Chapter Text
Shane sat in the car, drinking his coffee and staring at the dry cleaners. This had become his reward for therapy each week, staring off into the distance and letting his mind wander over the session before going home and trying to function like an adult.
He’d have to find a new routine, though. They were switching to remote next week. The summer was over and it was time to get back to work.
Just the thought of having to reorder his time after therapy was distressing. Especially since he wouldn’t always have time to just…mull everything over. He’d be on to the next thing, and on to the next.
Today they’d talked in-depth about the ESPN interview. It had started about life after hockey, and how Ilya was already doing homework on coaching. He really liked the camps and working with the kids, and he was mostly trying to figure out which level he wanted to coach at, because working with kids was looking like a real option for him. They both had no doubt he could coach at the level they were at now. It was just a question of whether Ilya really wanted to.
Shane thudded his head against the headrest. This would all be so much easier if Ilya hadn’t taken to working with kids so well and hadn’t liked it so damned much. It made Shane’s… just say…indecision about having children all the more complicated.
He told Phillipa about Ilya’s suggestion of becoming an analyst and had kind of laughed a little and explained his problem with being on-camera. “There is no way in hell I’d ever give a real opinion on TV, in front of thousands or millions of people I don’t know. Sorry. Can’t be done.”
Then he’d explained the ESPN thing. Phillipa actually congratulated his tenacity with “over-preparing” for the interview, and it felt weird and uncomfortable to have something that he saw as a major character flaw praised. He didn’t quite know what to do with that moment.
She’d also said that not everyone was cut out for television, and that was ok. He explained that with his current job, that wasn’t really acceptable. He had to do it and he had to be good at it.
Somehow the session had ended with him twisting the life out of a small throw pillow and talking about how, deep down, he was sad, frustrated and pissed with always having to be the ideal. The best at playing. The best at benign interviews. The best at behavior on the ice (he brought up his reputation for not getting into verbal or physical altercations). The most pristine image. The Canadian golden boy, basically. Because he wasn’t white.
It had taken him forty-five minutes to get from what he wanted to be when he grew up to one of his least-favorite topics. He spent another five minutes coming to see how deeply it had affected him, and how angry and resentful he was that the price he had to pay to play was trying to head off racism by being a golden boy. The sessions were only fifty minutes long, but she’d given him another five to just feel angry with how deeply a subject he hated even thinking about had shaped the entire way he interacted with his profession.
He couldn’t just be him. Ilya got to say whatever-the-fuck-ever he wanted in front of the camera. Forty goals? No. Fifty goals. Shane had to say that he’d continue working hard in the next season and looked forward to the challenges that came with bla bla bla. And it pissed him off. He had buried it so far down that he didn’t even realize how badly it pissed him off until that moment. He wasn’t honest on camera because he fucking COULDN’T be. There was too much riding on public perception.
They had all worked so hard the last year, altering the perception after he’d been publicly outed with Ilya. He’d had to expand his brand not just from model minority to model queer as well. And goddamn. He just wanted to tell someone to eat his whole ass sometimes when they pissed him off publicly.
He chuckled. That was his mother’s PR nightmare. Shane telling someone what he really thought. Because he thought a lot of unkind things.
Ilya, Hayden and Rose knew how big of an asshole he really was, and thank God someone actually KNEW him. Rose thought he was hysterical when he was being a bitchy asshole about stuff.
Shane wondered what it would be like to be a bitchy asshole all of the time? Just…say what he thought. Whenever he thought it.
His mom would go into apoplexy, first of all. But after that…?
He finished his coffee and instead of throwing the cup out, he just… drove home with it in the cup holder. Somehow, he was too angry to throw it away.
When he brought the empty cup into the house, Ilya gave him puppy dog eyes. “None for me?”
Shane tilted his head to the side giving him a look to ask if he was really being serious right now. “Did you bring me McDonald’s yesterday when you were running errands?”
“Would you eat McDonald’s if I brought you McDonalds?”
“Not the point.”
“How do you know about McDonald’s?”
Shane slammed his cup into the trash. “I follow you on Instagram, dumbass. Don’t take pictures of your McGriddles, all lined up like tiny sausage-filled soldiers and post them online.”
Ilya held out a hand to him. “Are you mad about McDonald’s?”
