This Is All Nonsense

The autism diagnosis has only been mentioned in that first Reddit post so far. From that post, we know that Shane was diagnosed when he was 8, that he had a friend he told about it, that friend told the rest of the team, and whatever his team did to him after made Yuna and David pull Shane from it entirely. And, critically, Shane did not tell his parents about his teammates bullying him. His coach had to be the one to do it.

I know in canon that Shane’s autism is undiagnosed. I changed that for this because I thought it added narrative depth to the events of the fic.

Specifically, Shane’s autism diagnosis is the first time that he learns that he needs to hide himself to play hockey.

Shane can’t hide skin color. He learns that he doesn’t fit in because of it. He learns he has to hide away the parts of himself that aren’t “white” enough. And he can hide some of the ways being Asian makes him culturally different from his teammates. But he never has the option to fully excise his skin color the way he has that option with his sexuality.

Shane has the option to hide his autism. And he learns that he needs to quite literally the first time he ever talks about it.

Shane hides because it is a learned behavior. It’s like when a toddler touches a hot stove and gets burned. Didn’t that hurt? Don’t you never want to feel that way again?

Okay. Don’t ever do that again, and you’ll be safe.

Once upon a time, Shane Hollander was 8 years old and told his friend on his hockey team that he wouldn’t be at practice because the doctor thought he had autism and he had to go back to take more tests. He didn’t think to hide it. He didn’t know that he was the wrong thing to be yet. His friend simply asked him why he wasn’t going to be at practice. All Shane did was answer.

He never gets to play on that team again.

Shane is the one who has to leave. He was the best player on that team. He’s been the best player on every team he’s ever been on. He gets hurt and somehow he is still the one who has to lose something after. All of the teammates who bullied him got to stay and keep playing together on the team that used to be his. Shane is the one who has to go.

Word of God, Shane has not acknowledged his autism diagnosis since 1999. He has never told anyone. He refused to talk about it with his parents after, and they eventually stopped bringing it up. Shane does not tell people about it. Shane does not think about it. Shane himself has never processed the diagnosis. It has no place in his self-image because immediately after he found out he was autistic, he excised it from his sense of self.

You do not get to be autistic and still play hockey. They will force you out. That lesson is learned. So Shane has buried that part of himself every single way he could since he was eight years old.

He hasn’t talked about it in nearly two decades. Which is one of the reasons why it is absolutely fucking agony to him that it is public knowledge right now.

Shane has spent his entire life running from how he felt when he was eight years old and had to leave his team. He has cut off every single part of himself that hockey could not accept because that was the only way he thought he could stay. He has been killing pieces of himself for nearly two decades because of this.

This season was the first time in his life he let himself believe that a team could love all of him. And then they just fucking didn’t.

Shane broke himself in a million ways to rebuild the metros from the ground up. He has earned his jersey’s place in those rafters more than anyone who has ever called themselves a Metro.

And then these assholes who haven’t given an ounce of what he’s given decide that he is the one that needs to be forced out.

He put in the work. He bled himself dry. He gave everything he had and sacrificed everything he was to make this team what it is. He gave more and did more and achieved more than any other player in the history of the franchise. And he is still the one they expect to leave. When it is his goddamn team.

Shane has been fighting this for months. He has bore through the pain and the humiliation rituals and the goddamn ice time because he was not going to be the one to fucking leave this time, and somehow he is still the one ousted. It is insult to fucking injury.

And then there’s that fucking Reddit article.

Now the whole world knows. You do not even get to hide that part of yourself. The option was taken from you. And there’s another thing for them to push you out over. Nineteen goddamn years of hiding that part of yourself away and it ends up on the front page of the New York fucking Times.

Don’t you feel like you’re still eight years old?

Doesn’t it fucking ache?

Everything you sacrificed, and you are still the one that has to leave.

