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“Did you?”
Shane froze, processing what he just heard. It’s not that he hadn’t been asked this question before, he just did not expect it at that moment, especially with everything it implied. Which was probably naïve of him.
The locker room was already tense; the air filled with anger and J.J had just opened the floodgates. “What’s that mean?”
J.J stared at him for a few seconds, then shook his head. “I don’t know, Hollander. Was it a mistake?”
“You think I tripped on purpose? That I let Ilya win?” Shane asked incredulously. His men were angry and looking for someone to blame. That, he could take. He tripped. It was his fault. He had just lost his team a chance at another Cup. This line of accusation was different, though.
Comeau, who had been slumped on a bench stood. “I know what I saw out there, and I didn’t see a mistake.”
“Well, it was! What the fuck?” Shane turned towards his teammates, making eye contact with as many as he could. “You guys don’t actually think I fell on purpose, do you?”
“How do we know for sure that you didn’t give our chance to win the Cup to your boyfriend?” There were murmurs, people agreeing in English and French.
“Does that idea actually make sense to you?” he asked, incredulous. Sometimes Shane wondered if they were all watching the same hockey games.
Shane looked at these men, at J.J, and realized they truly thought that that was possible. These were the men who were meant to have his back. He played with some of them for years and this was the culmination of their entire relationship. This was what he was always afraid of but somehow, he’d held out some hope that he had read these men wrong. He hoped that the accuracy of his assessment of who they were at their core ended at a professional level but clearly he’d been spot-on. Maybe it was the need to be accepted that did it, but he tried one more time. One more plea before he completely let go without guilt.
“Come on, guys. It was clearly an accident. J.J!”
“I’m sorry, man. Of course it was an accident,” J.J said. No one else agreed.
“Fuck this shit,” Shane said and angrily began to take off the rest of his gear. He threw everything in his bag and turned to walk away.
“Fucking faggot traitor,” someone muttered under their breath. The words landed in a comically ironic way to him. He always lived in fear of this and now that it was here, Shane felt an inexplicable urge to exhale.
He had been prepared to walk away, to be unceremoniously pushed out but now a part of him was screaming not like this. They didn’t get to walk away from this without any scars after ripping him apart. Not after so many years of trying to fit in with these men and lead them without making them feel small. Not after he tried for so long not to look or act too big in a room he knew for a fact that he was the only titan. He was tired of acting smaller than he was for small-minded men. The jealousy, the judgment, the hatred that simmered beneath the crocodile smiles that came with benefiting from his talent; all of the pretence ended here.
Shane was not that naïve. He knew that he made people in the sport deeply uncomfortable with how good he was for an outsider. They could forget the Japanese part of who he was for as long as it benefited them. But he made this team even more uncomfortable when he came out. He was one more asterisk away from hitting the minority trifactor and that was too much for this organisation. He knew that the only reason they didn’t immediately openly pick up their pitchforks was because he was the captain and a better player than all of them. You don’t usurp a King without the right ammunition – even if he was a faggot. He and Ilya being outed being the right ammunition was just convenient timing. He was on thin ice longer than he’d cared to admit.
Shane turned slowly, zeroing in on the man who had spoken. “If you are going to call me a traitor and a faggot, do it where I can see your mouth moving. Not when my back is turned, Berkes,” Shane said, looking directly at him.
“He’s not wrong,” said Drapeau. “You pop up with your new boyfriend, Rozanov of all people, and suddenly you can’t play hockey? Give me a fucking break, Hollander!” The cold gaze Drapeau had given him on the ice was nothing compared to the look he was giving Shane now.
Shane laughed. He could see the concern in Hayden’s eyes, but he couldn’t help it. Maybe he’d regret it later when the adrenaline dropped but as of this moment, he was beyond done with this team. Hayden straightened, no doubt ready to speak on Shane’s behalf. Always his amplifier. But this was officially Shane’s fight alone, and he would win it alone.
“Ilya was here before any of you, and I am so sick of pretending like you can even compare to that man. I gave up years of publicly loving him for this pathetic moment?” Shane asked no one in particular, but his eyes found Hayden’s again. Hayden looked back, the heartbreak he couldn’t even begin to articulate clear as day. Shane knew that he was still feeling guilty for the Cameo video that outed him and Ilya.
Shane took a deep, calming breath and a memory floated across his mind.
“Your family is here; your boyfriend is here. You are safe here.” Ilya.
Why was he ever scared of these people? It was time he took a page out of Ilya’s book and spoke his truth. He didn’t try to stop the cold, monotone of his voice. He leaned into it, if fact. He knew it was frightening, in a way. Worse than if he’d raised his voice.
“I want you all to understand at least one thing today. He was already mine before we ever got drafted. Ilya was mine when he lifted that Cup while you all sat on Jackie’s couch telling me how I should feel about him. I was his when I won you your first cup in over a decade and a half,” Shane said, directing that to management and coach Theriault. They had been standing on the side, silently giving the signal to every player in this room that Shane was fair game. That he was expendable.