He took his husband’s hand and let Ilya pull him into a hug. “No. I’m mad about… a bunch of stuff right now. Is therapy supposed to make you angry? Because that’s all it’s been, lately.”
A second later, he was in a bear hug. “I spent weeks being angry about being sad,” Ilya confirmed. “What are you angry about?”
Closing his eyes, he just enjoyed the pressure for a few moments, collecting his thoughts. “How racism ruins everything?” Now that he let himself think about it, he realized how much of his life had been shaped by it. It had definitely been the reason for his entire public persona. A weak laugh trickled out of him. “Didn’t even have time to be mad about autism today.”
“Progress?” Ilya asked, rocking them slightly.
Shane’s laugh upgraded from weak to bitter, then. “No.”
“Well, party at Bood’s with the newbies this weekend,” Ilya said, changing the subject.
He thought about it. “You know, there’s nothing I’d rather do less, right now.”
Ilya made a noncommittal sound. “I have to go.”
“I know. Maybe I’ll change my mind. But right now…that sounds like a fucking nightmare.” People he didn’t know, small talk, people being loud, the smell of barrique sauce, which annoyed Shane for some reason, obnoxious music…
“I told Bood you might be busy.”
Shane put his head on Ilya’s shoulder. “You are the best.” Ilya knew he him. He couldn’t ask for much more than that, could he?
His phone was still on Do Not Disturb from this morning, so he was startled when it began buzzing in his pocket. There weren’t many people on the “allowed” list and one of them was currently squeezing the life out of him. So he slid out of the hug and dug for it.
He saw it was Rose, so he answered and put it on speaker right away. She was filming something right now, so he knew her time was precious. “Hey! How’s it going?”
“Shane, I am SO sorry.” She’d been crying. Possibly was still crying.
The knot skipped his stomach and lodged just above his heart.
Ilya froze, but he was the first one to recover. “What happened?”
There was a deep, stuttering breath on the other end of the line. “I don’t know how—they hacked my phone.”
Shane decided to sit down before he fell down. This is what having a heart attack and a stroke at the same time felt like.
“Shane?” Rose asked miserably. “Shane—I’m sorry.”
A nervous, confused laugh escaped him as he set the phone on the coffee table.
“Maybe…maybe stay offline for a few days,” she whispered.
Ilya sat next to his husband and picked up the phone. “Thank you for telling us,” he said formally. “I will look after him. Keep him offline.”
She sniffed. “I’m sorry. I have to go—I have more people to call. Oh god, my brother…” A sob escaped her as she hung up. Had she really called Shane before her own family? He tried to think of everything he’d ever told her, plus who knows what was going on in the group text he wasn’t part of.
“Shane?”
He stared at the phone for the longest time, trying to gather his stray thoughts into something coherent. “Nothing is worse than getting outed on Instagram, right?” he asked absently.
“Ok. We fix this,” Ilya said in the firm tone Shane usually used for assaulting problems. “Press release. Deny everything. Say is all made up.”
Letting out a breath he’d been holding for who knew how long, Shane didn’t respond.
“It will be fine,” Ilya said. “I will make it fine.” Picking up the phone, he dialed Shane’s mother.
She picked up on the second ring. “Hi, hon. I have a contract—”
“Rose’s phone was hacked,” Ilya cut in. “I think news broke Shane.”
Yuna’s wheels turned for a moment. “Ok. Shane, honey, let me get to work. We’ll do some damage control and things will be fine. Ilya, check the usual online hell holes, see what’s out yet. I’ll check the entertainment news. We’ll see if we should get ahead of things, or just respond as it happens. Shane?”
He didn’t so much as blink.
“Ok. Give him a few minutes,” she told Ilya. “I’m going to get this started. Then he needs to tell me what’s on Rose’s phone about him, so we know what we’re dealing with. The diagnosis thing I can spin. But I need to know if there’s anything else there. Regardless of how awkward it is to tell your mom these things.”
“Got it,” Ilya said, already digging into his own phone. “Twitter says he is ‘sex-obsessed.’” He made tsk noise and bumped shoulders with Shane. “They do not know the half of it. Oh. Our marriage is in trouble because Rose and Shane text 250 times in one day.” He glanced over at Shane. “I am learning so much. Rose hates X-Squad movies…That may be it for now.”