Shane doesn’t know at this point that his autism diagnosis was in the leak. But he’s not going to take it well when he finds out. He never wanted anyone to know. He feels like it’s just another reason for people to talk about how different he is.

I think Shane struggles severely with his own tokenism. He wants to be known for his hockey. If Hayden achieves something, people talk about how impressive it is that any player did that. But if it’s Shane, it’s about how an Asian player did that. It’s not spectacular because of his achievement. It’s spectacular because there’s something intrinsically different about him that makes people say “wow, he sure is the wrong kind of guy to manage that.”

Shane just doesn’t want to talk about all that shit about himself that he can’t change. He doesn’t want to talk about how remarkable he is for someone who looks like him, or thinks like him, or is wrong like him. He wants to talk about everything he built for himself. He is the greatest player in the whole goddamn world. And that is spectacular for anyone. Why is he the guy that always has to come with a qualifier? “This is amazing, but especially for a guy like you who is wrong in pretty much every goddamn way you can be wrong.”

Shane doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t want to talk about it with the public. He doesn’t want to talk about it with his loved ones. He wanted to leave that diagnosis in fucking 1999 and he absolutely hates that people know about it. The last fucking thing he needed was to give people more slurs to pick from.

Ilya didn’t know about that Shane was autistic before now in the sense that he didn’t know about the diagnosis. But he knew that Shane was autistic in the sense that he knew Shane eats a Specific Type Of Yogurt Because That Is The Type With The Correct Texture. He knew Shane came off as kinda flat to people sometimes. He knew that Shane kept his life in a Specific Order and he knew that Shane took off his shoes at every door and he knew that Shane folded his clothes before sex.

Autism is just a word that describes how Shane is. Ilya already knows how Shane is and loves every bit of him. Shane Hollander is simply the most perfect person alive to Ilya. Every single thing he does is the new most charming thing that Ilya has ever seen in his life. He is unspeakably enchanted by that man.

Ilya knew that Shane Worked The Way Shane Worked. The label of autism itself isn’t so much as a blip to him, so he doesn’t care that Shane never told him that specific label. Like, Ilya doesn’t think of Shane’s autism as something that was hidden from him or that it is a revelation to him. Yes he basically knew all that already He Was The One Who Was Buying Shane’s Yogurt. He does not give a fuck if people decided Shane qualified for a special word for it. Ilya just calls it Being Shane and he feels #blessed every day to witness it.

Ilya does care that everyone else seems to care about it, but only because that’s one more thing that’s fucking killing Shane right now. Everyone needs to fuck off and let his man breathe.

Ilya does however have complicated feelings about the fact that Shane never told him about being bullied off his first hockey team because of it.

Ilya and Shane are still relatively early in accepting being together. Like, they have not been comfortable calling each other by their first names for a full year at this point. Like yeah, they’re eight years down the pipe with this relationship but also most of that was spent fleeing from each other after every moment of stolen intimacy. Shane only found out Ilya’s mother’s name and what happened to her like six months ago.

As a result, Ilya hasn’t told Shane every bad thing that’s ever happened to him. That list is fucking long. Shane does not expect him to have shared every bad thing to ever happen to him. And Ilya knows that Shane has not told him every bad thing to ever happen to him.

He wishes Shane told him about what happened when he was eight. It casts a lot of the events of the last season in a new light. But he wishes more that Shane hadn’t lost the option to tell him.

I feel like Shane and Ilya have always found a certain solace in confessing things to the other. They have both lived under an absolutely crushing level of secrecy. Ilya grew up queer in an abusive police family in goddamn Russia. He risked actually disappearing if his family found out. Shane meanwhile has never felt safe or comfortable sharing his whole self with anyone ever, until Ilya. He hid every part of himself that didn’t fit people’s expectations and he hid it from everyone, even his parents.

