Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Hayden Pike, fall 2021

Hayden sat back in his uncomfortable chair in the neuropsychologist’s office and stared at his wife, who was looking, wide-eyed, back at him. He felt weirdly like he’d just come off a game that went into double-overtime before they won: winded, but weirdly vindicated. It made so much sense, now that he’d heard the words.

It appears your son, Arthur, is on the autism spectrum, the specialist had said.

And yes, they’d sort of suspected, given some of what they called his “special features,” but at the same time, he sort of hadn’t expected them to actually be right about that. Just because Arthur had spoken late and slowly, and didn’t seem willing to look anyone in the eye, and was absolutely married to his routine, and would lose his shit if his clothes had tags in them…that all didn’t necessarily mean anything other than that little kids were weird.

Except apparently it did.

Jackie, clearly quicker on the uptake than Hayden, nodded at the specialist and straightened in her chair like the straight-A student she had been. “Ok. So if we want to set him up for the best life possible…what do we do now?”

The specialist smiled at her. “Mostly, both you and he will learn to live in harmony with the way his brain works. There will be some skill development and coping mechanisms that will help him a lot – and some for you as well – and you’ll want to grow his social skills within his boundaries. The goal is to raise an adult who understands himself and how he can best engage with the world.”

Hayden blinked. That all sounded great, but… “Yeah, but what do we do?” He needed a plan. Things to act on. He was a man in constant motion, and not just because he was raising four small children and played a professional sport. It was just how he was. Give him a workout plan and he’d nail it. Give him a nutritional plan and he’d stick to it. Turn him loose to do things on his own? He’d crash and burn.

Jackie glared at him. She’d always been better with open-ended things and struggled to understand why they felt so unsettling to him. “I’m sure they have, like, literature we can read.” She looked at the specialist earnestly. “We’re open to doing as much research and making as many adjustments as we need to do to make life good for him.”

Hayden nodded like a bobble-head, because yes, of course. He adored his four-year-old son, and he knew just enough about autism to know that Arthur would be living life in hard mode with this diagnosis. Anything they could do to reduce the burden and pain their little boy would feel in his life, they’d do. And if doing those things reduced the amount of uncontrollable screaming meltdowns and sobbing fits Arthur experienced over things they often couldn’t even identify, definitely all the better.

“Ok, well.” The specialist steepled her fingers in front of her face. “That’s the kind of attitude I like from parents. I can definitely give you some print-outs to take home today, as well as point you to copious online resources. You’re going to want to set Arthur up with a speech therapist and likely an occupational therapist. I’d also recommend finding a social skills group when the time is right.” She sighed. “A lot of this is going to involve finding compromises between Arthur and the world. Compromises that aren’t painful for him, but allow him to participate in the world as much as he wants to. Not,” she added, meeting Hayden’s eyes sternly, “as much as you or anyone else think he should, necessarily. And not necessarily in the ways you or anyone else think he should. Arthur’s brain is wired differently from the neurotypical person’s in some fundamental ways.”

Swallowing, Hayden nodded. “I understand.” Maybe. Sort of. He was going to read the absolute fuck out of every link and pamphlet this lady gave them. He was going to do this right for his son. He took Jackie’s hand and squeezed and she gave him a weak smile. He knew her well enough to know she felt similarly but was probably just as terrified as him, too.

Two days later, Hayden sat at the breakfast table with a sheaf of printed-out papers about autism, reading them as he shoveled a mixture of granola and Greek yogurt absentmindedly into his mouth.

“Jack?” he asked after swallowing his latest mouthful, picking up the highlighter next to his bowl to mark a few sentences.

“Hm?” Jackie said distractedly from where she was feeding Amber, the baby, at the other end of the table.

“Did you know that people with autism get really, really into their routines? And sometimes they’ll, like, lose their shit if the routine is broken?”

She nodded and wiped Amber’s mouth. “Yeah, that was in one of the websites I read yesterday. It makes sense, why Arthur’s always the one telling us when it’s bedtime.”

“And,” he went on, only half-hearing her agreement, “they have sensory issues, like only wanting to eat or not eat certain types of foods, or hating certain types of lighting?”

“Mmhm. The beige foods, ugh,” she said, shuddering lightly.

Hayden ate some more of his granola and kept reading. A picture was starting to take shape in his mind. “And they have trouble with reading social cues, and they’ll sometimes say the ‘wrong’ thing or just choose not to engage at all when they’re not sure?”

Jackie put down the spoon she’d been using and finally looked at him. “Hayd, I’ve read all this too. And I know you read about at least some of it before we even got the diagnosis, when we were suspicious. Why are you reciting it to me now?”

He sighed and took a sip of his coffee. “Well, I just…” He ran a hand through his hair and made an uncertain face. “I don’t know if this is just because I’m suddenly thinking so much about all these facts, and so I have them on the brain, but I keep thinking…I’ve seen a lot of this stuff before. Before Arthur.” He shrugged. “Years before Arthur.”

Now Jackie looked interested. “Oh, yeah?” she asked, plopping down in her chair as Amber happily smeared her hands through the mushed cereal left on the highchair’s tray. “Are you about to tell me you think I’m autistic?”

He huffed a little laugh. “No, you’re way too normal. Average. Non-neurodivergent? What’s the politically-correct way to say that?”

She shrugged. “I know what you meant. But now I really need to know who you’ve been seeing all these signs in.”

Hayden looked down and stirred his granola a bit restlessly. “Well, see, it’s like this. You know they say hockey players are all superstitious and weird, right?”

She grinned. “Of course. And you are.”

He nodded, then shrugged one shoulder. “Some of us are…quirkier than others.”

“Are you saying you think some of your teammates are autistic?” She looked skeptical of that. “Because I think you’re really just a bunch of supersitious weirdos, hon.”

He shook his head. “Not any of my current teammates.”

Jackie just stared at him for a second, and then her eyes widened as it hit her. “Oh, my god.”

Chapter Text

Shane Hollander, fall 2021

Shane listened to the mini-blender whirr its way through his smoothie’s ingredients and recited them in his mind: high-protein milk, ice, strawberries, kale, unflavored protein powder, and a banana. He made the same thing every morning, the preparation and consumption so much a part of his routine that he’d been known to do them while still mostly asleep. Once, after a sleepless night, Ilya had come downstairs at 3am to find the blender running and Shane actually asleep, face-down on the counter.

After he drank his smoothie, he’d brush his hair and teeth, put on his softest workout clothes, and go for his morning run. Sometimes Ilya and Anya accompanied him, but given that he hadn’t heard a peep from upstairs yet this morning, he suspected this was not going to be one of those days.

They had a game tonight but had been let out of morning skate by a coach in a surprisingly good mood, so Ilya wasn’t missing anything by sleeping late, and Shane wasn’t going to ruin his nice morning by waking him up. Besides, when Ilya came along, he always whined about the route Shane took and how it lacked anything to see along the way. Shane had tried repeatedly to explain to him that he wasn’t looking around himself when he ran, but Ilya insisted on scenery nonetheless.

Deeming his smoothie adequately blended, he turned off the blender and screwed the lid onto the jar/cup thingie. He’d been excited when he discovered these mini-blenders where you blend right in the cup you drink out of; it struck him as charmingly efficient and he’d eagerly described his new purchase to his husband. Ilya had just patted him on the shoulder and told him, “I buy you extra cups.” That turned out to have been a good call, because neither of them were reliable at remembering to run the dishwasher every day, and these cups definitely needed to be cleaned after each use.

“Lyubimy?” came a sleepy voice from the top of the stairs, immediately followed by the sound of Anya’s claws clicking down the staircase as she, as usual, attempted to beat the human to the ground floor.

“Da?” Shane called back. He’d finally got to a point in studying Russian where he could hold intermediate-level conversations, and now Ilya insisted he practice as much as he could, even when Ilya sometimes snickered at his word choices or how he pronounced them.

Is good, lyubimy, he’d assured Shane when Shane’s face had fallen in response to his teasing. You are learning, and the best way to learn is to do. You make mistakes, I correct them, you learn, we are happy.

Shane did not like making mistakes. They’d actually fought about the language thing, Shane frustratedly trying and failing to explain to his much more easygoing husband that his mind overflowed with noun declensions and verb suffixes and grammar rules, and that those jumbled thoughts often short-circuited him saying what could have been an imperfect but perfectly understandable sentence.

He was hoping the correct language forms eventually became muscle memory, the way correct hockey forms had become when he was a child, but Shane was…not nearly so young anymore. He was over thirty now, and brain plasticity diminished sharply after one’s late teens.

Ilya padded down the stairs much more quietly than their dog had. He slid up behind Shane just as Shane took his first sip of smoothie and pressed a soft kiss to his neck. “Good morning.”

Shane swallowed, wiped his upper lip, and put his cup down on the counter before turning to hug Ilya. “Morning. How’d you sleep?”

“Eh. You snored.”

“I do not snore!” Shane said indignantly, stepping back to glare at him. He didn’t. Hayden would have told him during all their time on the road if he snored.

Ilya assumed an overly thoughtful expression. “Hm. Maybe was Anya, then.” He said it as if he were 100% just humoring his snorer of a husband, and Shane scowled.

“Just for that, see if I offer to cook breakfast for you.”

Ilya’s eyes widened. “Shane. Sweetheart. My one true love.” He paused for effect, clasping his hands together piously in front of himself. “You cannot cook. Your pasta is too hard to chew. Your vegetables disintegrate into mush. Your meats…” He shuddered. “They are better not spoken of.”

Shane frowned and took an aggressive sip of his smoothie. “You’re rude,” he informed his husband after swallowing. “Besides, I had either a mother or a professional chef/dietician cooking for me for basically my whole life; I never needed to learn to cook. It’s not like it’s a personal failing. I bet a lot of the guys on the team don’t cook.”

“Aw, lyubimy, I do not mean to hurt your feelings. You are very good at many other things.” He grinned, the expression edging on a leer, and started to open his mouth again, but Shane cut him off with a raised hand.

“No sex jokes. You’re not getting in my pants before I’ve showered, and I’m not showering until after I run.”

Ilya huffed resentfully, kissed Shane’s bare shoulder, and then stepped back. “Very well. What route are you running today?”

Shane blinked at him. “Ilya, have you met me? It’s the same route I always take.”

Ilya frowned slightly. “What if I come?”

Shane fought the urge to roll his eyes. He’d known this was coming the moment he discovered his husband was awake. “You know you don’t really want to come, Ilya. Running bores you. My route especially bores you.”

“So we take other route. More scenic one. We could go around the lake?” Ilya suggested hopefully.

Shane barely held back his sigh. He didn’t want to go around the lake. He wanted to run his usual five kilometer route on the trail through the woods. Still, Ilya wanted to spend time with him, and it would be mean to say no to that, right? He could practically hear his mother’s voice in his head insisting he had to bend to meet other people sometimes, sweetie, even if it’s not what you want.

Hoping his face wasn’t showing his distaste at changing a perfectly good routine, Shane finally just nodded. “Sure. Sure, babe. We can go around the lake.” It wouldn’t ruin his day. He wouldn’t let it. That would just be silly.

Chapter Text

Shane, Christmas 2021

“Here, take her,” Hayden said, handing Amber to Shane, who scrambled to take the small human. No matter how many times Hayden did this, Shane was always convinced that this was going to be the time he’d drop her. Probably directly on her head. And then Hayden and Jackie would never speak to him again.

Crisis averted, this time, Shane managed to get a good grip on the baby before Hayden let go. “Do I still need to, like, support her head?” he asked, staring down at her warily.

Hayden snorted. “Nah, she’s past that age. Now you just need to not let her escape.” He patted Shane’s back. “C’mon, let’s go get a drink.” Without waiting for his agreement, he steered Shane toward the bar that stood in the corner of his living room. Getting there was easier said than done, because Hayden’s house was currently packed with hockey players, WAGs, team staff, and various miscellaneous friends and family, all there for his annual Christmas party.

Shane didn’t know where Hayden and Jackie got the time or energy to throw this bash every year, especially as their family grew. And he couldn’t even imagine trying to host something like this. Having to greet everyone? Shake hands, make small talk, select what foods and drinks to serve? He shuddered. Nightmare fuel. It didn’t help that Hayden had felt obligated to invite everyone from the Voyageurs, with whom Shane still had an icy relationship.

Finally, they made it to the wooden bar and Hayden stepped behind it to grab two clear plastic cups and fill them with Jackie’s punch. What was in that punch? No one would tell Shane. They’d been refusing to tell him for years. All he knew was that it was alcoholic and tasted sweet and it went down ok when he drank it.

He’d already had a glass when he and Ilya first arrived tonight, and he was pretty sure a second one would hose his diet for the week, so he tried to turn it down. “Oh, no, Hayd, I don’t -”

“No, take it, take it.” Hayden shoved the glass at him. “I need to talk to you, so we’ll take these and go into one of the bedrooms.”

Oh, thank god. Anything that got him out of this chaos. Shane accepted the drink with an awkward hand while using the other to try to keep Amber from her attempts to climb up to his shoulder.

As they crossed the room, Ilya, standing with a knot of other players, caught his eye and raised an eyebrow, a silent check-in. Shane gave him a nod. Sure, he was fine. Just fine.

He followed Hayden first to Jackie, where they traded off the baby, and then into Jade and Ruby’s bedroom. He obediently took a seat on the pink princess bed on the left while Hayden took the one on the right. And then Hayden just…sat there and looked at him for entirely too long. “What?” Shane finally said, shifting uncomfortably and dropping his eyes.

Hayden chuckled and muttered something that sounded like Yeah, that. “Nothing, man. Just…wanted to chat. You know we had that behavioral assessment for Arthur?”

“Oh my god, yes, I’d totally forgotten!” Shane mentally kicked himself for never following up with his best friend about the issue with his child he knew he’d been concerned about. “I’m so sorry I never asked. How did it go?”

Hayden shrugged and pulled a so-so face. “Well, they told us he has autism.”

Shane fumbled for the right response to that. I’m sorry your child isn’t standard-issue didn’t seem appropriate, but neither did Congratulations. Definitely not that second one. “Is he…ok?” he finally settled for. “Are you?”

Hayden’s face softened a little. “Yeah, he’s fine. It doesn’t really mean anything to him, you know? He’s four. He doesn’t know what ‘autism’ means. He just knows he’s uncomfortable a lot of the time.”

Shane could relate, but he didn’t say that. Being flippant wasn’t appropriate. “And you and Jackie?” he probed gently.

“We’re uh…coping. Learning. Doing a lot of reading.” Hayden sighed. “So much reading. I feel like I did in high school when I’d be assigned whole books and just be like ‘what the fuck’.”

Shane smiled in a way he hoped looked understanding. He’d never struggled with reading; though he didn’t have time to do it much these days, back in school he’d devoured pretty much every book he could get his hands on. “Are you…upset?” he ventured cautiously. “About Arthur, I mean?”

Hayden shook his head. “‘Upset’ isn’t the right word, exactly. Like, I guess we are, in the sense that we know he’s going to struggle his whole life, but in the sense of being upset that he’s different? Nah, not really. He is who he is, and we love him to death.” He turned his cup in his hands, then took a too-long sip. “But, so, there was something I wanted to bring up to you.”

“About Arthur?” Shane asked. “Sure. Anything I can do.”

“Not exactly about Arthur. Uh, so…” He paused, looking like he was thinking hard. “So there’s this cluster of symptoms that a lot of autistic people experience, right? Not everyone has all of them, but most people have some of them.”

Shane nodded encouragingly, though he had no idea where Hayden was going with this, and played with his fingers in his lap.

“Autistic people are really into routines and structure,” Hayden went on after a deep breath. “They develop obsessive special interests. They have food sensitivities, and often sensory ones too. A lot of them struggle with social behavior, like interpreting body language and subtle interpersonal cues.”

Shane considered all of that against what he knew of Arthur. “He definitely likes his routines, and he doesn’t have a lot of friends for whatever reason. And the thing he has about tags in his clothes!” He laughed a little. “It definitely fits.”

