Chapter Text
The first time Shane Hollander realizes the world is going to make a story out of him, it isn’t in a rink.
It’s in a hallway that smells like lemon cleaner and old carpet glue, under lighting so fluorescent it turns everyone’s skin a shade of sickly yellow and green. It’s in the reflective surface of a vending machine. His own face doubled and warped by the curved glass while his phone vibrates itself toward the edge of the bench. He doesn’t look at it right away.
He knows what it’ll be. He’s known since the moment the final horn sounded and the air on the ice shifted, thickened, the way it does when the thing that happens isn’t just a thing that happens. It’s something that will be clipped and replayed on Facebook and Instagram. Something that will be slowed down and circled in red. Something that will be captioned by people who have never met him and never will, people who will decide what he meant by a glance, by a hand, by a shove.
He lets the phone buzz once. Twice. On the third vibration, he picks it up like he’s picking up a weight. Like he’s about to do something that will strain him in a place he can’t train.
The screen is a flood. Texts. Missed calls. Notifications stacked on notifications. The group chat from the guys; half jokes, half panic. A message from his agent with no punctuation and too many exclamation points. An email from team PR marked URGENT. Another from someone in management with an attachment he doesn’t open.
And then, as if the universe can’t help itself, the push notification that somehow lands with the neat confidence of a punch.
BREAKING: LEAGUE REVIEWING INCIDENT INVOLVING HOLLANDER AND ROZANOV
He stares at it until the words stop meaning anything and become shapes, black against white, clean and careless. Hollander. Rozanov. Shane’s mouth goes dry.
There are some names that belong in your mouth, names you say when you’re young and stupid and in love, or when you’re older and you know better but you say them anyway because you can’t unlearn the taste.
Rozanov is not one of those names for Shane. Rozanov is a bruise. A rival. A man made of sharp edges and expensive suit fabric and a smile that never arrives honestly. A man who could walk into a room and make it smaller, make all the air turn to his personal property. A man who, when he looks at Shane, looks like he’s choosing where to put the knife.
And now the league is putting them in the same sentence like it’s inevitable. Like it isn’t an insult.
Shane swipes the notification away hard enough that his thumb aches.
In the locker room behind the closed door, the noise is wrong. Too loud in places, too quiet in others. The guys are showering, laughing a little too brightly, because that’s what you do when the ground beneath you has shifted and you don’t want to check if it’s going to drop.
Someone, he doesn’t even turn his head to see who, says, “You good, Cap?”
Shane’s reflex is immediate. Automatic. A muscle memory as old as his first set of skates. “Yeah,” he calls back, voice flat. “Fine.” He sits still long enough for the word to settle into the air, become plausible, and then he stands because standing is better than letting anyone see him think. His body understands this kind of crisis. His body has been built for it.
Adrenaline comes in clean, sharp lines. His lungs fill. His heart kicks.
His mind tries to do what it always does when it’s scared: organize. Make a list. Solve the problem. Control what can be controlled.
What happened is already on video.
He doesn’t need to see it to know how it looks. He remembers the play in flashes: ice under his blades, the sound of the crowd rising like a storm, the feeling of being hunted and hunting at the same time. He remembers Rozanov’s shoulder, the sudden collision, the little hitch of contact that became more than contact because of the way Rozanov turned, because of the way Shane’s hand found jersey.
Because of what Rozanov said.
Low, near Shane’s ear as they battled along the boards, their bodies pressed too close for the cameras not to get excited.
“You still pretending you don’t want it?”
Shane had felt something cold sweep through him then, a memory disguised as heat, the old familiar rage that lived just beneath his ribs whenever Ilya Rozanov decided to perform. Whenever he decided to make Shane part of his little show.
Shane’s mouth had moved before his brain caught up. “Go to hell.”
Rozanov had smiled.
And then the whistle blew, and something broke loose in the gap between what was said and what could be forgiven. Shane remembers the shove after the play. The way Rozanov’s skates slid, just enough to make it dramatic. The way his head snapped back like he’d been hit harder than he was.
He remembers the crowd feeding on it. He remembers the line of officials stepping in. And, worst of all, he remembers Rozanov looking right at him as it happened, eyes bright, furious, satisfied. Like he’d gotten what he came for.
Now Shane’s phone buzzes again, but this time he doesn’t have to look to know who it is. There’s a pattern to desperation. His momager's calls always come in threes. He answers on the second ring because if he doesn’t, someone will come find him, and Shane prefers his disasters private.
“Shane, honey,” his mom says immediately, breathless, the sound of someone pacing a room, “where are you?”
“Hallway,” Shane says. His voice comes out steady, which is a small mercy. “What is it?”
“What it is,” his mom repeats, and Shane can hear the stress turning her words sharp, “is a goddamn mess. It’s trending. League office is already involved. PR wants you silent; do not post anything, do not like anything, do not respond to anyone, okay?”
