Chapter Text
July 7, 2022
Jackson
“This is Jackson Doe.”
“Kid, it’s good to hear your voice. This is Brandon Wiebe from the Ottawa Centaurs.”
Coach Wiebe’s voice comes through grainy and slightly distorted. Jackson dropped his phone three weeks ago getting off the bus in the rain, and now everyone sounds like they are calling him from the bottom of a well. He grips the phone tighter anyway.
“I got a feeling you know why I’m calling.”
“Yes, sir.” His voice does not waver. That, at least, is something.
The pride has already climbed too high in his chest. It sits beneath his chin, dense and hot, threatening to choke him. Jackson presses the heel of his free hand into his sternum as though he might be able to force the feeling back down where it belongs.
His mother’s voice echoes instead—sharp, certain, unforgiving. Quiet down pride is a sin, don’t you go forgetting that.
“You’re a good kid and a hell of a goalie,” Wiebe says. “Can I look forward to seeing you in September?”
For one strange second, Jackson hears his father instead. Take the blessin’, Jack. You ain’t gon’ get ’em every other Sunday.
His pa used to say that when Jackson was little and shy about accepting anything. A second biscuit. A new pair of skates. Praise from a coach. The last piece of pie.
As though good things were rare animals, liable to bolt if Jackson stood around too long wondering whether he had any right to touch them.
“Yes, sir.” He sounds like an idiot.
There must be something else he is supposed to say. Something polished and memorable. Something worthy of a nineteen-year-old being drafted into the National Hockey League.
Thank you for the opportunity. I won’t let you down. I have dreamed about this since I was two years old.
Instead, every word he has ever learned appears to have evacuated his skull. Coach Wiebe laughs, slow and deep. The speaker crackles around the sound.
“It’s Coach now, kid.”
“Yes, si—” Jackson shuts his eyes. “Yes, Coach.”
“That’s better.”
The shelter is louder tonight than usual. Everyone has been pretending not to watch Jackson pretend not to watch the draft.
The old television bolted high in the corner flickers blue over rows of cots and mismatched chairs. Somebody found microwave popcorn. Someone else dragged in two extra card tables from the rec room. The younger kids were supposed to be asleep twenty minutes ago.
No one has enforced it. Coach Wiebe is still talking.
“We’ll send over a big-ass packet of shit in a few days. Contract information, reporting dates, all the fun stuff nobody dreams about when they’re six years old.” Jackson smiles despite himself.
“Yes, Coach.”
“We’ll get you settled before rookie camp. You’ll be staying with one of the veterans for your first season, so pack light. Don’t worry about housing starting in September.”
Jackson looks down. His duffel bag is shoved halfway beneath the cot. Pack light. He can do that.
“Thank you, Coach.” This time the words catch. Only slightly.
The shelter around him becomes painfully clear.
The rows of metal bed frames. The industrial carpet patterned to hide stains. The lockers with their dented doors. The smell of burnt coffee, laundry detergent, somebody’s instant ramen, and the sharp lemon disinfectant the evening staff uses on the bathrooms.
His skates are locked in the oversized storage cupboard Second Chance gave him because they did not fit safely anywhere else. His medication is in the locked refrigerator at the nurses’ station. Most of what he owns could fit into the duffel bag beneath his feet.
September. A veteran’s house. The Ottawa Centaurs.
“Go celebrate,” Coach says, gentler now. “You deserve it.” Jackson looks at the television. He does not know whether he believes in deserving things.
“Yes, Coach.”
“See you in a few weeks, son.” The call cuts off. The static disappears. Jackson keeps the phone pressed to his ear. For perhaps two seconds. Maybe five.
Years have accumulated inside his body.
They live in his throat. Behind his teeth. In the ugly ridge of his right knuckle where he broke it and never got it set properly. In the white scars beneath his shirt. In the calluses across his palms. In his knees and his back and the strange little chip in his tooth he can never stop touching with his tongue.
Years of work. Years of being watched. Years of making himself impossible to ignore and easy to tolerate.
He has carried them with a kind of force built from southern masculinity, dysphoria, fear, and the unshakable conviction that if he stopped moving for even one second, everything behind him might catch up.
