Archive of Our Own

The transition to a new team is, according to Ryan Price, always really weird. It’s uncomfortable and awkward getting to know a new group of people who you’ve never played with before, and Shane kind of didn’t want to do it. He wanted to play with Ilya, loved the fact that he and Shane would now be on the same team, but getting to know everyone else? He dreaded it. He loathed to think of it.

Sure, Shane met some of them at his wedding, but… 

They had been really excited for Ilya, and Shane was super happy about the fact that Ilya had a group of people to hold that close, but…

The team group chat was blowing up Ilya’s phone almost all day, everyday, which was great, but…

The thing was, Shane was pretty sure they hated him.

Well, “hated” was a strong word. They didn’t hate him, and they were never outwardly cruel or vicious, but there were side glances, a strange intonation, a slightly cold reception. He just felt that they didn’t like him. They didn’t want him there. And as much as it hurt Shane to realise, he also kind of expected it. The Metros were the same, after he came out to them. Weird looks and dropped conversations and unextended invitations. So when the Centaurs acted the same way around him, it didn’t come as a huge surprise. It came as a bit of a surprise because Ilya was always singing their praises - he loved that team and they loved him - so it stung slightly when they didn’t immediately open up to him, but… that’s what guys did, right? It’s what all of Shane’s teams had done all of his life. They thought he was weird or too quiet. They thought he was too strange to be a part of the group. He was part of the team, but never the group.

Except with the Metros. With the Metros, he was part of the group. He was embraced, he was brought in, he was loved like a brother.

Until he wasn’t. 

The worst part of it all wasn’t the distance between Shane and his teammates; it was that it was familiar to him. He had played hockey for over a decade and yet he still felt like that outsider kid that no one invited to their birthday parties. The kid that everyone wanted on their team because he was good, he was objectively the best of them all, but not the kid that they wanted to hang out with. 

The Centaurs, though they were Ilya’s family, were no different.

And Shane accepted that.

***

”What do you mean?” Ilya asked.

Shane shrugged. “Just…” He sighed, but forced a smile on his face. He knew, immediately, that Ilya saw through it, but he kept going. “I don’t feel great. You go out with the team. I’m just gonna go home.”

Ilya pressed the back of his hand to Shane’s forehead. “You don’t feel good?” There was disbelief in his voice, in his eyes, but he played along.

”Yeah.” Shane softly took hold of Ilya’s wrist and brought his hand down to press a kiss to the knuckles. “Go have fun with everyone else, okay?”

Shane didn’t realise that it would come back to bite him in the ass.

The next day, after a quiet night of reading, playing with Anya, and stress meal prepping for the next month, Shane got to the rink before anyone else. Ilya had wanted to sleep in, wanted to laze around with Shane in the early morning glow that filtered in through their window, but Shane had shaken his head and gone in. He was doing laps, warming up, when he heard voices coming closer to him.

”But did you see how he kept checking his phone?” Bood was saying. “Every time I looked over at him, he was on his phone. Whenever I asked him what was up, he’d just say ‘Texting Shane’. Like, can the guy not let his husband out of his sight for two fucking seconds?”

It plunged into Shane’s stomach like an ice cube. 

“I know,” the other person said. “It’s totally shitty. Ilya’s been super down recently, and he was before they got outed, too. Hollander must have been on him about being super hush hush, you know?”

Shane closed his eyes against the sudden stinging there. 

“I just…” The second person sighed. It was Harris, Shane realised. “I get being in the closet, and I get being quiet about being gay in hockey, but couldn’t he see how much it was fucking Ilya up? It’s like he didn’t even care. From everything we’ve seen, I don’t even know why Ilya’s with him. Ilya’s such a sweetheart and Hollander… isn’t.”

Feeling like something was crumbling in his chest, Shane slowly skated towards the boards, stepping off the ice and sitting down on the team bench with a thunk. The tears wouldn’t go away, streaming down his cheeks as uncontrolled and unrealised emotions burst, one after the other, in his head and chest. He clapped a hand over his mouth to stop himself from sobbing outright, biting into his palm. As he heard other people start to arrive, he hastily scrubbed at his face, wiping away the tears, and headed back onto the ice.