Shane closes his eyes. He can picture it, Rozanov’s face plastered across screens, his smirk cut into a still image like a weapon. Shane’s hand on his jersey. Shane’s expression captured mid-flash, mid-heat, something that could be framed as anger or obsession depending on the person doing the framing. He opens his eyes again and stares at the vending machine reflection. It’s still him, but not the him the world wants. The world wants a villain, a victim, a headline. “Okay,” he says.
“And listen,” his mom continues, voice lowering like she’s about to share a secret Shane doesn’t want. “They’re talking about a joint statement.”
Shane’s stomach tightens. “No.”
“It’s not up to you—”
“It is, actually,” Shane says, too fast. Too sharp. He forces himself to breathe. He forces his voice back down. “No joint statement.”
There’s a pause on the line. Then, cautiously, “Shane. The league. The team. They’re going to want to get ahead of this.”
“Let them,” Shane says.
“What about Rozanov?”
The name slides through the line like oil.
Shane doesn’t answer for a beat. He doesn’t want to give the agent anything he can repeat. He doesn’t want to say anything with heat in it, anything that can be misunderstood. He thinks of Rozanov’s voice near his ear. You still pretending you don’t want it?
Shane swallows. “What about him?” he says finally.
His mom exhales, a little defeated. “He’s already spinning it.”
Of course he is. Rozanov doesn’t wait for stories to happen to him. He makes them. He stages them. He walks into them like he’s built the set himself.
Shane’s grip on the phone tightens until his knuckles ache. “Send me what he said,” he tells his mom.
“Shane—”
“Send it.”
A beat. Then, softer, “Okay. And…Shane? They may call you in tomorrow. League hearing. It could be a fine, it could be—”
“I know,” Shane says. He knows the way this works. He knows how fast a league turns a human moment into a policy issue. He knows how quickly people decide who you are based on one replay. He ends the call before his agent can get any more worried into his ear.
For a second, he just stands there with the phone in his hand, staring at the screen like it might offer him a different outcome if he concentrates hard enough. Then the text comes through. A link. A screenshot. A quote in clean type.
Ilya Rozanov: “Some people can’t handle losing. I’m not surprised.”
Shane laughs once. It’s sharp and humorless and quiet enough that nobody hears it. It cuts his throat on the way out.
He can picture the exact tone Rozanov used. Light, amused, a little bored. A man with everything already arranged in his favor. He imagines, for a wild second, what it would feel like to throw his phone at the wall. To crack it open and let the buzzing silence finally stop.
Instead, he opens the email from PR. There are instructions in bullet points. There is a statement template already drafted, phrases like commitment to sportsmanship and respect for the league. There is a reminder about media availability.
And then, at the bottom, a line that makes Shane’s vision blur for a moment, not with tears, not with anything as indulgent as that. With fury. With the insult of being managed.
Please remain available… The league has suggested a mediated conversation between you and Mr. Rozanov, potentially with league representatives present. Mediated conversation…
Shane’s jaw clenches hard enough to ache. He can’t imagine anything he wants less than sitting across from Ilya Rozanov at a table while men in suits ask them to talk like they’re children who got into a fight on the playground. He can’t imagine giving Rozanov the satisfaction of watching him keep his face controlled, his voice even, while the cameras wait outside for their soundbite. He can’t imagine—
His phone rings again. This time it isn’t his agent. The caller ID is Team Management.
Shane stares at it for a beat like the act of refusing might make him disappear. He answers anyway. Because even if the world wants to make a story out of him, he still has a job. He still has responsibilities. He still has rules he follows because rules are safer than feelings.
“Hello,” Shane says.
“Shane,” a voice says. Calm. Corporate. The voice of a man whose life will not be rearranged by a headline. “We need you to come in.”
“Tonight?”
“A meeting. Now, if you can. We’re with legal and PR.”
Shane glances at the locker room door. He can hear the guys. The water. The laughter that’s too bright. He imagines walking back in and telling them he’s being called to the principal’s office like a teenager. He doesn’t want their eyes. He doesn’t want their sympathy. He doesn’t want their jokes. “Okay,” he says, because there are only so many words that keep you intact. “Where?”
“Conference room. Down the hall.”
Shane hangs up. He stands for another second, just long enough to feel his heartbeat hammering in his throat, just long enough to feel the thin line between control and collapse. He turns the phone over in his hand. Dark screen. His own face reflected faintly again. He thinks of Rozanov smiling as if this is a game.
He thinks of the league wanting a mediated conversation. He thinks of the way the world will tell this story: rivalries, tempers, egos, two men who can’t stand each other. He thinks of how easy it will be for them to believe that.
Because hate is simpler. Hate is something people understand.
Shane straightens his shoulders, sets his face into something blank and composed, and starts walking.
The conference room door is closed. He reaches for the handle. On the other side, he can already hear voices— low, serious, the soft clink of glass on a table, the sound of a crisis being processed by people who aren’t the ones bleeding for it.
Shane takes one breath. Then he opens the door and steps into the story the world has already decided to tell.