hint anyway because Shane rarely even closes the door anymore. Ilya sees this in his face and immediately says, “it was me or your mother.” 

“Can I just fucking shower? Jesus.” Shane tips his head back to rinse out his hair. 

“It has been a while,” Ilya says carefully, leaning back against the counter. “I was worried you were trying to drown yourself or something.” 

There’s a hint of a joke there, but considering... considering. Shane opens his eyes and looks at him. “I just need a minute when my mom isn’t badgering me.”  

Shane reaches for the soap. He asks carefully, “did you watch it?” 

“Yes,” Ilya says, very neutrally. At the same time that Shane realizes his hands are shaking, Ilya says, “Shane, you are having panic attack.” 

He’s not really – not medically – but he is breathing harder than he probably should be standing still in the shower. Ilya strips hastily out of his clothes and comes over and opens the glass door of the shower, letting in a rush of cool air, and he steps inside and puts his hands on Shane’s face.  

It’s the first time they’ve touched all morning. Shane hadn’t realized until it happened. The feel of Ilya’s skin on his resets his hitching breath. Ilya says, “tell me what is happening in your head.” 

Shane doesn’t. He says, “was it really that bad?” 

“Yes,” Ilya says, and then shrugs. “Probably, yes. It sounds very bad, the things he says happened. I think if I was, maybe, his parent, I would be very upset. But I am not so surprised.” 

Shane nods. “It just feels like such a nothing story. But my mom’s so fucking... worked up about it.” 

Ilya watches him for a moment. His hair is dripping into his eyes. Shane is already thinking about how he only put one towel out for himself, and how Ilya’s going to be dripping fucking everywhere when he gets out. But he holds Ilya’s wrists when he goes to pull his hands back, anyway, because Shane likes him close when he feels like this, untethered. 

“I think,” Ilya says carefully, “that your mom is also the parent of a teenage boy who played on that hockey team. And not just the manager of a person who is being asked for comment on a bad story. Yes?”  

Shane closes his eyes. “Fuck,” he says, with feeling.  

... 

Most of what Clark did – what he made the other guys do – was just the normal stuff. The stuff Shane did. Clark’s real talent was adding edge. Pushing right to the limit of what Shane was willing to accept and stopping an inch short. Escalating. And personalizing: he had a real gift for reading people, and if he wasn’t such an asshole he probably would have been a good captain, actually, but instead he got his rocks off figuring out how to get to each guy individually. The one time Shane brought it up with Coach, he’d gotten a level stare and a speech about how it was probably good for Shane, to learn how to take shit from the other guys, because if Shane could take it in his room then he could take it on the ice.  

It was advice that had pissed Shane off at the time, but it’s actually served him well in the years since, because he genuinely hasn’t ever taken as much shit from his opponents as he took from Matty Clark.  

Mostly, Shane tried to stay out of it. At first, he tried to do what Mack might have done – asserted himself, set limits. He wasn’t really that secure in his authority, though, and it must have shown, because Clark just laughed in his face.  

So instead Shane mostly avoided the whole scene. Clark was pissed off all the time with everyone including Shane, mostly because they all knew this was his final ride – nobody was taking him pro. He was looking for somewhere to put his energy and Shane figured it was easiest to just be off his radar as often as possible.  

So Shane skipped a lot of the parties and put his headphones on when they were on the bus and played his best hockey, because Shane was actually going pro, and so that’s what he needed to do. In return, Clark left him mostly alone except to rib him about how he never had fun with the boys in increasingly colorful terms. 

That reputation followed Shane into the majors, though, for being withdrawn and too serious and bad in the room. Some of it’s true. Some of it’s served him well, because he’s mostly avoided some of the shit he knows his teammates got up to in Montreal, too. But it’s always made him an outsider, more so than when he was the Asian guy and more so even than it has since everyone’s known for sure that he’s the gay guy. 

