For Sale: Fire Extinguisher, Never Used

As a baseline policy, they are not saying shit to anyone.

They have to run their lives like they are goddamn deep cover spies. They absolutely cannot risk emotional confessions to their team about how this was never real. They have an actual world power after them. Russia is not letting this go and would fucking jump at the chance to tell the world that the gay hockey Romeo & Juliet love story was never real. And they cannot risk the possibility that they tell a teammate, and that teammate goes home and eventually tells their dearest partner of five years who they love the truth that they learned today with complete confidence in the fact that it will remain a secret… and that partner was a Russian plant all along.

Other people share secrets. Other people get drunk and blab by accident. Other people have secret gambling addictions and get desperate enough for money that they decide to sell to the press. You have fallings out with other people and they decide, you know what? I have a fun fact I can still share. They have so much to lose that they cannot risk this information getting out. This is strictly need to know basis.

Shane’s parents find out immediately. They need to know. Their involvement is critical in keeping the lie running, and I don’t think Shane would be able to stomach lying to his parents for the rest of their lives. Boris and Thompson are both also need to know. They are just in such close proximity to Shane and Ilya at almost all moments that it’d be impossible to keep it from them, and they are also running so much of their overall security. They need to know what kind of potential targets they need to be worried about, especially if they find people who come looking for info about the hollanov early years.

I think Hayden knows though, in part because of how I imagine the dynamic with J.J.

J.J. had a rough fucking time in the major junior hockey system. He was a top performer but he was still very much the odd man out. He was ostracized by his team. This was in part because of his race. He was the only black kid in the room. This wasn’t a fact that went over well for him.

But it’s also was because he wasn’t an asshole. One of his teammates passed around photos of his girlfriend in the locker room without her knowledge. J.J. told her, and from then on, he was on the outs with his team. He had the reputation of a guy you couldn’t trust. A guy who wouldn’t have your back. They made his life hell and it was hammered into him, again and again, that it was his own fault that he was so alone. He betrayed them first. He couldn’t be trusted. He wouldn’t have his teammates back when they needed it.

J.J. came into the Metros the year after Shane and Hayden. Shane and Hayden had been rookies together. They had famously been rookies together. Shayden had a little bit of a WillMack style craze in the in-universe media. Everyone loved Shane Hollander, and the Metros media personnel decided that his friendship with Hayden humanized him. Hockey God Shane Hollander also likes to hang out with his best buddy. Shane and Hayden had a very set dynamic by the time J.J. got there.

J.J. came in the first year Shane was captain. Shane was young and under intense scrutiny, and J.J. had known about Shane Hollander since he was 14 years old. Shane had been famous for J.J.’s entire tenure in the major junior hockey system.

J.J. always kind of wondered about Shane. If being so famous made it any better for him in there. If. If he also dreaded going into the locker room. Probably not, right?

Not long after Shane became captain, he ended up with some tension with some of the more veteran players. He wouldn’t let them haze the rookies. The vets insisted it was an important bonding experience, part of team chemistry, it’d make them closer, and Shane just insisted hazing never made him feel close with the guys hazing him. That all came after, when they actually played. C’mon. We’re skipping that step.

He took shit for it, but he wouldn’t budge, and he had such a quiet but visceral hate for hazing that it took J.J. off guard.

And that’s. That’s the moment J.J. decided he really, really wanted to be friends with Shane. He just. He didn’t want to be the odd man out on this team. And he didn’t want to hate the locker room ever again. He thought Shane got what it meant to dread your own locker room and he. He suspected Shane would get a lot that the rest of the team wouldn’t.

He felt on the off step at the start? Shane and Hayden were such close friends already, and he was new and felt like he was elbowing his way into it. But he did it. The three of them, they all ended up falling into something together. Best friends he ever had.

J.J. knows the truth from Sochi, or at least most of it. He’s fuzzy on the exact details but he, Carter, and Scott know broadly that they’re all just selling a story. He’ll keep the secret until the day he dies.