When Ilya appeared, his gear freshly washed and his stick newly taped, he skated over to where Shane was doing laps again. He smiled widely at his husband, helmet tucked under his arm. Shane smiled back at him, tight and quick, and watched as that unfettered grin he loved slipped from Ilya’s face. The sparkle left his eyes, replaced with worry, and he pushed himself closer to Shane, reaching for him.

”Shanyuska,” he said, and Shane felt the tears spring back into his eyes.

Blinking quickly, Shane shook his head. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

”No, moy lyubovv, what happened?” 

Again, Shane shook his head. “I’ll tell you later, okay?”

Ilya looked at him warily before slowly nodding. “Okey. You promise?”

Shane nodded.

Practice went smoothly, but Shane could feel eyes heavy on his back at every turn. Not only the eyes of his teammates that disliked him, but now he could feel Ilya’s, too. Ilya watched him like a hawk, made sure to compliment him more than usual, being overall the sweet man that everyone knew and Shane loved, but it made everything feel worse. The more Ilya lavished praise upon Shane, the more he felt the hardening of his teammates' hearts against him. After practice, when Ilya was talking to Wiebe in his office, Shane waited for the showers to clear, sitting at his locker with a weight in his chest.

”I mean, come on,” he heard. It was Hayes. “The guy keeps complimenting him, keeps hyping him up, and not even a fucking smile? Hollander practically ignored him the whole practice.”

”It’s so obvious that he doesn’t feel the same way about Ilya.” Luca, the youngest on the team and the one that Shane thought might have been starting to like him. “Hollander didn’t even compliment him back. If my partner was being that nice and sweet to me, I’d reply in kind.”

”I can see why they kept it so quiet though.” Dykstra. His voice was distinct in Shane’s mind for some odd reason. “The way Hollander acts? Like he’s ashamed of Ilya? What a douchebag. Probably only married Ilya because of the press about their kiss.”

There was a murmur of agreement.

Shane quietly made his way over to the stalls, closing the door behind him and sitting on the closed toilet seat to wait them out. He heard as someone went into the locker room and then into the shower room.

”Has anyone seen Shane?”

Ilya’s voice, deep and Shane’s favourite sound in the whole world, rang out against the cold and damp tile around him. There were mumbled negatives, though it didn’t sound like anyone was actually all that bothered about not knowing where he was. He pulled his feet up onto the seat and hugged his legs, resting his cheek on his knee, and let himself cry.

At some point, when everyone had already left, there was a knock on the door to the stall Shane was in.

”Shushka?”

Shane straightened his legs and stood, feeling the stiffness in his limbs. He opened the door, letting Ilya see his tear stained face in the fluorescent lights of the locker room.

”Oh, baby,” Ilya sighed, pulling Shane into his arms. “Shanyusha, what happened?”

Shaking his head, Shane felt a fresh wave of tears gather in his eyes as he pressed himself against Ilya’s chest. He clung to his husband, needing to feel the tightness of the circle of his arm., and was rewarded by Ilya holding him closer, squeezing him.

”They hate me,” Shane whispered.

Ilya shook his head, but he didn’t say anything.

”They think I only married you because we got outed.”

Shane felt Ilya go stiff in his arms before he was pulling away, looking Shane in the eye, brows furrowed with confusion and rage. “What?”

”I overheard them talking in the showers. I’m a shitty husband because I don’t smile when you compliment me. I suck because I don’t compliment you back. I must be ashamed of you. I forced you to stay in the closet. I make you do things you don’t want to do because I want them.”

Ilya was nearly shaking. Shane could feel the anger rolling off him in waves, felt almost afraid of his husband. Well, he would have if he didn’t know Ilya as well as he did.

”They say this?”

Shane nodded.

”What the fuck?” Ilya pulled Shane to him again, holding him tighter than before. “No, Shane, don’t listen to them. You are perfect and I love you. You are the best thing to ever happen to me.”

”But they’re right,” Shane whispered. “I made you stay in the closet. I made you keep quiet about us, and I-“

”No.” Ilya’s arms somehow got tighter. “No, you don’t say these things. Oh, Shane.” Ilya pressed a kiss to Shane’s neck. “Shane, you are my reason to get up in the mornings. Don’t let them do that to you.”

Shane pulled back slightly, just enough to kiss him. “I love you.”