Hayden eyed him consideringly. “Right,” he said slowly, “but does that sound like anyone else you know, too?”

Not really? Shane mentally ran through everyone he and Hayden both knew. Certainly not Ilya, who could socialize with a brick wall if he wanted to. Maybe Shane’s father, who’d eaten the same thing for breakfast every day of his life? “My dad?” he offered uncertainly.

Hayden snorted out a tiny laugh. “Oh, lord, you’re oblivious. Ok, how to say this…” He trailed off and sighed deeply. “I’m just gonna say it. That all sounds a lot like you, Shane. Now, I’m not saying you’re autistic,” he hastened to add. “I’m not a doctor. But it might be interesting for you to do some reading about the characteristics of neurodivergence -” He pronounced the word a little awkwardly, like he was still wrapping his tongue around the syllables. “- and see if it resonates.”

Him? Autistic? That isn’t possible was Shane’s first reaction. Autistic people did things like obsess over trains, and flap their hands, and refuse to eat anything other than french fries. He was a successful – highly successful – adult who lived independently. He had a husband. He had friends. Well, friendly acquaintances. Teammates.

And so what if he was a creature of habit? So were a lot of people! “I really don’t think so,” he told Hayden after a moment. “Like, I guess I can see how you might think that because I love routine and stuff, but if I were autistic I don’t think I’d have gotten this far. I wouldn’t be able to focus on hockey.”

“Bud,” Hayden sighed. “My dude. My friend. You focus intently on hockey. You can rattle off stats from players who retired before you were even born. You can tell me the results of a random game played six months ago by two teams you’ve never encountered, in a different country. Any downtime you have, you’re on the rink. And it’s been like that your whole life. I think hockey is your obsessive special interest.”

Shane blinked, taken aback. Sure, he lived and breathed hockey, but what professional hockey player didn’t? “I think you’re seeing autism everywhere because you’ve got it on the brain,” he told Hayden, trying to sound calm and not show the vague sense of panic that was seeping through him. “Which,” he went on quickly, before Hayden could disagree, “is understandable! You’ve got a lot on your mind with Arthur. But I mean…even if I was autistic – and I’m not saying I am – what would it matter at this point in my life?”

Hayden’s eyes softened and he put down his glass on the girls’ nightstand in order to reach out and take Shane’s free hand. “You spend a lot of time feeling different. Apart from the rest of the world. I just kinda think that if you identified this in yourself, you might feel a bit more…explained. And maybe there’d be a sense of community.”

“I have a community,” Shane insisted. “I’ve got Ilya, and you, and my parents. The Cents.”

“Look.” Hayden released Shane’s hand and reached into his back pocket, taking out a printed sheet of paper. “Next time you have a couple of spare minutes, go to this website. They have a screening quiz. Take it, and see what it says. Maybe I’m completely wrong, and if so, I’ll own it. But maybe I’m not, you know?” He forced the paper into Shane’s resisting hand. “Just do it as a favor to me, ok?”

Damn it, Shane couldn’t resist when Hayden made those puppy eyes. Reluctantly, he accepted the paper and tucked it into his own pocket. “Fine. I think it’s dumb, and I already know what it’s gonna say, but fine, just to calm you down, I’ll do it.”

“And maybe google a bit, too,” Hayden suggested. “Just…read up on autism, especially adult undiagnosed autism. There’s a lot of, like…cheat mechanisms people pick up as they grow up not knowing why they’re different. It’s called masking – you learn to perform ‘being normal’ so people don’t look at you funny.”

He didn’t do that. Did he? Shane took an uncomfortable sip of his drink, unable to look Hayden in the face anymore. “I’ll try,” he muttered. “Can we be done with this topic now?”

Hayden heaved a sigh and patted his knee. “Sure. Sure, we can. Wanna go back out there and socialize?”

Fuck no, he didn’t, he realized. “I, uh…I think maybe I’ll see if Ilya is ready to head home,” he said. “You know, because we don’t like to leave Anya alone too long, and the drive home is a good two hours, so…”

Looking disappointed, Hayden nevertheless nodded. “Yeah. I get it.” He stood, and Shane copied him. “I’m really glad you guys came tonight. We don’t see each other enough anymore unless it’s on the ice.”

Shane mustered a smile. “And then, you’re always pissed because we’re beating you.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Hayden laughed, slapping him on the back as they walked out of the bedroom. “Just for that, I’m gonna kick your ass next time.”

“You can try.”

They returned to the living room and Shane’s eyes immediately searched for his husband. He found Ilya deep in conversation with Harris and Troy, who appeared to be telling some sort of hilarious story if Ilya’s roars of laughter were any indication.

He shouldn’t interrupt, he knew, but damn, he was really unsettled and he wanted to get the fuck out of here. Gathering all his social skills to try to extract them from the party, he crossed to where Ilya was standing.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Ilya said, slipping an arm around him as soon as he was within reach. He always seemed to know when Shane was near and needed him, no matter how distracted he’d been a moment before.

Shane felt the relaxation course through his body at the familiar touch. “Hey.” He glanced at Harris and Troy, then looked back at Ilya and dropped his voice. “Any chance you’re gonna be ready to go soon?”

Ilya studied him for a second and then it seemed to click. “You are overwhelmed?”

Shane scratched the back of his head self-consciously. “Uh, yeah, sort of. And I just had a really weird conversation with Hayden and I kind of…just want to go home and make a blanket fort.”

It wouldn’t be the first time. In their first few months of living together, Ilya had discovered that when Shane got too anxious, the dark and warmth of a blanket fort could keep him from overloading entirely. He now deployed that strategy regularly, and Shane didn’t hate it.

“Of course.” Ilya dropped a kiss on his forehead and then looked up at Harris and Troy. “Sorry, guys, but I must take my princess home before he turns into a pumpkin.”

“I…don’t think that’s how that story went,” Troy said. “In multiple ways.”

Harris slapped him reprovingly on the chest and offered Shane and Ilya a smile. “What he means is, no problem. We’ll talk to you on Monday at the rink, I’m sure.”

“Absolutely,” Shane managed to say, though his tongue felt thick as his anxiety over Hayden’s purported revelations increased the more he thought about them. “Monday.”

“Sounds good.” Troy offered them each his hand in turn. “Have a good Christmas.”

“We will,” Ilya agreed. “And the same to you.” He tightened his arm around Shane. “Ready, lyubimy?”

Shane nodded wordlessly and allowed Ilya to steer him first to the coat closet, then out the front door.

“You ok?” Ilya asked, peering across the roof of the car at him in concern when the valet stopped it in front of them.

“Yeah,” Shane assured him. “Just…feeling weird.”

Ilya hummed thoughtfully. “You can sleep on the way home if you want. Perhaps it will relax you. And then, there will be puppy kisses.”

Puppy kisses always helped, even if they left him feeling like he needed a shower. “Can’t wait,” he said weakly, settling into the passenger seat and clicking his seatbelt closed. He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep, but at least now he was away from that heaving mass of humanity in the house.

Despite firmly believing that he was too wound up to sleep, Shane dozed off with his head against the window within twenty minutes, lulled by the smooth rhythm of Ilya’s driving.

Chapter Text

Shane, a week later

Shane spent the next week with his head down, focusing on Ilya and team practice in preparation for their first post-holiday-break game. He’d set Hayden’s print-out aside. He’d get to it. Eventually. Probably.

Honestly, he was rather surprised Ilya hadn’t pushed him about what had weirded him out at Hayden’s party, but he wasn’t going to look that gift horse in the mouth. He didn’t want to talk about it. No, that wasn’t right; there was no reason to talk about it. Because it was nothing.

Right?

Still, he couldn’t sleep the night before their next game, and he somehow found himself sitting on the couch just past 2am, staring at his iPad, with Anya asleep on his lap gently snoring (see, it had been her doing the snoring!). Beside him lay the print-out, silently judging him. He wasn’t sure why he’d fetched it from his coat pocket in the first place, but now he couldn’t stop looking down at it and wondering.

Ugh, fuck. He determinedly tried to re-focus on the game tape he’d been watching on the tablet, but five minutes later, he was staring again at that printed-out URL.

Fine. Fine! He’d do the stupid quiz. Maybe Hayden was playing a prank on him and it would tell him which Muppet he was at the end, instead of whether he was autistic. Reluctantly, Shane typed the URL into his browser’s address bar.

He was taken to a page with a couple dozen questions listed, each one asking him to rate his answer from “disagree it applies to me” to “agree that it applies to me.” Didn’t seem too hard. He could do this.

He scrolled down to the first question: I am good at spotting patterns that other people miss. Well, yeah. That was why he was such a good captain and playmaker on the ice; he noticed things. He tapped agree.

I prefer to do things the same way every time. That depended on what they were talking about. In his daily life? Yes, definitely. Smoothie and a run every morning, On the ice? You couldn’t get away with that for long. He spent a good five minutes internally debating which the question meant for him to focus on before finally settling on the compromise of weakly agree.

And so it progressed. I find it challenging to understand the unspoken rules of social interaction. Agree. I have one or two special interests that can feel all-consuming. Well, he hadn’t thought so, until Hayden pointed out that it was hockey for him. Sighing, he went with weakly agree. I’m good at small talk or routine chit-chat. Hah, no. Shane was awful at that, and he gleefully tapped disagree. Take that, Hayden’s autism quiz!

As he worked his way through the questions, he began to notice that he was agreeing or weakly agreeing to almost all of them. It made him nervous. Unbidden, he found himself repetitively fingering Anya’s soft ears. Their velvet texture was comforting, and she didn’t seem to mind, happily sleeping through the touch.

Ten questions in, Shane took a break to stretch and make a cup of tea. He wasn’t getting back to sleep anytime soon. Anya grumpily followed him into the kitchen and hovered around his feet as he worked, clearly hoping he was preparing more than just tea. “It’s not breakfast time yet, go back to sleep,” he whispered to her, but she looked unconvinced.

And Shane was a complete pushover, because he went to the highest cabinet and retrieved the bag of freeze-dried liver treats they kept for her and tossed her one. Anya snapped it up without hesitation, then looked at him for more. Shane huffed a quiet laugh. “No more, baby. There’s rules about this.” And there were. Anya would happily eat all day, every day, so he and Ilya had long ago agreed that she got exactly two meals a day and no more than four treats. If he gave her more now, she’d be disappointed when her food budget ran out before bedtime tonight.

Sighing, Shane sank back into the couch with his mug of tea in one hand. He picked up the tablet again and tried to figure out where he’d left off. Ah, right, people tell me I’m too literal. Ilya regularly joked about Shane’s propensity for giving literal answers to his innuendoes and attempts at flirting. He remembered with a cringe one of their early exchanges when Ilya had asked him how many times he could come in an hour and Shane had given him a carefully thought-out answer based on his past experience. It turned out Ilya had been looking for something more like, “As many times as you want, sexy.” Which hadn’t even occurred to Shane.

Embarrassing.

He grew more and more tense as the end of the quiz neared. I can talk about my interests for hours and hours. I mimic other people’s behavior to appear “normal”. When my routine is disrupted, it can be distressing. Check, check, check. Goddammit.

He finished his tea and the quiz at the same time, and with a wince, he hit “submit.” Now was the moment of truth, he supposed. Loading. Loading. The little rainbow circle spun on the screen for way too long for his comfort, but finally the results were there.

Shane had scored eighty-five out of a possible hundred points, which translated to “many signs of autism”. On the bell curve it showed, he was a far-right outlier.

Fuck. That couldn’t be right. Shane wasn’t…he wasn’t impaired. He lived a fully functional life. And yes, sure, he sometimes felt like an alien wearing a human suit when it came to interacting with the rest of humanity, but when you got focused enough on something like hockey, coming out of it and trying to remember how to people was just…hard.

He realized he was clutching his mug and breathing fast, and made a determined effort to calm himself down. It wasn’t a big deal. This was just some online quiz. They had shitty online quizzes for everything these days, up to and including what type of bread he’d be if he were a carb. It wasn’t like this was an official diagnosis.

Anya lifted her head off his lap a few seconds before he heard a quiet “Shane?” from the stairs, followed by the sound of bare feet on the risers. Ilya emerged from the stairwell, his curly hair mussed and sticking up in all directions, the track pants he’d clearly just thrown on wrinkled and askew. “Is three in the morning. Why aren’t you in bed? We have game tomorrow.”

Shane sighed and lifted his hand off Anya so she could go greet her other daddy. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Mmm.” Ilya came around the corner of the couch and ran his fingers through Shane’s hair as Anya danced around his feet. “That has been happening to you a lot lately.”

It had, mostly because the stupid conversation with Hayden wouldn’t get out of his head whenever he tried to relax. “Got a lot on my mind,” he mumbled, tipping his head into Ilya’s touch like a needy cat.

Ilya gently took the mug from his fingers. “You want more tea?”

Shane shrugged. “Yeah, thanks.”

With a nod, Ilya headed into the kitchen and rustled around, turning on the electric kettle again and preparing a tea bag and the two packets of the artificial sweetener Shane preferred. “You want to talk about it?” he called as the kettle clicked on.

“Not really.” He sighed. He probably should, but this was…a lot. A possibly-heavy topic, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to discuss it at fuck o’clock in the morning.

Ilya was silent for the next few minutes as the kettle heated, then he slipped back into the room and handed Shane his mug. “Not sleeping isn’t good for you, lyubimy. Messes with your game. I have seen this over the years.” He tipped his head to the side, giving Shane the inquisitive-puppy look he found so hard to resist. “So perhaps talking is necessary, hm?”

Shane bit his lip and took a sip of tea, trying to figure out what to say. And then, before he could stop them, the words just started spilling out. “At the Christmas party, Hayden pulled me aside because he wanted to talk to me. He said Arthur is autistic and they just found out, so I was like, ‘Wow, are you ok?’ and he said they were but that the diagnosis made him think, and then he told me he thinks I’m autistic and I should do this online quiz to check. So I did it tonight and it…it says I’m very autistic? And I don’t know what to do with that because like…what the fuck? I’m not…pathological. I mean, I know you call me weird and boring and stuff but that’s just joking around, right?” He found himself looking imploringly at his husband, silently begging Ilya to tell him that nah, that quiz was bullshit and Shane was completely normal.

Instead, Ilya was silent for a long moment, and then he took the mug out of Shane’s nerveless fingers and took his hands in his. He regarded him solemnly for a few more seconds before finally opening his mouth. “I have…wondered.”

Shane’s eyes widened. What the fuck? “What?” he stuttered.

“Is not something that is much talked about in Russia,” Ilya went on thoughtfully. “Because it can be seen as weakness, and Russians do not like weakness. But I had a teammate in Boston, his son was on…” He paused, clearly searching for the right words. “Autism spectrum?” he tried, and Shane nodded. “Yes, that. Henry was ten. Very…rigid. Corbin could not bring him to the rink because the loud noises and lights scared him and made him cry. The few times I saw him outside the rink, he was very quiet and looked to his father to tell him what to say to people.” He sighed and side-eyed Shane. “Reminded me a bit of you when you talked to other people. One time, I asked him if he wanted to play hockey when he grew up, and he told me, ‘It’s irrelevant what I want unless I’m also unusually good at it.’ Which was…an odd answer from a ten-year-old. Very mature and logical. And Corbin told me later that Henry talked like that all the time and it was because he thought differently.”

“I don’t talk like that,” Shane protested, pulling his hands from Ilya’s and clenching them in his lap.

Ilya shook his head. “No, not exactly. But you have same…very logical quality. And sometimes when speaking, you freeze as if you are thinking very hard about what is supposed to come next. Henry did this too. So…” He shrugged. “I wondered, sometimes. But if it was not a problem for you, was not a problem for me. Is…is it a problem for you?” He looked at Shane earnestly. “Have I missed this?”

“I…I don’t know,” Shane confessed. “It never occurred to me until Hayden said what he said. And now I can’t get it out of my head.”

