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1: The Diagnosis
When Shane was seven years old, he was pretty sure he was cursed.
The doctors at the hospital called it Type 1 Diabetes, but all Shane knew was that everything was different for him after. He’d been feeling sick for weeks until one day, he’d passed out on the ice. One hospital stay later and the doctors were telling his parents the magic words. The doctors told him he would be okay and could be a normal kid, but when Shane looked over the man’s shoulder he could see his mom’s teary-eyed expression that made him think this was worse than what the weird man in the white coat was saying.
He didn’t feel very normal, either.
For one, none of his friends had to have so many shots. His mom called it insulin, and said his body wasn’t making it like it should so he had to have shots of it multiple times every day. His finger needed to be pricked every day, too, first thing in the morning and before he could eat. It made his fingertips bruised and sore, and Shane had never liked getting his yearly shots at the doctor’s office so he really hated his daily ones. He had to go to the nurse’s office before lunch every day so she could prick his finger and give him his insulin shot, and his friend group’s lunch table usually filled up by the time he got back to the cafeteria.
His friends also didn’t have to worry about getting sick on the ice. Shane’s mom said it was from low sugar in his blood, which didn’t really make sense if the curse made him have too much sugar in his body. She tried to explain it to him once, but all Shane knew was that sometimes hockey made him feel bad. If he didn’t eat enough before practice or a game, he could get light-headed and anxious and really, really tired, like he couldn’t think as fast as he normally could.
His coach sometimes made him prick his finger before games to make sure the hockey didn’t hurt him. They made him sit down if the number was too low, even if it was normal. It was because hockey could make his sugar drop really fast and could make him sick enough to go back to the hospital, they explained each time. They said the same thing when Shane tried to eat a lot of food before practice to keep his sugar high. That made him feel bad, too, in a different way that made him sluggish and tired. The coaches and his mom said high sugar could make him go back to the hospital too, so he had to stop. Shane didn't really want to go to the hospital again, but he didn't like the way his friends on the team looked at him when the number was too low. Like he was scary, like he might break. They never seemed to hit him very hard for the rest of the practice after, like he was more breakable than the rest of them. Maybe he was. Maybe this curse the doctor at the hospital gave him did something bad to his body that couldn't be fixed, that would make hockey too hard to keep playing.
Shane wished that his body liked hockey as much as he did.
That was the curse, he guessed. He was destined to love something that wasn’t very nice to him in return.
2: The Dexcom Campaign
“It’s important, Shane. Not many kids like you get to see themselves in sports.”
It wasn’t the first time someone told him this. It wasn’t the first time his mom said it even this week.
Asian-Canadian. Grandson of immigrants. Type 1 diabetic. Gay, even if the world didn’t quite know that yet. The words piled up until it seemed like those were the only things that people saw when they looked at him.
There were kids who looked like him who were waiting for Shane to be legendary in the league because there were so few of them before. Kids who heard the same nasty words that Shane did, the same harsh stereotypes, even from teammates who thought they were being friendly but didn’t know any better. There were kids who had to do the same insulin injections that he used to do before getting his pump, who were told just like him that it was incredibly difficult for people with type 1 diabetes to be professional athletes.
Everyone was waiting. Watching. Hoping that he would live up to all of their expectations because someone had to. Being average was not good enough, not for someone with so much to prove. Prove that people who looked like him had a place in the league. Prove that diabetes didn’t prevent people from being athletes. Proving that men could like other men and still play fucking hockey.
So even though Shane wanted to scream at hearing the pressure-filled words yet again, all he did was nod. “I know, Mom,” Shane said, ignoring the way her words sat heavy in his chest, making his heart clench painfully.
He wanted to run off of the set.
He wanted to go home.
He wanted to never set foot in front of the cameras ever again.
Shane knew he wouldn’t do any of that.
Because he hadn’t had anyone like him to look up to. No generational talent breaking every record in the books in the league with a family like his. No people with the same Dexcom stuck on the back of their arm visible everywhere they went, except when they wore their hockey gear.
He’d always wished he had.
So Shane allowed his heart to race and his breath to quicken all through the filming of the commercial. He spoke about his experiences wearing a Dexcom as a teenager and how life-changing it was while he played international level hockey. He talked about the time that he had a hypoglycemic event on the ice because he didn’t have a Dexcom to warn him ahead of time, and he carefully left out the part when he’d checked his sugar beforehand and saw that it was on the lower end of normal and decided to play anyway because he was tired of having to do things that none of his teammates had to do just to play the game he loved so much.