His mother was typing on the other end of the line. “Alright. Keep an eye out. I have alerts set up for both of you already, but keep an eye on the socials.” She sighed. “We’ll get through this. Take care of him?”
Before Ilya could respond, she hung up.
Ilya looked Shane over. “Alright. Enough shock. We have to do something about this.” He bumped Shane in the shoulder again, but Shane just kept staring at the spot where his phone once sat. “Shane… love. Come on. We got through the other thing.”
It was another five minutes before Shane started coming around. Ilya just on held him until then. He started taking deeper breaths, then his eye closed and he let out a groan.
Ilya squeezed him again. “Where did you go?” he asked gently.
“I think I’m going to die from this feeling,” Shane said in a low tone, eyes still shut. If he didn’t actually die from this, he didn’t know what was happening.
“Ok.”
“This isn’t worse,” he managed to choke out around the pain in his chest. “It’s not worse than last time. But it’s so fucking much worse.” He didn’t know why. It just was.
“So far they just say you’re a little freaky at sex. We know this. Probably all the juicy stuff is from more famous people in her phone and it will swallow up Shane Hollander liking sex.”
“That isn’t everything,” Shane said in a strangled tone.
They both knew that. Ilya looked at Shane’s phone. It was mercifully silent, despite blowing up, because he still had it on Do Not Disturb. “You need to do two things,” Ilya ordered. This seemed to cut through some of the mental haze created by the physical pain and the ‘not again’ playing over and over in his head. “First, call Phillipa. You talk to her. Even if only to her voicemail.”
Having something to do was good. He was good at doing things. He could do that. He didn’t know what he’d say to her, or her voicemail. But he could call her. “And?” He asked.
With a grim smile, Ilya handed Shane his own phone. “DO NOT look at socials. Do not look at my texts.” Ilya’s phone was starting to light up too. “Just call her.” He pulled up the number buried on his phone. They each had the other’s therapist’s number…just in case. This was that just in case.
Shane looked at phone in his hand, trying to ignore the text alerts. Several were marked as being from the Shane’s Angels group chat and a few others were from Hayden, directly to Ilya. He swallowed, his throat burning.
He let out a deep breath. “Good news,” he said with a touch of hysteria. “I’m not mad about racism anymore.”
Ilya touched the number so it would dial. “You do that. I will go throw your phone into the ocean.”
They were nowhere near the ocean. Shane wanted to point that out, but the phone picked up.
“Phillipa Collins,” his therapist answered professionally.
“Hi, um. This is Shane. Have you seen social media?”
She paused. “No. What’s wrong?”
He told her his friend’s phone had been hacked. A friend that he told a lot of things to. And it felt like the last time something like this had happened, but worse. So much worse. He felt like he was dying this time.
She said her next appointment hadn’t arrived yet, so she had a few minutes, but ONLY a few minutes. After she asked him what he felt like physically and he described tunnel vision, being clammy and cold and warm at the same time, the tight band around his chest, the bile in his throat and the pain in his head and jaw, she told him he should go to the emergency room, just as a precaution because while it was probably a panic attack, it was also classic heart attack symptoms.
He told her he would have Ilya take him. He gave her his mother’s number so they could set up an appointment when he was done at the emergency room.
She told him that she doesn’t make after-hours appointments, but this one time she would, just to assess his situation. Then, after quickly making sure he was not a danger to himself or others, she let him go.
When he handed Ilya back his phone, his husband already had the keys for Shane’s car.
“What’re those for?” He asked, feeling a strange, tingling twinge right below his heart.
“I heard what she said. Could be heart attack.”
“It’s a panic attack,” he said, making a face as he swallowed down the acid rising in his throat.
“Get in the fucking car, Hollander.”
“Where’s my phone?”
“Don’t make me call ambulance.” Which is what you were supposed to do in these situations, not use private transport. But the only thing more embarrassing than going to the ER for a panic attack was going in an ambulance for a panic attack. “I will fucking do it.”
Yeah, Ilya would.
Which was how he ended up sitting in the ER, attached to a bunch of monitors, saying over and over again he was sure it was a panic attack when people asked him about his symptoms.
The guy running the EKG machine looked like he desperately wanted to ask a question. Ilya had to hover and glower at the same time before the man backed down sheepishly.