They are both so weighed down with all this awful bullshit that they had to carry alone and couldn’t tell a single fucking person about, but then suddenly they could tell the other, and they weren’t afraid the other would spit on them for it. They weren’t afraid at all. It was unimaginably freeing when they got to unburden themselves to each other and Ilya wanted Shane to have that option with this. That’s just another thing that got taken from them.

Hayden cares a little more about the fact that Shane never told him. But not in a “I wish you trusted me with this and I’m mad that you didn’t” kind of way. He cares in a “the fact that you never once felt fully safe in the entire time I have known you has genuinely been keeping me awake at night” kind of way.

At least in the show, Hayden seems to have a baseline awareness that Shane has a particular way he functions and he does not try to change that. What we see of Hayden appears to be legitimately accepting of and accommodating to Shane. Shane wants to keep to his diet and Hayden does not say “dude can’t you just break it for one night it’s not a big deal,” he says, Yes My Best Buddy In The Whole World Is Coming To My House. Honey, Prepare Our Finest Bird Food.

The Pikes are experiencing the mental and physical load that comes with having multiple young and energetic children forging boldly ahead into the Terrible Twos one after another and they still put in the effort to make sure Shane Hollander is comfortable in their home. They keep the fridge stocked with ginger ale for him. They prepare Shane-friendly meals instead of saying “I just spent several hours making three separate dinners for my children who are having mutually exclusive picky phases and then chased it with the hostage negotiation that is trying to get Ruby to eat a singular vegetable even though it was gross because ‘the air touched it.’ Please just eat whatever I shove on the plate in front of you.” I know a lot of people who would not be super chill accommodating restrictive diets. Jackie is. Hayden is. He does not expect Shane to be anyone other than who he is.

Hayden doesn’t give a shit Shane’s autistic and doesn’t think much of it. He Has Also Been Buying Shane’s Yogurt. I think it threw him for a loop for like, four and a half seconds, because he’s a professional hockey player who grew up in hockey circles and didn’t exactly receive an education on the autism spectrum. He associated his mental image of autism closer with the stereotypes, which Shane didn’t fit. When he found out, he changed his mental image of autism to include Shane. But it didn’t change his mental image of Shane himself.

I’m very much trying not to get too much into this because I feel like it risks getting into Things I Shan’t Say, but I feel like it’s fairly obvious right now that the way this last season has gone is absolutely fucking haunting Hayden. He now has a visceral awareness of just how quickly a team can turn on you for being different because he’s had a front row seat to it happening. He’s not out here being like “why didn’t Shane ever tell anyone this” oh he fucking knows why

Hayden is upset that Shane didn’t feel comfortable enough to ever share this. But he’s upset because it means that other people made Shane uncomfortable to begin with. He’s upset for Shane, not at Shane.

I personally think hockey culture/high level sport locker rooms are too toxic to be fully safe for anyone, like from a baseline level hazing is way too common for that, but Hayden Pike is the kind of guy who is about as safe as you can get. He is white. He seems to be straight (though I don’t know if canon outright says it). And despite Ilya’s jabs, Hayden is likely an excellent hockey player. The mere fact that he’s a pro puts him above almost everyone. He’s a first line player for one of the best teams in the country. He’s not in the same league as hockey god Shane Hollander, but he’s fucking good.

Hayden was probably one of the best players on most of his teams growing up. He was just naturally The Kind Of Guy who’s “supposed” to be playing hockey. He has pretty much always been safe in the locker room and he hasn’t ever had to think about what it means to not be safe, until he saw what happened to Shane.

It is driving him fucking crazy that Shane doesn’t get to be safe to way he’s always been.

It is driving him fucking crazy that Shane has had to squirrel away pieces of himself literally the entire time Hayden has known him.

Shane is his best friend. He is the pseudo baby brother who Hayden adores. And Hayden feels a lot of loss around all those years where he didn’t know Shane was gay. He feels like he’s missed huge chunks of Shane’s life and didn’t even know it at the time. And he feels like Shane’s been forced to go it alone. Finding out about the autism just adds to that feeling.