“Perhaps we research more?” Ilya offered. “The internet knows everything, after all.”

Throat tight, Shane nodded. “Um…yeah. Yeah, I guess we should. But…I guess I don’t understand why it matters to Hayden. Like, I’ve come this far in life, you know, without having any idea one way or the other. So why should I care now?”

Ilya didn’t seem to have an answer to that, either. “Perhaps you shouldn’t and it isn’t important. But also, it could be. Knowing things about yourself is useful sometimes. Like me, I know I am conceited and talk too much. So I think, sometimes, when I want to say something, ‘Will Farah be angry at me for saying this?’” He grinned. “Often, I say it anyway, because like I said, I talk too much. But sometimes I am able to reason with myself. Perhaps this would give you chance to reason with yourself when you are uncomfortable?”

“I guess.” He didn’t really see how he could reason himself out of being uncomfortable, but if Ilya thought learning more might be useful, then he supposed he was willing to try. He picked up his iPad again and typed “Autism symptoms” into the search bar. 

He started to tap on the first result that came up, but then Ilya’s hand covered his gently. “Perhaps we leave this for another time, mm?” he said quietly as he pulled Shane’s hand down. “Is very late, and we have game tomorrow. You should try to sleep more.”

“I honestly don’t know if I can,” Shane told him with a sigh. “Everything keeps…running through my head. Over and over.”

Ilya gave him a soft smile. “We will cuddle. I will stroke your hair. That always relaxes you.” His smile sharpened a little, going sly. “Maybe we let Anya sleep on the bed with us? She is soft.”

“Oh my god, Ilya,” Shane couldn’t help but laugh, “you know the rule about no dogs on the bed. She sheds! Tons!”

“Ah, but this is special occasion, no? Shane Hollander is very stressed; he needs emotional support husband and dog.”

“Emotional support husband?” Shane rolled his eyes. “Is that what you are?”

Ilya nodded firmly. “Definitely. I support your emotions. Always.” He pried the iPad out of Shane’s hand and set it down, then wrapped an arm around Shane’s shoulders. “Come, sweetheart. We will at least lay down together.”

Shane sighed, but allowed himself to be pulled off the couch and up the stairs. They settled, spooned together, on the bed, and Shane did not let Anya join them despite Ilya’s plea. 

Ilya kissed the side of his head. “Rest, lyubimy. Tomorrow night, we win game. Then we research.” He took Shane’s top hand and laced their fingers together. “We will learn and everything will be good. Everything is good when we are together.”

Letting out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, Shane let his eyes drift shut and snuggled back into his husband.

Chapter Text

Shane, Valentine’s Day 2022

It was 8pm on Valentine’s Day, they were on a “double date” with Shane’s parents at his parents’ cottage, and abruptly, he just…decided it was time. Time to get some answers to questions that he’d been wondering about since Christmas.

Shane took a sip of the champagne his father had poured him when they say down, and looked over the edge of the glass at Ilya. His husband was focused on the last few bites of his steak – unsurprisingly. The guy was a carnivore – but seemed to intuit that he was being watched and looked up after a second.

Their eyes met, and Shane knew Ilya could read what he was thinking on his face. He gave Shane an encouraging nod.

Shane drew in a breath, let it out, and looked at his parents. “So, uh, I had a question. About when I was a kid.”

“Oh?” asked his father absently, eyes still on his risotto. Which, admittedly, was very good.

“What kind of question?” his mother added, cocking her head curiously.

“Well, like…” Shane cleared his throat. “Was I a weird kid? I mean, I know I was a probably a weird kid, but I’m wondering how weird.”

“Oh, honey,” Yuna said, frowning, “I don’t like that word. You’re not and have never been ‘weird’. You’re special.”

Shane grimaced. This might be tougher to get through than he’d expected. “Well yeah, but I mean, like…I vaguely remember feeling different than other kids. And I was wondering, I guess, if that was obvious from the outside.”

David cleared his throat and set down his fork, finally looking up. “Your mom’s right, you were never ‘weird’. But we did notice that you were really focused on hockey, almost as soon as we put you in it, and you’d rather have been on the ice than playing tag or whatever with other kids. So I suppose if you want to call that ‘weird’…” He shrugged.

Shane thought about that for a second. It didn’t really tell him much; lots of kids were obsessed with their favorite sport. He dug in his brain for a more specific symptom of autism that he’d found in his research and tried that: “When I was learning to talk, how was it? Did I pick stuff up fast?”

Both parents blinked at him, looking confused by the topic shift. “Talking?” Yuna echoed. “Shane, what’s this sudden curiosity about your childhood about?”

He shrugged self-consciously. “Nothing. Just…Ilya and I were talking about when we were kids, you know, and I realized that I don’t have a lot of clear memories of when I was little.” It was true; Shane had no idea if it was an autism thing or not, but he had mostly scattered flashbulb images as memories, rather than whole scenes, right up until his high school years. “So I thought I’d ask you guys about your memories.”

“Well,” David said, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands over his stomach, “let’s see. Learning to talk. As I recall, your first word was ‘doggie’. You were…about three?” He looked to his wife for confirmation, and she nodded. “We’d just started to worry that it seemed really late, but then as soon as you came out with ‘doggie’, it was like you’d figured things out, and then you were speaking in whole sentences.”

That checked out. He’d learned through his now-slightly-obsessive research that language acquisition by autistic children could be very uneven.

“You were reading at 4,” his mother added. “We were so proud. It confused your kindergarten teacher, though. She was trying to teach the alphabet and you were like ‘here, let me read you a book’.” She smiled fondly.

“Did other children think it was odd?” Ilya asked, and Shane threw him a grateful glance for helping this along. Ilya had been at his side through all the reading and researching, learning right along with him and seeming to be genuinely invested in helping Shane figure things out.

David thought about that. “I don’t really know. He didn’t always have a lot to do with the other kids, so I’m not sure how much they realized he was ahead of them.”

“I didn’t play with other kids?” Shane asked.

“No, you did,” Yuna said quickly. “Sometimes. But mostly you wanted to go off and do your own thing, like you were living in your own little world.” She smiled a little. “Your teacher was actually a bit concerned about that, that first year of school. She wanted to get you evaluated for autism, but we -”

Record scratch. Wait, what? She was still talking, but Shane suddenly couldn’t hear her. There was a strange rushing in his ears.

Under the table, Ilya squeezed his knee, and Shane slammed back into the moment abruptly.

“- so it just seemed silly,” his mother was saying, “since it wasn’t a problem.”

“You…suspected I was autistic?” he managed to say through a dry mouth.

“Well, no,” she replied, “that was what I was saying: we didn’t, because you did just fine. You could talk to people – when you wanted – and we taught you all about looking people in the eye and being tactful.”

Vaguely, Shane remembered her urging him to Be polite, Shaney, you can’t just say whatever you want, whenever you want. He’d been perhaps seven years old then, and they’d been trying to teach him how to get along with his new hockey teammates. The memories started trickling back to him as he thought about it. Coming home from practice to find that his coach had called his parents. His parents sitting him down for a talk, telling him that he sometimes made the other kids uncomfortable and he needed to restrain himself more.

Shane felt his face grow hot with long-forgotten embarrassment. “You…knew,” he stammered out.

His mother’s eyes widened at his tone. “Knew what?”

“That I was…I am…” He shook his head, unable to find the right words. “Or you at least you suspected, since the kindergarten teacher told you.”

Ilya’s hand tightened on his leg and Shane sucked in a breath and tried to compose his thoughts enough to say something coherent. “Hayden thinks I’m autistic,” he finally blurted.

“Oh, honey.” Yuna sighed and took a sip of her wine. “You’re an introvert and Hayden’s not. That doesn’t mean you’re autistic.” She looked at Ilya as if expecting him to back her up. “Right? He’s your polar opposite, but he’s always been like that.”

Ilya studied her for a long moment, clearly considering how to respond to that. “I think Hayden may be right,” he finally said slowly. “Shane did evaluation online. It said he has many symptoms. And now that we have learned more about autism…yes, I see it.”

Yuna blinked and turned her gaze to her husband. “David? What do you think about this?”

David, looking thoughtful, picked up his fork and stirred his rice idly. “I suppose I’d like to hear why Shane and Ilya think that.” He looked up at Shane. “You sound like you’ve both thought about this a lot. And like it matters to you.”

Did it matter to him? At some point since the issue had been raised to his consciousness, he guessed it had come to matter. He felt like he needed to know, one way or the other, because it was possibly a full facet of himself that he didn’t know. And now, added to that, was the beginning of a feeling of betrayal if his parents had been given an opportunity to get him evaluated and…what, just decided it didn’t matter, so they wouldn’t bother?

He must have been silent too long, because Ilya answered for him. “Shane does not do well with social situations and expectations. Talking. Meeting the eyes. Also, he is…passionate about his routines. That is an autistic trait, we have learned. When his routine is broken he gets very upset.”

It was nothing he and Ilya hadn’t talked about and agreed applied to him already, but somehow Shane didn’t like hearing it all laid out like this. “I don’t get upset,” he protested weakly. “I just…don’t like it.”

“Well, that depends on what you mean by ‘upset’,” his mother spoke up, surprising him. “I remember as a child you’d cry and cry if something changed. When they switched you from left wing to center when you were nine, you cried for a week and we practically had to beg you to keep playing.”

Shane stared at her. “And you…didn’t think there was anything weird about that?”

She bit her lip. “Well, we just thought you were very attached to what you were doing.”

“Mom!” Shane burst out. “You had to have known it wasn’t normal for a kid to be that ‘attached’ to a hockey position.”

Beside him, Ilya snorted quietly, and yeah, ok, it was a little funny that Shane, of all people, would be saying it was abnormal to be obsessed with hockey.

“Well, we didn’t,” Yuna said defensively. “We thought you were just a very sensitive little boy.” She sighed again. “I really don’t think you’re autistic, honey. You’re a successful, married athlete who manages his own life just fine. If you were autistic…”

“That is a myth,” Ilya spoke up before Shane could sputter out another protest. “Autistic people can be very capable. Or not so capable. There is big range of…” He glanced over at Shane questioningly. “…Impairment?”

“Impairment,” Shane confirmed with a nod. “Or disability, I guess.”

“So you think you’re disabled?” Yuna challenged, not backing down from her position. “Shane, that’s absurd.”

Shane closed his eyes for a second, trying to gather himself. “Mom, the only way I manage my life as well as I do is with Farah’s and your help and a lot of obsessing over everything I do. Normal people don’t do that.” He waved at his husband demonstratively. “Ilya doesn’t do that.”

“Shane,” David said, and his voice caught on his son’s name. “There is nothing wrong with you.” His expression was pleading, as if he needed to convince Shane – all of them – that Shane wasn’t devalued by what he was describing.

“There is not,” Ilya agreed immediately. “He is perfect. But that does not mean he cannot also be different.”

“But…” Yuna was fingering her wine glass nervously now. “Even if this were true, do they even diagnose adults with autism? And what would change if you found out you did have it?” She looked up at him. “Would it make any difference to your life?”

“I don’t know, Mom,” Shane sighed. “But I think I want to find out.”

Yuna and David exchanged a look, and after a few seconds, David spoke again. “And we will support you, the same as we always have. We just want to make sure you’ve thought this out.”

“Will it affect your work?” Yuna picked up the thread of the thought. “Your contract? Will you ask for accommodations of some kind? Will you go public with any diagnosis, the way you did with being gay?”

Shane’s immediate reaction was to recoil. Hell no, he wasn’t going to be doing any media interviews about the state of his brain! It was bad enough that the public got his sexuality; he didn’t owe them more.

Moving slowly, Ilya reached over and took his hand, joining them on top of the table. “I do not think Shane has all the answers yet,” he told Shane’s parents. “But he has been successfully doing his job for a long time now, without knowing this about himself. If he chooses to make it known, I will support him. If he chooses to keep it private, I will support that.” He glanced at Shane. “I think perhaps he needs to know for himself, more than for any other reason. And,” he added very deliberately, looking from Yuna to David, “he needs to know that his family supports this.”

“Well of course we…” Yuna sputtered. “We always…I wouldn’t…” She ran a hand over her hair and looked at Shane, but he couldn’t meet her gaze. This whole conversation was overwhelming his already-depleted mental resources. “We will always support you, Shane. No matter what. We’re just trying to wrap our heads around this. It came out of nowhere.”

Shane couldn’t stop himself from huffing out a resentful little laugh at that. “They literally told you when I was in kindergarten.”

“But we didn’t think…” She gestured helplessly, then slumped back in her chair. “It seemed so foreign to what we knew of our little boy. I suppose we didn’t believe it could apply to you.”

Shane tightened his hand on his husband’s and Ilya squeezed back, a silent gesture of support. “And I can understand that, I guess,” he managed to say, though his throat was getting tight. “I’m not mad at you.” Ok, he was a little mad, after what they’d revealed during this conversation, but he’d get over it. Shane was good at stuffing down his feelings. “I just…need to know. For my own peace of mind.”

That was perhaps overstating it. Shane wasn’t sure he’d ever actually find peace of mind, whether or not he got a shiny new mental health diagnosis. But he could find equilibrium and maybe comfort, and those would have to be enough.

His parents continued to talk at him, trying to be reassuring, he thought, but Shane was done. He had no energy left for any of this. “I’m sorry,” he finally managed to say when his mom paused for breath. “I didn’t mean to ruin dinner. It was lovely, truly. But I…I need to go home now.”

Immediately, Ilya was on his feet and helping Shane push back his chair. Shane wasn’t sure what he’d done to deserve this man, but whatever it was, he’d do it again in a heartbeat. “Come, lyubimy,” Ilya said quietly. “We will go home, where it is quiet, and see Anya.”

Shane nodded wordlessly and allowed Ilya to handle the rest of the thanks, the statements about how it was time to go, the shaking of his father’s hand and the hugging of his mother. Ilya kept a death-grip on Shane’s hand the whole time, the only sign that he, too, was anxious. The difference was, Ilya’s anxiety centered around whether Shane was okay rather than around the stressful conversation they’d just had.

Shane was glad at least one of them could let his parents’ comments go that easily.

Chapter Text

Hayden, late February 2022

Hayden picked up the toy his son had just chucked across the room and sighed to himself. He loved his kids. He did. He’d die for the little fuckers. But god, sometimes they were little fuckers.

“Arthur, honey,” he said in his most patient voice, “we don’t throw things in this house.”

Arthur didn’t give a shit. He was in the midst of melting down over them having bought him the wrong socks, the ones with “bad” seams in the toes. They hadn’t realized the mistake until he’d put the first pair on and screamed like there was a live scorpion in the toe and not a little sticky-outy bit of fabric.

“Let me try,” Jackie said, sliding up next to him and resting a hand on Hayden’s shoulder soothingly. “Sometimes he reacts better to me.”

It was true, he sometimes did. Probably because Arthur spent so much more time with his mother than his father, and man, didn’t Hayden hate that aspect of his career? He loved hockey, but he hated how much it took him away from his family.

Sighing, he nodded at his wife and left Arthur’s bedroom, heading for the kitchen and reminding himself that, day off or not, eleven in the morning was too early to open a self-pity beer.

Just as he was opening a can of Coke instead, he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. Hayden put the can down on the counter and fished the phone out, checking the display to find that it was a text from his best friend.

Shane: Hey, you got a few minutes?

Hayden: Sure, what’s up?

Shane: Can I call?

That was unusual. Shane usually preferred to text. He said speaking in real-time made him anxious. Hayden was suddenly afraid someone was sick or dying. Ilya? Shane’s mother?

Hayden: What? What’s wrong? Of course you can call!

A few seconds later, his phone rang, and he answered it before the first ring could even finish. “Shane? What’s going on?” He tried to keep the worry out of his voice, but he wasn’t sure he succeeded.