But I think he would struggle lying to Hayden. J.J. knows what it is to be the odd man out. He doesn’t want that to be Hayden.

Hayden also believes the lie the least at the start.

He can tell something is fucking up. He doesn’t believe the story and he’s pushing for the truth. He’s stuck between being scared that Shane’s stuck in a fake relationship with a guy who molested him on a balcony in 2011 and being scared that it isn’t all a lie and Hayden just came off as so homophobic that Shane told J.J. and not him. I think they tell him because they trust him so highly and to preserve his relationship with J.J. and Shane.

And let me tell you, Hayden fucking hates Ilya at the start of this fic. He is killing that man with his mind.

Hayden absolutely hates the idea of Shane being trapped in a long term relationship, possibly including marriage, with someone he wasn’t even dating at the start, particularly because this happened because Shane went for a handshake and Ilya went for second base. Like. He is very much focused on the part of that video that ended with Shane shoving Ilya off of him, having to stop Ilya a second time when he went in for another kiss, and storming off upset. He’s not giving so much credence to how long Shane spent kissing back.

Hayden also has a very specific fear that he’s grappling with, and it’s the idea that Shane will feel obligated to have sex with Ilya.

Shane and Ilya absolutely have to keep up appearances of a dedicated and monogamous relationship. They cannot afford to be caught sleeping around. If they’re getting sex, it needs to be from each other.

And Ilya had a reputation for sleeping around before this. He had sex very regularly with a lot of people. Now his only way to get it is out of Shane. Hayden is very worried that Shane’s going to keep sleeping with Ilya because he’s trying to satisfy him enough that he doesn’t blow the entire secret by fucking around with someone else.

It’s important to note that Hayden is coming into this very unwilling to give Ilya the benefit of the doubt. Again, his intro to Hollanov is a video that involves them fighting about something, Shane turning to leave upset, offering Ilya a sportsman-like handshake, and Ilya backing him against a wall and shoving his tongue down his throat. Shane eventually pushes him off, and Ilya tries to go back in again. Shane ends up shoving Ilya against the wall, and then he storms off, visibly upset. Like. As far as Hayden’s concerned, he already hated Ilya at the outset and he also has video proof that Ilya has already crossed Shane’s physical boundaries once and managed to ruin his fucking life in the process.

And Shane’s not exactly making tender proclamations of his secret love to Hayden. He doesn’t talk about his emotions. He comes back from Sochi and, from Hayden’s perspective, spends the next few months boiling in his own stress from the consequences. And before a Boston game, Hayden sort of probes if Shane wants to just stay at the hotel instead of with Ilya. He doesn’t have to go spend the night with him if he doesn’t want to. Shane is very stressed in the moment and blows him off with a “Jesus Hayden of course I do” which, to Shane, means “if I don’t go over there there are going to be international news stories about how Hollanov is breaking up 3.5 weeks after the entire world rallied to save their love and people will want us drawn and quartered in the streets for it and I really don’t want to deal with that” not “I have to go sexually service Ilya Rozanov to keep a lie made for his benefit afloat”

But Hayden hears “Hayden should go buy a gun. That’s what Hayden should do.” Like. He is KILLING that man with his mind. Hayden’s gonna need some time to come to terms with Hollanov.

I think they tell Cliff because Ilya really needs someone in the aftermath.

I talked about this in another post, but Svetlana is stuck in Russia doing spy game shit. And yes I will get her out of Russia before the fic ends I would never leave her in there but it would be a long and involved process. Ilya is absolutely fucking terrified for her. He is waking up every day and looking for news that’s the daughter of the minister of sport has been arrested or murdered. It’s giving him nightmares.

Ilya has just lost his family, and while those guys fucking sucked, they were still his family. Ilya’s shown to still love them even though they’ve hurt him. He said it killed him that he wasn’t able to take care of his dad when he was sick. Now he will never see any of them again.