Everyone still talks about all the shit that went down in juniors like they’re telling war stories, when the Hockey Canada guys get together at Worlds or at the Olympics or at the All-Star Games. Trying to one-up each other. Shane’s stories really aren’t that bad, in comparison, but that's almost worse now because it’s been long enough that guys seem proud of it, of what they endured and what they invented, and Shane doesn’t really have that much to contribute.  

That’s the whole point: now they’re a team, bonded by it. The only people who can really understand the whole thing. And Shane was there, he was part of it, but he wasn’t really. Not fully.  

And really. Compared to some of the shit that Shane knows other teams were doing, some of the really fucked up shit, some of the, like, dangerous shit, his stuff seems pretty mild. Pretty stupid to be worked up over as a grown man.  

Pretty stupid to still be thinking about all these years later. 

... 

It’s pretty bad, after all. Shane finally watches the video with one eye, toweling off after his shower. It’s not that long. It’s only about five minutes, clipped from a longer podcast that Shane’s never heard of before. He recognizes Grant right away, even though he’s grown a beard and he’s wearing a ballcap and overhead headphones.  

Shane was there – he thought he knew what happened, and how he would feel about it. It feels worse than that, hearing someone say it all out loud and at once. 

When it’s over, he rewinds and watches again, still standing naked, paying more attention this time. Grant is retired now, obviously, or he wouldn’t be saying any of this. Apparently recently retired, because that’s why he’s on the podcast. He had ended up in Sweden after all.  

Shane’s name comes up once, early, and then not again. So that’s... better, than it could be.  

Yeah, the team was super good. It was kind of crazy, looking back, like there were real players on that team. Shane Hollander was on that team – played with him back in the day. That was cool. But I can’t, uh... yeah, I definitely didn’t have the best juniors experience. Ha. Yeah. Everything you’ve heard and worse, man, it was brutal. Probably shouldn’t be saying any of this, but there was... I mean, you know, it was kind of the whole team, it was just the whole thing, you know, the way it was. Hell, I did it myself the next year! Fucked up, right? But shit, yeah, when I was a rookie it was absolutely brutal. It was mostly this one older player, won’t name names, but –  

The rest kind of blurs together, over Shane’s heartbeat echoing in his own ears. His fingers are numb – he might actually be having a panic attack now, for real. Shane keeps getting snatches, removed from context, words that make no impact. Mostly, he’s watching Grant’s face, rueful and a little embarrassed and more and more animated as he gets into it.  

Made me drink like, so much warm beer. Pictures of girls. Everytime we fucked someone – yeah. Shared pictures. Naked, everyone just looking. Threesomes, he grabbed my – Stayed there for probably half an hour? Fines were brutal, too. Gave me this girl, told me to – Tied together. Had to drink all of it if you were last. Fuck, yeah, we were all so drunk. A lap for every girl. Called in tears.  

When the video ends, Shane goes to his dresser and pulls out a shirt and puts it on over his damp skin. He steps into underwear and into shorts and then he goes downstairs, where his mother is still worrying her bottom lip in her mouth.  

“I watched it,” he says.  

She nods. He waits, waits to see which way this is going to go. Unsurprisingly, she chooses business. 

“We need to make a statement,” she says. “Journalists are picking the story up, we’ve already been asked for comment a few times.” 

“I don’t want to make a statement.” 

“Shane,” she says. “This isn’t... listen. This story isn’t going away. Everyone knows you were on that team – they want to hear from you.” 

“I don’t have anything to say,” Shane says, and he needs to do something with his hands, so he starts to make himself a protein shake, familiar, mechanical movement.  

She sighs. “Well,” Yuna says, hesitantly, and then she steels herself. “Is it... true?” 

He hits the button on the blender. He’s not even going to drink this fucking thing – he already had one this morning and the last thing he needs right now is to blow his macros. But it buys him a moment of silence. Finally, he can’t blend anymore. He’s forced to say, “yeah. I mean, it’s been a while. I don’t remember, like. Details. But. Yeah.” 