“What? Nothing’s wrong, why?” Shane sounded confused. “Well, I mean, I guess it depends on what you mean by ‘wrong’, but -”

“Shane,” he interrupted before his friend could start rambling about semantics, “you never call me. You have me worried Ilya dropped dead or something and you’re calling to tell me that because you’re crying so hard you can’t see to type.”

A long moment of silence greeted that, and then: “Uh, no. That has not happened.”

Hayden let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding and sagged back against the counter. “Ok. Ok, good. what’s up, then?” He picked up his Coke again and took a sip.

“So…you know what we talked about at your Christmas party? Arthur, and the stuff you said about me?”

Of course Hayden remembered. It wasn’t every day you informed your friend that you thought he had a medical disorder he didn’t know about. In the time since then, Hayden had made the effort to not mention his suspicions again. He didn’t want to pressure Shane or stress him out, and he knew Shane sometimes needed time to chew new ideas over before he came to a decision about them. “Yeah, man,” he said as casually as he could manage. “I remember.”

There was a moment of charged silence on the line, and then Shane said, “Well, I did what you said. I took the test and did a bunch of reading. And then I talked it over with Ilya. And…I think maybe you were right.”

Whoa. What was the best way to respond to that? “Proud of you, bud,” he finally said, and if it sounded a little bit fatherly, well, he was a dad. “What can I do to help?”

More silence. Shane was probably thinking that over because it hadn’t occurred to him that Hayden would make the offer. Finally, he said, “Can you give me the name of Arthur’s doctor? The one who diagnosed him? I think maybe I need to…talk to someone.”

“She’s a pediatric specialist,” Hayden said, wincing. “So I don’t think she could work with you. But I could call her and ask for recommendations for someone an adult could see, maybe?” It galled him to not be able to offer more immediate help to his friend. He bit his lip. “Shane? Are you, like…ok with this? I know it’s probably a mindfuck.”

Shane laughed, a tinge of bitterness in the sound. “Not really ok, no, but it makes sense whether I like it or not.” He sighed. “It’s been a couple months of a lot of thinking about it. I even asked my parents about what I was like as a kid.” He huffed. “Turns out a teacher told them I should get evaluated and they declined.”

“What?” Hayden blurted incredulously, before he could stop himself. He knew parents didn’t always follow the advice of professionals – the anti-vax movement was enough evidence of that – but as a parent who was in the midst of raising a child with Arthur’s brain, he couldn’t imagine being told something might be off and just shrugging and going about his day and not worrying about it.

“Yeah,” Shane said with a sigh, “they thought I was just ‘really sensitive’.” Hayden could almost see him making air quotes around the words. “I kinda shut down when Mom told me that. It…wasn’t great.”

“Hey, shutting down is better than melting down,” Hayden offered philosophically. “I say this as someone whose kid is currently melting down. You might be able to hear the screaming through the phone.”

“Screaming?” Shane said in surprise. “No, I can’t hear anything.”

It was Hayden’s turn to sigh. “Yeah, we bought him the wrong socks and everything went to shit. Jackie is trying to calm him down now after tagging me out when I failed.”

“Oh, Hayd,” Shane said, “I’m sure you didn’t fail.”

“No, I did. He was throwing shit across the room and screaming and wouldn’t listen to a word I said.” He sighed again. “This parenting gig is hard as fuck, dude.”

Shane made a small noise Hayden couldn’t interpret. “Maybe that’s why my parents didn’t want to make it any harder by getting me looked at.”

“Hey, man, no,” he said immediately, straightening up and jostling his Coke can. “It’s hard whether you get the diagnosis or not. Plus, when you choose to have a kid, you accept that you have to care for them no matter what might go wrong. Wait,” he added hastily, “I didn’t mean ‘wrong’ like, ‘there’s something wrong with you’. There’s not. I promise.”

Shane’s laugh was weak, but it was there. “Calm down, I know what you meant.”

“Yeah, well, anyway…my point was that it’s a parent’s responsibility to do the best they can for their kid, and maybe your parents did the best they knew at the time or whatever, but that doesn’t mean they did the objectively best thing. You’re allowed to be upset about that.”

Silence greeted that pronouncement for a long second, and then Shane heaved out a breath. “I…I think I needed to hear that. They were so upset when I told them I thought I might be…you know. Almost like they were offended at the idea that they could have produced a defective kid.”

“Shane, you’re not -”

“Defective. I know,” he finished for Hayden. “Ilya’s said that too. But I think they kinda think an autistic kid would be.”

“Dude, I’ve met your parents. They adore you. I guarantee they do not think you’re defective.”

He could almost picture Shane’s shrug at that. “I mean, I know they love me. But I’m still angry at them.” He paused. “I’m allowed to be angry, for real? Even though they didn’t mean to hurt me?”

“Shane. You absolutely are.”

A quiet sniff. “The more I read about autism, the less I’m sure I understand stuff like that. Like whether I’m right to be angry about something. Because what if that’s just the autism talking?” He didn’t sound sure of his own words.

“It’s not like you’re possessed by a demon, Shane,” Hayden assured him, trying to sound as supportive as possible. His friend needed reassurance, not to hear Hayden’s own parental doubts about whether he was qualified to give advice in this situation when he couldn’t even help his own son. “It doesn’t somehow overrule your real self. You are your real self. Autism and all.”

“I guess. But if my reactions are different than a normal person’s -”

“There’s no such thing as ‘normal.’ We’re all fucked up one way or another. You just pick your poison. Or, well, you don’t get to pick, as the case may be.” Hayden ran a hand through his hair and tried to think of how to explain this in a way his friend would understand. “Like, I’m a hyperactive shithead. You think that does’t drive Jackie nuts? And that I don’t sometimes drive myself nuts?” He snorted. “If you’re fucked up, so am I, just…differently. But the people who love us love us anyway. And your parents love the hell out of you.” He paused as something occurred to him. “What does Rozanov say about all this?”

“I haven’t exactly said this to him,” Shane admitted. “Mostly because I don’t even know exactly what it is I’m worried about, so it’s hard to put into words. It seems like it helps to talk to someone who has experience with another autistic person, though.”

“Me?”

“You,” he confirmed. “I can tell you’ve been studying up on this for Arthur.”

“A lot,” Hayden agreed. “Have you been researching, too?”

Shane snorted. “Endlessly. Ilya has to pry me away from the internet a lot.”

“Good. It’s good to learn about yourself.” That sounded so stupid, but Hayden couldn’t think of a better way to phrase it right now. “But try not to obssess too much, either,” he added after a moment, thinking about Shane’s habit of hyperfixating.

“It’s…a little late for that, I think,” Shane confessed, and Hayden winced. “The more I read, the more I see in myself, so I just keep reading.”

That settled it. Shane needed a professional. “Ok,” he said as confidently as he could manage, “we need to find you a doctor who can do an official evaluation. Have you looked for one, or had you been assuming you could use Arthur’s?”

“Arthur’s, mostly,” Shane said. “But also…the league does all my healthcare, pretty much.”

Hayden wasn’t sure where he was going with that statement “Ok…?”

Shane sighed. “I don’t want them to know I’m seeing a…a shrink. You know? It’s bad enough to them that I’m gay; if they find out I also have a mental illness…” His voice tightened over the course of the sentence until it sounded like he was choking by the end.

“Hey, whoa, Shane. Breathe,” Hayden ordered, concerned. “Let’s calm down, ok?”

Shane made a noise of agreement, but didn’t say anything.

“Ok I’m just gonna talk, then. First off, medical privacy is a thing. Ontario’s PHIPA means your doctor isn’t just gonna call up the commissioner and be like ‘Yo Hollander’s autistic’. Second, autism isn’t a mental illness. I looked it up. It’s a ‘neurodevelopmental disorder’.”

Shane laughed wetly. “I don’t think the label will make much of a difference to them.”

“Fuck them,” Hayden hissed. “But ok, fine, if you’re worried about going through league doctors, then we’ll find you a private doctor and you can pay them out of pocket if Provincial Health doesn’t cover it. You have enough money to make this a non-problem.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Hayden smiled wryly. “Shane, you’re stressed as fuck. I’d be surprised if you were that on-the-ball.”

“True,” he allowed. “Ok so I need to make a plan. Plans help. Do you really think Arthur’s doctor can recommend someone for me?”

“I do.” Hayden finished his Coke and crushed the can against the counter, then dropped it in the recycling bin.

“Ok, please ask them, then. Then I guess I…ugh…I guess I’d have to call them and make an appointment.”

Hayden couldn’t hold back his chuckle. “You and phone calls, man.”

“They’re awful!” Shane protested.

“Sometimes you just gotta -” He broke off when Jackie entered the kitchen, a sniffling Arthur wrapped around her like a koala bear. Hayden noticed his feet were bare. “Sorry, Shane, hold on a sec.” He covered the mouthpiece of his phone and turned to his son. “You ok, buddy?”

Arthur sniffled again, but nodded his face into Jackie’s neck.

Jackie met his eyes. “I think he needs some Daddy snuggles. Can you…” She nodded at the phone he was holding.

“Oh. Oh, uh, give me five minutes,” he said. “It’s Shane, and I’ve gotta…” He waved his hand, attempting to communicate something like get him back on an even keel.

With the superpowers almost ten years of marriage had brought her, Jackie intuited what he meant and nodded. “Sure. We’ll be on the couch.” And she turned and carried Arthur out of the room, leaving Hayden to his call.

He uncovered the mouthpiece. “Hey, sorry. Jackie came in to tell me Arthur’s calming down but needs hugs.”

“Awww.” He could almost hear the smile in Shane’s voice. “Go hug him, then. I’ll be ok.”

“I promise I’ll get you that referral, ok? And hey – talk to Ilya about all of this, even if he just listens while you ramble to clear your head. I bet it’ll help.”

“Ok.” Shane sighed. “Thanks, Hayd. This helped, too. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Definitely. I’ll text you when I have a free hand after snuggle time.”

They said quick goodbyes and then Hayden slid his phone into his pocket and headed into the living room, where he found his wife and son on the couch while the twins fought over the Xbox controller. One look at Arthur told him that the fighting wasn’t helping him calm down. “Girls,” he said sternly. “If you have to fight, do it in your room. Better yet, don’t fight in the first place. We’re trying to calm your brother down.”

Both girls paused and looked at Arthur, then looked at each other, then back at Hayden. “Sorry, Dad,” they chorused. “We’ll go play in our room,” Jade added, setting down the controller.

They really were good kids. He and Jackie had given them their best attempt at an age-appropriate what is autism and how can you help? lecture, and it seemed to have made a difference now that they knew that sometimes their brother could get overstimulated.

Argument apparently forgotten, the girls skipped out of the room holding hands. Hayden could only shake his head at how quickly they fought and made up. Then, with a sigh, he settled on the couch next to Jackie, who still had Arthur on her lap. “Hey, bud,” he said, running a soothing hand down Arthur’s back. “You feeling better?”

Arthur wiped his nose on Jackie’s shirt – ew, parenthood– but nodded. “Better,” he echoed. “The socks was wrong,” he added plaintively.

“Aw, I’m sorry.” He held out his arms and Jackie neatly transferred the child to him. He gave Arthur a firm squeeze. “We won’t make you wear them, and we’ll be more careful what we buy in the future, ok?”

“Mmkay.” Arthur settled his head on his father’s shoulder and relaxed. Hayden kept up a soothing stroking motion on his back, and soon Arthur’s breathing deepened and evened out.

Jackie turned to him. “What did Shane want?” she whispered, trying not to wake Arthur up.

Hayden would have shrugged, but he was a bed. “Venting, mostly, but also he wanted the name of Arthur’s doctor because he thinks he wants to look into actually getting diagnosed.”

Jackie’s eyes went wide. “He believes you?”

“Yup. Apparently he’s done a buttload of research since Christmas.”

“Well, good.” She sighed. “Art’s doctor won’t work, though.”

“Nope. But I promised to ask her if she could recommend someone and let him know. So that’s my job for my downtime this week.”

Smiling, she leaned forward and kissed first his temple, then Arthur’s. “You’re a good friend, Hayden Pike.”

Chapter Text

Shane, July 2022

It had taken more than a few months to jump through the hoops necessary to get Shane in to see the neuropsychologist Arthur’s doctor had recommended – medical services in Ontario were just overloaded, no matter how much money you were willing to throw at the issue – but today was finally the day.

Shane clutched Ilya’s hand as they walked into the doctor’s office. He had no idea what to expect out of this…interview? Test? Evaluation? Whatever you’d call it. His googling had informed him that he could expect to be asked some personal history, some questions about his habits, and probably be given some intelligence-related tests, but nothing he’d found had told him what it would really be like.

So of course, he was anxious as fuck.

“It will be ok, sweetheart,” Ilya bent to murmur in his ear when he noticed Shane’s hand shaking as he handed his documents to the receptionist.

Shane could only look at him pleadingly, any and all words caught in his throat.

“Ok, Mr. Hollander,” the receptionist said, handing back his documents, “you can have a seat and we’ll call you when Dr. McMurray is ready for you.”

Shane just nodded and allowed Ilya to lead him to the waiting area. As soon as they sat, his knee started bouncing up and down of its own volition. Shane put a hand on it, trying to hold it still, but not being able to move it made things even worse, so he sighed and let it do what it wanted.

Ilya looked at him out of the corner of his eye, then fished his earbuds out of his pocket and offered one to Shane. When Shane accepted it and popped it into his ear, Ilya navigated his phone to YouTube and found footage of “Scott Hunter’s greatest hits”. Contrary to what someone on the outside might think, this was not the greatest plays made by Scott Hunter; it was footage of the most dramatic physical hits Hunter had taken, and it never failed to make both of them both laugh and wince at the way the older man got flung off his feet. In short, a great distraction for a high-anxiety moment.

Ilya hit the play button and soon he was snickering openly while Shane tried to hide his own smile. “Oof,” Ilya muttered at one particularly dramatic hit that took Hunter right off his skates. And then, “I hit better.”

Shane rolled his eyes and patted Ilya’s leg. “Of course you do, dear.”

“No, really. Look, Ondin fumbled the puck within seconds of stealing it from Hunter. I would have kept.”

“You’ve been known to -”

“Shane?” interrupted a voice from the office doorway. They both looked up to find a pleasant-looking woman in her 40s smiling at them and holding the door open. “We’re ready for you.”

Shane stood immediately, then hesitated, looked down at Ilya, and looked back up at the woman. “Um, does he need to wait out here, or…?”

“Only if you want him to,” she assured him. “It’s quite common – and often useful – to bring a loved one in with you.”

That made him feel a lot better. Ilya knew how to keep him calm. Shane seized Ilya’s hand like the lifeline it was and dragged him to his feet. “Come on.”

They followed the woman deeper into the office until they reached what looked like a small, slightly-cluttered conference room. The woman gestured them to seats at the table. “Go ahead and make yourselves comfortable. We’ll be here for probably two or three hours.”

Shane swallowed, but allowed Ilya to lead him to two chairs side-by-side on the long side of the table. As they settled, he looked around a bit more closely. There were what looked like children's toys and logic puzzles on shelves against one wall. A large whiteboard was on a second wall. The table contained a few stacks of paper that he wasn’t close enough to read, even when he squinted. Shane regretted not bringing his glasses.

“So,” the woman said as she pulled out the chair at the head of the table, “I’m Doctor Melinda McMurray, and please feel free to either call me Melina or Dr. McMurray, whichever you’re more comfortable with. My understanding is that you’re here today because you suspect you may be on the autism spectrum, and we’re going to be evaluating you for that?”

Swallowing, Shane nodded wordlessly.

“Ok, great,” she went on, not looking surprised at the silent answer. “And who is this you brought with you today?” 

She gave Ilya a little wave, and he waved back. “I am -” he began, only to be stopped by her holding up a hand.

“I’d like Shane to tell me, if that’s possible. Shane?” she said, turning to him. “Can you articulate who your companion is?”

Shane tried to clear the anxious lump in his throat. “He’s…” It came out croaky, and he tried again. “Um, Ilya. My husband.”