”I love you.” Ilya rested their foreheads together. “I will talk to them.”

”No,” Shane whispered. “No, it’s… I’ll get over it. I’ll get used to it. It’s hockey, it’s just like this.”

***

Ilya woke up in the middle of the night to an empty bed. 

He knew, without needing to be told, exactly where Shane was going to be, and proved himself correct when he found the other man in their home gym, legs pumping as he rode the stationary bike. The back of his shirt was damp with sweat and his head was bowed, obviously exhausted but not giving in. Ilya grabbed a towel from the stack near the door and padded over softly, pressing the towel to the back of Shane’s neck when he got to him. Shane jumped slightly, looking up at Ilya with wide eyes. 

“Did I wake you?” Shane asked.

Ilya shook his head. “Come back to bed.”

Shane looked away from him, shaking his head. “I’m not done yet.”

”It is two in the morning,” Ilya said. “We have practice in five hours. You need sleep.”

”I just need to finish my set, and then I promise I’ll sleep.”

Ilya sighed. “Okay. Want me to stay while you work out?”

Shane met Ilya’s eyes again with a soft smile. “Go back to sleep, Ilyusha. I’ll be there soon. Promise.”

Ilya didn’t know if Shane actually kept that promise. He wasn’t in bed when Ilya woke up again, but the sound of the blender in the kitchen let him know where his husband was. It was a hard morning to drag himself out of his bed. Ilya wanted nothing more than to stuff his head back into his pillow and go back to sleep, but he had been correct when he told Shane they had practice that morning. He was captain, too, so he kind of had to go. Maybe he should listen to Galina and tell his coach about his depression, just to let him know why some mornings might be difficult for Ilya. Maybe he should tell Bood, too, as his alternate captain. And Harris. Hell, maybe he should tell the whole team.

Shane was already dressed to go when Ilya reached the kitchen. He had one of his disgusting smoothies in his hand, half of it already gone. 

It was a bad morning for Shane, too, then.

It was something that Ilya and Shane had only just started talking about. Shane’s restrictive eating habits, the way he controlled everything that went into his body with an iron fist, were concerning to Ilya. Finding Shane, near tears, staring at a box of mac and cheese at midnight in their darkened kitchen had pushed them into the discussion, pushed Shane to find a therapist that specialised in athletes with disordered eating habits (because Shane refused to call it an eating disorder). So, seeing Shane with a smoothie in his hand and nothing else near him, let Ilya know exactly how hard the team's words had hit him. 

“Could you make me a slice of peanut butter toast?” Ilya asked.

Shane looked at him with surprise, pulled from his own thoughts with an almost audible snap.

”Huh?” Shane asked.

”I am having bad morning,” Ilya said. “I don’t… I know I need to eat but I don’t have energy to make food. Could you make me a slice of peanut butter toast? Please?”

It was Ilya’s own little way of making Shane handle food, too. He watched as Shane dunked the slices of bread in the toaster and then slather them in peanut butter, smiling slightly when Shane added a drizzle of honey to each slice. He passed the plate to Ilya, eyeing the food before, hesitantly, putting another single slice in the toaster. Ilya took it as a victory, even though Shane only ate half of it. 

On the drive to the rink, Ilya decided to put on his “funny music” playlist, waiting for Shane to notice and smile. Halfway through “Budapest” by George Ezra, he noticed that Shane had tuned back into the music. At the beginning of “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by The Proclaimers, he saw a smile nudging at the corners of Shane's mouth. When they reached the chorus, they were both singing, voices out of tune and loud, laughing at themselves and each other, with each other. They bellowed “All Stars” by Smashmouth and crooned to “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield, holding hands over the center console. There were tears in Ilya’s eyes when they pulled into the parking lot and Shane was still giggling every now and then. Despite all the shit going on in Ilya’s head, he had Shane’s boyish laughter ringing in his ears and his heart felt lighter. 

“I’m going to tell Wiebe about my depression today,” Ilya said before they unbuckled. “Galina suggested it.”

Shane looked at him for a moment before a soft smile broke out across his face. “I think that’s a great idea.”

They parted ways at the door, Shane going to the locker room while Ilya made his way to Wiebe’s office. When he reached the door, he found it open. Bood and Wyatt were inside, both with their arms crossed as they faced their coach with frowns on their faces.