They drew blood. And they kept drawing it at regular intervals. And in between doctors and nurses popping in, they just sat there. Ilya wouldn’t let Shane have his phone, and wouldn’t answer any questions.
“I told you, it’s not bad,” Ilya tried to soothe. “They think you are sex fiend. Which… fair.”
Shane rubbed his forehead. “Yeah. Rose and I talked about sex. A lot. Sorry.” He was starting to calm down, though. The pain in his chest was still pretty bad. But he felt less…floaty and tunnel vision-y.
Ilya shrugged. He’d made peace with Rose Landry being his husband’s Other Best Friend years ago. He would never be rid of her.
A new doctor came in and introduced himself. “I understand you’re having a difficult day.”
A bitter laugh escaped Shane. “You could say that.”
“I saw the news. I’m sorry.”
Shane’s eyes grew wide and his hand went to his chest as the pain spread and increased. “National or local?” he asked, but it came out a little strangled.
David Hollander appeared outside the bay at just the right moment in a black suit and tie, looking like he was on his way to someone’s funeral. A second or two later and Ilya would have already murdered someone, so it would have been the correct outfit. “Hey, kid,” he said with a small, stiff wave. “Am I interrupting?”
“NO,” Ilya said forcefully, dragging him into the small room. “We are so happy to see you.” But it was forced. “Tell doctor we don’t want to know about news or social media.”
Shane’s dad introduced himself and tried to smooth things over. “He’s already having such a rough day. He doesn’t need to know about all that.”
‘All that?’ Shane wanted to scream. What was all of that? What had been released? “I think not knowing is making it worse.”
David looked to Ilya for guidance. “Let the doctor do his thing. I will catch you up after that,” he allowed.
Shane answered all the same questions again, explained what hurt…again. The doctor explained that so far everything looked good, that it wasn’t a heart attack, but they had to do the bloodwork multiple times. It sounded like he was going to be here a while.
The doctor said a bunch of other things he hoped someone else was paying attention to, because all Shane could do was listen to the pulse in his ears. He finished by saying they’d get him something for the nausea, and then he was gone.
“Ok. Tell me what the fuck is going on,” he ordered.
Taking off his suit jacket, David sat down. “I only know what your mother told me. Ilya, I’ll talk to him. You give Yuna a call. She wants to get some information from you.”
Ilya looked Shane over, and almost said no, but stepped out. “Be RIGHT back,” he promised.
“A lot of stuff got out there. It’s not just you who’s going through this,” David said, putting a hand on his son’s arm. “But they leaked a bunch of your texts with Rose while you two were watching hockey and all your funny little chirps.”
Shane ran a hand over his face. They might have been funny, but he was also downright mean and hurtful. “Shit. But that isn’t everything.” He knew when his dad was holding back on the worst.
His dad really didn’t want to be telling this, but he pressed onward. “It’s… they’ve taken a few facts and they’ve spun a narrative. You know how that goes. And don’t worry. Mom’s already working on—”
“Dad.”
“Apparently. According to people who don’t know anything. Ilya is taking advantage of you. He’s made you sex-obsessed and forced you into, um.” His dad took in and let out a deep breath before continuing. “A sub-dom? Do I have that right? Relationship that you can’t consent to because of, um, your autism.”
Somehow Shane found new levels of anguish. His heart rate kicked up, his blood pressure kicked up, and a new face neither of them had seen before appeared to check him over. He didn’t say anything while the woman with the cheerful face and the bright purple Crocs did her thing. She told him to stay calm, and to relax, like that was going to help, but she left after that.
“What the fuck?” He moaned quietly once the lady was gone. “What the actual fuck? Jesus fucking Christ.”
“I know. I know. Today’s going to be bad. But it’ll get better. I promise.”
Ilya came back in with a scowl on his face. One so deep and intense, Shane had never seen it before. “What?”
“I know people in the mob,” he said in quiet, dead seriousness. “They think I do not know people in the mob. I know people in the mob.”
David grasped for some way to keep them both calm. “I don’t think we need the Russian mob, Ilya. Maybe just some press releases and a law suit or two.”
“What’s wrong now?”
Ilya leaned against the wall and fumbled a little on how to say it. Finally he just got it out. “Someone saw us come in. Now the social media and the stupider news places are saying you hurt yourself over reports.”
TO BE CONTINUED…