McMurray smiled warmly. “Thank you, Shane. Ilya, it’s nice to meet you. I’m glad Shane has some support here today, not only for the emotional aspect, but because it can be very helpful in diagnosis to get input from someone who doesn’t live inside the head of the person we’re evaluating.”

Ilya looked like it took him a second to parse that sentence, but then he nodded. “I am happy to do whatever I can.”

She turned back to Shane. “So Shane, let’s start by having you tell me what brings you to me today. What are you experiencing that makes you think autism might be affecting your life?”

After one more big swallow and effort to push down his anxiety, Shane started talking. “Well, my friend, his son was recently diagnosed as autistic, and my friend started researching to learn more about the condition. And then he told me he thinks a lot of what he learned applies to me too, and he thought I should get checked out. So then I started doing research and…” He shrugged. “A lot of it does seem to fit.”

“Can you be more specific about what you think fits? I’d also like to hear about how those items affect your life, from your perspective.”

Shane glanced at Ilya, wishing he could do the talking for him as he so often did. Ilya offered him a reassuring smile and an encouraging nod, but stayed silent. Clearly Shane was going to have to do this himself. Luckily, he’d come prepared.

He pulled his notes out of his pocket and smoothed them out on the table, then swallowed and tried to get himself to talk.

“Shane?” prompted McMurray gently, eyes on the papers.

“I, uh…” He cleared his throat yet again and stared down at the notes. “I’m really routine-oriented. I do the same things the same way every day, preferably at the same time. I get obsessive about particular things, especially hockey – we’re both hockey players,” he added, gesturing between him and Ilya, and McMurray nodded. “Um, I suck with people. Like, in a structured environment like a media interview I do ok, but put me in a room at a fundraiser where I’m supposed to schmooze or something and I just…can’t. I either can’t say anything, or I sound like a particularly stupid robot.”

McMurray, focused on her notepad, cracked a smile at that, and Ilya snorted into his fist.

Shane didn’t see what was so funny about that. He did sound that way; people had even told him that! Holding in a sigh, he picked up where he’d left off. “I have trouble making friends, and I’m not sure why. It’s not like I don’t like people, but nothing ever seems to…click. My parents used to yell at me when I was little for talking over people or blurting out things I wasn’t supposed to say. I get overwhelmed a lot if a room is particularly noisy or busy. Which, considering I play in arenas for a living, isn’t great.”

“That’s all really interesting, Shane,” she said, still taking notes, when he paused. “Is there anything else?”

“Um, I don’t know if this counts, but I really, really hate mushrooms? Like, the texture is just…” He gagged just thinking about it. “But I love touching Ilya’s hair, and when I’m nervous sometimes he’ll let me just pet him. I don’t know if that’s the kind of ‘sensory’ stuff that applies to autism, though.”

“I think that could definitely be something we explore,” McMurray said noncommittally. “Ilya, is there anything you’d add to all this?”

Ilya considered that for a moment. He, unlike Shane, had not come prepared with notes. “When I break his routine, he gets…oh, what is the English word.” He stopped, thinking. “Vzvolnovannyy? Agi…tation?”

“Agitated?” Shane supplied helpfully, and Ilya nodded.

“Yes, that. Agitated. Upset, worried, anxious. And he is truly obsessive about hockey. Can list off facts about everything. He…” He smirked a little. “He folds his clothes every time he takes them off, no matter what. Socks included. Little sock ball.” A pause to think. “When we are on the ice, his stick is always moving. Puck or no puck, always moving.”

McMurray made a few more notes, then nodded. “This is all really helpful information, guys, thank you. Shane, you mentioned your parents reprimanding you as a child. Can you tell me a little more about that?”

“They decided to not get me tested for autism as a child!” Shane blurted before he could stop himself, still offended at that revelation even months later. It wasn’t exactly an answer to what she’d asked, but the words had risen up and come out of his mouth anyway.

McMurray blinked once, then nodded. “Ok, so they suspected you might be different? But they decided not to pursue it? Have you ever spoken to them about what made them think you were different?”

Once again, the anxiety and frustration led to the words sticking in his throat. He turned an imploring look on Ilya, who nodded his understanding. “I will answer this for him, if that is ok?”

McMurray cast Shane a considering look, seemed to pick up on what was going on, and nodded. “Go ahead.”

“They say he was very sensitive child. Cried whenever things changed. Talked late, but then very well. He could read before other children. They say they ‘taught’ him how to look people in the eye and take turns in conversations and be polite.” The look on his face made clear what he thought about Shane’s parents’ tutelage. “His kindergarten teacher suspected autism because Shane was always alone, but his parents did not want to have him tested because they thought they could teach -” There was that word again. “- him to be normal.” He sniffed disapprovingly, and Shane felt tears prickle at the backs of his eyes at his husband’s protectiveness. “They are very nice people, but they have…spot of blindness.”

He glanced over at Shane. “I covered everything?”

Shane sniffed quietly and nodded. “Sorry,” he eked out. “I don’t know why I’m…” He waved his hand at himself as if to say like this.

“This is emotional stuff,” McMurray reassured him calmly. “Trust me, I see a lot of tears in these interviews.” She gently pushed a box of tissues Shane hadn’t noticed in his direction. “So, I think I have a good understanding now of why you’ve chosen to be evaluated. At this point I’d like to do some cognitive testing. It’s basically little games we’ll play together. No pressure; there are no right or wrong answers.”

No pressure? Suuuure. Shane bit his lip and nodded, because what else was he going to do?

The doctor turned and picked up a small plastic bin of…stuff…off the shelving, then brought it back to the table. “Ok, so in this first test, I’m going to ask you to manipulate some blocks…”

An hour later, tests complete, Shane was fighting tears – again – and Ilya was tense and pressed against him protectively, clearly hating Shane’s distress. The doctor, on the other hand, was completely unperturbed. “Thank you for sticking with me through all those, Shane,” she said, offering him a smile. “I know it can be frustrating, especially for someone who’s a habitually high achiever, to be asked to do things that may not be in your wheelhouse. But the whole point here was to find your limitations, and I think we’ve got some good data.”

Shane managed a nod and a hum of understanding.

“I also want to take this opportunity to point out one thing I noticed while we were doing these tests,” McMurray went on. “Which was that, while we were running through these tests with your right hand, your left hand was holding Ilya’s and you were manipulating his fingers.”

Self-consciously, Shane tried to pull his hand away from his husband, but Ilya held on stubbornly.

“That’s not a criticism,” McMurray hastened to say. “It’s an observation, and an informative one. Are you familiar with the concept of stimming?”

Shane glanced down at their hands, then up at the doctor, frowning. “Yeah but that’s like…hand flapping or rocking back and forth, right? Not holding someone’s hand for comfort.”

She shrugged lightly. “It’s the movement that interests me more than the hand-holding itself. Stimming can be obvious or very subtle. I worked with one woman whose favorite stim was to click her teeth together in rhythm. Almost unnoticeable if you didn’t know to look for it, but it helped her cope.” She paused, looked down at her papers, and then looked up and smiled. “So, I think I have everything I need for today. I need to score this assessment and run some numbers, and then I’ll need to write up my analysis.”

Shane blinked, taken aback. “You can’t tell me now?” He’d had visions of walking out of the office today with The Answer To Everything. “Even preliminarily?”

Pre-limi-nar-ily, Ilya mouthed to himself, and Shane stifled a somewhat deranged-sounding giggle. God, he was getting punchy at this point. Two hours of having to be “on” and constantly analyzing his own thoughts and behavior…he needed a nap. Or maybe a drink. Maybe both.

McMurray cocked her head to the side, studying him. “You know, I’ve never watched hockey. I didn’t know the rules at all before today.”

Uh, what? Shane blinked at her again. “I’m sorry?” he ventured, unsure of what she was getting at with that subject change.

A gentle smile. “Nearly every test we did, you related it to hockey in some way. The rules, or people’s play style, or the social interactions you observe. I learned a lot.”

Shane still didn’t get her point, but beside him, Ilya was nodding eagerly. “Yes, exactly, is like that!” he said, still nodding.

“Dude,” Shane said, looking over at him, “we play hockey.”

Ilya smothered a laugh in his fist. “Sorry, lyubimy,” he said quickly, catching Shane’s frown. “I am not laughing at you, I promise. Is just funny, the way she said that to someone who might be autistic. Very…implication and not literal.”

Shane’s frown deepened. He couldn’t shake the feeling both people in the room were making fun of him somehow. “Explain,” he demanded.

Ilya stopped laughing and sighed, squeezing Shane’s hand. “She cannot say officially that you are autistic, because she needs to do her…” He waved his free hand. “Math stuff. But she has noted two things just now: you have obsessive interest in hockey, and you have what is probably stim.”

“Okay…”

McMurray took over for Ilya, smiling warmly at both of them. “What your husband is trying to say, I believe, is that I just dropped some broad hints about what I think my conclusion is likely to be, forgetting for a moment that hints aren’t likely to be clear to you. Neurotypical conversational bias, I regret to say. So let me be a little clearer: my preliminary thoughts, after talking to you today, are that you are likely autistic. As I said, my official analysis will take a bit, and then I’ll be able to tell you with more certainty, but I think if it’s helpful to you to think in terms of ‘I have it’ or ‘I don’t have it’, it’s safe for you to go home today and start processing in terms of ‘I have it’.”

She…he…wow. It wasn’t like he hadn’t already basically convinced himself he was autistic, but this was, like, an official stamp on it. Shane was somehow still taken aback. Did this explain everything? His…life? “I…” he croaked out, but then broke off as he felt more tears leak out.

Wordlessly, Ilya picked up a fresh tissue and dabbed tenderly at Shane’s eyes.

“I’m going to head back to my office and get started on this,” McMurray said, gesturing to the papers in her hand, “but you’re welcome to hang out in here for the next few minutes to compose yourself. Once you’re ready, head out to the receptionist to make your follow-up appointment.”

Shane just nodded, still unable to form words. Once again stepping in for him, Ilya said in his most polite tone, “We will. Thank you very much for your work today, Doctor.”

“Take care of yourselves,” she said with a smile, and then she was gone out the door, shutting it behind her.

“Sweetheart,” Ilya said, turning to Shane and wrapping him up in his big arms. “Is ok. This is a good thing. We will know.”

“I know,” Shane got out roughly. “I do. It’s just…a lot.”

“You want to call Hayden?” Ilya said, offering his phone.

Shane shook his head. “I just…want to go home. Maybe take a long walk with Anya around the lake? Get out of me head for a while.”

“I think that sounds wonderful, Shane. Come, we will do that.” He urged him to his feet, still holding the tissue. He wiped a few last tears off Shane’s cheeks. “You are good?”

Shane bit his lip, took a deep breath, and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m ok. Let’s get out of here.”

Ilya kissed his forehead and gently led Shane toward the door. “Anything you want, my love.”

Chapter Text

Ilya, August 2022

Ilya arrived home at noon from the early-morning skate he’d been forced into due to what might, possibly, have been him goofing off too much during last night’s practice. His husband, perfect angel that he was, had not goofed off and had thus escaped the punishment. So Ilya was mildly grumpy when he pushed open the door that led from the enormous garage into the mudroom, and he was preparing to tease and aggravate Shane to work off some of the frustration.

“Hey, I didn’t -” He was just starting his first quip as he walked into the living room, but he came to an abrupt halt when he found a pale-faced Shane, his freckles standing out in stark relief, curled into the corner of the sectional couch. Immediately, all intention to annoy his husband dropped away. “Shane?” he asked, rushing toward the man. “What’s wrong?”

Shane sniffled and wiped his eyes in what was probably supposed to be a surreptitious manner, but Ilya missed nothing when it came to him. “Uh…nothing’s wrong, exactly.”

Ilya carefully sat down next to his husband and pulled him into his side. “I do not think I believe that. You are upset.” He thumbed another tear off Shane’s face. “Clearly.”

Shane sighed. “No, I mean nothing’s wrong. I’m just upset anyway, I guess. The, um…” His eyes flashed to Ilya’s for a split second before dropping again, and Shane buried his face in Ilya’s neck. “The results of my psych testing came in.” The words were muffled by skin, but they were still comprehensible.

Ah. Ilya had been half-expecting this. He gently set Shane just far enough away from him that he could study his face. “And the results are…bad?” he ventured.

Shane shook his head, still avoiding his eyes. “Bad…I mean, no, I guess they’re not ‘bad’, but they…” He sighed and leaned forward, picking up a thick sheaf of papers off the coffee table and slapping them into Ilya’s hands. “Here.”

Obediently, Ilya took the packet and flipped through it. It began with a simple summary of Shane’s identity and the tests the psychologist had administered, and then launched into a list of the results of each test. Ilya skimmed past a paragraph-long discussion of his husband’s IQ – who cared about that, Shane was plenty smart – and began trying to make sense of the dense, clinical prose that described the results of the more relevant tests.

Ilya’s English had improved vastly in the years since he joined the NHL, and even more so since he’d become part of the Hollander family, but after a few pages, he was forced to conclude that it was perhaps still not up to this task. He kept flipping pages, hoping for a summary, and finally found one, not that it made much more sense:

Mr. Hollander is an intelligent man and there is no evidence of learning disability, per se. He does report, and the tests support, symptoms that cluster within the autism spectrum, particularly interpersonal relational ability, verbal fluency, executive function, and habitual practices. There is a large discrepancy between Mr. Hollander’s manual dexterity and other physical skills and his more communicative skills. Mr. Hollander also exhibited significant levels of anxiety during this testing, which aligns with the results of his Zung Anxiety Inventory. Given the common co-morbidity between autism and anxiety, this must be taken as supportive, or at least not exclusive, of the existence of autism in the subject.

Ilya read it three times, trying to puzzle through the complex sentences, before finally giving up. “‘Supportive of the existence of autism in the subject’,” he read off the page. “This means you are autistic? I’m sorry, I…much of this language I cannot…”

Shane laughed wetly and shook his head. “I’m a native speaker of English and I can barely make heads or tails of any of this. But I did manage to figure out that yes, she thinks I’m on the autism spectrum.” He shrugged with what looked to Ilya like deliberate carelessness. “Not like we hadn’t figured that out already.”

Ilya didn’t buy the act. “There is a difference between suspecting and knowing,” he pointed out. “It is suddenly a real, official thing.”

“I guess.” Shane wiped his eyes again. “This is stupid. I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m just so….” He seemed to run out of words then, and ended by just shrugging.

“Relieved?” Ilya guessed. “Frightened?” Hell, it could be anything – everything? – that Shane was feeling at this point. He had the right to any feeling.

“Angry!” Shane hissed out abruptly, and Ilya’s eyes jumped to him, taking in his suddenly-burning eyes and gritted teeth.

His husband was really and truly mad, and that was one emotion Ilya hadn’t expected. Ilya just wasn’t sure what or who he was mad at. So he tried probing, gently. “Angry at who? Or what?”

Shane groaned and buried his face in his hands. “I don’t know. Me? The system? Definitely my parents. I could have grown up with this identity, knowing something fundamental about myself, and they decided I didn’t get that option. Why? Would it have been so bad? Couldn’t they stand to find out about me?” His voice cracked on the last word.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Ilya couldn’t not take him in his arms, rocking side to side as Shane sniffled into his neck. “Your parents love you. They were stupid, yes, but you must never doubt that you are everything to them. Whether or not you are autistic.”

“Mom was so…resistant,” Shane protested, not lifting his head. “Did you hear how she said ‘disabled’? As if it were something wrong.”

“No,” Ilya cooed comfortingly. “No, lyubimy, no no no. She did not mean like that, I am sure.” He’d known Shane had been disturbed by their conversation with his parents on Valentine’s Day, but he’d had no idea it was still lingering hurtfully in his head like this. He should have known, he realized. His Shane felt things deeply, and he never forgot a wound, whether physical or psychic. “I think she was trying to say that you are so, so successful, you know? And a disability is like…disadvantage, but you do not perform like you are disadvantaged, so you cannot have disability in her eyes.”