”Ilya,” Wiebe said, standing when he noticed the captain. “Come in, I was just about to call you, actually.”

Ilya threw his own confused frown into the mix. “What is going on?”

”Close the door, please.” When Ilya did, Wiebe motioned to the third, empty seat across from his desk. “Sit.” Ilya sat and Wiebe sighed. “Ilya, there’s been some… concerns raised by the team.”

”About?” Ilya asked.

”Your behaviour, now and last season.” Wiebe gestured for Bood or Wyatt to continue.

”We just noticed how down you seemed last season,” Bood said. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and looking at Ilya was earnest concern. “And it’s back again. We know it’s not easy, with all the media attention on your marriage and your relationship, but if Hollander isn’t being, you know… supportive, or is being controlling about the situation, you know you can come to us, right?”

”He doesn’t have to dictate everything you do,” Wyatt added. “When we went out two nights ago, he kept texting you and you seemed really bothered by it. He doesn’t own you, you know?”

With pursed lips, Ilya stared at the floor as he gathered himself. It was taking everything inside of him to not yell at them, to not punch them both. He looked up at Wiebe, who had been silent.

”Coach?” Ilya asked.

Again, Wiebe sighed. “Ilya, I know you a lot better than I know Shane, and… maybe he’s good at putting on a face when he’s here, I don’t know. I just want to know what’s going on, so that we can help you.”

Ilya nodded again, his hands clasped so tightly in his lap that his knuckles had turned white. “I see.”

”And you know that we’ll never judge you for anything,” Wyatt said. “If he’s… you know, hurting you, then we can get you out of that situation.”

Oh, and that made something in Ilya’s chest start to fester.

”You think he is hitting me?” Ilya asked. “Hurting me?”

Wyatt and Bood shrugged.

Ilya pressed his lips together tightly, nodding as he thought. “Yesterday, after everyone had left, I found Shane in one of the bathroom stalls. Do you know what he did when he saw me?”

The three men shook their heads.

”He practically fell into my arms.” Ilya felt his eyes sting. He pressed them closed for a moment before looking at each of them in turn. “Crying. Almost sobbing. Because he heard what you were saying about him in the showers. That you think he is terrible husband. That you all believe he is ashamed of me, of being in relationship with me.” He was so angry that he was dropping words. He was so pissed off in defense of his husband that he was ignoring the rules of the English language. “That he only married me because of video. I spent most of that night texting Shane because I wanted to. Shane was telling me to talk to you all. To have, but I was worried about him.” They at least had the sense to look chastised for their words. There were tears in his eyes and if this had happened with the Raiders, he might have been embarrassed, but not here. He took in a deep breath. “Yes, I have been not good this season. Last season, my mood was… bad. I was… I was diagnosed with depression a few months ago, and am still figuring out medications. I have been so…” He made a vague gesture to his own head. “In own mind, recently. I do not want to get out of bed. There are days when I think it would be best if I was not alive.”

”Ilya,” Bood whispered, reaching out to rest a hand on Ilya’s knee.

With barely contained anger, Ilya pushed his hand away. “Do you know what gets me out of bed each day? What gets me to want to stay alive?” They stared at him and he stared back. “Shane. Shane is the only reason I am here, at this rink, right now. He supports me, in therapy and at work and everything else. He loves me, with his whole heart. He is the only reason I am getting up in the mornings, sometimes.” He looked down at his wedding ring. “Shane is not like other men. He does not smile as freely. He does not speak without thinking about it so many times. But he does not deserve to feel like he is bad because of it.” He smiled down at his ring. “We sang together on the way to the rink this morning. We laughed so much that it hurt. And to see that locked away because of people I love… it hurts.” Ilya sniffled and looked back at his coach. “My husband does not beat me. My husband is not ashamed of me and did not only marry me because of video. He asked me to marry him before the video came out. After plane almost crashed. He asked me to marry him, not other way round.” A self confident smirk stretched across Ilya’s face. “As if I could be made to do something I didn’t want to do. As if he could.”

”Ilya…” Wyatt started.

”No.” Ilya stood up, shaking his head. “You owe Shane apology. And I want to go back to bed, so. I know is practice, but. I am going home and I am taking my husband with me.”