Yuna pulls her cardigan across her body and nods, once, like she expected bad news but had thought that she might avoid it after all. Shane can’t quite meet her eyes, but it doesn’t stop him noticing the moment that she softens and switches: mom mode.  

“Were you –” she pauses, searching for a word. Finally, she lands on, “did you? Did they do that to you? Too?” 

It’s stuttering, uncertain in a way that she’s usually not. It scares Shane. It scares him the way that he was scared when he was sixteen and knew, really understood for the first time, that his parents loved him and wanted good things for him and that they gave up so much for him, and that Shane’s part in repaying that was going to have to be keeping his mouth fucking shut about how he was going to get to where they wanted him to be.  

But it frustrates him, too. His mother is a smart woman. She follows hockey very closely, and she reads the news every morning and has for her entire adult life. And she married his dad, who played hockey growing up just like Shane did. All of these things should mean that she already knows, and that Shane shouldn’t have to say it like this, as a grown man in his own kitchen, like he’s confessing something.  

So he says, “obviously. It was everyone. All of us.” 

Her face goes ashen. Her voice wobbles when she says, “Shane.” 

And then, because of that wobble, he walks it back. He says, “I mean, mom, it wasn’t like... it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t that bad, like what he’s saying. I mean, for me. It was just dumb shit. Team stuff. I’m fine.” 

He hasn’t seen her cry since – since he came out to them, probably. She did the same thing, then, her face mournful and apologetic, like she was the one who should be sorry, and not Shane, Shane who has never done the right thing, been the right way, fit in the way he should have. Shane who always made it so difficult on himself, being himself, and who has been mitigating that – being him – for as long as he’s played hockey.  

“If we had known,” she starts, and the sentence dies between them. Shane tries to fill in the blanks, but he’s never been very good at that. If they had known, they would have done something? Maybe. Maybe Shane would have been traded, maybe the coach would have been fired. There would have been a fuss. His mom might have felt good about it at the time, but it would have been way shittier in the long run, definitely. Every player Shane ever played with the rest of his career would have known then that Shane was the kind of player to cause a fuss.  

Or, if they had known, they would have pulled him from the team? Pulled him out of hockey? That’s a lie. She never would have done that. Shane never would have let her. They’ve always, mutually, had a very clear vision of where he needs to go, and how he needs to get there.  

“Don’t, mom,” he says. Ilya comes into the kitchen, then, hair wet and pushed back from his face. He’s in new dry clothes. Shane doesn’t know why, but he can’t look straight at him. It’s worse than his mom. “It’s not – don't do that, make it something that it wasn’t. Literally every single player, I’m telling you, shit like this happened. Normal shit. Okay? This is why it’s – it’s not even a fucking story. Any player could get called up on stuff like this. And if we comment on it, then it’s just, it just validates it all, it just draws more attention to me, and I don’t –” he breaks himself off, shakes his head. “I can’t.” 

“Shane,” she says, tremulous, “I’m telling you, this is not normal, honey. We –” 

“Yuna, maybe it is time for a break, okay?” Ilya says kindly. “Can we think about it and call you tonight?” 

She opens her mouth and then closes it, looking between them. Ilya puts his hand on Shane’s shoulder, and he struggles not to shrug it off. He does want her gone, he realizes suddenly. No wonder he can’t figure out other people – he can’t even figure out what he’s feeling. He can’t even fucking stand up for himself, so no wonder he couldn’t ever do it for other people.  

“Alright,” she finally says, softly, after an interminable silence that Shane’s sure was occupied by a furious and silent conversation between the two of them. He can’t lift his head to find out. 

He looks studiously at the counter and waits, as he always has, for it to be over. 

... 

At seventeen, Shane had a girlfriend. They weren’t having a lot of sex – Shane wasn’t really that interested, for reasons that felt gummy and complicated at the time but have become staggeringly obvious since – but they were having some. Mostly, it was easier that way. It was easier to not lie to the boys when they asked him about the sex they assumed he was having. It was easier to not have to always put Jessica off, because they didn’t play every night and so he didn’t always have the excuse that he was just wiped after their games.  