“I was his when I put two more Cup rings on your fingers back-to-back so no, Drapeau, Ilya is not some new boyfriend I suddenly need to throw games for. He has been my world since before this team even drafted me, so I’ll be damned if I walk out this door with you belittling what we have. He fucking moved to Ottawa in his prime for me and I what? Delayed coming out with him for this fucking team? I hurt him to preserve a fucking cancer on our relationship.”
“Shane, come on. Let’s go,” Hayden said. He put a firm hand around Shane’s arm and Shane shook him off like it was nothing.
“No, Hayden, they need to hear this. I couldn’t trust you with that part of my life, and I was right. Your shock, your hurt officially means nothing to me, I owe you nothing. I sacrificed so much for this, dedicated 10 years of my life for this team and what I get in return is ‘faggot traitor’?” His voice was cold; there was no hysteria to what he was saying. He looked around at each player, his eyes lingering on those he’d played longer with. Some averted their eyes, others stared daggers into him.
“When you go home to the comfort of your wives and girlfriends tonight, I want you to remember that that’s the life I gave up to put championship Cups in your hands. I gave up being whole, with Ilya, for you and this organisation. I want you to look at everything you’ve got, at every Cup ring you keep on some pedestal in your house and know that a faggot traitor led you to that glory.” Shane straightened even more, letting out a weighted breath filled with decisiveness, as if he had come to a final decision about a problem none of them were aware he was solving. He stood in a way that made it clear that he would be nobody’s victim.
“And I hope you’ve enjoyed that glory.” Shane looked at Hayden and J.J, his eyes cold, voice chillingly flat, “You two might want to start looking into an early trade. Because for as long as I play this sport, Montreal is never winning a Championship again. Wherever I end up, I will make it my personal mission to stand between you all and that Cup. Every year from today, when each loss – because you will be doing a lot of losing from now on –drains the life out of you I want you to remember that it’s a faggot sucking you dry.” It was an oath laced in facts. It was the voice of their Captain, the man who led them to victory and made them better players, making a promise and a threat. It was knowledge, analytics, cold facts from someone who knew, intimately, every flaw in the structure of this team and its players beyond what anyone ever imagined.
And because Shane Hollander was a hockey geek who really hated bad hockey reads, he couldn’t help but add on, “And by the way, if we were going to be throwing games for each other, Ilya would have had to throw this one for me because Ottawa will not make it past Scott Hunter and the Admirals again. But we don’t do that because we’ve always respected the integrity of this sport and each other. If you weren’t too busy being homophobic fucks, you would see you that.”
Shane sighed like a disappointed teacher who finally accepted he was teaching a bunch of idiots, “As your Captain, I’m disappointed because I thought I taught you better than that. As a gay man, you exceeded all my expectations,” and walked out without a backwards glance.
He felt bad for speaking on Ottawa so plainly. He would have to make it up to Ilya and the Ottawa boys. But their momentum had run its course, and the hockey part of Shane’s brain couldn’t ignore that. Ottawa needed a bit more conditioning to get the championship and, unfortunately, it would not be this one. Hunter learned his lesson; he would not be repeating the same mistakes he made the last time he faced Ottawa. Their Championship bid, like Shane’s, was over.
Shane had to prepare to comfort a sulking Russian soon. But first, he had a Russian to go sulk to. And that thought, of going home to Ilya, to mourn the loss of what he had with the Voyageurs in his strong arms, made Shane feel so much better.
Hayden watched Shane leave and it was like he took the oxygen in the room with him. For a good while, all they could do was stand there, waiting for someone to break. He caught J.J’s eye. He looked equally stunned as a silent what the fuck did we just do? hung between them.
No one noticed the unassuming young reporter who snuck in at the beginning, recorded every second, every word and silently slipped out as Shane Hollander’s words soaked into their very bones. Drapeau’s loud outburst moments later provided the perfect distraction, making sure not a single person registered his presence at all.
The recording, clear as day, was released almost a year later on the day Ottawa, led by Captain Ilya Rozanov (alongside his husband, Shane Hollander) knocked Montreal out of the Playoffs with a historic (and brutally humiliating for Montreal) 16-3 victory during game 4.
The internet shattered and Shane resolutely stayed off it. Ilya did not.
The video trends every year Montreal fails (again, and again, and again) to make it to (or are knocked out of) the playoffs.
Every man in that room when Shane Hollander made his chilling declaration often wonders why none of them said anything at all. Maybe, just maybe, regardless of whatever deep-rooted bigotry a lesser man harbours, he has no choice but to remain silent when his King finally decides to speak; Shane Hollander has been ruling Montreal from a throne all the way in Ottawa.
Or the men were simply too stunned to speak.
Either way, they keep on losing. As their King decreed they would.