“Ilya,” Wiebe said. 

Ilya looked at him.

”Thank you for telling us.” Wiebe swallowed. “It’s hard to open up about mental illness, so, yeah. Thank you. And yeah, I think you and Shane should go home. Have a day off. We’ll be okay.”

***

The locker room was actually really nice when it was empty. It felt a lot more welcoming than Shane’s old one, even though they looked almost exactly the same. It was as if the laughter and all the happy thoughts had been pressed into the stone, like flowers into wet clay. 

The door opened and Harris walked in, looking down at his phone with a frown on his face. He looked up with he felt eyes on him, and jumped slightly when he saw Shane.

”Sorry,” Harris said. “I would’ve knocked if I thought anyone was here.”

”It’s okay,” Shane said. He wasn’t even undressed yet. “I like to get here early.”

”I noticed.” Harris looked down at his phone again and then back to Shane. “Troy left something in his locker that he wants at home, so he sent me to grab it. He’s still sick, so he’s not coming to practice.”

Shane nodded. 

“So I’m just gonna… get it.”

Harris got whatever it was Troy wanted out of the locker. As he was leaving, Shane said, “Hey, Harris?”

He turned and looked at Shane, mouth slightly twisted to the side. “Yeah?”

”Thank you for looking out for Ilya,” Shane said. “He told me a lot about the team when he joined and he was really worried that he wouldn’t fit in, so it was really great to hear how open you all were. He doesn’t have a lot of people, so… yeah. Thank you.”

Harris looked surprised, as if he hadn’t expected anything like that to come out of Shane’s mouth. He nodded and turned to leave again, but hesitated at the door. 

“You get it, right?” Harris asked, turning back to Shane.

”Get it?” Shane asked.

”Why we’re so protective of him?”

Shane nodded.

”Because he’s a great guy. He hasn’t told us about everything he’s been through, but you can always tell, you know? We know about his mom dying and how young he was, but there’s obviously more going on. More happened. And you can tell that it’s had this huge effect on him, but he goes out of his way to help others. He goes out of his way to make others feel welcomed. Almost everyone calls him this huge asshole, but he’s really sweet, so we’re really protective of him. We love him. And we don’t want to see him get hurt.”

Shane nodded again. “I love him, too.”

Again, Harris seemed surprised by the lack of defensiveness in Shane’s voice. “Do you?”

”There’s nothing I can say or do to prove it to you, but yeah. I love him.”

A silence stretched between them. Harris frowned, but not at Shane. It was more like he was frowning at the situation, the way the conversation hadn’t gone the way he’d thought it might. Or maybe he was frowning at Shane; Shane couldn’t read the other man’s mind. 

“Do you want to get drinks after practice today?” Harris asked. “I feel like we… might not have given you a chance to actually get to know any of us. We kind of jumped to the defensive as soon as we met you.”

Shane smiled, a small, shy thing that looked out of place in the locker room. “I’d like that. I’d have to check with Ilya, though.”

Harris smiled back and opened his mouth to respond, but he was gently pushed into the room. He looked behind him and laughed.

”Speak of the devil.”

Ilya walked in, confusion on his face once more. “I am not devil.”

”No,” Harris said. “It’s an idiom.”

The frown deepened. “I’m not idiot, either.” He plodded over to Shane, pulling him into a tight hug. “We are going home. Wiebe says is okey.”

Shane matched his frown, concern in his eyes. “But we have practice?”

”Yes, Shane,” Ilya said, rolling his eyes as he pulled away. “But we are going home. I cannot look at team today.” 

Shane pressed a gentle hand to Ilya’s cheek. “Hey,” he murmured. “What happened?”

Ilya scowled even deeper. “They accuse you of hitting me. Of beating me. Like you are…” He let out a torrent of angry Russian, only some of which Shane caught. Shane knew he said something about his brother and his father, something about being angry, and then, weirdly, something about fish. Or maybe not fish, but a word that sounded like fish? “I want to go home.”

Leaning forward, Shane kissed him softly, feeling Ilya loosen beneath his hand and in his arm. “Okay. We’ll go home.”

***

Ilya told Shane how the meeting went. He also apologised for talking about Shane being upset without asking first, but Shane didn’t mind too much. 