The television changes. The draft bell rings out through the shelter. It rolls between the cots and the card tables and the abandoned coffee cups. His photograph appears on the pixelated screen.
JACKSON DOE.
GOALTENDER.
SECOND ROUND. NINTH PICK. FORTY-FIRST OVERALL.
OTTAWA CENTAURS.
The number two team in the league. The team that lost the Stanley Cup to the New York Admirals in game seven last season. The team Ilya Rozanov captains. The team Shane Hollander plays for. The Ottawa fucking Centaurs.
Jackson shatters. There is no dignity to it.
His face folds before he can stop it. The first sound he makes is awful and wet and embarrassingly young. He bends forward, elbows on his knees, one hand covering his mouth as though the rest of the shelter has not already seen his name spread across the television.
His shoulders shake. His cot gives a long, dying squeak beneath his weight. It has been doing that for months.
“Holy shit.”
Melissa reaches him first. Her hug is less an embrace and more a full-body collision. Jackson barely has time to move the phone before she slams into him, arms around his neck, laughing and crying in equal measure.
“You did it, you fucking psycho.”
Someone whoops. Someone else shouts, “Language,” because there are kids present. This inspires more swearing. Richie appears from nowhere and scruffs Jackson by the back of his neck, dragging him upright enough to press a loud kiss to his cheek.
“Get off me,” Jackson says, laughing now, though it comes out broken.
“No.”
“You’re sweaty.”
“You love me.”
Another body crashes into him. Then another. None of them are friends, exactly.
Jackson is not sure what word exists for people who know which nights you wake up screaming but don’t know your favorite color. People who will steal your socks without remorse and sit with you in the emergency room without being asked. People who have seen you at your worst because everyone here has arrived through some version of worst.
Maybe there doesn’t need to be a word for it. For three months, Second Chance has been the safest place Jackson knows. It is not safe in the way people with homes mean safe.
There are arguments. Theft. Relapses. Police occasionally. Some nights every bed is full and somebody has to be turned away.
But no one asks Jackson to explain himself here. The nurses help with his injections when his hands shake too much. They let him grab a second plate after a game.
The younger kids know he plays professionally, or almost professionally, and mostly care because this means he can explain how to tape an ankle properly and once bought everyone milkshakes when the shelter kitchen flooded.
Jackson had come here because they needed volunteers. He stayed because eventually he needed a bed.
His phone chimes. The sound is sharp enough to cut through the noise. Jackson looks down.
Dad: I am so proud of you Jackson.
His lungs stop working. For one ridiculous moment, this nearly breaks him worse than the call. His father has always been proud of him.
Mostly. Often. In the quiet ways a man can be proud of someone while still failing to show it much at all.
Jackson reads the message twice. Then a third time. His thumb moves before he can stop it. His mother’s text thread opens. The last message sits at the bottom of the screen.
To Mom: Happy Birthday Ma. I hope the boys don’t give you trouble today. I sent a little thing in the mail that reminded me of you. All my love.
Delivered. Nothing beneath it. Jackson stares at the screen.
Her birthday had been yesterday. She is busy. It is almost harvest. His dad said it was a nice birthday. He did not mention whether she liked the gift. That does not mean anything. It means she is busy. It means—
“Earth to huckleberry.” Jackson looks up. Melissa is standing over him with her hands on her hips. Behind her, Desmond is carrying something on a paper napkin with the grave concentration of a bomb technician.
“We have secured provisions,” Melissa says.
“I found it,” Desmond corrects.
“You found it because I told you where to look.”
“You said there might be something.”
“Just give it to him.” Desmond holds out the napkin.
A cookie sits in the middle of it. It is slightly burned around one edge and decorated with uneven blue frosting. Someone has written what might be a C in the center. Or a horseshoe. Or a worm. Jackson looks at it.
“It’s a C,” Desmond says.
“I knew that.”
“For Centaurs.”
“I knew that too.”
“No, you didn’t.” Jackson takes the cookie.
“Thank you.” The frosting is still soft. It smells like sugar and cheap vanilla.
