✨At The Cottage✨

I hope he struggles to look Hayden in the eyes sometimes because he can't stop thinking about that fucking video. He doesn't want to, that's his best friend and it was an honest mistake, but God, would it have killed him to watch it back? He was so close to getting to come out on his own terms. So fucking close.

I hope he's bitter about how nice the Centaurs are because how is that fair? Why didn't he get to have that in Montreal? Why was it so impossible for them to give him this? Why do the guys in Ottawa make it seem so fucking easy? Even Troy Fucking Barrett's nice here?! What the hell's in the water?

I hope he looks up at the rafters when they play Montreal and all he sees is where his jersey should have been retired and he just wants to scream. I hope when fans burn their Hollander jerseys, he's not able to laugh it off as absurd extremist homophobia. He's fucking livid.

He looks at his body, at his legs that will be shot before 50 and every bone he's broken and every injury he's played through, all to be tossed aside because, what? Because he fell in love? Because he tripped, which players do all the fucking time?

I hope he's angry and then angry at himself because this is supposed to be his happily ever after. He's supposed to be happy. Why can't he just be fucking happy? Why can't he just hold Ilya's hand and kiss him in public? Why does that still feel like a death sentence? Why can't he get his brain to understand that he's free now?

And I hope we see Ilya loving him at his most bitter self, whispering reminders that he doesn't have to move on just yet. That he's spent a decade carefully controlling every single emotion and he's allowed to feel them now, even if they're not pretty.

Shane always just wanted to play hockey. He didn’t want to talk about the racial barriers he was breaking, he didn’t want to talk about the homophobic barriers he was breaking. He just wanted to be known for his hockey. And now he’ll always be known as the gay Asian hockey player who married his rival and just possibly might have thrown a game for said rival. Mud sticks.

I want him to be angry. He has every right to be. And I desperately want Ilya to support him. Yeah, the Centaurs gave him a soft landing, but it still isn’t fair that he needed one. That his team, management, and fans of a decade turned on him the very first time he did something that didn’t fit the sexless hockey robot image they’d built in their heads.

That they got outed and couldn’t control the narrative because Hayden couldn’t take two minutes to play back that stupid birthday video before sending it to fucking Brad. Brad, who posted it to fucking Twitter like Shane kissing his fiancé was the next Watergate.