A writer's place.

Shane and Ilya’s daughter has to do a family tree project in class. They’ve done a great job at emphasizing to her that parents can be any two people that love each other and she understands that other kids might not know that. The rest of the project will be pretty straight forward - Shane doesn’t have any siblings and their daughter doesn’t know much about Ilya’s family at this age besides that papa has a mama that watches over them and that loves her very much. Shane is still nervous about it and having a Very Normal Shane Reaction wondering if she will feel left out for not having a mom and feeling sad that she will never know her papas family and wondering if she is lonely and if they should have another kid. When they get an email from the school asking them to come in at pickup to discuss her family tree Ilya is already angry and ready to pick a fight with whatever stupid kid is bullying their daughter for having two dads. They walk into the classroom and their daughter is standing with her arms crossed insisting that there is nothing wrong with her project and when the teacher slides it across the table they see something so bizarre that they don’t know where to start. She’s drawn on only one side of the tree - Ilya and Shane both stemming from Yuna and David. Next to them are about ten stick figures of different sizes all with hearts around them. While they’re trying to decipher what on earth she has drawn she starts presenting it with her little finger saying “see? Dad is grandma Yuna and grandpa David’s son and Papa is grandma Yuna and grandpa David’s son, too.” And then she moves her finger along with “and that’s uncle Hayden, uncle Troy and uncle Harris, uncle Evan, uncle Luca….” And as she’s naming every stick figure Shane is trying to figure out how he’s going to explain to her teacher that he is not married to one of his 10 brothers when he is actually an only child and Ilya has to turn away because he’s crying at the reminder that the family that adopted him adopted her as well and there has never been a child that has been so loved

A few retired players come out after Scott Hunter but after Shane and Ilya are outed, a lot of older retired players decide to come out. After all of these players come out, someone puts a spreadsheet together and realizes that all of the modern hockey dynasties had at least 1 queer player in the lineup and that player was almost always the star/top guy on the team. The front offices start believing queer players are inherently better at hockey and you need one if you want to win, but you can’t just ask prospects if they’re queer due to labor laws. Almost every front office comes up with a list of questions they think will gauge queerness. A team thinks they’ve drafted the gayest man to ever gay but he shows up to the facility with his girlfriend and he’s like “Oh no I’m not gay. I just have 5 older sisters and really like pink.” Meanwhile the Centaurs draft a guy that everyone thought was 100% straight because he looks like a bro country singer but he’s actually a pansexual menace and they threepeat.

I think it would be funny when Shane and Ilya were outed that every player in the NHL was sided with Ilya because “ I’m not gay but I would sleep with Hollander, come on it’s Shane motherfucking Hollander if you had a chance to sleep with him you take it”. But no one can understand Shane wanting to sleep with Ilya.

thinking about codependentmaxxing hollanov after shane signed with the centaurs. they do not leave the other’s side everything is a group activity they go everywhere together they look like lost puppies when they don’t have the other around like it severely affects their mood and whenever one of them has to go somewhere alone the other sulks the whole day. people (jokingly) asked them about it and in the most earnest bitchiest way shane replied something along the lines of “everyone has had him for 10 years and i only got seconds and minutes. now they can suck it. he’s mine. i’ve spent so long missing him it physically hurts me to do it again”. and ilya usually makes a joke about how shane is too hot for him to leave alone but secretly he also thinks if he goes five mins without shane’s breath in his proximity he will die of oxygen deprivation.