And it was easier to avoid the other stuff, that way.  

With a girlfriend, Shane could mostly get out of the weird sex games the guys wanted to play at parties. He didn’t have to round up girls to bring, and he didn’t have to pretend that he wanted to bang any of the girls that the other guys brought. They might have thought he was pussywhipped for sticking with one girl, but that was at least a reasonable excuse.  

In fact, his teammates always assumed that he was having way more sex than he actually was, because he left a lot of parties early that way, pretending that he was going to get laid and not that he was going home to jerk off or watch game tape. There was this young phenom out of Russia that people were starting to talk about who would be drafted Shane’s same draft year, and he was trying to keep an eye on his progress.  

Luckily, Jessica was as humiliated by the whole thing – the bad sex that they weren’t having that often – as Shane was, so he pretty safely figured that she wouldn’t ever tell. She was fine. She was hot enough that the guys let Shane off the hook about a lot of shit, and she was nice enough that Shane didn’t mind having her around when it made sense for her to be there.  

And she was crazy about hockey. Shane pretty much knew that that was why she was dating him – because he was good at hockey, and already kind of famous for it – but that was also the reason that he was dating her – because guys who were good at hockey were expected to be dating girls who looked like Jessica – so he figured that was fair.  

And, Shane figured, despite the mediocre sex, when it came to dating a hockey player, he was probably her safest option. Even if she didn’t understand why he never took her to the parties.  

... 

Ilya is careful with him all afternoon. He avoids the topic completely even as Shane’s phone continues to buzz relentlessly on the countertop until Shane finally shuts it down. They have lunch. They play video games. Ilya keeps surreptitiously checking his own phone, typing out quick responses between rounds. He keeps touching Shane, firm and reassuring.  

Finally, Shane shrugs him off. “Stop it,” he snaps. “You don’t have anything to feel sorry for me about.” 

Ilya pulls his hand back. “Okay,” he says easily. Too easily.  

“Stop it,” Shane says again. “You’re being... nothing happened to me.” 

“Okay,” Ilya says again. Is Shane reading skepticism into his tone? Ilya checks his phone again. 

“Is that what people are saying online?” Shane asks impulsively. “Poor, gay Shane Hollander. Stuffed in a locker, or whatever.” 

“No,” Ilya says firmly. “That is not what people are saying online, Shane.” 

Into that response, Shane reads that it’s the opposite – that people are angry with him. “I didn’t do it,” Shane says, and then clears his throat. “Not really. I didn’t – all I did was.” All I did was nothing.  

“Okay,” Ilya says again, powering up a new game.  

“Let’s not talk about it. And don’t fucking say okay again.” 

Shane’s disastrous competition, though. Distracted and slow. He feels sick, sixteen again, confused by what people want from him. Can’t they understand that it was the only way? And it wasn’t even... it wasn’t even that bad, for Shane. He just hasn’t thought about it in so long. He just never thought about it, because. Because it wasn’t even that bad. Because it was something that happened, a long time ago, something he got through to get where he is. Where he’s happy.  

So it’s frustrating – annoying – that he keeps thinking about it, now. He thought it was over. He didn’t think that he’d ever have to think about Matty Clark again, about the way he used to get so close in the room, riling Shane up asking for details about how many kills he had, whispering pussy right against his face when Shane shrugged him off, the warm wash of his breath, the terror that he knew, deep down, what Shane really was: what are you, Hollzy, a fag? The first person who ever taught Shane that an easy fuck off was less suspicious than a denial.  

He didn’t think he’d have to think about it again, the rookie party where Clark and the others ran beers through the dishwasher to make them hot before they put one in Deter’s hand and told him to drink. Him and all the other rookies. At Shane’s rookie party, Mack had given him beer, and he’d told Shane to drink, but he hadn’t made it disgusting like that. Shane hadn’t really wanted it, but Mack had said, “Drink the fucking beer, Hollzy.” He'd said, “for your sake, drink the fucking beer. I’m going easy on you. I can only hold them off so fucking long.”  