For one second, with no warning at all, it smells like his mother’s kitchen. Flour on the counter. His brothers fighting over a wooden spoon. His ma smacking his hand away from cooling cookies and telling him he has the patience of a starving coyote.
His stomach turns. He holds the cookie anyway. Melissa points toward the kitchen with theatrical seriousness.
“I also saw fresh fruit.” Jackson blinks.
“Real fresh fruit?”
“Potentially.”
“That sounds like propaganda.”
“I saw an apple with my own eyes.”
“Bruised?”
“Obviously.” He lets himself be pulled to his feet.
Around him, the shelter is still celebrating. His face is still on the television. His phone is warm in his palm. His father is proud of him. His mother has not called.
Jackson eats a bruised apple with half his mind buried in the dirt of a south Texas ranch and the other half already flying across Ottawa ice.
July 8, 2022
Ilya
Ilya Rozanov is having a lovely dream in his lovely bed with his lovely husband when the loudest fucking loon in Canadian history screams directly outside the window.
His entire body jerks awake. Shane, possessing the survival instincts of a rock, does not move.
Ilya lies frozen beneath the comforter, heart racing, listening for another attack. The cottage is silent. Then, from somewhere across the water:
WOOOOOOO-ooo.
“Bitch,” Ilya whispers. Shane makes a soft noise against his chest and burrows closer. The anger becomes significantly more difficult to maintain.
The morning light is thin and silver through the curtains. The lake beyond the windows has not yet burned off its mist. Their bedroom smells faintly of woodsmoke from the fire they let die sometime after midnight and the expensive laundry detergent Shane pretends not to care about but absolutely notices when Ilya buys the wrong kind.
Ilya looks down. Shane is mostly hidden beneath the blankets, one arm thrown across Ilya’s stomach, hair sticking up at the back. Safe. Warm. Here.
The sight still surprises him sometimes. Not Shane specifically. Though Shane surprises him constantly. The life does. The quiet. The cottage. A bedroom where no one will enter without knocking.
A house full of people who love him badly and loudly and without requiring anything in return except that he stop pretending he does not need them. He can hear the coffee machine grinding downstairs. Yuna. Of course.
The NHL Draft has become something close to a religious holiday in the Hollander-Rozanov family.
Yesterday, Shane’s parents arrived before the first pick carrying enough food for a small wedding. David brought four racks of ribs. Yuna brought two bottles of wine and then criticized the wine already in the cottage.
They watched the draft crammed together in the living room beneath the enormous weighted blanket David bought Shane for Christmas.
They booed the Voyagers. They argued over trades. Yuna predicted three picks correctly and became unbearable about it. Ilya does not remember when Shane’s parents went to bed.
He remembers wine. He remembers the television still playing downstairs. He remembers Shane everywhere. His dream had been excellent.
Shane, naked, sitting in the Stanley Cup. Very tasteful. Artistic.
The loon is fortunate to be protected by Canadian law.
Ilya looks toward the window. A part of him thinks about getting up. Another part thinks about the porch.
Yuna will be sitting outside with her coffee, probably wrapped in the ugly blanket with the ducks on it. The lake will be quiet. David will wake up eventually and complain that no one saved him the good coffee even though no one has ever prevented him from making his own.
Soft mornings used to feel fictional. As a child, Ilya dreamed about being held so tightly no one could take him away. His mother used to hold him like that. Before age hollowed her out. Before grief and addiction and loneliness turned love into something he could not carry for her.
Her grip weakened near the end. Not her body. Something deeper. Sometimes, in pieces of the life around him, Ilya still feels her.
In Yuna’s hands when she adjusts his collar without asking. In David setting aside the corner piece of a pan of brownies because he remembers Ilya likes it. In Shane asleep against his chest.
His mother is stronger here. Memory is kind enough to restore her.
Shane’s breathing changes. His leg jerks once beneath the blankets. Then his eyes blink open. Ilya smiles. He had never dreamed about meeting an angel as a child. What child would? He knows now that angels have sharp elbows and terrible circulation.