He’s been spat out by his home country. And that place also fucking sucked and he dreaded going back to it, but he didn’t hate all of it. He never gets to go back. His name is mud. He’s being trashed as one of the worst traitors in Russian history. Like. It’s miserable.

He also lost so much of the freedom that he loved in his life in America. He can’t go out by himself at all. He needs security at all moments. He has to be careful about what he eats and where he goes and who he’s with.

Shane and Shane’s parents would be a very limited support system. His dynamic with Shane has never been more uncertain. He feels like he trapped Shane in a relationship Shane may not want. And Ilya very much did not get to meet Yuna and David as the man their son was in love with and who’d been in a relationship with him for 8 years. No, the first time he ever spoke with the future in laws was a private meeting in the fucking White House that consisted of Shane and Ilya immediately copping to the fact that the relationship was fake and Yuna saying, with extreme pain, “Shane. Shane. You two are the face of gay marriage now.” And Shane saying “I KNOW IM WORKING ON IT”

They’re trying to make Ilya feel welcome to the family but it’s. Stilted. Ilya feels like he trapped their fucking child and they must hate him. Twice a week he gets a bewildering call from David Hollander to “check in” and once a month the Hollanders fly down to come see one of his games and take him out for dinner at a restaurant that has to be preapproved for security reasons two weeks in advance. Surely this is for appearances and not because they want a real relationship with him.

He’s struggling hard. He needs someone. He keeps crashing out to his bodyguard, who has the emotional range of a walnut. Boris needs Ilya to have someone. He is so tired.

Cliff is his ride or die. His boy to the end. In my mind, Ilya straight up lived with Cliff when he first moved to America. He’s like Ilya’s big brother, and he more than proved his dedication to his boy when Ilya was in Sochi.

He and Shane talk about it and they decide to tell him as long as Ilya drills into that man’s head that if he tells anyone Ilya may die in real life. Like. Telling anyone’s a risk but it’s a risk they decide to take. Shane was already kinda worried about Ilya being too isolated after Sochi. He inherently had J.J. since J.J. was in the Ally Squad, and Ilya agreed to let him tell Hayden. Shane knew Ilya needed someone and knew that he and his parents weren’t cutting it.

Shane is extremely worried about Ilya in the aftermath of Sochi. He spent a lot of time locked in a small room with Ilya. They couldn’t hide from each other much there. And he also knows that he and Ilya don’t have the kind of relationship where they’re emotionally supporting each other. Like. He’s limited in how much help he can give. Ilya doesnt really love him after all.

They decide to gamble on Marley. Cliff Marleau is now Hollanov’s #1 shipper.

Unlike Hayden, Cliff gets the front load of “I have trapped Shane Hollander in an unwanted relationship but it’s not that I don’t want it he doesn’t want it. I have never wanted anything more than him. I yearn for his freckles.”

And Cliff’s like. No brother.

Your man wants you.

I’ve seen it.

Cliff Marleau saw the broadcast of them in front of that fucking car. The photo? Gonna win that fucking Pulitzer. Because that love is real. Shane Hollander’s heart IS already his. #trust

Cliff is hyping Ilya up to woo his fucking man. He’s intervening because Ilya’s giving himself panic attacks watching his fucking man play hockey under threat of assassination. He is deleting Twitter off Ilya’s fucking phone because Russian twitter is. Brutal. He is. Tired. But He Will Stand By His Motherfucking Boy No Matter What. Come At Him Russia. He Will Hold The Line.

They’re not risking anyone else. The stakes are just so fucking high. They cannot risk the entire world finding out that their half a billion dollar rescue effort that will affect international relations for decades to come was based on a fake love story. Enough people want them dead as it stands, and their jobs are dependent on the goodwill of their respective government. The NHL can boot them if they fall out of international favor.

The most their teams find out is that they get an inkling that Shane and Ilya are fighting after they fallout because they’re subjected to their manful pining.