Some of the rookies puked that beer right back up, but not Deter. He’d had a lot though. He’d been really drunk, and Clark had kept the beers coming. Shane had thought about saying something, but Deter had looked at him, and if Deter caved or if Shane rescued him it would have been worse for him and they both knew it, so Shane just stood there and didn’t do anything after all. The night is a little fuzzy – Shane had been drinking too, more slowly. There had been a lot of girls there. Shane remembers them being young, but he was young, too, so they were probably all the same age. He remembers Clark saying something about all those girls, nothing nice, and pushing one at Deter, telling Shane to back him up on this, that Deter was a pussy and wouldn’t follow through.  

And Shane, his constant refrain, “don’t drag me into this, Clarky.” 

Shane doesn’t know why he’s remembering this all now. Why he’s thinking about it. Why he’s thinking about that bus bathroom and the smell of it with the lights off and five rookies crammed in and rooting around for change on the floor. Standing naked in the locker room shower and waiting for his turn to dance. The sticky lipgloss of the poor girl, so drunk, that got put in Shane’s lap when he’d had that beer that Mack had told him to have. 

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Ilya says. At least he doesn’t let Shane win – that would be the worst.  

“Then stop looking at me like you know something,” Shane snaps, hurling the controller down.  

Ilya doesn’t give him an inch. He stands, and he comes to Shane, and he embraces him, and he says, “but I do know, Shane.”  

“No, you don’t,” Shane says stubbornly, pulling back from him again and pacing. “Nothing even... I know it was probably worse for you. I know this probably...” 

“Okay!” Ilya says, finally exasperated, hands thrown up. “Yes, Shane, it was shitty for me too! This is what you want to hear? You want to hear it was not just you? That coach used to hit us with hockey stick on the ice when we finished skates last? You want to hear, what, what they used to call us in front of whole team when we made mistake? Drills they made us run? Humiliation when we lose?” 

His English is fracturing; he spits something fast in Russian. “This makes you feel better?” he adds.  

Shane shakes his head mutely. Ilya had been that age when Shane met him. Shane can’t believe he forgot. That when he met Ilya, he’d been thinking about how different it was, at World Juniors, than it was in Sarnia – the guys still got up to shit, but they were all more on a level, not such a distinct hierarchy. Shane could be one of the boys or he couldn’t, could come to the hotel room when he was texted or not, but there was no Matty Clark. 

It had all been happening at the same time: World Juniors, and Sarnia, and Ilya. He’d forgotten. And Ilya had been so young. His coaches had all been perpetually angry: the Canadian boys had all laughed at that. The way the Russian coaches had been shouting, constantly, at a team that was much better disciplined than Shane’s own.  

“No,” he says, because why would he be happy to hear that: that Ilya was scared, too. Ilya’s never scared. “I don’t fucking want that. That sucks. That...” 

And then Ilya throws his hands out. You see? “I am very upset, Shane,” he says evenly, “because I love you, and because you are hurting. Yes? And I do not like it when you are hurt.” 

“I’m not,” Shane says, feebly. Ilya throws his hands up again.  

“Why do you hear this, what I have said happened to me, and you know it is bad? That it sucks? But everything today, it is like... it is like you don’t understand. That a bad thing happened to you. And I’m sorry it happened, Shane, but it did happen. And it was bad. Your mother, and me, we are not worried about you for nothing.” 

Shane shakes his head again.  

“What if it was another person. If it wasn’t Shane Hollander, and if it was another little boy and he came to you and he said – he said, all of this. All of this that happened to you, he said it happened to him?” 

“I wasn’t a little kid, Ilya,” Shane says, throat dry. He’d been practically an adult. He’d thought he was an adult – living away from home, courting celebrity status, destined for bigger things. He’d felt so grown up. He’d had a good reputation. He’d reflected well on his parents and his community and his team.  

Especially his team. They’d been a winning team. Shane never would have done anything to endanger that.  