“Good morning, moya lyubov’.” Shane makes no attempt to answer. He tucks his face farther into Ilya’s ribs and presses a lazy kiss there.
Ilya closes his eyes. This is acceptable.
The universe, having already sent the loon, decides it has not done enough. Ilya’s phone begins screaming. Not ringing. Screaming.
A tornado siren fills the bedroom. Shane’s entire body tenses. Ilya groans. Only one person has that ringtone. He reaches blindly toward the nightstand.
His hand hits a glass of water. Then a book. Then Shane’s phone.
“Other side,” Shane mumbles.
“I know.”
“You’re hitting me.”
“I know.” Finally, his hand closes around the phone. He answers without looking at the screen.
“Good morning, Rozanov.” Coach Wiebe sounds far too pleased with himself.
“Good morning, Coach.” Ilya’s voice is rough with sleep. “I assume you wake husband and I at unknowable hour for life-or-death emergency. Did you lose Viagra again?” Shane pinches his side. Hard. Ilya grunts.
“Thank you, Hollander,” Wiebe says. Shane closes his eyes again.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I know where the bruises come from.”
“You wish,” Ilya says. Another pinch. Coach laughs.
“Look, I won’t bother you long. I wanted to call before either of you were awake enough to properly argue.” Ilya opens one eye.
“That means you are doing something bad.”
“I let it slide last season.”
“No.”
“I haven’t told you what it is.”
“No.” Shane sighs into his chest.
“Let him speak.”
“Betrayal.”
“I let it slide last season,” Wiebe continues, “because Shane had just moved to Ottawa, you two had finally stopped making everyone around you deeply uncomfortable, and I thought putting a nineteen-year-old rookie in the middle of whatever honeymoon phase you had going on might qualify as a human rights violation.” Ilya looks down at Shane. Shane’s face is pressed firmly into his ribs.
“Coach is homophobic,” Ilya says.
“I’m about to become more homophobic.”
“Typical Canadian.”
“But you’re not getting out of housing a rookie this year.” Silence. Ilya sits up. Shane, dragged partially with him, makes a displeased sound.
“You call to tell us,” Ilya says slowly. “Not ask.”
“Correct.”
“No.”
“You cannot say no.”
“Watch.”
“You agreed to the veteran housing rotation.”
“I agreed years ago before I had husband. This is changed circumstance.” Shane rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. Ilya sees the exact moment he gives up on returning to sleep.
“We’re at the cottage until training camp,” Shane says. Wiebe seizes on the voice of reason instantly.
“Yes. I know. That’s why I’m calling now.” Ilya does not like the direction this is moving. “You’ll need to head back earlier than usual.”
“No.”
“Late August.”
“No.”
“Last week of August.” Ilya sits fully upright.
“You steal three weeks from cottage?”
“It’s not theft if I employ you.”
“I am going to bring your daughters to Blackpink concert without you.”
“They’d probably prefer that.” Ilya narrows his eyes at the phone. Wiebe has become too powerful. Shane takes the phone from Ilya’s hand.
“Who is the rookie?” Direct. Practical. Fucking traitor.
“Jackson Doe.” Shane goes still. Only slightly. Ilya notices because Ilya notices everything Shane does.
“The goalie,” Shane says. “The trans goalie.” There is no hesitation in the words. No careful euphemism. No lowering of the voice, as though Jackson Doe might materialize from the lake if spoken about too directly. Coach Wiebe’s tone changes. Not dramatically. Enough.
“Yeah.” Ilya knows the name now. Of course he does.
The draft had played for hours yesterday. Yuna had looked up from her phone sometime during the second round and said, “Oh, interesting,” in the tone she reserves for anything that requires immediate research.
Jackson Doe. Nineteen. Goalie. American. The first openly trans man drafted into the NHL.
The news had already been everywhere before the draft. By midnight, every sports network in North America had clipped the phone call announcement into something with dramatic music.
Ilya remembers the photo more than the name. A serious face. Broad shoulders. Dark curly hair. Young. Very young.
“He’s been in Ottawa for years,” Shane says. “OHL.”
“Yeah. Brantford.”