“But I am disadvantaged!” Shane nearly wailed. “Just because I look like I’m in control and understand things, it doesn’t mean I do. It means I’m fucking good at faking it!” He pulled back and thumped a fist against his chest as if he needed to physically work out some of his frustration. “Because it turns out I’m a fucking amazing actor.” He snorted. “Should’ve known, when they kept hiring me for those stupid commercials.”

“You are very good seller of energy drinks,” Ilya agreed readily. “And you are very good at living in a world that is not best suited to you. But it is not fair that you must do that.” He sighed and leaned his forehead against Shane’s. “I am sorry it is difficult for you. More difficult than for others.”

“I just…” Shane’s eyes drifted closed. “I feel like I don’t even know who I am anymore. Everything is colored by this autism-masking filter I’ve developed, my whole life. What am I really like underneath? I don’t know!”

“You are amazing,” Ilya said, gripping the back of Shane’s neck possessively. “You are my Shane, and you are amazing. You are funny – yes, you,” he added quickly when Shane cast him a doubtful look. “You are smart. You are wise and give good advice to your friends. And you are…well, not completely bad at hockey.”

Shane snorted quietly. “Fuck you, I’m better than you.”

“Never!” Ilya protested, glad to be back on familiar ground. Then he sobered. “I think there will be some learning to do about yourself. Unpeeling the layers? Is that how you say that? Because yes, we will discover who you are when you are not ‘faking it’. But also I think it will not be as different as you think. I can usually tell when you are acting, and you do not act with me. Or with Hayden, or your father. With your mother, hmm.” He tipped his head side-to-side. “Yes, with her you act, some. Because you feel you must make her proud.”

“So -” Shane began, but Ilya kept talking.

“So when you are not sure who you are, lyubimy, you ask me. You trust me to tell you the truth – because I will. And the truth is that you are different and fucking amazing. And you should not be ashamed of who you are. Be who you are.”

Shane’s response to that was an eye roll. “Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who’s going to end up in the tabloids as ‘Has Hollander gone off the deep end?’ if you do something weird.”

“Pah,” Ilya scoffed. “You have made it this far as boring Shane Hollander, there is no reason to think you will not retire still as boring Shane Hollander. We all put on mask for the press. Because they are annoying and like to make scandal, so we must be on our best behavior. Nothing wrong with that.” He paused, considering that. “Well, everything wrong with that, because we shouldn’t have to pretend, but we all do.”

Shane sighed and dropped his forehead to Ilya’s shoulder. “I just wish I knew what this means about me. Like, I don’t consciously mask, I just do it. Which means I don’t even know who I am underneath!”

“We will discover,” Ilya said firmly. “Do you think, perhaps…” He licked his lips, nervous to make the suggestion. “Perhaps therapy might help you learn about yourself? There might be therapists who specialize in autism.”

Shane thought about that for a second, then shrugged without lifting his head. “I guess?” He didn’t sound convinced.

“Perhaps…” Ilya went on slowly, “perhaps also you can…uh…” He searched for the right English, but could only come up with the very awkward, “re-view yourself? Like, see in new light things about yourself. You are not, what did you call yourself, stupid robot? You are smart person who does not excel at small talk. And that’s fine, because you make deeper connections with the people you do talk to. You are not broken because you are anxious; you are simply so smart that you always think many steps ahead. That is why you are so good on the ice. You anticipate. Is strength.”

“You’re very optimistic,” Shane commented dryly. “And I appreciate it, but I’m not sure I believe you.”

Ilya shrugged, gently jostling Shane’s head. “You do not need to believe me; is truth either way. You will learn. I will repeat it many times until you do.”

Shane looked up and gave him a weak smile. “That sounds like a threat, Rozanov.”

“Beatings will continue until morale improves,” Ilya said, grinning back and glad he’d seen that meme come across his Insta recently. “And if perhaps I must beat your mother a few times, well, I will do that, too. Because there is nothing wrong with my husband.”

“Uh, let’s maybe not beat my mom.”

“Metaphoric beating,” he assured Shane. “I just lecture. Probably.”

“Mmhmm. I’ll tell her to watch her back.”

“David will protect her.”

Shane snorted. “My dad couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag.”

Ilya had to disagree with that. “He played hockey. He must know how to fight.”

“I play hockey and I don’t,” Shane pointed out. It was true. He’d tried a few times, when really angered, but Shane simply didn’t have the fire that led to throwing punches, and when he did try to throw them, he mostly flailed comically.

Ilya shrugged again, more dramatically this time. “You don’t need to fight. You have me. I fight for you.” He thought about that a little more, then added, “I will fight you for you, if I need to.”

Shane sighed and pressed a soft kiss to Ilya’s lips. “You don’t need to fight my battles.”

Ilya shook his head. “This is our battle. Learning about you. Making you happy. Making changes, if we need to. We both will fight for that.” When Shane opened his mouth to make the inevitable protest, Ilya put a hand over his mouth. “Both.”

“Ilya…”

“Because I love you. You are very lovable.” He smirked. “Lovable…and boring. But cute-boring.” He booped Shane’s nose. “Like very lazy kitten.”

“Oh god, please don’t start calling me ‘kitten’,” Shane groaned.

“My kotyonok. It has a certain ring to it,” Ilya said blandly.

“Ya tebya nenavizhu.”

“You do not hate me. You love me. Much.” He drew Shane into a tight hug. “You are not crying anymore. Do you feel better, sweetheart?”

Shane sighed. “Some. But I guess I really should look into therapy. Or maybe just one of those rooms where they give you a bat and let you break shit until you feel better.”

Ilya raised a brow. “That is a thing that exists?”

“Yeah, I think they’re called ‘rage rooms’.”

Ilya grinned. “I just found our next team-building activity.”

“Oh, god, what have I done?” Shane groaned as he facepalmed.

Chapter Text

Shane, September 2022

“Hell yeah!” yelled Bood as the team – well, the six of them who’d been able to align their schedules – piled out of the party bus Ilya had hired to take them to the rage room. He’d seized on the idea when Shane mentioned it in passing and absolutely insisted that it needed to happen. Shane had mostly just sighed and given in to what his husband wanted, a skill he’d learned over his years with the man. What could it hurt to smash some stuff up with his teammates, after all?

Unfortunately – or maybe fortunately? – the date they’d found to do the rage room was the day after Shane’s first appointment with his new therapist. And now Shane had…feelings to work out. So grabbing a bat and breaking shit? Yeah, he could get behind that.

Ilya shoved Bood, who had been clinging to his arm and hooting his excitement. “Ugh, get off me, you are heavy.”

“You love meeee,” Bood sang, unfazed by the rejection, as they crossed the parking lot toward the nondescript warehouse-style building that housed the rage room. “Fuck, I’m so ready for this after last night’s game.”

They’d won, but the game had been a shitshow despite that. They’d played Montreal, which the team had loyally declared their Official Nemesis after hearing how they had treated Shane, and things had been rough from the get-go. Montreal’s defense had zeroed in on both Shane and Ilya and spent most of the game doing their best to keep them against the boards. Luckily, Ottawa’s wingers were fucking amazing and between them and their enforcers who’d run interference for Shane and Ilya, the team had kept the play – and the centers – alive.

Shane was keeping his distance from today’s horseplay between Ilya and Bood – the last thing he needed was to be accidentally checked off the ice – when Haas sidled up to him and quietly said, “So we just…break things? This is a thing Canadians do?”

Shane glanced at him and offered a reassuring smile. “Well, I think it’s more an American thing than a Canadian one, but it’s leaked across the border. Ilya thinks it’ll be fun, so…” He shrugged.

Haas nodded. “Yes, we do what he says.” The younger man absolutely idolized Ilya, would probably do anything he said. “When I was ten, I broke my mother’s favorite vase, playing inside the house. I think she has still not forgiven me completely.”

Shane caught the building’s door as Dykstra casually let it swing shut behind him, holding it for Haas. “I think that happened to all of us at some point in childhood.”

Haas smiled. “So today, we make up for it, eh?”

Personally, Shane wouldn’t have minded re-breaking one of his mother’s vases today. Because yeah, he was still working through those feelings about his parents.

But he wasn’t going to think about that. Today was for fun and blowing off some steam.

The group came to a halt in a generic-looking lobby. A reception desk was in front of them, four chairs off to the side, presumably for people who arrived before their booking. The receptionist looked up at them and his eyes widened. “Uh…hi,” he stammered. “You’re…you’re…”

It wasn’t an uncommon reaction, particularly to Shane or Ilya, let alone a large chunk of the whole team. Still, it always made Shane vaguely uncomfortable to have attention on him, and he shrank slightly behind Haas.

Ilya, meanwhile, just puffed out his chest. “We are. We have reservation under Rozanov. Eleven a.m.”

Visibly composing himself, the receptionist looked at his computer and nodded. “Uh, yeah. Definitely. Got you right here. So you’ll be, uh, six people for the large room, one hour?”

“D’you think an hour is enough?” Dykstra whispered to Hayes behind Shane. “How much shit will there be to break?”

Hayes snorted. “You don’t need to break everything in the room. It’s not a competition.”

“Well, that’s less fun.”

Shane’s lips twitched at that, but before he could say anything, the receptionist was leading them down a hallway and into the warehouse space. Shane looked around. They were surrounded by…stuff.

Old CRT televisions lay on fragile-looking tables. Glass-fronted pictures hung on false walls. A toaster and crockpot were on a sideboard. And yes, there were vases, plates, and glasses everywhere.

A short, dark-haired woman entered the room behind them, passing the retreating receptionist, and closed the door behind her. “Hi, folks,” she said cheerfully. “I’m Megan and I’m going to be your guide today. First rule of the rage room: head and eye protection at all times.” She started handing out plastic safety glasses and helmets.

The team obediently put them on as they were handed them, and then the snickers started, because yes, neither accessory was exactly flattering. Shane winced a little when he thought about how many other people’s heads these things had sat upon, but he gamely put them on anyway. In for a penny, in for a pound.

“Second rule,” said Megan. “No hitting each other, either on purpose or accidentally. That means spacing yourselves out enough to swing safely.” She gestured around the room. “There’s plenty of room and plenty of stuff.”

Shane heard a camera shutter go off and looked to the side to see Bood grinning at his phone. “You guys look so ridiculous, I love it,” he announced. “I’m sending this to Harris to post.”

Grumbles greeted that pronouncement, but Bood just shrugged. “Take it out on the glassware, not me.”

“Third rule,” Megan announced. “Only break stuff in the designated zones. Don’t go putting holes in our walls or breaking the lights or anything. Fourth rule: you will listen to me when I make any announcements or give directions.”

“Guh, hot domme,” Dykstra whispered to no one in particular. Shane shot him a look, because no, they were not going to be perving on the staff.

Megan just rolled her eyes. “You couldn’t handle me. Now, last rule: you’re here to work off some frustration; have fun with it! You’ll have an hour to break everything you can get your hands – or bats – on. When your time is up, the music will stop and you’ll hear me blow this whistle.” She held it up. “All destruction stops at that point and all bats go down.” She looked around the room. “Everyone got all that?”

The team mumbled various agreements, many of them already sizing up the room to see what they wanted to start with.

“Great.” Megan gestured to a corner, where an umbrella stand held a dozen wooden baseball bats. “Then go ahead and let your rage out!”

Cheers greeted that pronouncement and then the boys started grabbing bats. Megan backed up and leaned against the wall, pressing a button next to her head. Heavy metal music started blasting through the room, the beat thrumming with Shane’s increasing pulse.

He picked up a bat, testing its weight in his hand. Substantial, but not heavy. Weighty enough to easily break glass.

He heard a crash and looked up from his bat to realize that the others had already started going to town on the room. Bood was bashing away at one of the TVs. Dykstra was picking up plates from a stack and flinging them at the floor to watch them smash at his feet. Haas and Hayes, more cautious, were moving across the room and looking around for their first targets.

Only Ilya and Shane were still stationary. Ilya elbowed Shane gently. “Time to break things, yes?” His voice was loud to be heard over the music.

Shane took a deep breath and nodded. Ilya grinned at him and then let out a war cry and charged deeper into the room with his bat held over his head like a caveman with a club.

Shane got himself moving too, zeroing in on a cluster of Chinese-inspired vases that sat on a table. He poked the first one with the end of his bat and watched it tumble to the floor and break. Something inside him released at the sound of the smash, and then Shane was swinging his bat at the next vase. It launched off the table when he made contact and flew six feet before hitting the ground and shattering.

Oh, damn, this felt good. Shane sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, shaking out his shoulders, and then used his bat to slam the rest of the vases off the table in one fell swoop. A cacophony of crashes greeted the action. He realized he was making a guttural growling noise, but the music was loud enough to cover it, so he didn’t stop himself.

From across the room, he heard the faint sound of Ilya laughing wildly, followed by the sound of answering shouts from other teammates.

What would you like to address in these therapy sessions, Shane? asked his therapist’s voice in his head, repeating her opening words from yesterday. Shane hadn’t been sure what to say to that, eventually stammering that he was coming to terms with a new autism diagnosis and the confusion that went with it.

He’d felt like a tongue-tied idiot, trying to explain what he wanted to get out of therapy when he honestly had no idea what he wanted out of it other than to feel better, somehow.

Shane slammed his bat into the screen of a TV and screamed.

What does your personal support network look like? she’d asked next.

Well, let’s see, Shane had wanted to say but hadn’t, I’ve got a husband who’d do anything for me, a father who just seems confused, and a mother who refuses to believe there could be anything wrong with me and says ‘disabled’ like it’s a dirty word.

In reality, what he’d said was that his family was supportive but also confused. He couldn’t quite bring himself to share the embarrassment he felt over his parents’ reactions.

“Fuck!” he yelled in frustration, bringing his bat down on another table. He hadn’t tried to discuss his autism with his parents since Valentine’s Day, too stung by their – mostly his mother’s - reactions to face that again. He still spoke to them regularly; they just…ignored that topic.

Shane whipped around and smashed his bat into an ugly ceramic lamp, which went flying into a wall. “It’s not a dirty word!” he shouted into the chaos that surrounded him. “I’m not wrong!”

Ten feet away, Ilya must have heard his yell, because he stopped and looked up, his eyes meeting Shane’s momentarily. Then Ilya smiled and nodded approvingly, mouthing something that looked like, “Good.”

What do you think would have been different if you’d grown up knowing you were autistic? asked the therapist.

“Everything!” Smash. “I don’t know myself!” Shatter. He kicked what looked like a propped-up piece of drywall, his foot getting stuck in it for a moment before he shook it free.

What do your current coping mechanisms look like?

Hiding under his husband. Playing hockey. Not talking about things, as much as he could.

Shane, I am noticing that you seem to have a lot of feelings of shame wrapped up in this diagnosis.

“No fucking shit!” He swung his bat again, as hard as he could, and a pyramid of drinking glasses shattered. “What am I supposed to feel? Tell me that! Because I don’t fucking know! I never know how I’m supposed to feel!” The beat of the music pounded through him, and he smashed things to the rhythm, whirling and swinging. Around him, debris piled up in little mounds.

Do you feel safe sharing your emotions with your support network? she’d said as if that were a totally reasonable question that didn’t hurt to answer.

Shane swung his bat so hard he almost lost his grip on it with his sweaty hands, but he caught it at the last second and directed it into a picture frame standing on a table. Glass shattered and sprayed. “No!” he screamed at the phantom therapist. “No, I don’t! I’m trying to get used to this and I can’t fucking talk to anyone who fucking understands!”

“Dude,” he heard through a break in the music, and he looked up to find Dykstra and Bood standing still a few feet away, staring at him. Shane bared his teeth reflexively and both men flinched and looked away.

He broke another vase.

I think one of our goals for your therapy will be finding you psychologically safe spaces.

“What the fuck even is a safe space?” Break a table in half. Kick the remnants. Growl.