It’s not surprising when, the game after the commercial airs, the questions shift away from the ice.
“Shane, what impact do you think your outward representation of Type 1 Diabetes will have on kids currently playing sports today?”
I’m just one person. Could you ask about the game I just played?
“I hope I can be proof to any kid with diabetes that it’s possible to play the sport you love,” Shane answered instead.
“What about parents who think it’s dangerous to play sports at the professional level like this?”
I’m not telling parents what to do with their kids.
“I understand the worry that people have for their kids. I do have to be careful when I step out on the ice, but I’ve figured out what works for me. I’m able to keep track of my sugar and correct it before it goes low. I eat the same foods before every game because I know it keeps my sugars up. I’ve also always had coaches in youth leagues and the Metros medical team now who help to keep me safe. I’ve never felt like my diabetes would prevent me from doing what I love. It’s the job of any parent to worry about their kid’s safety, but I hope that I can show a way to do it safely.”
The post-game interview continued on in much of the same way, with very few questions actually relating to the goal he scored or the assist he had. In a sport where his worth is defined by the number of goals he can score for his team, these reporters seem to actually care very little about it.
By the time Shane got back to the locker room to grab his bag, he knew the headlines would be out. They would misinterpret or overexaggerate what he said. Suddenly people would be talking about how Shane Hollander told parents to stop worrying about their kids, or how he’s telling other people how to manage their own diabetes. It used to scare him, the way that these people could completely ruin his image with one well-twisted headline. Now, he understood that it didn’t really matter what he said, they’d always find a way to make it more interesting.
Sometimes he thought about following Ilya’s suit, saying whatever came to mind and making bold claims that only either of them could actually follow-through on.
Instead, Shane held his tongue and answered politely. Succinctly. In a way that would minimize the damage.
Because he had kids looking up to him. Asian-Canadian kids. Kids with parents or grandparents who were not born in Canada. Kids with insulin injections and pumps and glucometers and Dexcoms just like him.
When Shane finally left the Bell Centre for the night, the billboard of him standing shirtless, turned to show off the small monitoring machine on the back of his arm, loomed over him as a reminder of everything he was working for.
3: The Insulin Pump
“Fuck, Hollander, you’re perfect like this.”
If there was one place that Shane could slow down his racing mind, it was under Ilya Rozanov. Each touch was steadying — the hand on his hip firm enough to leave behind finger-shaped bruises, Ilya filling him over and over again and stealing his breath each time, the hand pressed on Shane’s back between his shoulder blades, keeping his upper half held down to the mattress. Then, eventually, when they’d both come, the gentle touches and the line of Ilya’s chest pressed to his back, and hands working through his hair and over the planes of his stomach to soothe.
But for now, this.
“Rozanov,” Shane moaned, his voice cracking on the name at a particularly hard thrust. “Need you, fuck, please!”
The hand on his back moved, folding over top his own where it was clenched into the bedsheets. Ilya’s fingers slotted between his perfectly, gripping onto him like he was Ilya’s tether to the world.
The rest of the world seemed to stop when they were here, when they were connected in the Shane had never been with anyone else. When he was here, he wasn’t Shane Hollander of the Montreal Metros, #24, drafted second overall in his draft class and rookie of the year in 2011. He wasn’t the man in the Rolex ads or on the Dexcom campaigns giving his own testimonials about playing hockey with the monitor on.
He was Hollander here. Shane. Lyubimyy, sometimes, in that time between when they’d both come and Shane came back to Earth. He didn’t know what it meant, but he knew that Ilya’s voice went soft when he said it, the same way he’d said Shane’s name.
“You’re made for this, made for me,” Ilya said, his movements becoming just disorganized enough that Shane knew he was close.
Ilya’s hands gripped onto him tighter, his hips slamming forward against Shane’s with an intensity that had Shane’s body rocking forward, his own hands gripped tightly in the bedsheets to stay in place. Ilya moaned behind him, hurried words of pleasure falling from his lips as–
Three beeps and then one long, shrill alarm sounded.