“And he’s staying with us for the whole season?” Shane asks.
“If he makes the roster, yes.” The words land badly. Ilya cannot immediately say why. Of course that is how it works.
Rookies come in. Rookies get cut. Some make the roster. Some go down. Some disappear back into leagues Ilya does not follow closely enough. Still. He thinks of the photograph. Something in his chest twists. Coach continues.
“He’s a good kid. Quiet. Polite. Hell of a goalie. He’s done camps with the league before, so some of you may have crossed paths with him.”
“I have not,” Ilya says.
“I don’t think I have either,” Shane says.
“You’ll meet him before rookie camp. I want him settled before the chaos starts.”
“Why us?” Ilya asks. It is not exactly a protest anymore. Wiebe is quiet for half a beat.
“You two have the space.”
“Many people have space.”
“You’re the captain.”
“Unfortunate administrative error.”
“And Shane is Shane.” Shane frowns.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you own a label maker.”
“That is not a qualification for caring for another human being.”
“It’s more than Ilya has.”
“Fuck you.” Coach laughs again. Then his voice softens.
“Look. He’s been handling himself for a long time. I think a stable house will be good for him.” Ilya looks toward the window. Mist still covers the lake. Something in the word stable irritates him. People use words like that when they are talking around the truth. Shane sits beside him now, knees pulled up beneath the blankets.
“Does he know it’s us?” Shane asks.
“Not yet.”
“Excellent,” Ilya says. “He can still flee country.”
“You will be normal.”
“No.”
“You will be kind.”
“I am always kind.” Shane and Wiebe laugh at exactly the same time. Ilya looks between his husband and the phone. “This is hostile environment.”
“I’ll send you his information,” Wiebe says. “You’ll meet here the last week of August. Press him a key before he arrives. I’m not having a repeat of the Hoffman situation.”
“The Hoffman situation was not my fault.”
“You changed the locks.”
“He lost key three times.”
“Press. Him. A. Key.” Ilya has several further arguments prepared. Coach Wiebe hangs up. The call ends.
Ilya stares at the phone. Then at Shane. Then back at the phone.
“He hangs up like coward.”
“He hung up because he’s known you for twelve years.”
“Same thing.” Shane reaches for his own phone. Ilya watches with immediate suspicion. “What are you doing?”
“Looking him up.”
“We are not stalking child.”
“He’s nineteen.”
“Baby.”
“You called Haas a fetus until he was twenty-three.”
“He has weak beard.” Shane ignores him. Ilya falls backward onto the pillows with the dramatic force appropriate to the situation.
Three weeks. Three entire weeks stolen from the cottage. He had plans. Some of the plans involved Shane naked in the lake. Many involved Shane naked elsewhere.
Now they have to return to Ottawa early to prepare a bedroom for a rookie goalie. A rookie goalie who is apparently quiet. Polite. A good kid.
Ilya closes his eyes. His mother would tell him to stop being selfish. Not kindly. She would have loved the cottage. That thought arrives without warning.
For one moment, grief presses a thumb beneath his ribs. It is less sharp than it used to be. This almost feels worse. Pain is easier to understand when it is loud.
He feels Shane shift beside him. A hand settles against his forearm. No question. No demand. Just there. Ilya turns his hand and catches Shane’s fingers. On the other side of the room, Shane’s phone lights his face.
“Oh,” Shane says. Ilya opens his eyes.
“What?” Shane turns the screen. The article photo shows Jackson in his major junior gear. He is standing in the crease, mask shoved up onto the top of his head, sweat-dark hair flattened at his forehead. Someone caught him mid-laugh.
Not the serious photograph from the draft coverage. This one is younger somehow. Or maybe simply less guarded.
“He’s good,” Shane says. Ilya looks at the statistics beneath the photograph.
“Very good.”
“He shut out the championship final.”
“I can read.” Shane scrolls.
“There’s a lot of coverage.”
“Bad?”
“Both.” Ilya reaches over and takes the phone. The headlines are exactly what he expects.
Historic. Controversial. Groundbreaking. Debate. Questions. Eligibility. Fairness. Biology. A nineteen-year-old boy transformed into an argument for strangers.