“It’s really okay,” Shane said. They were laid next to each other on their bed, turned to face each other, hands clasped between them. “It’s hockey, Ilya. It’s just the way it is.”

”It shouldn’t be that way,” Ilya grumbled. “Just because Metros were shit doesn’t mean all teams are shit.”

Shane scrunched his nose in the way that Ilya knew meant he was trying not to laugh.

”What?” Ilya asked, a smile slowly spreading on his lips.

”You sound more like you did when we first met when you get angry. You drop a lot of your articles.” Shane touched Ilya’s nose with his own. “It’s cute.”

Ilya reared his head back, pretending to be offended. “Excuse me? I am not cute. I am handsome, I am manly.” He pushed Shane onto his back and straddled his hips. He could feel Shane’s laughter rumble under his hands on his chest. “I am the most manly man you’ve ever seen!”

Shane gripped Ilya’s shoulders and they were suddenly wrestling in their bed, pillows sliding off as the sheets were pushed to the floor. Ilya somehow got Shane in a headlock, but then found himself under Shane with one of his legs pressed against his shoulder. They were laughing, breathless as they pushed and pulled at each other, until they settled once more in each other’s arms. 

“It really is okay,” Shane panted. He tilted his head back on Ilya’s shoulder so he could look his husband in the eye. “I have you, so I’m happy. That’s all I need.”

***

Ilya realised that, while Bood and Wyatt had warmed a little to Shane, the others hadn’t. Maybe Troy had, after what Shane had told him about the conversation he’d had with Harris, but Troy was different. Troy hadn’t iced Shane out when he’d joined the team, probably because he knew what it felt like to be iced out. He hadn’t warmed to Shane, either, which sucked because Troy was Ilya’s best friend on the team, but it was more than the others. The others had stopped being vaguely hostile, but they weren’t welcoming. They played around Shane like he was a cog in their well oiled machine, but they didn’t talk to him off the ice. They didn’t joke around with him in the locker room. They didn’t even include him in conversations in the group chat. If he said anything, added any comment, they ignored him as if he’d never said anything. 

The whole thing was going to get them nowhere, Ilya thought. Sure, they played well together, but playing well didn’t win them games. Playing well didn’t win them Cups. They had to play their best. They had to be the best. 

They’d played a few games and won maybe half of them, but it wasn’t going as well as Ilya had hoped. When Shane was added to the roster, he thought they’d be swimming in wins and basically winning the Cup before the play-offs even started. This, though? This wasn’t that. This wasn’t even close to that.

And then they had to play against the Metros.

And Ilya saw the looks on his teammates' faces when they recognised their own words and actions reflected on the face and in the voices of Shane’s old teammates. They saw Shane give hollow smiles as the men who he used to hold as closely as family spat slurs at him and joked about him taking it up the ass from the whole team. None of the Centaurs had ever said anything like that, but they had basically treated Shane the same way. They had made him a pariah, an outcast, and seeing it in blue, white, and red on the other side of the ice made them feel some way that they didn’t know how to articulate. They knew that blank smile on Shane’s face, the look of acceptance of fate. They had gotten that smile, those empty eyes, and they realised that they were making him feel just as badly as the blatantly homophobic team they hated did. Part of Ilya felt vindicated, felt that they deserved to feel ashamed of themselves, but another part just hated the Metros even more.

Shane scored the winning goal. Ilya watched as his teammates swarmed his husband, cheering and patting him on the shoulders. It was awkward, but it was a start.

***

Shane was surrounded by his new team and he felt like they were actually being honest with their congratulations. He smiled weakly at them, not entirely knowing how to respond, but then something caught his eye. Off to the side, someone was skating quickly toward Ilya, a blur of blue and red, and then suddenly Ilya was slammed against the boards, the sound of snapping bone audible from half a rink away. 

“Ilya!” Shane yelled.

The group around him turned and then parted like the Red Sea as Shane pushed himself forward, over to where his husband had crumpled on the ice. He didn’t even get that far, though, before he was pushed back by someone in a Metros’ jersey. Hayden was there, holding Shane back.

”Let me go!” Shane snapped.

”Let the medics get to him,” Hayden pleaded.

Shane snapped his eyes to his best friend, who seemed to wither under his glare. “Let me go.”

