Chapter Text
It began slowly.
Well, the second time, at least. The first time was swift, like lightning flashing and striking, burning. The first time, it was a steep decline. Shane was young then, only 17, yet already of age in the hungry eyes of recruiters and coaches. He felt like a jester, constantly performing. He hated the way they circled him like sharks, charging him after practices and calling his phone at every hour of the day. Smiles and thanks, promises to consider offers- he hated it, he hated all of it. He hated how that had become his life, and he hated this hatred. It made him feel ungrateful, like a child whining upon learning that things were, in fact, expected of him in adulthood. For this, he hated himself.
It didn’t begin as a means to change his physical appearance, per se. Before then, Shane’s body had never been a point of insecurity- he knew his body supported him physically, knew that the hours and hours of grueling practice translated into a “fit” figure. Still, one could only despise their insides so deeply before it translated to their outsides. So, he began to hate his skin. He hated the way his hips were too wide, hated the way his underarms were too soft, hated the way his stomach turned doughy after too many cheat days. Most of all, he hated not being allowed to hate his body. He had to revere his form as some sort of divine entity; burly thighs that propelled him across the ice, aggressive lats that swung with power- it would be sacrilegious, immature, stupid to starve this body. Nonetheless, he craved it. He craved pain that was self-inflicted, not the product of a practice that ran too long or a check that stung long after he walked off the ice. When his days spiraled, and when it felt as though every little aspect of his life no longer belonged to him, starving gave Shane control. Whereas every other aspect of Shane’s life belonged to the hockey world, this secret belonged to him.
It worked in his favor that the idea of a 17-year-old star hockey player with Anorexia seemed such an outlandish idea. He fed off of this silent rebellion, basking in the hunger pains, the lightheadedness, the dropping number on the scale. Every morning, after an AM run and a mug of green tea before his parents awoke, Shane would stand in his childhood bathroom, running a stray finger over his rib bones. He knew that the thoracic cage consisted of 12 pairs of bones (he’d always loved biology before school stopped mattering), though the most he was ever able to see poking from underneath his skin was 8 pairs. That was his goal– to see all 12 pairs of rib bones. At that point, he would stop. He didn’t feel sick- Yuna, being Yuna, still forced him to eat whenever she was around (which was all the time), but would let him get away with eating increasingly smaller portions, believing Shane’s weak excuses of nausea or previously ingested protein bars. It wasn’t until a particularly intense practice following 3 days of sub-600 intakes led to a rather dramatic scene– Shane fainting into the arms of his mother, to be exact– for his post-game, pre-game, rest day anxiety-induced decreased appetite to finally be called into question. It only took 5 minutes of a psychiatrist asking Shane questions for him to finally crack, barrelling into full-body sobs whilst he begged her to understand. Nothing belongs to me, he pleaded. This is all I have. I just want to look right, feel right, be right.
Shane was promptly admitted into a residential eating facility. When Yuna began to bring up things like “secrecy”, “discretion”, and “the future of his career”, Shane realized that recovery was not a choice. It was his only option. He had built his life around the sanctity of his body, and he could no longer be allowed the choice to turn back. Not after everything his parents had sacrificed, not after he had already received hundreds of offers, not after he had spent every waking moment of his life thus far training for one thing. So, he caved. He spent 5 weeks zoning out in therapy, choking down unseasoned food laden with extra butter, and being yelled at for even standing for too long. By the end of his stay, Shane felt crazy enough to never even touch a scale again. Lucky for him, his little “hiatus” had perfectly lined up with the off-season, so his absence was barely noticed. He would be back in training just in time for the draft, then life would carry on like Shane Hollander hadn’t just spent a month being convinced by therapists that food was not the enemy. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure whether or not he had truly “recovered”, whatever that was supposed to look like. He knew he hated residential, and he knew he loved hockey, and he knew that he didn’t want to see that disappointment in his parents’ eyes again, so he moved on. Shane Hollander wasn’t dying anymore, and that was all that mattered. Or at least he was supposed to be, and Shane always did what he was supposed to do. Almost always.
The second time, it began slowly.