Ilya jumped, fully separating from Shane and stumbling until gravity took over and he tilted off of the bed. He landed harshly, a muffled grunt sounding as he sat up and peered at Shane who was still laying on the bed.
Of fucking course it would do this right now.
Shane heard the warning before, earlier in the day before his game, that his eight-hour grace period had started. But that hadn’t been a good time to change out the pod, so he’d silenced it, ignored it for later. He could change it after the game before Ilya came over, he told himself.
Except he hadn’t. Shane got distracted preparing for seeing Ilya again after so many weeks having to make do with phone and video calls.
Now his insulin pump pod expired and it wouldn’t stop the alarm until he replaced it.
Shane groaned, flopping onto his back and covering his face with his hands.
“Shane? What the fuck is happening?” Ilya shouted, having recovered from his fall enough to rejoin Shane on the bed. His hands roamed the sheets, trying to find the source of the ear-splitting sound. He wouldn’t find it, not looking on the bed. No, he’d have to look to the small white square stuck to Shane’s abdomen, which looked inconsequential but was still sounding the loudest, most irritating alarm Shane could possibly imagine. “What is that?”
“My pump,” Shane sighed, keeping his face tucked into the inner elbow of one arm folded over it while his other reached down to fumble blindly for the pod. His fingers found it and eventually began working at the adhesive, wincing as the strong substance clung painfully to his skin. “It expired.”
“Your what?” Ilya asked, though he must’ve found what Shane was doing because his hands came to rest of the fingers that shook as he tried to pull off the pod. Shane’s mind was still moving slow, still recovering from the pure bliss he’d been feeling just moments before his pump decided to make itself known. “Are you okay? Do you need a hospital? What is wrong with it?”
“No, it’s fine,” Shane groaned, fingers pushing Ilya’s hands away so he could finish detaching the still screeching pod. It didn’t stop making noise when it was detached from him either, continuing to yell its protest at the fact that Shane hadn’t kept up with its replacement schedule. “Grab my phone, I need to replace it.”
“Why did it break. Did I break it?”
“No, Ilya,” Shane said, “you didn’t break anything. It only lasts for three days, I just have to change it out.”
Ilya followed Shane throughout the whole process, eyebrows still drawn together in concern as though he didn’t quite believe that it was as mundane as Shane said. He watched as Shane grabbed his insulin vial, drew up enough to last him the three days, and injected it into his replacement pod. Ilya stood close as Shane cleaned off his skin and reapplied the pod, placing the Tegaderm over it and connecting it to his phone and Dexcom. He watched the entire process, sometimes asking questions like, “It doesn’t come with insulin in it?” or “Does that hurt when it goes in? Does it always hurt until you take it off?”
“You can touch it, you won’t break it,” Shane said, having not bothered to replace his shirt even long after finishing the replacement. They both were sat on his couch, him leaning back against the armrest while Ilya settled between his legs, focused entirely on his abdomen.
Ilya’s fingers were gentle as they reached out and brushed over the white square of the pod. He ran over the adhesive around it, too, like he still didn’t quite believe Shane that it didn’t somehow hurt him like this. “This knows to give you insulin when you eat?”
“Not really,” Shane explained. He didn’t have that many romantic partners in the past, but none of them had ever been this curious about his pump. They’d mostly ignored it, preferring to pretend that it wasn’t there. He remembered his last girlfriend before Ilya had even said it bothered her to see it during sex, because it took her out of the mood.
It never bothered Ilya. Before tonight, when the shrill alarm signaled the pod’s expiration, Shane was sure it would never interfere with anything that he and Ilya did together.
“It’s always giving me insulin,” Shane said, “even right now. My Dexcom tells it what my blood sugar is and it can correct the rate itself. Before I eat I can look at my sugar and manually enter a bolus dose to cover the carbs I’m eating.”
“You don’t eat carbs,” Ilya teased, earning an eye roll from Shane.
“You know what I mean.”
“You promise you are okay? That was a very loud alarm for a replacement.”
It was. The alarm was annoying, painful at times. He’d give anything to be able to shut off the alarm without replacing the entire thing, if only for the times that it had gone off in public. This was definitely the worst though, right in the middle of the night Shane was looking forward to for weeks.
“I promise,” Shane said, leaning forward to capture Ilya’s lips with his own. “It won’t interrupt us again either.”
Ilya grinned, understanding Shane’s point immediately.
