Chapter Text
Shane is having a shit day. More than a shit day. He’s having the worst day of his life. An absolutely no good, very bad, how-the-fuck-is-this-my-life day. Honestly, he’s not sure how he got here.
It starts like this:
The alarm on his phone doesn’t go off. It’s his first day at the new job and his stupid, fucking alarm doesn’t go off.
Luckily, his body has gotten used to waking up early all by itself from a summer spent being woken up by neighbouring construction work every morning for months and so he wakes up with the sun anyway and thanks his lucky star for his body’s circadian rhythm (and the construction workers terrible work schedule), but that should’ve been the first sign of things going wrong.
He looks out of the window, squinting at the blazing sun. It’s a hot day in late summer and if he had been anyone else he would have been rejoicing at the beauty of the day, the warmth and the lovely weather. The birds chirping and the way Tuna Melt, his cat, is stretching out in the rays of sunshine. As it is, he’s not someone else, he is in fact Shane Hollander and Shane Hollander cannot stand the sun. Or, rather, his body can’t. He’s going to need to lather himself in sunscreen, something that's definitely going to cut into his morning routine time.
It’s too late to laze around in bed and check social media and the news, the way he would’ve been able to normally if his damn phone had worked but he manages to take a shower, style his hair and grab a croissant from the counter, which he holds between his teeth while he grabs his shoes, almost falling over as he jumps in place and balances desperately in an effort to get them on.
If his mother could see him now she’d probably have a heart attack.
A few years ago that thought would’ve had Shane with a pit in his stomach for the rest of the day — maybe even the rest of the week — but he’s come a long way since. It’s just a passing thought in a blurry, hurried morning now.
It’s not much of a morning routine but it’s something, he thinks. He won’t be late and that’s all that matters, he thinks. And then there’s an accident somewhere ahead of him that completely stops all traffic and he is stuck anyway. Fuck, he thinks.
But that’s not all. Oh, no. Shane’s bad day has barely started.
By the time he gets to work Svetlana is already there. She looks exhausted and annoyed, two things she should not be looking this early in the workday, and Shane fears that he’s in trouble.
It’s the first day on this job — a job he got because of his lifelong friend (and ex-girlfriend) and he can’t fuck this up because Rose put her neck out for him and he can’t disappoint her, not now that they’re finally good again, fuck what is he going to do — and he’s already fucking it up. But Svetlana isn’t looking at him. She’s looking at her phone.
In fact, she barely spares him a glance as she frowns down at the screen, fingers firing essay-length messages to God knows who.
Is he getting fired already? Is that why she’s not looking at him? Is she texting their bosses that the new kid is late and that she’s not putting up with him? Shit.
This can’t be it, he thinks. Please. Please, don’t take this from me. Not now. Not yet. I need it.
“Good, you’re here. Have you had time to check social media this morning?” Svetlana says as way of greeting.
Shane blinks.
That was not what he was expecting at all.
“Um,” he says. “No, sorry. The service on the O-train is terrible.”
Svetlana wrinkles her nose.
“Why are you taking the O-train?”
Because I’m terrified of driving, Shane thinks.
“It’s environmentally friendly,” he mutters.
It’s his go-to when people ask. And people always ask. They think it’s weird when he says he never got his license. That he’s in his 20s and can’t drive. He’d rather not deal with it at work, too.
“Hm, good for you,” Svetlana says, still distracted by her phone. Her long, curly hair is pinned up but there’s little pieces slipping out in the front and falling into her eyes as she keeps typing.
She doesn’t seem to notice them.
“Anyway, we have a major disaster on our hands. Huge. Astronomical. We’re going to be in meetings all day so if you need to, like, pee or get some coffee or something do it now before they arrive.”
He’d noticed this about Svetlana in his interviews. That she sometimes talked in incomplete sentences. Like she assumed everyone had the information that was in her head, too. Like she never said more than she needed to. Like she just expected people to pick up on the words that never managed to make their way out of her mouth.
“Sorry, 'they'?” Shane asks anyway.
He prefers being informed. And they’re a team now, the two of them. They’re both doing PR, together, even if they have different areas of expertise. He needs to know what she knows. He doesn’t like asking but it seems like this is how Svetlana functions. He can work with that.
“Yeah, Ilya Rozanov. He’s the one in trouble. His friend, Troy Barrett, insisted on joining in though, says he can ‘provide context’ or something. I don’t know, I think he just wants in on the meeting. The two of them are attached at the hip, they always do everything together. When Ilya’s contract was up last year he even put it in his demands that he gets to play with Troy or he doesn’t stay. It’s cute, in an annoyingly toxic and unhealthy kind of way.”
She pauses for a moment before snapping her fingers.
