Chapter Text
One of Shane’s top ten favourite things about hockey was the mouth guards, not that he’d ever say it. He had them practically since he stepped on the ice, and there was a comforting familiarity to the moulded plastic. No matter how stressful life got, no matter how much the locker room sucked, at least Shane could pop his mouth guard in and head out on the ice.
He was very aware it was weird and sort of childish; it’d been a consistent chirp in middle school, when other kids started to notice that Shane wore a mouth guard even during practice. It’d extended through high school, amplified when he spent a season with a Billet family, and continued all the way to professional hockey. Some nights, when Shane was with his Billet family outside of Toronto and missing his own parents, he’d sleep with his mouth guard. He hid it, ashamed and feeling like a baby, but there was something comforting about it. In a strange city, in a strange room, with a strange new routine, the simple feel of the mouth guard was grounding. Soothing, almost.
Shane was pretty sure there was something deeply wrong with him.
He hid his idiosyncrasies well, projecting the image of a normal man, but there was only so much he could hide, especially when the Metros had him buddy up with Hayden in hotel rooms. Overall he was grateful to have Hayden around, but it did make it harder to engage in some of his freak shit. With Hayden, Shane couldn’t spend hours upon hours not speaking. He couldn’t put a heating pad over his face for no reason, nor could he really pull on his hair to comfort himself. The mouth guard was out of the picture too, of course. He’d never live that one down if Hayden found him out, and he really didn’t miss the mouth guard related chirping.
Cincinnati Ohio is what finally broke him. The Ohio Red Coats were a god awful team with with a shitty ass goalie and an even worse defence; even Hayden was faster than their centres by the time he was fifteen. There was no possible way in the seven circles of hell that was the Midwestern US the Red Coats should have been able to beat the Metros. The only only team those dipshits could reliably beat was the fucking Centaurs.
But somehow, the Metros lost.
Logically, Shane knew it wasn’t his fault. It was his rookie year, his fourth roadie ever, and they had eight gruelling games in ten days. No matter what the assistant coach or the asshole in the fourth fucking line said, it wasn’t Shane’s fault. That knowledge didn’t make it easier to handle though.
Logic didn’t stop his eyes from burning with tears, logic didn’t make him feel any less sick to his stomach. It didn’t fix the stupid hotel lights from flickering, and no amount of reasoning could make it any easier for Shane to force words out.
There was so much he could say, if only he could open his mouth. I’m sorry. What the hell were you doing, missing that pass? I’ll watch the tapes obsessively. Maybe if Wilson wasn’t hungover we could have won. We might’ve won if I didn’t miss that pass. I scored the only two goals of the game. I know it wasn’t enough. I will be better next time. Could you turn off the overhead light Hayden? No, I don’t want to go out. I want to watch the tape. I want to lay down and sleep. I want to practice more.
He didn’t say any of that though. Instead Shane sat with his thoughts all through the bus ride back to the hotel, and blocked out the light with the blankets while Hayden showered. He also, for no reason in particular, “forgot” to take his mouth guard out. I was a rough game, a rough day, and he wanted the comfort.
He wanted his mom. And his dad. Fuck, he needed someone to hug him tight and tell him what to do.
He needed something in his mouth, for comfort. A hoodie string, a straw, maybe Ilya Rozanov’s dick (for purely mouth-feel reasons). A mouth guard.
“No way you’re asleep yet.” Hayden called, his footsteps coming into the room. Then, because Hayden was sort of a dick, he pulled the blanket off Shane and exposed him to the harsh expanse that was the rest of the room. “Dude, what the fuck are you doing?”
Fuck. He’d been caught with blanket over his head, his mouth guard was half out of his mouth as he chewed on it, and a hand pulling his hair away from his skull. He must’ve looked like he belonged in an insane asylum, especially when he wasn’t talking.
“What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
All Shane could do was shake his head. He needed more time if he was going to respond verbally.
“You’re just being weird?”
He nodded.
“Sure, well. Let go of your hair,” Hayden said, trying to pry his fingers away. Fuck, if only Hayden would hug him. Maybe lay on top of him. Although that might be gay, and he really didn’t want those chirps going around again.
Shane continued to chew on his mouth guard, flipping it around, saliva covering the plastic with long tendrils.
“Did you forget to take your mouth guard out? You’re fuckin weird man,” Hayden said, giving him a light punch on the shoulder. Too light, actually. He needed Hayden to touch him harder. In a normal way, of course.
He was fucking weird.
He shrugged, there was nothing he could do about it anymore— he was never going to live this down. It was perfect hazing material really. Fuck, he’d need to wash his mouth guard out every time in case someone did some fucked shit to it.