He lunged forward, pinning Shane’s body down with his hands and Shane’s insulin pump was forgotten entirely.
4: Hypoglycemia
There was something wrong with Shane.
He and Ilya were with the Pike children, watching them while Hayden and Jackie took Amber to one of her doctor’s appointments. Ever since they’d told the Pikes about their relationship, Ilya was folded into the friendship. It hadn’t been easy, especially since he and Hayden Pike clearly had something in their personalities that clashed on a basic level. Still, Ilya continued to show up.
Because this was Shane’s best friend, his brother. And hey, at least the girls were a joy to babysit, even if they could be a little exhausting with all of their energy.
Although he’d been here many times before, Jade and Ruby still tended to cling to Shane a little closer. It made sense, given Ilya was the new guy while Shane had been their Uncle Shane for their entire lives. He was at their house for dinner at least weekly unless the team was on a long string of away games, and even then he was often around for the goodnight calls that Hayden would have with his family.
Shane was already an integral member of the Pike family. Ilya was just happy to be invited.
It did mean, though, that Shane didn’t often get a break from whatever games the girls wanted to play. Which made it all the more strange when Ilya returned from making lunch for the girls to find they were sitting playing with their dolls alone in their room.
“Where did Shane go?” Ilya asked, having not seen him in the kitchen or main living space before.
Ruby shrugged. “Dunno. Uncle Shane said he felt weird.”
“Weird how?” Ilya asked, something icy and fearful burrowing into his lungs and nesting there. “What did he say?”
“He said he was getting a snack ‘cause he was tired which is weird ‘cause we’re ‘bout to have lunch. Silly Uncle Shane!”
“Fuck,” Ilya hissed, ignoring the way the girls yelled about the swear jar the Pikes kept in the living room. Because Shane said he needed food, which could only mean that his sugar had gone low. It hadn’t ever happened when Ilya was here, and really, Shane said it didn’t happen often in general now that he had his pump and sugar sensor.
Shane didn’t go to the kitchen, so he must have gone for the glucose tablets that he kept in his bag.
Ilya hurried to the spare bedroom where they dropped their things, though stopped dead in his tracks in the doorway.
Shane hadn’t made it to his bag, that much was clear.
Did Ilya’s heart stop? It felt like it stopped. He couldn’t remember how to make it go again, or how to make his lungs inflate and deflate like they should. All he could do was stare at the crumpled body on the floor of the spare bedroom, looking far too pale and lifeless.
Shane Hollander was supposed to be full of life. He was supposed to outlive Ilya no matter what. He couldn’t do this to him now. He couldn’t go. Not over blood sugar, the thing that Shane spent his whole life managing. The thing he was an expert in by now.
“Shane?” Ilya asked, though he knew from the completely slack expression on the other man’s face that he wouldn’t get an answer.
His phone was lying unlocked and on beside him. Ilya bent down to look at it, hissing at the red and the angry beeps that sounded from it at an interval. He struggled in his haze to recall the numbers that Shane told him about once, when they’d laid in bed while Ilya asked him as many questions as he could think of about his diabetes. Ilya had wanted to know everything about this thing that was so important in Shane’s life, this thing that Shane and Yuna and David and even Hayden had become experts in managing that Ilya knew nothing about.
He thought Shane said less than 70 was bad.
He had no idea for sure, but 28 seemed impossibly low.
The glucose tablets had spilled out of their plastic tube, but they didn’t fucking matter anyway because Shane wasn’t awake to eat them. “Fuck,” Ilya hissed. He knew what to do if Shane was having a mild low. He knew because Shane said he mostly could handle it on his own and Ilya could just be there to help him through the brain fog. Make sure he actually got something to eat, make sure he pricked his finger after to watch the number return to normal. What the fuck was he supposed to do when it got this bad? They’d never talked about it before, only to say that Shane hadn’t had a low that bad since he was a kid.
Fuck, they should’ve talked about it.
“What’s wrong with Uncle Shane!” Ruby yelled out from behind Ilya, clutching onto his shirt in her attempts to get around him to Shane.
Fuck, the girls. They shouldn’t see this. Shane would never forgive him if he let the girls be scarred in the way he’d been scarred, if he let them see something that was far too serious for their innocent eyes.