His heart was beating fast, which struck Shane as comical considering he could play a full shift at high speed without his heart rate increasing much. But somehow breaking shit shot his pulse up? He let out a laugh that probably sounded completely unhinged. “I’m not broken!” he screamed at no one. “Why can’t you love me?”

“Shane.”

“I don’t know what to do!”

“Shane!” A hand grabbed his arm, aborting his latest swing of the bat, and Shane jerked to a stop to find his husband watching him with concern. 

A sudden, overwhelming silence washed over him and Shane realized the music had just stopped. He stood there, panting, the bat dangling from his hand.

“Our hour is up, lyubimy,” Ilya said gently. “And I think we have destroyed everything there is to destroy.” He pried the bat from Shane’s hands.

Shane looked around the room, seeing only broken glass and shattered wood everywhere. His teammates stood in a small cluster five feet away, eyeing him concernedly.

“‘M fine,” he muttered, though no one had asked whether he was or not. Ilya stepped away from him to deposit the bat in its receptacle, and a sudden anxiety gripped Shane at the loss of his warmth. “Ilya?”

Ilya hurried back over to him, taking his hand. “I’m here.”

Hayes was the first to walk over to them. “Hey, you ok?” he asked Shane, brow furrowed. “That was intense.”

Shane opened his mouth, but no words came out. Oh, great, this again.

“He will be fine,” Ilya said for him after a second of charged silence. “Let’s get out of here. Beers next.”

Drinking at this point was either a great idea or an awful one, and Shane honestly wasn’t sure which it was. He wasn’t sure he cared, either. He’d take his chances.

He allowed Ilya to escort him out of the building and to the bus. Hand him into a seat. Wrap an arm around him. Shane was shivering.

The rest of the team piled into the vehicle, and as each man slipped past his seat, they rested a quick hand on his shoulder or ruffled his hair. “You good, man?” asked Dykstra tentatively, looking like he wasn’t entirely sure Shane wasn’t going to whip out another bat and come at him.

Shane could only shake his head. “I need that drink.”

“We can do that.” Dykstra nodded firmly. “We can definitely do that.”

Hayes popped his head over the seat back between him and Shane and Ilya. “You know you can tell us shit, right? Like, you don’t have to, but if you want to talk about whatever it is…”

Could he tell his teammates about his new reality? How would they react to knowing he was even less normal than they’d already thought?

Ilya squeezed his shoulder and leaned down to whisper into his ear, “Perhaps it would help?”

Shane just grunted. He needed to think about this. But he didn’t want to think about this. But he had to think about this.

Fuck.

Chapter Text

Shane, September 2022 (the same day)

The party bus dropped them off at a pub Dykstra insisted would have space for them and wouldn’t mind a rowdy bunch of hockey players. It wasn’t their usual post-game place, where Shane had grown comfortable – since they were nowhere near the arena – but frankly, he’d take what he could get at this point, because he really wanted that beer.

His teammates were treating him gently, obviously having picked up on the fact that his behavior in the rage room had been A Thing. Ilya, on the other hand, seemed to be making a determined effort to keep things light and the attention off Shane. He’d been chirping everyone the entire ride to the pub, until the other guys were jeering and throwing crumpled receipts and candy wrappers at him.

By the time they trooped into the wood-paneled pub, even Shane had managed a smile at Ilya’s antics. The adrenaline rush from the rage room had dissipated, and he was feeling less shaky now, though as always, his anxieties lurked in the back of his mind.

“I’ll get the first round,” said Wyatt Hayes as they grabbed a table in the back corner. “Anyone want anything other than beer?” Heads shook around the table and he nodded. “Be right back.”

Haas, who had ended up between Shane and Bood, cast Shane a sideways look and elbowed him gently. “We definitely would have pissed off our mothers, huh?” he asked, referencing the conversation about broken vases the two of them had had on the way into the rage room.

Shane snorted. “Oh, yeah. They’d have killed us.” He did his best to keep his dark thoughts about his mother out of his head, but something must have showed on his face anyway, because Haas studied him instead of laughing.

Before Haas could probe, as Shane was sure he was about to, Hayes returned with two pitchers of beer, a stack of plastic cups clenched in his teeth. He let the cups drop onto the table and put the pitchers down beside them.

“Gross,” Dykstra whined, fingering the top cup in the stack, “you slobbered on them.”

“Suck it up,” Wyatt said with a roll of his eyes. “The beer will sterilize them or whatever.”

Dykstra thought for a second, shrugged, and poured himself a cup of beer. “Fair enough.” He took a long sip and slouched back in his chair. “So, Hollzy, you gonna tell us what that was back there?” He gestured vaguely over his shoulder, obviously trying to indicate the rage room. A variety of exclamations greeted that, mostly guys telling Dykstra to shut up or be more sensitive. “What?” he said. “We all saw him lose his shit. Hollzy doesn’t do that. If he’s got a problem, I wanna hear about it.”

“Why?” Ilya said coldly, his arm tightening protectively around Shane’s shoulders. Shane allowed himself to lean slightly into his husband.

“What? Because he’s our teammate, dude. And he’s upset. That shit doesn’t fly on the Cents.” Dykstra’s eyes were wide and he looked like he couldn’t figure out why what he’d said was an issue.

“I think what he means,” Hayes said slowly, jerking a thumb to indicate Dykstra, “is that we want Shane to know we’re here for him if there’s something on his mind.”

“Shane is right here,” Shane couldn’t stop himself from snapping. He didn’t like the way they were talking around him, as if he were a non-entity in this conversation.

Hayes nodded, taking the correction. “Right, yeah.” He turned from looking at Ilya to face Shane. “Well, we’re here for you if you want to talk about it.”

Did he want to talk about it? Honestly, Shane was kinda sick of trying to talk about it. Ilya, his parents, his therapist…he kept talking, and it never seemed to fix anything. He gave a tight shake of his head and poured himself a beer. “No. I mean, thank you,” he added as his ingrained manners kicked in, “but no.” He took a gulp of his beer.

“Fair,” Bood said with a nod, pouring beers for himself, Haas, and Ilya and passing them around. “So did I tell you guys about the new grill I got? It’s got a smoker attached on one side and an induction hotplate on the other, so I can basically cook a full meal with that baby.”

Thankful for the subject change, Shane relaxed by increments over the next hour as the guys chatted and drank without focusing on him. The alcohol hitting his bloodstream helped, too. Shane had always felt a bit more chilled out and…normal…when he had a buzz on. He’d read that that could be a characteristic of neurodivergence, too. Too bad he couldn’t stay permanently loaded; maybe then he wouldn’t struggle so hard.

“So basically,” Hayes was saying when Shane tuned back into the conversation at one point four rounds in, “it’s just a matter of working those muscles and tendons, consistently, day after day. That and reflexes.”

“Man, I could never,” Dykstra said with a shake of his head. “I mean, it’s not like my reflexes are bad, playing defense, but doing the splits and shit? Nope, nope, nope.” He cupped his crotch protectively and everyone laughed, even Shane.

“Shane?” said a quiet voice to his side, and he looked over to find Haas studying him again.

It wasn’t the first time that day, and Shane couldn’t decide whether to be concerned for the younger man, who clearly had something on his mind, or himself, because the likelihood was that what was on Haas’s mind was Shane. “Hmm?” he mumbled, taking another sip of warm beer.

Haas leaned into him and dropped his voice. “You seem better now. I’m glad. We…” He glanced around the table, then back at Shane. “I think we all were worried.”

Shane shrugged, unsure what to say to that. “The beer is helping,” was what he finally came up with.

“Mmm.” Haas nodded. “Reduces the anxieties, right? Beer is good for that.” He looked thoughtful, then added, even more quietly, “Though my doctor says it is not good with my medications, to drink too much.”

Shane’s eyebrows went up. Medications? Was Haas sick? “Dude, you ok?” he asked before he could stop himself.

Haas’s mouth quirked up at the side. “I was going to ask you that. Me, I am fine. I, uh…” He looked around the table again, but everyone else, even Ilya, was distracted by other conversations. “I have anxiety disorder,” he nearly whispered. “But it is under control,” he added quickly, as if to forestall Shane’s concern. “I just thought…after today…perhaps you know something about that sort of thing. And I wanted you to know you are not alone, if so.”

Shane had absolutely no idea what to say to that. I’m sorry, perhaps? I get it? Yeah, they diagnosed me with anxiety at the same time they told me I’m autistic? He eventually settled for a slight nod and an, “I appreciate that.” He paused, bit his lip, thought some more, then sighed. It was time to take the leap. “C’mere.” He stood up, pulling on Haas’s arm to get him to follow.

Beside Shane, Ilya looked up in concern. Shane gave him a reassuring smile and nod. He was fine. Everything was fine. Just gonna go confess his secret to a teammate for the first time. Nothing to it.

Ilya didn’t look entirely convinced, but he didn’t object as Shane led an unprotesting Haas away from the group’s table and toward a two-seater table across the room. They slipped into the chairs at the new table, both still clutching their beers, and looked at each other.

“I, uh,” Shane started weakly. “I got diagnosed with anxiety recently too. Not on any medications for it, though.”

“Ah.” Haas nodded. “Not everyone needs them.”

Shane nodded. “My doctor said…” He swallowed. “My doctor said it’s a common co-occurring diagnosis with, uh, something else I have.”

Haas cocked his head to the side curiously. “Oh?”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He could do this. Maybe it would help to talk to someone else who had mental stuff going on. Haas wouldn’t laugh at him. He bit his lip and forced his eyes open again. “I recently found out I’m…autistic.” And then he held his breath.

Haas exhaled, almost as if he were doing the breathing for Shane, who couldn’t. Then he nodded. “I see.” He thought for a second. “Thank you for telling me that. I do not know much about autism, but it makes you…feel apart, sort of, right? You don’t like looking at people, conversation, things like that?”

Thank you for telling me that, Shane’s brain echoed disbelievingly. Thank you? Haas was thanking him for telling him he was basically a defective human being? He huffed out a laugh for lack of a better response. “It makes me weird as fuck. If you hadn’t noticed.”

Haas frowned, his brows going down. “You’re not weird.”

Shane snorted another self-deprecating laugh. “Yeah, I am. You don’t have to lie to me.”

“I’m not lying!” Haas protested hotly. “Hollander, I don’t think you are weird. I don’t think anyone else does, either. You are…formal, maybe? And I can see that sometimes you are very self-conscious. But that does not make you ‘weird’. You’re…you’re famous!”

“You can be famous and weird.” Shane pointed at himself.

“Hmph.” Haas crossed his arms in front of himself. “What does Rozanov say? I mean, I assume he knows?”

Shane shrugged. “He knows. And he probably agrees with you, but he’s hardly unbiased.”

Haas’s face softened. “I think he loves you a lot.”

“See, biased.”

“Does anyone else know?”

Shane shook his head firmly. “No. Well. Hayden Pike, because he’s the one who told me to get evaluated. But other than that…you’re the first person I’ve told outside my family. And…” He swallowed. “They didn’t take it well.”

Haas looked somewhere between puzzled and offended by that. “Your family is upset?”

Why was he blurting all of this out? Shane didn’t know, but somehow he couldn’t stop himself. The floodgates had opened. “I mean, my father seemed open to it but had a lot of questions, but my mom insists it’s not possible for me to be autistic. Because I’m so successful, I guess.”

“But -”

“I haven’t talked to them about it since I first mentioned it, though, because it was just…yeah, that was a bad conversation. I don’t want to deal with it. I have enough to deal with, getting myself used to the idea, you know? Well, you don’t know. But it’s a lot. It explains so much about me, but I’m still figuring out what it explains, and how, and how to deal with knowing this about myself now. I’ll see myself doing something and I’ll be like ‘Oh I bet that’s an autistic trait’ and I’ll look it up and yep, that’s a thing, and I just…I wonder what life would have been like if I knew this about myself before I was fucking thirty years old, you know? And it turns out my parents suspected it back when I was a kid but decided not to test me, and I just…I’ve got a lot of feelings about that.”

Haas was staring at him, open-mouthed, when Shane finally ran out of words. He waited for a few seconds, presumably to see if Shane was going to blurt out anything else, and then said tentatively, “You have a lot on your mind, I see.”

That understatement startled a chuckle out of Shane despite his agitation. “You could say that.”

“It does explain some things, though,” Haas added thoughtfully. “When we were first learning to play on the line together, I found it difficult to predict what you were going to do next, and I think maybe it was because you are less expressive than I am used to a center being?”

Shane nodded. “Yeah, that’s probably true. Hayden got used to reading my body language more than my face. He used to tell me that my face didn’t telegraph anything, and that was why opposing players found it hard to take me on.” He rolled his eyes. “Except Ilya. He always seemed to be able to guess what I was going to do.”

Haas smiled. “That’d be useful now, though, if we ever get you on a line together.”

“True.” Shane sighed and stared down into his beer. “Sorry for dumping all of this on you.”

“Hey, no.” Haas laid a comforting hand on his forearm. “I’m glad you felt like you could tell me. Are you…going to tell the others?”

He shook his head immediately. “I don’t want them to think of me as…” He paused, struggling to find the right words. “As…as something other? Someone they have to treat differently?” He sighed, knowing those uncharitable thoughts weren’t the ones he was supposed to be focusing on. “My therapist says I have ‘a lot of shame’.” He made air quotes around the words.

“Hmm.” Haas considered that. “I do understand that – I haven’t mentioned my anxiety to many people, either – but on the other hand, perhaps it would help people understand you better. And that could make you feel less uncomfortable, as well as possibly improving our play as a team.”

“You think I should tell them?” Shane asked, freezing at the thought of exposing himself like that.

Haas shook his head quickly. “I’m not saying you have to. At all. And I’m certainly not going to out you. But it’s something you could think about, for the future, if you’re ever ready. I…” He bit his lip and looked down. “I think I’d be more comfortable talking about my stuff if I knew someone else on the team understood. Maybe there are others in that position, too?”

Shane hadn’t thought of that. Everyone else on the team was so…normal. They were sports bros. Surely none of them had psychological shit? He didn’t feel like he could chance it right now. He shook his head. “I don’t think I’m ready for that.”

“Ok.” Haas patted his shoulder. “It’s your decision. I won’t push you. But if you’re ever ready…I will stand next to you.”

Shane suddenly felt tears pricking at the backs of his eyes and fought them back determinedly. Nope. No. He wasn’t going to cry over a teammate being nice to him. Even if that did feel foreign after his experience with the Voyageurs. “Thanks,” he managed to say to Haas, thankfully without his voice audibly wavering.

For just a second, he imagined himself standing in the locker room in front of his team, with Ilya at one shoulder and Haas at the other. Telling them the truth.

Maybe someday.

Chapter Text

Ilya, November 2022

They were home for two whole weeks between roadies, and Ilya couldn’t be more grateful. He loved the excitement of the season, including the travel, but that didn’t mean that when they got a break, he didn’t appreciate the hell out of the opportunity to sleep in his own bed at night and snuggle his dog.

And to snuggle his husband. Though he got to do that on the road as well, it was never the same in a hotel bed. Ilya felt like he’d grown more clingy over their years together, and he’d be embarrassed about that except for the fact that the clingier he got, the more secure Shane seemed to feel.

Especially after this autism stuff. Shane had pulled into himself over the past almost-year of struggling with the idea, and sometimes it seemed like only Ilya could bring him any relief from his stress and angst about that. So he was happy to cling and cuddle just as much as his husband needed.

That didn’t mean Ilya didn’t worry, though. Normally, Shane’s parents comprised a vital part of both of their support systems, but Shane had drawn away from them, too, since their disastrous Valentine’s Day dinner, and Ilya had felt like he had to do the same out of a combination of solidarity with his husband and his own anger at Yuna and David for their reactions.

He’d tried gently encouraging Shane over the past few months to talk to his parents, to re-open the topic of what they now knew was him truly being autistic, but Shane shut right the fuck down every time the topic came up. Face shuttered, mouth tight, eyes pleading with him to drop it drop it drop it. So Ilya had dropped it, every time.