Hayden hesitated, but then dropped his arm. Shane quickly glided his way over to Ilya, who was being looked over by the medics, frowning groggily at the man talking to him. He found Shane and smiled sleepily, waving slightly with one hand as he laid on the ice.

”Is he okay?” Shane asked.

The rest of the team was starting to gather behind him.

”He’s definitely got a concussion,” the medic said. Shane thought his name might be Ryan, but he was new. “And from the sound of it, a broken bone or two, but we won’t be able to tell where until he gear is off. It might be his arm.”

***

Ilya, through bleary eyes and pounding head, watched as Shane turned from the group surrounding him and bounded across the ice, out of his line of sight. He didn’t know what his husband was doing, as the medics were now placing the brace around his neck, but he could hear Shane yelling. He couldn’t make out a lot of the words clearly through the fog in his brain, but he could tell that Shane was angry. There was a silence, a low grumble of words in a voice Ilya thought might be Drapeau or Miitka, and then the sound of skin striking skin. There was a gasp from the audience, and suddenly there were a lot less people around Ilya.

As the medics lifted him from the ice onto the stretcher, Ilya raised a hand and gripped one of them by the arm.

”Ilya?” she said.

”Where’s Shane?” he asked.

She looked away from him across the ice and bit her bottom lip. “Uhm… beating the crap out of one of the Metros.” She frowned. “Comeau, I think.”

Ilya let out a delirious giggle. “That’s my husband.”

She smiled down at him, brows pinched in concern. “I know, sweetheart. Let’s get you to the hospital, yeah?”

***

Shane was sitting in the waiting room with an ice pack on his right hand and one pressed against his split lip. He was going to have a black eye in the morning, too, but the worst of it was the busted skin on his knuckles. The doctor who’d looked him over when they’d first gotten to the hospital said they needed to check for a “fight bite”, whatever that was, and had injected something into his hand, but nothing happened. The doctor smiled at him and told him that was good. No “fight bite”. He stitched two of Shane’s knuckles back together and wrapped his hand, giving him both ice packs after he was done.

”Your lip is going to hurt for a while, but it doesn’t need stitches,” the doctor said. “Keep the ice on your knuckles and face and the swelling will go down.”

Shane nodded. Just as the doctor began to leave, he asked, “What’s a fight bite?”

The doctor smiled at Shane. “If the other person’s teeth break into your joint. The stuff we injected into your hand was saline, and if it came out of the bite, then you would need it to be surgically cleaned out, as there are a lot of germs in the human mouth. Because the saline didn’t come out of the wound, you don’t need surgery, just stitches.”

After another nod, Shane watched the doctor walk away. Then, he had been led to the waiting room to, as the name suggested, wait for Ilya to be out of surgery. They had to go in and realign the two bones in his left forearm and relocate his shoulder, so he might be out of it for a while. As he waited, Shane looked up the fight on his phone. He was probably going to get suspended, and as long as Comeau did, too, he was okay with that. It was unprovoked, Comeau’s attack on Ilya, so Shane’s response probably wouldn’t be as harsh, or at least he hoped. He was so in his own thoughts that he didn’t notice when his teammates started to arrive.

”Yo, Hollander.”

Shane looked up and found Wyatt standing in front of him. He was holding out a can of ginger ale.

”Ilya told us you liked this brand,” Wyatt said. 

Shane took the can in his injured hand. “Thanks.”

They all sat around him. The waiting room wasn’t really suited for so many people, but some of them sat on the floor, leaning against the wall or each other. There was an awkward silence that stretched uncomfortably, before-

“Who the fuck taught you how to punch like that, Hollander?”

He didn’t catch who’d asked before the whole team was talking. They were asking him fighting questions, praising his form, giving him pointers. Bood was sitting next to him and took the ice pack, pressing it to his knuckles for him. Dykstra was on his other side, animatedly retelling the fight to Shane, move by move, adding commentary. Troy was sitting across from him, and winked when Shane made eye contact. Harris, next to Troy, smiled at him gently.

No one commented when the tears started pouring down Shane’s cheeks, but Bood did wrap an arm around his shoulders. Luca, sitting on the floor in front of Dykstra, leaned his head against Shane’s knee and hugged his calves. The room grew quiet as they waited, but it was comfortable, for the first time since Shane joined the team.