“His sugar is low. Go back to your room,” Ilya told Ruby and Jade, trying to steer her back out of the spare bedroom with shaking hands that already felt numb. It was too late, he was too late. He would going to have to call an ambulance and they’d bring a coroner and he’d have to explain to Yuna and David that he’d let their son die because he never learned what to do and-
“Use the sugar shot!”
“What?”
The sugar shot. The sugar shot.
No, Shane definitely never told him about anything like that.
“What sugar shot, Jade? What shot?” Later, he’d apologize for his clipped tone, his hurried words. For now, all he could think about was this thing that might be enough to save his Shane.
Ilya watched on helplessly as Ruby and Jade ran to the kitchen, pulling out a white pen with a red cap on it. Glucagon injection, it read. The girls sprinted back to the bedroom and with practiced hands, Jade uncapped the pen, pushed up Shane’s shirt to expose his lower abdomen, and stuck the pen into a free space on the opposite side of his abdomen from his pump. Jade pushed and pushed until Shane was laying on his side then, like she knew exactly what she was doing.
Like Shane had shown them, even the kids.
“You have to pause his pump,” Ruby told Ilya, tugging at the end of his shirt to get his attention. “And call 911!”
He knew how to do that at least. The girls may have had to save Shane’s life, but he could turn off a fucking pump and call for help.
Ilya moved on autopilot, reaching for Shane’s phone to stop the pump. He used it to call for emergency services too, stunned by how even and calm his voice was even when he felt as shattered and listless as he did.
“What now? He’s not waking up,” Ilya said, hearing both the operator and Ruby explain at the same time that it takes minutes for the glucagon to work. The girls even knew that, too.
So the three of them sat and waited for emergency services. Ilya moved to prop Shane’s head in his lap, one hand reaching out to brush through his hair while the other moved down on Shane’s chest where his heart raced in his chest. It seemed too fast for how unconscious Shane was, but it was proof enough that the love of Ilya’s life hadn’t left him yet. The girls gathered around Shane too, saying they would hold his hands so he wouldn’t be scared. The operator stayed on the line, too, but Ilya didn’t hear a single word they said until the sirens came roaring down the street. All he could hear was the pounding of his own heart in his ears, the shaky breaths from Shane’s lips, and the gentle words of encouragement the Pike girls gave Shane the whole time.
By the time the ambulance got there, Shane was starting to come back to awareness. He still looked out of it, eyes glassy and eyelids already halfway to closing again, but he was there. The medics gave him an IV line immediately and hooked a bag of something up to it before loading Shane up into the ambulance.
There was nothing Ilya wanted to do more than climb into the back with him. He wanted to hold Shane’s hand and promise everything was okay, he wanted to listen to the medics and let them tell him that everything was okay.
He couldn’t bring the girls, though. They’d already been so brave, braver than any kid should have to be when there was still an adult in the room. An adult who should’ve known what to do. So he let the ambulance drive off with a promise from the medics that Shane’s sugar was already coming back up, and this was more to make sure he was okay in the wake of such a severe event.
Ilya loaded the girls up into the car quickly, already on the phone with Hayden to let him know what happened.
In the waiting room, he finally asked the question on his mind.
“How did you know to do that? The sugar shot,” Ilya asked Ruby and Jade.
“Uncle Shane showed us,” Jade said, the tears she’d shed in the aftermath of such a scary situation finally dried but still making her voice wobbly. “He showed us the shot and what to do in case an emergency. He said it wouldn’t happen but just in case his sugar needed fixed and Mommy and Daddy weren’t here to help.”
“Did we fix it?” Ruby asked, her voice equally as wobbly as her sister’s. “Did we help Uncle Shane?”
“You did,” Ilya promised, squeezing the little hands that held onto his own for comfort. “You both were so brave. You did everything right.”
If neither of you were there, Shane might’ve died or been hurt.
Ilya spent the rest of the time in the waiting room researching when he wasn’t taking care of the girls. How to use a glucagon pen, signs of severe hypoglycemia requiring one, and if more ever needed to be given. He asked Yuna and David where Shane kept his other pens, when he called to tell them what happened.
By the time the doctor came out to explain about a miscalculated insulin dose, Ilya was practically an expert in glucagon and hypoglycemic events.