“Oh! And your ex, too. She’s going to be there.”
Shane just barely resists the urge to make a face at that.
He doesn’t like being referred to as Rose’s ex. That’s what his entire public life had been, towards the end. Rose Landry’s ex. Never his own person. He’d stupidly thought he could get away from it at work, despite everything. What a dumb notion, he now realises. Of course, Svetlana knew though. He couldn’t hide it from her.
“What happened?” he asks, curiosity piqued.
As far as he knew Ilya Rozanov was the Centaurs’s golden boy. Never in the news for anything bad, unless he’d played a bad game or he’d been too cheeky with a response or a chirp. Somehow, people never really minded his worse behaviours because everyone was too busy getting blinded by that smile and the Russian accent. Whatever this was, it must've been terrible.
He knew Ilya and Troy had spent the weekend in Vegas, something about ‘cheering Ilya up’ after a break-up. Rose had mentioned it in passing. He’d only met Ilya a handful of times but he couldn’t imagine him doing anything that bad, even in a place like Vegas.
Rose had mentioned alcohol though. Maybe he’d drank too much and done something stupid like pee in public or do karaoke shirtless. Maybe he’d gambled all his money away. Maybe he’d married a stripper. Not that those were things that would warrant all-day meetings. Well, maybe the last one would.
“You’ll find out in a few minutes, they’re almost here. Now, I’m gonna go use the bathroom before we’re stuck for hours in the most uncomfy chairs you can imagine and then I’m getting myself a coffee. I suggest you do the same. Go piss, girl.”
❆
He finds out what happens when he’s sitting crouched on top of a closed toilet lid in a gray cubicle, knees pulled tight to his chest and phone in his hand, furiously scrolling through newspaper articles and social media feeds.
Fuck, he thinks.
What the fuck.
This was bad. Really bad. Astronomical, in the words of Svetlana Vetrova.
He stops at an article that had managed to get a hold of the tweet before it had been deleted. Ilya Rozanov’s face stares back at him, his charming, white smile a stark contrast to his darker, golden curls.
He starts reading.
Fans in uproar after Centaurs Captain Ilya Rozanov tweets “Only steers and queers in Vegas and I’m not a cow.” — is Rozanov gay or a homophobe? Vote in the poll below!
Is this really the kind of person Rose was willingly attaching herself to? The kind of person his ex lovingly referred to as a friend and client? The kind of person she would support?
Rose knew Shane was gay. Hell, Rose was queer herself. So why would she ever put up with this kind of bullshit from anyone, nevermind someone she considered a friend? That wasn’t like her. This didn’t add up. None of this was adding up.
He didn’t have time to think anymore on just why he felt a pit in his stomach at the words he’d just read though. At the tweet he’d just seen. At Ilya Rozanov’s face staring back at him on his phone screen.
He didn’t have time to question any of it, although a voice in the back of his head was still asking itself why something felt so off about all of this. He didn’t have time to listen to that voice at all, he didn’t have time to feel angry or sad or bad.
So he shoved all those thoughts and feelings, all the question marks and doubt, into a box and he buried it somewhere deep in his mind. Somewhere he wouldn’t be able to touch it.
The pit remained no matter how hard he tried to get rid of it but he could work with that.
He had a job to do. And he was going to do it, whether Ilya Rozanov deserved his help or not.
❆
Twenty minutes later finds him sitting around an oval table with Svetlana on one side, Coach Wiebe and Colt Bryan, the team president, on the other while Ilya, Troy and Ilya’s agent, Rose Landry, sit across from them.
The tension in the room is so thick Shane doubts even the sharpest of blades could cut through it.
It’s been quiet for a minute, possibly more.
When they had entered, Rose had given Shane a small smile before joining Ilya and Troy in a quite convincing act of sombre seriousness and solemnity. Shane didn’t buy it for a second coming from Rose, who he had grown up with and knew very well, but Ilya’s act seemed slightly more sincere.
Ilya has been staring at his lap from the moment he sat down, something more akin to anxiety than shame radiating from his entire being. He’s been avoiding everyone's eyes ever since.
Shane has never seen Ilya Rozanov this way. Small and sunken in. A shell of his usual self. As if he wished to crumple up and disappear.
It felt unnatural on him, this smallness.
Ilya Rozanov was supposed to be the life of the party, the mirrorball shining brightly and radiating happiness onto others. Confidence. Self-assuredness. Captain material. Not whatever this was.
The quiet stretches on. Nobody seems willing to make the first move.
Shane isn’t sure how normal this is.
Maybe this is how all Centaur’s fixer meetings went. Maybe this is how they dealt with things here. Punishment by quietude.