The most I see Shane telling Hélène is that Ilya wanted him to join the Raiders for his own safety after his disastrous last season and that Shane refused. She could tell something had happened, and making this season work was just as important to her as it was to Shane. Like. If Shane fucked this up, he was losing pro hockey for himself. If she fucked up, she may lose it for women as a whole. He didn’t think she’d sell him out to the press and if she wanted to sell him out then she’d already clocked that he’d had a falling out with Ilya.

So I feel like one of the benefits of yall seeing this fic as it’s built is that you can see the ugly guts of my drafting process. When I was first planning the fic, I was going to have Vegas happen in a very similar way to canon. Not how the encounter that night itself went, Ilya would not have the same stressors around going back to Russia leading him to be cold and distant after they had sex, and also they’d be expected to share a room at the NHL awards so he’s not exactly going to kick Shane out after, so it wouldn’t make sense to have it play out the same way as canon. But I was considering having their relationship kind of be on ice the way it is in canon until Ilya wins the Stanley Cup and feels emboldened to Woo His Man.

And then I thought about it more and realized that makes no goddamn sense.

There’s too much forced proximity in this fic for that plot to work. Shane and Ilya would be together constantly in the aftermath of their rescue. They can’t just not be talking at all in the intervening time, and Shane would be expected to be at every playoffs game cheering him on. They’d be living together during the playoffs. It doesn’t make sense that they’re just totally non communicative with that much close contact.

It’s also just a waste of narrative space.

Like. That’s a lot of time to work with. There’s no reason to be so loyal to the narrative that it needs to happen the same way, especially since this narrative has completely different set of circumstances driving it. The build up to Vegas can and should be completely different.

I think there’s going to be a Vegas analogue in it. It doesn’t actually happen in Vegas. I think it’s going to happen with the Stanley Cup final game.

I think by this point Shane and Ilya are back in a dynamic of sleeping together but they are still dancing around what they are beyond that. I still have an ask in progress in my shameful graveyard of unfinished asks about how they handle sex so I won’t get into that in detail. They’re having sex again and they both quietly want a lot more but are figuring out how much they can ask for from the other.

Sex is going to be sort of stressed throughout the playoffs arc. It’s going to be a constant topic of conversation, for better and for worse.

I say for better because they will spend this arc getting to live together for the first extended period of time. They’re talking more. They’re getting more comfortable with each other. Figuring out how to balance sexual and non-sexual intimacy is part of that.

But it’s also going to be for worse because they can’t escape the world’s scrutiny.

I think when they get back from Sochi everyone is going to be trying to get them in the other’s jersey, but it’s gonna be framed in kind of a demeaning way. It’s a joke and they’re clearly the butt of it. It’s like. Haha Rozanov :) put it on :) :) :). It feels like a moment where people are laughing at them and their relationship, and it grates at both of them.

To sidestep it, Shane and Ilya both brush it off the question of “what would it take to get you to wear the other’s jersey” with “Stanley Cup. Like. Cup in hand before the jersey goes on. Yep. That’s. That’s what it would take.”

And then of course Ilya has to immediately go out and make a run for the Stanley Cup.

The jersey promise crops up again when the Raiders are on the cup run. The Raiders owner has got that thing on standby for the fucking photo op post-cup win. People are not gonna let them forget their promise. And, when Ilya’s on his Campaign To Woo His Own Boyfriend, he asks Shane if he’d leave it on for him that night when they got home from winning the cup. Like, a fuck-him-in-the-jersey deal. Shane agrees. He’s legitimately fine with it when he’s talking about it with Ilya. He thinks it’s hot too.

But uh. “Shane Hollander is getting fucked in that jersey after the Raiders win” becomes an unfortunately popular take that the internet runs with. They all remember his jersey promise and are ready to sexualize the fuck out of it. Shane sees the jokes and they start to eat at him. It’s not that he’s ashamed of being with Ilya, per se. It’s more the confirmation that other people are laughing at him for it. He’s raw from the way his season with the Metros ended and the knowledge that the Metros are having to actively gut the whole team right now because that’s the only way he can play anymore. They drafted him to be the heart of a rebuild and he felt like they were almost to a cup. He’s worried that this will set them back years and the fact that some of his friends legitimately could not work with him after Sochi is still fucking aching. Like he’s just in a bad place and the jokes hit a raw point.