He would never be caught off-guard again. Never again would Shane’s health be put in jeopardy because of him. The girls would never have to worry for their Uncle Shane again, because Ilya would help him. Ilya would make sure that he stays safe when Shane can’t do it himself.
5: The CGM Monitor
Lily: Eat.
Lily: your sugar is 95 ↘️
Me: That’s not low
Lily: I see the arrow. You have game tonight.
Me: [Picture of 4 crackers with peanut butter]
Me: Better?
Lily: Thank you moy lyubimyy <3
Lily: Are you ignoring your phone alarm on purpose?
Me: Alarms are silenced
Lily: TURN THEM ON
Me: I’m getting on the plane I don’t want to be annoying.
Lily: I do not want you to die. Turn annoying life-saving alarms on
Lily: Also eat food your sugar is 64
Lily: I see Jade convinced you to have birthday cake
Me: She was relentless of course she did.
Me: Stop stalking my sugar I’ll revoke access
Lily: You would not dare
Lily: Who else would be the alarm when you turn yours off
Lily: I hope you enjoyed the cake <3
Me: Did you remember to get blueberries?
Lily: Yes I got your sex blueberries
Me: Don’t call them that!
Lily: You eat blueberries before sex I know this about you
Me: It’s to keep my sugar up.
Lily: I know this too 😏
“Shane,” Ilya’s voice called from the living room.
Shane paused mid-bite, leaned forward against the kitchen island. He hadn’t bothered to even sit down to eat, knowing he would have to head back to his hotel soon. Montreal was playing Ottawa later that evening, and while there wasn’t a daytime curfew he knew he should set a good example as captain by being the first in the hotel lobby ready to head to the arena.
“You know I’ve had type 1 for over twenty years, right?” Shane said, abandoning his food in favor of rejoining Ilya in the living room.
Ilya was on the floor, sprawled out to cuddle with Anya where she lay. Still, he looked up with a slight pinch in his expression that hadn’t quite gone away since the incident a few months before.
He meant well, Shane knew he did. It was even helpful in a lot of ways, because now his mom didn’t have to send the texts that Ilya took over sending.
“I know what I’m doing,” Shane reminded him, planting his hands on his hips as he looked at his boyfriend.
“I know you do,” Ilya said, voice softened enough that Shane knew he was serious. It wasn’t long before that mischievous look appeared back on his face, though, and Ilya added, “Which is why I know you had carbs with your lunch before a game.”
“I have to limit carbs.” It was the automatic answer, the one Shane memorized long ago. Most people took it at face-value, letting Shane continue on with the diet chosen for an athlete who didn’t have diabetes.
“Limit is not the same as remove completely,” Ilya pointed out. It wasn’t the first time he brought it up, and though that fact irritated Shane to no end he did know one thing: Ilya was right. “I can make tuna melts. I will even call you Hollander so you don’t get scared.”
“Fuck off,” Shane laughed, though followed Ilya back into the kitchen. He settled himself at the kitchen island as Ilya gathered the ingredients, content to watch the man he loved make this meal for them both. His mom might have pushed him to have something with far more carbs than even this before on a gameday, and Hayden would have simply allowed Shane to avoid them completely in favor of keeping to his diet.
Ilya knew. He learned. He worked with Shane to slot himself into the routine that Shane had made for himself so many years ago.
He made things easier.
“I saw your new Dexcom commercial,” Ilya said as he put the melts together. “They make it seem like you are dying.”
“They do not,” Shane laughed. “They wanted me to talk about how hard it was before I got my system.”
“Yes, with sad music and those puppy eyes you get when you are sad. They played a montage, Shane, it was like those sad puppy adoption commercials.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“Marlow asked me if you’ll make it to playoffs.”
“Marlow thinks you two going to Paris wasn’t gay,” Shane protested. “It was a fine commercial. I just don’t want to get the questions about it.”
“Why? You get to show all those little kids with tiny little insulin pumps that they can play hockey too,” Ilya answered. And wasn’t that the point of it all?
He did get to. It was great that he did. He just…
“But maybe I tell Haas to sneak into the media room to ask you about your loss instead,” Ilya suggested, shrugging but not looking up from the melts he was assembling.
“My loss? Who died?”
“No one,” Ilya said. This time he did look up, smirking and obviously pleased with himself. “Your embarrassing loss to Ottawa tonight. I am thinking I will have a hat trick tonight.”