... 

Shane remembers being – what. Seventeen? Sixteen. It must have been his sixteen-year season because Marty was his road roommate that year and he remembers that when he woke up, Marty was snoring in the bed across the room like he always did and always swore that he didn’t. Shane’s not sure what woke him up, because he got really good at sleeping through Marty’s snoring. Maybe a door slammed down the hall. But he woke up, and he realized he needed a piss – maybe that woke up him – and so he stumbled into the bathroom without turning on the light. He didn’t need it. Most hotel rooms are laid out pretty much the same, and he’d been in and out of hotels for travel hockey for a decade already at that point.  

Shane remembers taking a piss. Tucking himself back in his boxers. And then, in the dark, he remembers feeling like something was off, like something was. Wrong. He froze, ears perking, and that’s when he heard it. In the room next door – in Clark and Deter’s room. Someone was crying in the bathroom.  

It was a shitty hotel. The walls were thin. The day before, Shane had been trying to nap on his pregame schedule and Clark had the TV on so loud through the wall that Shane could hear the Sportsnet guys talking about him. So whoever was in the bathroom probably didn’t even need to be crying that loud, for Shane to hear it. In fact, it was pretty soft. It took a minute for Shane to realize what he was hearing.  

He just stood there, in the dark. Honestly, it was hard to even tell if it was a boy or a girl. Clark had probably made a lot of girls cry. Maybe he’d been at the bar, picked up, been a dickhead. Maybe some poor girl was muffling her sobs in the bathroom, and Deter was – where? Out past curfew, because Clark kicked him out of the room? Them being road roomies was someone’s idea of a joke – maybe Clark’s himself.  

Hell, maybe it was Deter crying. Clark had made him cry before, too, and then Clark had called him a faggot and laughed in his face about it and Shane and everyone else had all pulled on their pads and looked at the wall and pretended not to hear it, because it was easier with Clark that way. Who was going to put their head up and tell him to knock it off and get Clark’s big white smile turned in their direction instead? 

Shane remembers standing there, listening to someone crying in his teammates’ bathroom. And he remembers, for a minute, thinking – I should go make sure they’re okay.  

And then Shane went back to bed.  

Because, really, like. What was he going to do? Was he going to leave his room, after midnight – after curfew – and hope he didn’t wake Marty up coming or going? And then what. He was going to go knock on his coach’s door? Coach, I think there’s someone crying in Clark’s room. Coach would have sat his ass for breaking curfew. Or he wouldn’t have, and Shane would have been a fucking narc.  

Or, what, Shane was going to go next door, knock, make Clark let him in? It was either Deter crying in the bathroom, or it wasn’t. If it was, Shane had just ruined both of their fucking seasons, because the guys would never drop it: Deter crying like that, and Shane caring like that. And if it wasn’t, then what – Hey, Clark, do you have a girl crying in your bathroom? Everything good, man? No, I don’t want to fuck her too, thanks. Just checking in.  

Yeah fucking right.  

Shane had washed his hands. If it was like, bad. Like, if the person was hurt. They would probably call the cops or something.  

Right? 

So Shane went back to bed.  

It’s been more than fifteen years now, and Shane still wonders about that night sometimes. Who it was, and what had happened.  

... 

Ilya is smoking on the dock as the sun goes down. Sometimes he smokes like he finds real pleasure in it – body languid, cigarette loose between his fingers. More often he smokes like it’s breathing or blinking, something his body does without conscious effort. Today, his body is tight, arm working mechanically at his lips with hardly a moment to exhale. It’s the only thing all day that has belied his stress.  

Shane watches from the deck as he burns through one cigarette and pulls another out of the packet to hold between his fingers, unlit. Ilya lets his head fall back. For the first time, Shane understands what people must mean when they say I need a cigarette like Ilya had said it fifteen minutes ago. It looks like it would feel good, today, to do something destructive. Something that would let him get outside, alone, in the quiet.  