Shane couldn’t exactly pinpoint the (second) first time, though he thinks it began around his fifth season with the Metros. One particular game against the Admirals had been an overwhelmingly disheartening loss. It was always harder to lose a home game, and it didn’t help that Shane had played exceptionally poorly. That, coupled with the disappointed look in his coach’s eyes when he walked back into the locker room, sent Shane down an all-too familiar spiral. Upon his return home, he ignored a snarky text from Rozanov, and trudged to his fridge to dish himself up a post-game meal. He stood in front of the fridge for what felt like hours, but was likely seconds. Everything was just numbers, numbers, numbers. 300 here, 750 there, 120 below. It wasn’t particularly strange for Shane to notice the calories of the food he was consuming. He knew that on average he burned anywhere from 1,800 - 3,000 calories during a game, and knew that his post-game meal needed to be at least half of that for his muscles to properly recover. But really, he thought, I couldn’t have burned that many calories. He had skated awfully. His passes were sloppy. He had missed his shots by laughable amounts. He wouldn’t be surprised if he had only burned a couple hundred calories, if any. He wasn’t even hungry. So, Shane Hollander did the one thing Shane Hollander wasn’t supposed to do: he didn’t eat. Instead, he shut his fridge, walked to his bathroom, and started the shower while he stripped himself of his sweaty athletic wear. Before allowing himself to stand underneath the lukewarm water to wash away the last reminders of a defeating day, he paused for a moment in front of his mirror. He examined himself for a few moments, head tilted slightly. He noticed that he could no longer see any of his rib bones. His abs weren’t as defined as they used to be. Worst of all, despite the fact that he could easily bench press 300 pounds, he swore he could see his upper arms jiggle a bit when he flexed. He was used to the shame of seeing his post-recovery body, but found an all-too familiar sensation creeping up the back of his throat: disgust.
Shaking his head, he stepped away from the mirror. He wasn’t 17 anymore. He was the captain of a professional hockey team. There were too many people relying on him for this childish, self-indulgent hatred to return. Just because he had disappointed them today didn’t mean he had to disappoint them with something as stupid as this. He showered quickly, put on his favorite silk pajamas, and went to sleep.
The annoying thing about that disgust, though, is the fact that it never really goes away. It can bury itself for a while, popping up from time to time until you shoo it away like a whack-a-mole at a shitty arcade. Shane thought that this mole would simply retreat like every other time a self-deprecating thought slipped past his defenses. He hadn’t whacked it, though. He had merely walked away, pretending that it was never there to begin with. Unfortunately for him, those moles were pretty damn persistent.
Shane didn’t think much of it when he found himself using the same excuse after a devastating loss against the Centaurs the next week. He told himself he’d eat a big breakfast in the morning to compensate. When the Metros lost to Buffalo two weeks later, he was just too tired to deal with cooking a meal. Two days after, 3 blocked shots by the Hammerhead goalie meant that he could just chug a bottle of water and an Advil to appease his nauseous stomach. It became a new post-loss ritual. He’d stand in front of his fridge for a few seconds, decide that he was a grown man that could decide whether or not he wanted to eat, then walk to the bathroom to turn the water scalding hot, then icy cold. He spent an increasing amount of time in front of the mirror, telling himself he was merely checking his body for bruises. He ran his fingers over his rib bones only to make sure he hadn’t hurt them. And, without fail, when that disgust would return every time, he’d turn and wash it away. He told no one of this newly formed practice, though he had almost let it slip to the therapist Yuna forced him to see every other week over Zoom. He had been telling her what he told her everytime they met, that he was wary of the mounting pressure being applied on him, but was feeling stable and supported. Following the same script for every session, she asked what coping mechanisms he was using to maintain his mental health, and in a moment of stupidity, the words “starving myself” almost left his lips. He stopped himself after a fraction of a second, paused, then started rambling about morning meditations and nightly journaling. Luckily, his therapist hadn’t noticed. Unfortunately, Shane had.
Shane wished that his self-awareness would have forced him to be more proactive. He wished that he had called Yuna, or mentioned it offhandedly to Hayden in the locker room, or even asked the team nutritionist to help him write a stricter meal plan. In the ugliest parts of his brain, though, a sick excitement had reawoken in Shane. At 3 AM after a grueling practice, he sat on the edge of his bed, trying desperately to conjure up the bleakest memories from when he had developed this “thing”. He tried to remember the sadness in his parents’ eyes, the heartbreak when his physician told him he was no longer cleared to play until he went to treatment, or the sleepless nights spent in the hospital while Therapeutic Assistants checked on him every 15 minutes. For some reason, he couldn’t. He thought back to that time and could only remember what it felt like to have control. He remembered the calm, the feeling of lightness in the mornings, the triumph of watching the scale drop every single day. That night, Shane had two scary, scary realizations. First, that he missed being sick. He missed having something for himself, missed the way he knew this something he could meet all of his goals on, missed obsessing over the number of ribs he could count on himself instead of his lackluster performances. And second, Shane realized that maybe, just maybe, he was already sick again.