The springs creaked as Hayden sat down on the opposite bed. “You good? You’re not talking and it’s kinda freaking me out.”
When Shane was ten, he super glued his fingers together to see what it would feel like. It was possible to get them apart— easier than his mom had implied— but the glue left a hard, dry residue on his fingertips. It affected everything he touched; the counter, his pencil, his hockey stick, was all filtered out by a thick, ductile layer of plastic-something that sucked all the moisture out of his fingers.
His lips felt like that now. They were super glued together, and while he could open them, speaking felt weird, as if he was forcing the words through a weird chemical layer.
“I’m fine.” He wished he didn’t have to speak. If he had his own room like some of the more veteran members, he’d be able to turn off the lights, chew on his mouth guard and not speak.
“Did something happen? You seemed off at the game man.”
Great, Shane loved knowing that his hockey was fucked for some unknowable reason. Maybe Hayden fucking Pike could show Shane, the player with two fucking goals, how to play hockey. Hayden Pike, who’d gotten one assist and practically gave the puck to those fuck ass Ohio players.
He shook his head. He shouldn’t be mean to Hayden, one of the few guys who actually put up with his bullshit.
“Okay then why are you curled up with the mouth guard and pulling your hair?” Hayden asked, and fuck was he pulling his hair again? He wasn’t stopping, if that’s what Hayden wanted.
He shrugged. “I’m just weird.”
Hayden laughed. “Yeah I already knew that dude. What specifically is making you weird tonight?”
“I dunno.” It was a bad answer, but it was the truth. Shane didn’t know why he was acting like a crazy person. Sure there was the game and the long road trip, but no one else pulled this shit, at least not that Shane knew of.
“You can talk to me man.”
It felt like his lips were covered in dried superglue residue when he took a breath in. “I really don’t know Hayden.”
“You’re just… doing this shit?”
“Yeah.”
Hayden scoffed. “Whatever man, I don’t care if you’re weird.”
“Chuis fatiguéI'm tired,” Shane mumbled, the French words coming easier to him for some reason. Sometimes words in a different language were easier to get out, like they bypassed the word filter by virtue of not being the language he thought in.
“Man fuck off with your French shit, I’m not translating that.” For someone literally born and raised in Quebec, it was truly astounding just how abysmal Hayden was at French— even cognates went over his head. It was like all the tiny little concussions had knocked the official language of his home providence right out of his head.
“Bonne nuit goodnight,” Shane said, using French again to be an asshole. He brought the blanket back over his head and closed his eyes. The mouth guard stayed firmly in.
Shane Hollander was a remarkably calm baby. Of course, he was fed, changed, read to, and rocked to sleep on an incredibly rigid schedule, but even for top tier care he rarely ever cried. David and Yuna told people it was their karmic reward for how hard it had been for Yuna to carry a full pregnancy, though Yuna was pretty convinced it was actually just the schedule. Even so, friends, relatives, coworkers would hold Shane and he’d lay there, happy as a clam. And if he did get fussy? Well, David had put a little pacifier in his mouth at one month old and as long as Shane had it in his mouth, he was happy. They joked he could get through a tornado unaffected, as long as he had the pacifier.
It turned out that it wasn’t just the pacifier Shane loved though.
From the moment Shane’s hands could grab, David and Yuna were pulling things out of his mouth. It was normal, an exploration of the world around him, something all children went through, but Shane… Shane was always putting things in his mouth.
Anything handed to Shane went directly in his mouth. His own fingers? In his mouth. Their fingers? Also in his mouth. Whoever was holding him put their fingers near his mouth? As you’d expect, he put them in his mouth.
Really, anything near his mouth was fair game as baby Shane was concerned— not a hoodie string or tie went unchewed by Shane Hollander. Cords, tassels, strings, shirts, bibs, rocks, grass, books, toys, stuffed animals, water bottles, straws, spoons, the bars of his crib— nearly everything in the Hollander household had spit stains and tiny teeth marks on them. David even had to find and buy baby safe disinfectant out of fear he’d try to bit the counter tops. As much as they had to keep things away from Shane’s mouth, it was incredibly endearing. Sometimes, Yuna would let Shane chew on her fingers. It was cute, sue her.
The downside came a little before his second birthday, when they had to get rid of the pacifier.