Shane pads down the dock. The planks transfer his weight down the length of the whole thing, and Ilya tenses. When he turns to look at Shane, his face is momentarily very hard, and then he softens. Shane drops down beside him, his legs just long enough for his feet to skim the water. 

“Are we okay?” 

Ilya hums and reaches over to thumb at his chin. “I love you, Shane,” he says, answering a question that Shane didn’t know he was asking. Whether he still deserves it. “That doesn’t change. That never changes.” 

Shane’s eyes burn; he drops his head forward into his hands so Ilya won’t be able to see it. He can probably tell, anyway, because he knows Shane very well. 

Ilya reaches over and puts his hand in the middle of Shane’s back, heavy and warm. Again, he says, “tell me what is happening in your head.” 

Shane shakes his head. The problem is that he doesn’t know, not really, because everything is so confused and rotten inside. “You tell me,” he says, senselessly, but sometimes Ilya can. Sometimes he figures it out before Shane does.  

But this time, he doesn’t say anything. Finally, Shane sucks in a deep breath. “I think it was probably pretty bad,” Shane says, watery, “what happened back then.” 

“Yes,” Ilya says, steadily, and he pulls Shane into his chest, where Shane can tuck his face and inhale the smell of detergent and cigarette smoke and let his eyes water. “I know it was.” 

“But it wasn’t just... me,” Shane says, muffled, “I never did anything. I mean... I didn’t start anything, but I didn’t stop anything. I was. Fuck. I let it happen. I was complicit.” 

Ilya’s arm tightens over his shoulder. “Yes,” he says again. 

“And I’m mad,” Shane continues. “I’m mad that it happened. I’m mad that so many people let it happen and I’m mad that I was part of it, and now I’m mad that I have to fucking do something about it. Because I know I have to do something. I have to say something. But I’m mad that I’m the only one who’s getting asked about it, because it’s not just me, and it wasn’t just Grant Deter, and it wasn’t just that team. I don’t want to be the poster child for something else. I don’t want to be the spokesperson against hazing in junior hockey, and now I have to be, because I... fuck.” 

“I know,” Ilya says, into his hair, like maybe he really does know. Like maybe he really does know Shane, even these awful, dark parts of him, and maybe he really does love him anyway.  

“We run a mental health charity, Ilya. It’s humiliating. I’m going to have to go stand in front of all those kids and know that they know, and their parents know, that I’ve captained teams where shit like this happened and I didn’t do anything.” 

Ilya makes a noise in his throat. “Not just you, Shane.” 

“Yeah, but. I’m the one who has to say something.” Shane sits up and scrubs his eyes. It really is a beautiful evening. He really is very lucky, that he has all of this. In the video, he noticed Grant was wearing a wedding ring. He hopes that he found someone who’s sitting next to him tonight, leaning into him, lending him strength.  

But the thing is – Grant wasn’t special. And neither was Shane. Neither of them had it any better than the other guys, but neither of them had it any worse. They’re just the ones who are going to say it out loud.  

“You were just a kid back then,” Ilya says. “But now you are a grownup. And so now you have to do what grownups are supposed to do.” 

“I know,” Shane says, sniffs hard, and then decides not to cry. He’s good at that, now. After. “Fuck. What am I even supposed to say? Sorry, Deter, I was so shit scared that they’d fucking figure it out about me, whatever it was there was to figure out, the shit I didn’t even know about back then, that I let you take it instead. I let it happen because it was just fucking easier that way. And because... fuck. Because I fucking did it, and it didn’t kill me, and it’s just what you fucking do. That was the way I thought, and it was easier to not do anything, and so I didn’t.” 

Ilya takes his hand. “Yes, pretty much,” he says, leaning into bump their shoulders together. “I think you basically say that.” 

Shane sits there for a heartbeat and lets the moment be – his beautiful husband, their beautiful house, a beautiful summer night. He never thought that it would all be possible at sixteen. And he did it anyway.  

“Can I borrow your phone?” Shane asks. “Mine is inside. I think I need to call my mom. I think I know what I want to say.”