And those aren’t the only jokes. I talked about it in another post, but the jokes around how Shane and Ilya each play noticeably better after being together start pretty soon after post-Sochi, and they are in full force during the playoffs. The internet is full of jokes about how Shane Hollander is doing his part for the Raider’s cup run on his goddamn back.

It does not help that Ilya’s off playing the games of his goddamn life. Like he’s doing really well. He needs the Cup to redeem himself and also the body language experts agree that his boyfriend wants to fuck him more when he’s good at hockey. He has a master plan to Woo His Own Boyfriend and it is CRITICAL that he is the hottest thing in hockey history. Boris do you think Shane is falling for him yet.

But the internet doesn’t look at Ilya’s performance and say “wow he’s a generational talent who’s putting in the effort to succeed in part because this is the hockey player version of a peacock’s mating dance to him.” They say “on GOD Shane Hollander is climbing in that saddle every night and riding until his boyfriend gets a hockey power up”

It’s important to note that Shane is much more aware of the internet jokes than Ilya. Ilya is Locked The Fuck In. The playoffs are so goddamn time consuming and Ilya is dragging the raiders through these rounds through sheer force of will. He spends the vast majority of his time either in games or prepping for a game. If he’s not with the Raiders, he’s spending his time with Shane.

Like. I think I said this somewhere else, but at this point Ilya has convinced himself that what he has with Shane can be real and he just needs to show Shane that they can be happy together. He’s trying so fucking hard to charm his own boyfriend. He legitimately just wants Shane to be happy with him. He has a fridge stocked with perfectly chilled ginger ale. He has a 342 step plan. This is one long extended tuna melt where Shane cant flee in panic without stopping to retrieve his own pants. He is pulling out all the fucking stops because Ilya wants Shane to really, truly love him and be happy with him more than he’s ever wanted anything. Like Ilya wants this to be real so fucking badly.

Ilya’s just not online right now. He’s focusing on the playoffs or on being with Shane. His time is fucking booked. And he took a step back from social media after Sochi to distance himself from how much backlash he faced in Russia. He just simply does not see the jokes.

Shane sees them.

He’s not in practices or team meetings. He’s not playing games. He’s sitting watching every game with his parents, Hayden, and the Ally Squad, because Scott Hunter’s life has deteriorated to the point where he is expected to support Ilya Rozanov in his playoffs match. J.J., Carter, and Scott are all expected to be there as soon as their teams are done competing as a matter of publicity.

Hayden is there because he’s worried about Shane and J.J.

Shane sees when the jokes first start and he just deletes twitter off his phone entirely. He tries to block it all out. He wants to be here for Ilya. He’s happy for Ilya, he’s proud of Ilya, and that’s what matters right now. He’s legitimately thrilled that Ilya’s getting this moment after all the shit he went through in Russia. He doesn’t want his own bullshit to detract from that. He’s not looking at it. He’s not thinking about it. He’s here and he’s happy to be here and that’s what fucking matters.

It comes to a head during the final game. Shane goes to the bathroom between periods when the raiders are kinda struggling, and the camera had panned over to where their group was sitting in that time. His absence was on the Jumbotron and on the broadcast.

Then the raiders rally and win the game. And suddenly the new joke is that this comeback comes to you courtesy of Shane Hollander’s mouth. Shane obviously went and blew Ilya between periods to give him a power up. Shane Hollander, thank you for your service.

Shane doesn’t see it at first. He stopped looking at social media weeks ago. He only finds out because his phone starts blowing up with messages from his teammates that will still talk to him, and his management team. The Mother Who Birthed And Raised Him And Manages His Career is sitting a few chairs over making small talk with the Raiders’ owner and is suddenly getting a lot of phones calls in a way that means it can only be about Shane. Shane finds out very quickly.

