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bonus:

Rose and Shane (who are both closet cinephiles; Shane because he thinks it's embarrassing to have hobbies and Rose because being a cinephile as an actor just seems cringe to her) are working their way through one of those "100 movies to watch before you die" lists and finally get to Dirty Dancing.

"I can't believe you haven't seen this," Rose says, and Shane grumbles something about not really being a fan of the genre and well, their rule is that if they think the movie is stupid they can turn it off after an hour so Rose finds it on one of the 6000 streaming platforms Ilya pays for (the Fast and the Furious movies keep jumping around) and starts the stream fully expecting for Shane to exert his veto power in an hour.

And then he just doesn't. He sits there and watches the whole thing, mouth slightly open. Usually they talk at least a little bit about the plot or the cinematography (Shane has developed some opinions in that regard, mostly adopted from Rose whose opinions he takes as gospel by consequence of knowing next to nothing about the industry) but Shane is just. Rapt.

Then Ilya comes stalking into the living room towards the end of the movie and by pure coincidence he's wearing a black shirt and pants and Shane looks away from the TV for the first time in 90 minutes.

"Shane," he says, and puts two fingers on Shane's jaw, entirely chaste but extremely proprietary. "Have you seen my iPad?"

"Den," Shane says softly. "It's in the den."

(And maybe one day Ilya sees a photo of young David with his motocycle and is like hmm. I get it Yuna)

There's a picture of David straddling the motorcycle with Yuna sitting behind him, arms wrapped around his waist. They're both wearing sunglasses and Yuna is very obviously wearing David's leather riding jacket because it's oversized on her. They're both young and in love and while Yuna is grinning at the camera, David is grinning at her.

The Centaurs are playing in New York and Shane doesn’t travel with the team because of some, like, very minor injury, don’t worry, he’s fine. Scott asks Ilya to get a drink afterwards, but not at the Kingfisher, somewhere else, no reason. He is absolutely miserable to be confiding in fucking Ilya Rozanov about this, but he eventually confesses that he and Kip are getting divorced. 

He says that after he came out, there was all this pressure to make sure the story had a happy ending. He was with Kip when he came out, of course they had to get married! Maybe he didn’t really think about what it meant to actually be married, though. Everything just happened really fast. And, like — Shane and Ilya got married right after they came out. Does Ilya ever feel like they rushed into things? Did he feel that pressure to get married to make the whole thing more palatable? 

(For our purposes we are in book canon, Scott and Kip went from getting together to coming out in like six months and Scott doesn’t really know how long Shane and Ilya have been together.)

And Ilya is like, “Cool story, but my relationship has traveled more roads and suffered more obstacles than you could ever possibly imagine. One time Shane had to google because he didn’t know that the word for what he was trying to describe was ‘microagression’ and then he had to get out his Russian dictionary, but there’s no Russian word for ‘microagression’ so he kind of invented one, and then we could finally finish our argument about whether the Voyageurs were being a shitty team and also we were doing all of this over FaceTime because I was in Ottawa and Shane was in Pittsburgh. Actually getting married was a footnote at the end of the 200 page dissertation of things that we did to make that relationship work.” Because obviously a central tenant of Shane and Ilya’s relationship is that they do kind of think their relationship is better than everyone else’s and I don’t know, maybe they make some valid points! 

I also like the idea of Ilya being utterly baffled, like, “I have literally only ever made romantic choices that I knew would make the rest of the world unhappy, you’re asking me if I felt pressured to get married? And you think I would care about that? Grandpa, I cannot relate.” 

Here are some of my rambling thoughts are this:

Sports marriages are a subset of career-dominated marriages, where one spouse plays the supporting role to other's career due to its intensity, status, geographic mobility etc. And by spouse, let's be real - even outside male professional sports, in the vast majority of these marriages it's the wife that plays the supporting role.

Research about wives in sports marriages consistently highlights the power imbalance between spouses and the pressures on wives to both the household and the public image of the marriage/family so that the husband and primary earner isn't distracted. The uncertainty that comes with trades, bad performance or the risk of injury. Not being able to maintain their own career or form strong social networks. Being aware that their husbands have constant opportunities to cheat and could leave the marriage at any time and not be worse off.

I think it would be the thankless fucking work of a traditional patriarchal marriage but dialled up to 11 and with people constantly watching you, waiting to criticise any bad outfit or weight gain, while at the same time talking about how lucky you are. It's the worst parts of being a female celebrity and you don't even get to have your own career/money, just exist as an extension of your husband.

Now imagine being the first out male same-sex couple not only in your sport, but possibly in all of professional sport in North America (and maybe even further?). Who came out it very dramatic fashion on live TV? There's no hiding, no going back.

I think the pressure on Scott, both internal and external, to make this relationship work and be worth it would be incredibly intense. I think the pressures on Kip would be equally intense but coming from other directions and would affect him differently.

Thinking about this through the lens of respectability/equality politics vs liberation politics is so interesting! Marriage is a way to make their relationship more 'normal', less threatening in a homophobic culture. To conform and at least approximate the relationships around them. It's not to say it's not also about love and the very important legal benefits one gains from being married, but there can be multiple driving forces for a decision.

In theory, one of the great things about queer relationships is that you can do away with gendered expectations around household and emotional labour, caring duties, careers and so on. However, a career-dominated marriage of any kind could end up dragging you kicking and screaming into these dynamics. I can see Kip taking real issue with this as the one being dragged.

The research talks about how many women in sports marriages go from being excited and start-struck to struggling to bitter once the long-term reality sets in. Even the women with 'good' husbands who didn't cheat and who tried to be as involved as possible still had a hard time. All the love and best intentions in the world can't change the external stressors in these relationships, nor the amount of time and energy the athlete must dedicate to their career and therefore not have available for their loved ones.

Yuna Hollander does not hesitate to scoop that charitable opportunity up.

They get their 12 players, one for each month. Shane gets his birth month, May. The tagline on top of his photo is: "I may be a two-time Stanley Cup winner, but I still get checked regularly for early onset heart disease."

During the following preseason, Ilya walks in on the Bears howling with laughter about something. Never one to be left out, Ilya demands to know what's so funny. He's passed a Heartthrob Against Heart Disease 2018-2019 calendar and joins in on the laughter as he flips through these idiots. That is, until he gets to May.

Shane is on the ice, a hockey stick slotted across his broad shoulders, arms draped over it. He's shirtless, only wearing gloves and his baggy hockey pants, ridden down on one side to show off the top of his underwear and the deep V just above his hips. They must have had him do pushups because his abs are more defined than usual, deep cuts across his stomach shimmering with a thin layer of sweat. His hair was messed up, like someone had run their hands through it. He was looking directly at the camera, a little smirk on his face like he knew exactly what he was doing. His biceps...

The calendar was snatched from him, which was probably a good thing, if the saliva pooling in his mouth and the tightness of his pants were anything to go by.

Guys guys guys guys guys guys

Aaaaaaaaaa

I am feeling so fucking emotional about the fact that not only did this guy read a huge chunk of my essay, but he spent so much time backing up what I said with video clips and photos.

I cut down the video so that Tumblr would actually post it — it's almost 25m long — but please go watch the whole thing and let him know I sent you. It's a REALLY good video.