It was recommended to get rid of it at two anyways, and their family doctor theorized it might be affecting Shane’s speech or lack thereof. Usually kids had a few words by 18 months; at 21, Shane didn’t even have “mama” or “Dada.” There were lots of reasons for this, and the ones Yuna was sticking to was a combination of raising him bilingual and the damn pacifier. There were other, scarier reasons for why Shane wasn’t talking, might never talk, but Yuna refused to consider it. David, for his part, only worried about it if he was awake too late at night.
The first attempt to wean Shane off of the pacifier was to take it away when he was calm. While a great idea in theory, once they took the pacifier away Shane became distinctly not calm and no amount of toys or rattles or exhaustion could calm him. They were able to remove the pacifier when he was sleeping, but then Shane woke up in the middle of the night and screamed until he got it back.
They’d told their pediatrician this, and he told them to stop giving it back to Shane after meals.
The plan had been to slowly stop giving Shane the pacifier after one meal, then give it back if he asked for it over an hour later. The problem with the plan was that Yuna and David felt cruel and heartless denying their baby his favourite comfort. After every meal, Shane would reach for his pacifier, a habit they had unfortunately been training his entire life. Whenever either of them said “later” and moved it away, Shane looked at them with huge, watery eyes and promptly started crying. Of course, they’d tried to calm him, even giving him other things to put in his mouth, but none were as effective as what he wanted: the pacifier. Once, in a moment of desperation, David had once tried giving Shane his finger. It had worked for a few minutes, but when David tried to remove his finger Shane bit down like a little piranha. Yuna had to step in with the pacifier once he drew blood.
All the parenting advice they got said to let him “cry it out,” but neither of them could handle that. They simply loved Shane so much, and they couldn’t bear to see him cry like that, especially not while knowing they had the antidote.
They read every parenting book they could, but none of them even remotely worked. The closest they got to a solution was gradually cutting off the tip of the pacifiers, but once Shane stopped being able to fit them in his mouth and he was back to crying.
Eventually, they’d broken down and let David’s mom take Shane for an extended weekend vacation; the woman promised she could break Shane of the habit, and David turned out okay, so it was probably fine, right? They still spent the whole four days worrying about their baby, despite David’s parents reassurances that they’d done it before and David turned out great. So, it had to be fine. Shane could walk and even stand up in skates off ice, he needed to get rid of the pacifier.
When they returned, Shane was slightly better about the pacifier— David’s parents were able to wean him off of it, then they all spent the next two years trying to get Shane to take other things out of his mouth. They liked to joke that they didn’t need a dog, because their son carried around a slobbery stuffed animal all on his own. The doctor said it was better than a pacifier or sucking his thumb, so at least there was that.
They’d mostly broken the habit of Shane putting everything in his mouth by age 5, in senior kindergarten. For a few, beautiful months, Shane was mostly normal about keeping things out of his mouth. Mostly.
(Kitty the stuffed cat still got its leg put in Shane’s mouth at least once a week. Kitty was not allowed to leave the house due to this.)
Then, hockey began. The TimBits U7 league was a mockery of the time honoured game of hockey, but all three Hollanders loved it, Shane especially. It was safe to say he was thoroughly hockey obsessed: he wore jerseys constantly, begged to wear his skates indoors, played hours of street hockey, and would do practically anything to get extra ice time. TimBits hockey, of course, was his favourite time of day.
It wasn’t just the ice part that Shane liked though. Sure, he loved the sport, but there was a certain piece of gear he loved just as much.
While five and six year olds didn’t need full hockey gear, putting such small children in tiny pads, hockey gloves, and jerseys was simply too cute to resist. Besides, Shane looked too small with just the helmet and the Montreal jerseys looked great on him. Yuna begrudgingly admitted that the Centaurs jerseys looked cute too, but Montreal was still better.
And then David’s dad, David’s fucking dad, gifted Shane a mouth guard before his first ‘game.’ None of the kids could even send the puck into the air, much less fling it at someone’s mouth. Still, CCM made mouth guards for tiny tiny children because, well, it was cute.
Predictably, David and Yuna had to wrestle that wretched mouth guard out of his mouth daily. They even had to store Shane’s hockey gear in a high, locked cabinet so he couldn’t dig through his bag and find the stupid thing. They figured when he grew out of the mouth guard and they’d be free, but when that eventually happened Shane screamed and cried and hit himself in the head and refused to go on the ice. They took him home, and he cried about missing hockey practice. After two more go’s of it, they’d relented and got him a bigger mouth guard.
It did at least get easier to get Shane to take the thing out of his mouth as he got older, but not much. He ardently refused to get on the ice without a mouth guard and by the time he was old enough to listen to reason he actually needed it. Even as an Adult, David was pretty sure Shane never went on the ice without a mouth guard.