Drapeau made a nasty fucking joke about it on Twitter when it first started picking up speed and the entire mess went viral. Like. Globally viral. Drapeau was still feeling bitter about his trade. He was receiving a lot of backlash for the tweet and it was fueling the rumors around the division in the Metros this season being because of shane’s sexuality. His team needed to meet with him to see how to handle it since the metros were trying to keep the extent of the problems under the tightest fucking wrap. Drapeau’s joke threatens that.

And what Drapeau says. That hurts. That just about kills Shane.

Shane was in Drapeau’s wedding. He thought they were friends. And he knows they’re not anymore, Drapeau made that pretty clear towards the end, but. He. Fuck.

He guesses it doesn’t matter. Didn’t matter to Drapeau.

That’s a problem for tomorrow Shane. Tonight’s about Ilya. He just wants to be here and be happy for him.

Ilya wins. Shane puts on the Raiders jersey and goes down and kisses Ilya in front of the Stanley goddamn Cup. Roger Crowell stands five feet to the left trying to kill them with his mind. He has the most rancid fucking expression on his face that he’s trying to pretend is a smile. Oh my god that man hates them so much.

The raiders have rented out a space in anticipation of a win just so Ilya can party with his boys. He hasn’t been able to go out with them since before Sochi due to the security concerns. It’s not the same as going to the club but it’s still something. Shane, Hayden + the Ally Squad are all expected to join. Eyes of the world and all that.

Scott Hunter. Hates his fucking life. So does Hayden.

Shane’s repressing the fuck out of every emotion he feels around Drapeau and the entire scandal he’s going to have to deal with tomorrow. For tonight, he is here and he is fucking happy for Ilya. He is. He doesn’t want anything to take away from that. Ilya went through so much shit in and after Sochi and he lost fucking everything in the process and so help him god Shane is not ruining this night. It’s not a big deal anyway. It’s fucking stupid. It’s all so fucking stupid.

Shane does pretty good on the ol’ “if I cram all my emotions down into a box and refuse to acknowledge them they simply will disappear” front. He Is Present And He Is Participating. He Can Do This. Socialization. Hayden please stop looking at him like that Shane’s not thinking about it he’s not

Shane just knows he cannot do this tonight. Paparazzi flew in from all over the world just to see one half of Hollanov win the Stanley cup right after Sochi. If he looks upset he’s going to wake up to every fucking body language expert in the world insisting that he resents Ilya for winning. And Jesus, Ilya’s so fucking happy. Shane had a front row seat to how what happened in Sochi ate him alive. Ilya’s been in a spiral worrying about Svetlana for months. He hasn’t been able to go out and party since their lives fell apart and he deserves just one good night.

And, frankly, Shane knows he’s supposed to sleep with Ilya when they get home.

Ilya just won the goddamn Stanley Cup. Shane promised to wear the jersey. And he also made a promise similar to Vegas, where he’d do anything Ilya asked in bed if he won the Stanley cup. It felt fun and stupid and flirty at the time. He doesn’t want to ruin the fucking mood by being in his head about dumb and meaningless shit. He just needs to get over it for the night and focus on now.

And he almost makes it too. Until some dumb drunken Raider who saw the jokes about Shane fucking his man right through the playoffs and spiking their chances to win makes a joke about Shane having done his part too.

And Shane’s like. Ah. Haha. Good one.

And Hayden takes a much stronger stance of Hey Do You Want To Shut The Fuck Up Before I Shut You Up.

And Ilya. Sorry. What. What is this.

There is no defusing it. Ilya goes and gets a phone to look himself while Shane insists it’s no big deal and that he doesn’t care. Ilya doesn’t find it funny, especially when he sees what Drapeau said and just how much the idea that Shane sucked him off in between periods exploded. And he can tell immediately that the entire ally squad already knew. He was the only one out of the loop.

Shane insists it’s not a big deal. He doesn’t care and he hasn’t been paying attention to that shit since the playoffs started. It’s not a big deal. Stop looking at it and drop it.