“You’re an asshole,” Shane laughed, but the words settled his entire body anyway. It was so simple, so classically Ilya, but then again the other man always seemed to know the right thing to say.
To make him forget, for just a moment, all of the pressure waiting for Shane at the rink.
Here, he could be Shane. He could be Ilya’s lyubimyy. He could be a guy with type 1 diabetes who knew how to manage it but could also get help from the people he loved.
He could just be.
+1: Inspiration
“Mr. Hollander! Mr. Hollander!”
Even by the end of that summer’s hockey camp, the voices of the kids tended to run together. Shane recognized this one though, having spent so much time working with the kid.
The legal team hadn’t wanted to let him join. A liability, they had called him. All Shane saw was the little superhero-patterned sticker covering the sensor on the kid’s arm and the sharp eyes he had while he tracked the puck down the ice. He saw familiar fingersticks and waiting on the bench for the number to be good while the rest of the kids got to start skating without a worry in the world.
It was an easy decision to take responsibility for the kid for the week. No one else understood the low prevention, the monitoring, the Dexcom malfunctions quite like he did. No one else was more comfortable with it, either.
There was no way Shane would ever allow a kid to be left out of his hockey camp because of this.
“Hi, Alexandre. Did you have a good week?” Shane asked, starting to crouch down to be eye-level with the kid until he saw the woman holding onto the kid’s hand. He’d seen her once before at the start of the week, when she’d nervously asked Alexandre if she was absolutely sure that he wanted to participate in this camp every day of the week, if he was sure that he would be okay without her staying to watch.
“It was the best week ever!” Alexandre shouted, causing a bright smile to spread on Shane’s face. “This is my mom, she wanted to say hi too.”
“Shane Hollander,” he introduced, sticking his hand out to shake.
The woman smiled and gave a breathy laugh, like she couldn’t quite believe what was happening. “I know who you are, Mr. Hollander,” she admitted. “I’m Sofia. I wanted to thank you for letting Alexandre join your camp. No other summer hockey programs would take him.”
Shane nodded, that familiar surge of frustration and loneliness bursting in his chest even if it had been decades since he last experienced the same. “It was the same for me too. The coaches were scared to have me there. My doctors told my mom not to let me play hockey at all. I was so glad she didn’t listen to them. I’m glad you’re letting him play, he’s good.”
Sofia rested her hand on top of her son’s head, the smile on her face turning a little sad as she nodded along. “It’s hard, you know? But we watch the Metros every week. We see you out there playing the best hockey there’s been in years, and all those interviews you give talking about it…it means the world to us.”
“I wanna be just like you when I grow up!” Alexandre declared, loud enough to draw the attention of a few other parents who were picking their kids up that last day. “You have a sensor just like mine!”
Now that they were in their summer clothes, Alexandre could easily point to the sensor on the back of his own arm. Shane’s didn’t have the same superhero-printed tape on it, but it was the same model stuck there on his arm.
“I do,” Shane agreed. “Keep playing hockey as long as you want to, okay, Alexandre? Your sugar can’t hold you back, I promise.”
Alexandre rushed forward, then, to wrap Shane into a hug. He could distantly hear Sofia trying to urge her son to back up, but Shane quickly wrapped his arms around the kid instead. If tears made his vision blurry in that moment, then no one needed to know.
“I’m happy you had a good time at camp,” Shane told him. “Good luck this season.”
“You too! I hope you win the Cup again!” Alexandre called out as he pulled back from the hug and returned to his mom’s side.
Shane hoped he did too. He laughed and waved the pair off, waiting only until they were gone to rub at his eyes to disperse the tears gathering there.
“Are you okay?” Ilya asked, index finger moving to brush across Shane’s pinky only briefly before he put some distance between them.
Shane felt a little like he’d been pulled through an emotional steamroller. He felt wrung out despite the fact that he’d had much more physically challenging days during hockey season. His heart had also never felt lighter, more full.
“I think that was the reason for all of it,” Shane said, watching as the kid started pointing at his sensor and explaining what it did to some of the other kids at the camp. “Seeing kids like him get to play.”
“Seeing kids like you get to play,” Ilya corrected gently, a soft expression filling his features.
“Yeah,” Shane nodded, finally understanding why his mom had pushed him to do so many commercials, testimonials, and interviews talking about it. “Kids just like me.”