Ilya scrolls past them. There are photographs from camps. Junior games. A press conference where Jackson sits behind a microphone with both hands folded together so tightly his knuckles are white. He looks older there. Not nineteen. Not any particular age. Just tired. Ilya hands the phone back.
“He looks boring.” Shane looks at him.
“Yes.”
“Very boring.”
“Probably.”
“Terrible.”
“Tragic.” Ilya settles deeper beneath the comforter. “We give him basement.” Shane’s eyebrows pull together.
“The upstairs guest room is for my parents.”
“Yes.”
“The basement room is nice.”
“I did not say it is not nice.”
“You said it like we’re putting him in a dungeon.”
“I am Russian. Everything sounds like dungeon.” Shane puts his phone down.
“We should probably replace the mattress.” Ilya closes his eyes. Here it begins.
“And clear out the storage tubs.”
“No.”
“Ilya.”
“They are important.”
“You haven’t opened them since we moved.”
“They contain memories.”
“They contain extension cords and a broken humidifier.”
“Memories.”
“The curtains down there are awful.”
“They are curtains.”
“The room is dark.”
“He is goalie. They like dark.”
“That is not a thing.”
“You do not know.” Shane is already thinking. Ilya can see the machinery turning behind his eyes.
Sheets. Towels. Closet space. Dietary restrictions. Schedules. Emergency contacts. The disruption is taking shape in real time.
Something unfamiliar will be moving through their home. Using their kitchen. Leaving shoes near the door. Existing inside the private life Ilya and Shane fought years to build.
He should resent it. He does resent it. A little. Maybe.
Shane’s stomach growls. Loudly. Ilya’s attention snaps away from everything else. He looks down. Shane looks annoyed at his own body.
“My husband going hungry in my own home,” Ilya says, horrified. “Because he only eats nightmare smoothie slop and bird food.”
“I had ribs last night.”
“You ate one rib.”
“I ate more than one.”
“One and half.”
“You were not counting.”
“I always count.” That is the wrong thing to say. He knows it the moment Shane’s face changes. Not much. A small withdrawal. Ilya reaches out immediately and runs his thumb over Shane’s wrist.
“I mean because I watch you,” he says. “Not food. You.” Shane looks at him. Ilya waits. A breath passes. Then another. Shane nods.
Ilya hates how quickly he can still hurt him by accident. He hates how easy it is to become careless inside happiness. His mother had loved him. His father had loved him. Love had not prevented damage. He knows this better than most.
Maybe that is what Wiebe meant by stable. Not perfect. Not safe from every hurt. Just a house where people notice. A house where someone comes back. Ilya does not like thinking this early in the morning.
He abruptly throws the comforter off all three occupants of the bed. Anya, previously concealed near Shane’s feet, jerks awake in outrage.
“We must make breakfast before your father wastes away,” Ilya tells her. Anya sneezes. Shane groans. Ilya jumps out of bed and crosses the room toward the closet. He returns moments later wearing boxer briefs and one of Shane’s old T-shirts.
“This is my shirt,” Shane says.
“Our shirt.”
“It says Team Canada.”
“Yes. Our country.”
“You are Russian.”
“I contain multitudes.” He leans down and kisses Shane’s cheek with enough force to push his head sideways. Then he points toward Anya.
“Come. We make green goo.” Anya leaps from the bed. Ilya heads for the door.
Behind him, Shane says, “You’re not putting peanut butter in it again.”
“It needs flavor.”
“It needs to be drinkable.”
“Peanut butter is drinkable if brave.”
“No.” Ilya is already halfway down the stairs.
For several minutes, Coach Wiebe’s call disappears beneath the sound of the blender, Anya’s nails on the floor, and Shane following after them to prevent culinary terrorism.
But the rookie has already entered the house. Not physically. Not yet. For now, Jackson Doe exists as a name in Coach Wiebe’s voice, a photograph on Shane’s phone, and three weeks cut from the end of summer.
An obligation. An intrusion. A bedroom that needs new curtains. By September, there will be a key waiting for him.