Ilya has no intention of dropping it. But he is also intimately aware of the fact that their every conversation leaks unless it’s held privately. They are being scrutinized constantly. This exact conversation is probably going to be in the fucking news tomorrow as it is. Ilya lets it go in the moment and starts angling them into a position to go home.

He’s fully planning to just pick up the conversation once they’re in the privacy of their own home. Shane’s not gonna feel comfortable talking about it in front of Boris and Thompson. Ilya doesn’t bring it up in the car. He’s waiting for them to be locked in for the night with no expected interruptions.

Shane tries to initiate sex pretty immediately once they’re back and Ilya is like. No. Shane I can tell you’re still upset. Like they should talk about whatever the fuck just happened.

Shane does not think they should talk about it.

Ilya was excited for this night, he just won the Stanley goddamn cup, Shane wants to have a good night with him. Ignore it. Just fucking ignore it. Shane doesn’t care what they’re saying about him. They’re gonna say it no matter what. They’re probably never going to stop saying it, so he just needs to get used to this and ignore it.

And when they get nowhere in the conversation Ilya is eventually finally like. Fine. Anything wants, right?

Then he wants them to go upstairs and go to sleep.

He can tell Shane’s upset. He doesn’t want to have sex with Shane when he’s upset. Like he legitimately doesn’t. The idea of having sex with someone who’s forcing aside their own feelings to just be a body for Ilya to fuck into is sickening to him. So he doesn’t want to have sex tonight. Shane’s upset and he’s upset and no one would have a good time. He wants to go upstairs and go to sleep and hopefully sleep off the worst of the emotional fallout so they can talk tomorrow. It’s anything he wants, and that’s what he wants.

It’s actually unbelievably important to Ilya that he knows that Shane knows that he never ever should sleep with Ilya out of obligation. He. He really, really needs to know that Shane knows that because he’s about to freak out.

And Shane knows that. Of course he knows that. He. He knew that.

So, I’ve mentioned this in other posts, but the major junior hockey systems and what it means to exist within it keep asserting itself like Address Me. And part of what I think needs to be addressed is the sex of it all.

I’ve also mentioned this in other posts, but I don’t like implementing shane’s canonical backstory of spending years forcing himself to have sex with women unless I intend to meaningfully address it. That’s a horror story and I don’t want to unpack it without the narrative space. But I think it informs too much of Shane and J.J.’s motivations, the conflict with the Metros, and with his dynamic with Ilya to ignore it in this one.

I’m still reading We Breed Lions, and the presence of sex in the major junior hockey system seems inescapable. A lot of the major junior hockey teams exist in hockey towns where the team is the most important thing in the town. These are a bunch of teenaged boys, a lot of whom are away from their parents and billeting with strangers, who are suddenly thrust into being local celebrities. Accountability is nonexistent. They are told constantly that they are elites, they are the best of the best, they are important and valuable and desired.

Sex is pervasive. A lot of them are having sex constantly and casually. Women are often described as “kills.” One person stated that they had a “bitch board” in the locker room where every guy listed every girl he had sex with. He was ostracized from the team after he told a girl she was on it. A common tradition is having to do laps during practice to showcase your sexual conquests. You skate your lap backwards if the girl you slept with was Black. You skate your lap with your helmet off if she was Asian. The objectification of women is pervasive and commonplace and communal. You are meant to talk about it after. You are meant to share the names and gorey details. It is very common to have group sex or allow your teammates to watch. It is alarmingly common to have coaches join in on group sex with the players. And there was a series of gang rapes that were never prosecuted where one alleged victim claimed that one of the players raping her told her it was part of a hazing ritual for the team.

In this system, sex is not a private act. It’s something you are meant to share with your team. It’s a performance you put on for everyone else.