He wishes he knew. He wishes this wasn’t his first day at the job. He wishes he could turn to Svetlana and ask what he was meant to do here. But Svetlana is looking at Rose, Ilya and Troy. She’s looking at them so intensely that any pleading look from Shane would’ve gone unnoticed anyway.
After what feels like a small eternity the general manager leans forward, hands clasped in front of him and resting on the wooden tabletop.
“It seems,” he says. “That we have found ourselves in quite some trouble now. Haven’t we, Mr. Rozanov?”
Ilya finally looks up at the sound of his name, eyes darting back and forth over everyone in front of him until they snag on Shane. For a second, and only a second, something flashes in his eyes — too fast for Shane to recognise — before he finally lets his gaze land steadily on Bryan’s face.
“I really am sorry if I hurt anyone. I never meant to—”
“Sometimes,” Bryan interrupts. “Our intentions matter little in comparison to the outcome of our actions. Or, in this case, the judgement of the public.”
Ilya says nothing to this but Troy leans closer to him, shoulder bumping against Ilya’s. As if he was trying to comfort him, in whatever small way he could.
Shane looks away.
“Well,” Coach Wiebe starts, voice awfully loud after Bryan’s quiet, calming lilt, “What’s done is done and now we gotta deal with it. You fucked up, kid. None of this was okay. Even if I personally believe you didn't have malicious intent. The damage is done. So. Svetlana, how do we fix this?”
“Actually,” Svetlana says, turning towards the coach. “I thought we could let Shane here handle this one. It’s his first day. Feels like a sign, doesn’t it? I feel like he’s meant to take the lead on this.”
Which Shane had not expected at all.
Every single person in the room turns to look at him and Shane is panicking. Big time. Capital letters PANICKING. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do here. What he’s supposed to say. All the experience he’s had and all of the knowledge he’s absorbed just goes straight out the window and he’s blanking. Blanking terribly. Blanking so badly he’s afraid he’s going to start gaping like a fish at any moment.
Still.
He opens his mouth, not sure what’s about to come out of it and says:
“Fake dating.”
What?
“Fake… dating?” Wiebe repeats slowly, as if he’s praying that he’s misheard.
Shane wishes that was the case.
Actually, Shane wishes a hole would open up right under his feet and swallow him whole because anything had to be better than what he was currently experiencing, including being swallowed alive.
“Fake dating,” he repeats, hoping to convey some semblance of authority. A sense of confidence.
He has to save this somehow. He can’t get fired on his first day.
He looks to Rose at that thought. His friend has an eyebrow raised, something akin to a question in her eyes.
It spurs Shane on.
Rose doesn’t look disappointed or angry, just intrigued, and that has to mean something.
“If we get Rozanov to double down on it. If we get him to— to say that it was his way of coming out. We could spin this. But nobody would believe it if it’s just talk, they’ll see it for what it is — a desperate attempt to save himself and — pardon my language — cover his ass. Same with any redemption plan — make him donate his money to a queer charity, make him volunteer for GLAAD or the Trevor Project… it doesn’t matter, people have done that before and the public is more skeptical and more aware these days. They wouldn’t buy it for a second. But if we get him to fake date, date a man, it’ll blow over much quicker. And it’ll give the team positive feedback; instead of being branded as homophobic Centaurs will be progressive. An openly queer hockey player. Those are rare. He’d be a trailblazer. Have him say it was a misunderstanding. A badly worded way of coming out, instead of yet another case of a homophobic hockey player. Have him fake date.”
Ilya looks as if he’s about to protest at this but Rose puts a hand on his shoulder, gives him a look, and he settles back down with a frown on his face.
“Having an openly queer hockey player might not be a bad thing, for the optics,” Wiebe mutters reluctantly, turning to the general manager next to him. "And it would be great for representation, having not only an openly queer hockey player but a captain, too."
There’s a twinkle in Bryan’s eye. One that makes Shane feel uneasy. Makes him want to squirm under the older man’s gaze. But he doesn’t. He looks right back.
If this was going to get him fired, if this was how he was going out, he’d go out with a bang. He’d go out with his back straight and his head held high. No matter how ridiculous his suggestion might have been considered.
He doesn’t dare look at Ilya though.
Ilya, who hasn’t said a word this entire time. Ilya, who he is putting in a terrible position by proposing this. Maybe, a voice in his head says, he wouldn’t be in this position if he wasn’t tweeting homophobic things after drinking his way through Vegas.
“I think,” Bryan says eventually, “you and I need to start drafting a press release, Brandon. Ms. Vetrova and Mr. Hollander will be too busy to do it themselves, since they’ll have their hands full putting together a list of potential suitors. Let’s get Ilya Rozanov a boyfriend.”