And there is an absolutely enormous pressure to perform. One person claimed that he wasn’t ready to lose his virginity and tried to lie about when his team pressured him. Somehow, the team found out he lied, and he decided he had to lose it and get it over with just to make the team’s backlash stop. He had a miserable first experience, and then had 10 or 20 more miserable encounters because it’s what he was supposed to do.

I think the pressure to have sex would be extremely intense on Shane. He was the guy who walked in with exceptional status and was NHL bound, and he is also simultaneously the odd man out. He’s one of the only POC in a very white and systemically racist space. He would be under pressure to fit in, including fucking like the big fucking star he was, and when he didn’t, he’d fall under scrutiny.

I don’t think Shane even knew his first time was gonna happen in advance. There was a vet on the team. He wasn’t a good person. He was mean and small and good at knowing the best way to hurt people, and he fucking hated Shane.

He has a lot of hope for Shane when he was drafted. This guy was 20 and in his last year of draft eligibility. He realized he was about to age out of the system and the window to join the NHL was closing. He had a complex about it. He was bogged down by a shit team that held him back and that’s why he wasn’t drafted. But when Shane joined with all of the hype and attention on him already, he started hoping that he could use that attention to get himself drafted before the clock ran out.

Sometimes teams will assign each rookie to a vet on these teams. That rookie is paying his fucking dues to that vet. He’s taking care of his equipment for him. Paying for his meals. There’s a set hierarchy on these teams and it defers to the older veterans. If the vets like you, your life is good. If they don’t, your life is very, very bad.

Shane was this vet’s rookie. And he was very good to Shane, except when he wasn’t. He needed Shane to know that not being good to him was an option so he’d appreciate that being good to him was the vet’s choice.

Shane doesn’t like his vet. But he does like his fellow rookie, Jake, who he went through hazing with. He thinks that guy’s the closest thing he’s ever had to a real friend. And Jake is getting absolutely shit on by the vets on the team. He’s the bottom of the food chain, and shane’s the player everyone’s talking about. Shane realizes his success sometimes provides him a little protection and that Jake may get some if he starts succeeding too.

Shane ends up practicing with him in secret, and they get really, really good together. Good enough that he’s put on Shane’s line. Good enough that the news starts talking about Jake too. Suddenly, maybe Jake’s the guy who’s NHL bound. Maybe he’s the one who’s going to make it out.

The vet finds out that he and Shane were practicing in secret together. And he thinks it’s so fucking funny. It’s so fucking funny how, in a way, Shane just picked who’d make it to the NHL. And he picked Jake. Isn’t that a fucking scream?

Shane just walked into a hotel room after an away game and found out that he was supposed to lose his virginity. Always looking out for him, his vet. Got him a volunteer and everything. C’mon, don’t be such a faggot about it.

The way things went down, Shane didn’t feel like he could leave the room. He went through with it and it fucked him up. And that kind of defined every time he had sex growing up. He went through with it because he felt like he had to. He told himself it was fine after and wasn’t a big deal.

The deterioration of the Metros is going to impact Shane and J.J. the most. They both had some very bad experiences in the major junior hockey system that are going to be dredged up by how the Metros collapse. And they’re trying to get each other through it.

Like. Shane and J.J. have two sticks of mental health that they are banging together to make fire. They have never been less prepared for a task. They keep opening their little boxes of trauma and keep hurriedly cramming the lid back on. Shan’t be inspecting that.

Ilya making a big deal out of the idea of Shane having sex with him out of obligation sort of forces Shane to confront that it is a big deal. He’s been refusing to do that since he was a kid. He always said yes in the end. That means it was fine. He doesn’t need to think about it.

The thing is that Shane’s never had sex with Ilya out of obligation. He always wanted to be there. Nothing ever happened that he didn’t want. He always felt like he could stop it if he wanted to.

And uh. That’s probably the only time that’s been true for Shane and sex. Ilya’s the only person he’s had sex with and wanted it. Which uh.

Probably not great.

They don’t talk about it. I don’t think Shane would be ready to admit this to Ilya right after he admitted it to himself. Shane needs time to work through it more before he’d consider telling Ilya.