He couldn’t do it anymore. He was…well, perhaps frightened was too strong a word, but he was very worried about his husband’s emotional state. He’d been obediently attending therapy, and Ilya thought he’d maybe made closer friends with Haas, but despite all that, Shane didn’t seem to be shifting out of the dark place the diagnosis had put him in. Ilya had lived depression, had fought to survive those times when everything seemed shadowed and he wasn’t sure why he was bothering to go through the motions of life; he couldn’t stomach the idea of his beloved Shane going through the same thing. Especially if Ilya could help in even the tiniest way.

Which was why he was on his way to Yuna and David’s house on a Friday afternoon on a day when Shane was babysitting for Hayden’s kids. Normally, Ilya would have gone with him – he loved those little monsters – but he’d made an excuse this time, because he had something more important to do today.

He was going to have a come-to-Jesus talk with Shane’s parents. They had to get on board with Shane’s new reality; it had to become a topic Shane felt they supported him on, instead of one he felt they looked down on. Because Ilya couldn’t do this emotional-support thing alone, no matter how hard he tried. He couldn’t be everything Shane needed. It galled him, but it was true.

He parked his car in his in-laws’ driveway and just sat for a second, studying their tidy little bungalow. It was nothing like the size of their lake cottage, but then, this house was within Ottawa’s city limits, where land was at a premium, and they’d bought it with their own money long before Shane’s current income became even a dream. He thought they’d lived here for nearly Shane’s entire life, actually. The house – and the people in it - had always had a warm glow around them in Ilya’s mind, but when he looked today, he saw only the tension he was feeling.

With a deep sigh, he picked up the manila folder of papers he’d brought with him and thumbed through the pages. They contained dozens of printed-out autism resources, though Ilya would be surprised if Yuna, especially, hadn’t already done her own research; more than that, though, they contained about ten pages of Ilya’s poorly handwritten notes on Shane’s personal version of autism, in particular. He was going to make these people understand whether they liked it or not.

He allowed himself ten more seconds for a mental pep talk, then got out of the car and strode up to the front door. He knew their video doorbell would be alerting them that someone was on the stoop and they’d be able to see him on the feed, but he rang the bell anyway. It felt more official, somehow.

“Ilya!” Yuna said in surprise as she swung the front door open. Her eyebrows were high on her forehead, and she looked around behind him. “I didn’t know you were coming today. David, did we know the boys were coming over?” she called back over her shoulder. Then, looking at Ilya again and realizing he was alone, she added, “Wait, where’s Shane?”

Ilya gave her a tight smile. She was so at ease, and something about that made him almost angry – that she could be so comfortable while her son lived in constant turmoil partially due to her. “He is busy today. Is just me.”

She blinked. “Oh. Well, come on in, we were just about to sit down for lunch. It’s just grilled cheese and tomato soup,” she said apologetically, as if she’d have prepared a feast if she’d known he was coming. Which, to be fair, she might well have. Yuna’s cooking was always delicious and always plentiful.

Ilya maintained his smile and nodded, stepping inside as she stepped back. “That sounds delicious, thank you.”

He noticed Yuna’s eyes catching on his folder as he passed her. She wasn’t stupid; Ilya didn’t usually turn up at their house with documentation. He wondered what she was speculating about what he’d brought.

“Hey, Ilya,” David spoke up from the kitchen table, where he was laying out a third plate, bowl, and napkin, as Ilya and Yuna entered the room. “Haven’t seen you in a while. How are things going?” He grinned. “We watched you annihilate Tampa on Tuesday. Very nice; good goals for both of you.”

“And three assists for you!” Yuna added, nodding. “I bet your wingers are happy with you.” She moved to the stove and turned the burner back on under a frying pan, then put together a cheese sandwich to grill in the pan.

Ilya’s smile was genuine this time. His wingers were happy with him – it had been a great game – and the memory of that, along with the sense of comfort that always came to him when he was in the Hollanders’ kitchen, brought his mood up a notch. He settled into his usual seat at the table, across from David, and set his folder down.

“What’s that?” David asked, nodding at it. “More paperwork for Yuna?” Even months into Ilya’s Canadian citizenship process, and even though they’d been assured that it was a mere formality, there always seemed to be more forms for someone – him, his husband, their family members – to fill out.

Ilya shook his head, trying to decide whether to bring the Shane issue up now or push it back to once they had some food in their stomachs. Neither Yuna nor David appeared particularly hangry – a useful English word, that – and he didn’t actually have a brush-off prepared that would let him delay the discussion, so he decided to go for it. “Research. On – oh, thank you,” he broke off as Yuna put a can of Coke down in front of him. He popped it open and took a sip, wetting his suddenly-dry throat.

David raised his eyebrows. “Research? You?” His tone was teasing. They all knew Ilya wasn’t the studious one in his relationship. He’d rather be in the gym or playing with Anya than reading.

“I know, is surprising,” he agreed with a smirk. “But this is important.”

With perfect timing, Yuna began distributing sandwiches onto their plates, and then set a pot of soup down on a trivet on the table. “Serve yourselves,” she instructed, ladling herself some tomato soup into her bowl.

Both men did as ordered, and soon Ilya was surrounded by the sounds of chewing and slurping. After a few bites, though, he put down his own spoon. He felt like he needed to get this out in the open while they were distracted. “So yes, I brought research,” he said slowly, nodding down at the folder again. “On autism.”

Both Yuna and David went still, then exchanged a glance with each other. “Oh?” David said carefully.

“Why?” asked Yuna, managing to look like she had no idea of the answer.

Ilya blinked at her, a bit stunned that she had the balls to ask that. “Because of your son.”

Yuna sighed and put down the half-sandwich she’d been about to bite into. “Look, Ilya, we’ve done some research, too. I’m still not really sure that -”

He whipped open the folder, selected the top sheet of paper, and slapped it onto the table in front of her. “Look, then.”

Obediently, Yuna looked down at the paper. Ilya knew what she was seeing: the ‘summary’ page of Shane’s neuropsych evaluation, with symptoms that cluster within the autism spectrum and existence of autism in the subject highlighted in bright yellow.

Yuna drew in a slow breath. “What is this, exactly?”

“Official conclusion of his doctor,” Ilya said, and if it came out a little snappish, well, could you blame him? “He is autistic. Testing says so.”

David pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I don’t think that’s a total shock,” he said, glancing at his wife out of the corner of his eye. “When we read up on it, we did notice some things Shane does that seemed to match up to characteristics of autism.”

Ilya just stared at him for a second. “You knew?”

“Well,” Yuna said, “we don’t – didn’t – know anything. Shane had just said he thought he might be. This is the first we’re hearing of an actual diagnosis.” She sounded vaguely put-out by that, as if she were trying to decide whether to be offended that they’d kept it a secret from her.

“Yes,” Ilya said shortly, “because – I do not know if you’ve noticed – Shane has not said a word to you about autism since you told him he couldn’t possibly be ‘disabled’.” He sneered the last word, wanting to get across to them clearly how disdainful he was of their treatment of Shane in February. “There is reason for that. He is…embarrassed. And hurt. By you.”

Yuna’s eyes widened. “Hurt? Why? I would have thought that, if he is autistic, he’d be pleased to hear that it’s not obvious.”

God, he was so glad he’d come here alone for this conversation. Shane would have been either catatonic or just running out of the room after that comment, if he’d been here. “Yuna,” he said, very deliberately, “being autistic is not a failing. It is not something to be embarrassed about. It is not something one must feel obligated to hide.”

“No, no!” She looked alarmed now. “I’m not saying he should be embarrassed, not at all. I just meant, like, he does so well for himself that…” She shrugged a bit helplessly. “Even if he has this issue, he’s coping with it so very well. It’s something to be proud of.”

He couldn’t decide whether that was a backhanded compliment or just more ignorance, but he had bigger fish to fry at the moment. “Do you remember what you told him about his childhood, that day?”

“Sure,” David spoke up. “We told him that we didn’t think he was weird, but he did have an obsession with hockey and liked to play alone. And…oh.” He glanced at his wife as understanding apparently hit him a bit belatedly. “We told him we chose not to get him evaluated for autism in kindergarten. He’s…upset about that?”

Ilya sighed, trying to think of the right way to phrase this that would get his point across effectively, but not hurtfully enough to put them on the defensive. “Autism colors person’s whole life,” he said, carefully selecting his words as he went. “From childhood to death, always it has effects. When it is identified in childhood, children can grow up learning how to…to…” The right word escaped him for a moment, and he fought his frustration. “Coping mechanisms!” he finally blurted, ignoring that his English grammar had gone to shit. “They can grow up learning how to be themselves but also to adjust to the world, and adjust world to them where they can. Shane…did not have that chance.”

Both parents were staring at him now in what looked like dawning horror, but neither said a word, so Ilya went on. “He grew up thinking he was simply odd, unlikable. That he wasn’t trying hard enough because he couldn’t easily do things that other people do naturally. Talk to strangers, meet the eyes. Change habits. These are almost impossible for him, and he grew up being told to change. Because you did not know, and he did not know.”

“So he -” Yuna started, and Ilya shook his head and held up a hand to cut her off.

“And that happens to many autistic people,” he kept going. “Not every parent is aware of the symptoms, many children slip through the cracks, adults find out as big surprise after years of struggling. He could forgive you that. What he is struggling to forgive is that you could have known. You had opportunity, and you did not take it.”

“Ilya…” David breathed. “We didn’t realize – I mean, we thought – but he was so capable.”

Ilya nodded firmly, because yes, his husband was one of the most capable people he knew. “He is, very. But that does not mean he does not struggle. And he wishes very much that he could have grown up knowing that his struggles weren’t his personal failings. That he wasn’t weak.”

As he watched, a tear slipped down Yuna’s cheek. “He’s never been weak. Not a day in his life,” she said, voice hushed like her husband’s now but somehow also still strong.

He might as well get it all out while they were in a receptive mood, Ilya decided. “And then, when he finally made the realization – at thirty years old – and came to you to discuss it…” He sighed. “You did not believe him. You told him he couldn’t be autistic. Yuna, you said ‘disabled’ like it was something you wouldn’t allow him to be. Like it was bad.”

“It’s not -!”

“He is hurt,” Ilya delivered the coup de grace. He knew these people deeply loved their son, and would never hurt him consciously. So he also knew that telling them that they had hurt him would make a hard impact. “So very hurt, that it seemed you did not care enough, about him as a child or an adult, to consider and listen his experience in life.”

“My little boy…hurt…” Yuna whispered, now crying in earnest. Hand shaking, she picked up her napkin and wiped at her left eye, leaving behind a smear of mascara.

“He does not feel he can talk to you about this,” Ilya finished. “Because you were not believing when he tried. And I…” He bit his lip, unsure if he should share this part. “I am worried about him. All his life, he has had you as support. Besides being gay, he could come to you with any problem he had. And now he feels that support is gone, and he is…groundless?” That didn’t sound like the right word, so he tried again. “Without foundation. Fumbling. He…I think perhaps he is depressed at combination of new diagnosis and loss of his support. So I worry. Because I know depression, and I do not want him to have it.”

“Oh, my god,” David said, the words muffled by the hand he’d put over his mouth. “Do…do you think…I mean, is he safe?”

It took Ilya a few seconds to figure out what he meant by that, and then he nodded in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. “I do not think he would harm himself. But it is a very bad place to be in, that dark place in your mind. I bring him as much light as I can, but I cannot be everything.”

“He needs us,” Yuna said, flattening her hands on the table with new determination. “All of us.”

“Yes.” Ilya inclined his head again.

“Is…” she began, then shook her head, regrouped, and tried again. “Is he angry at us? I mean, will he talk to us? About this?”

Ilya sighed. “I do not know. He is very…avoidant. Your talk left sour taste in his mouth, and he does not want to taste it again. He will not be the one to bring it up to you.”

David was nodding now. “Then maybe it’s time we bring it up to him.” He paused, then reached across the table for Ilya’s forgotten folder. “After we do some reading. Because, honey,” he added, looking at his wife, “we can’t get this wrong again.”

“No,” Yuna agreed. “No, we can’t.” She dropped her gaze to the table, then let out an awkward little laugh. “Oh. Our food is cold. Guess David and I being stupid ruined lunch. I’m so sorry, Ilya. I can reheat everything.” Without waiting for his agreement, she pushed abruptly to her feet and started gathering plates to put in the microwave. “They won’t be quite as crispy heated up, but…”

Apparently the discussion about Shane was over. At least it seemed to have gone relatively well. “Do you…want me to go?” Ilya offered, unsure what to do with himself now that his purpose in coming here today seemed to have been served.

“No!” David said immediately. “Please, stay. We owe you lunch.”

“And a lot more than that,” Yuna added, still facing the microwave and not them. Despite her back being to Ilya, he could tell when she wiped her eyes again. “I just…” She turned and put Ilya’s re-warmed sandwich down in front of him. “I – we – didn’t realize, Ilya. And I know that doesn’t justify upsetting Shane. And I promise we’re going to read what you brought. But…it’s really hard to think of my little boy as having something wrong with him. He’s perfect.”

“Ah.” Ilya took a thoughtful bite of his sandwich, chewed, and swallowed. “He is perfect. And he does not have something wrong with him. You will learn this, through the reading. Autism is not a defect; is just a different way of being. This is not a failure, by you as parents or by him as person. Is just…how things are. How he is. And we have all loved him as long as we’ve known him, and he has always been what he is. Knowing a new word for it should make no difference, hmm?”

David cleared his throat, looking a little teary-eyed himself. “No. It doesn’t make a difference. Not at all.”

Yuna put down the last of the reheated sandwiches on the table and sat again. “Except maybe it gives us more insight. More ways to understand him.”

“Yes!” Ilya couldn’t help slapping a hand on the table in his enthusiasm. “Yes, please. Understand him. Please.”

“God,” Yuna said shakily, leaning forward to put her face in her hands. “I can hear in your voice how worried you are. You have every right to be angry at us, for making Shane that upset and you that worried. So I guess I can only say thank you for you still taking the time to come talk to us, instead of writing us off as a lost cause.”

It was Ilya’s turn to go wide-eyed in shock. “We would never. You are Shane’s family! You are…you are my family. My only family, now. You make mistake, sure. Big mistake, yes. But you can make it better, now that you know.”

David nodded grimly, staring down at his plate. “We will.” Then he looked up at Ilya. “But…how?”

Ilya sighed. “Talk to him. Call him and say ‘Hello my son, we have researched and we would like to talk to you about the autism. We believe you and we are very sorry that we reacted badly first time.’ Then, next time you see him, you give him hug. Big hug.” He smirked a little, demonstrating the size of the required hug with his arms spread wide. “He won’t like it, but he will take it, and it will mean very much to him even if he grumbles.”

“Ok.” David nodded again. “We can do that.”

“But also,” Ilya added, lifting a finger to stop David, “you must then follow through on that promise. You must listen and believe. Adapt. Understand. Support.”

“My god,” Yuna said, face still in her hands and her words muffled. “You are the best thing that ever happened to Shane, Ilya. I’m just…” She sighed. “I’m so glad he has you fighting in his corner.”

Uncomfortable now with the attention being turned on him, Ilya grimaced. “Ah, I would do this for any teammate, you know,” he said, trying to sound dismissive but probably missing the mark, because frankly, he was feeling a little like crying himself over how much better this lunch had gone than he had feared it would.

Yuna lifted her head and pinned him with a hard look. “Don’t do that, Ilya. Accept the thanks we’re giving you. Your state of mind is just as important as Shane’s and it’s beyond obvious that you’ve been very upset about this. So not only did we hurt one son, but we hurt both. It’s going to be a while before I forgive myself for that.”

David reached out and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “We’ll put in the work to earn their forgiveness, and then maybe we can work on forgiving ourselves.” He swallowed hard, then nodded to himself. “Now, let’s finish lunch. And then maybe…Ilya would like to stay and watch some highlights from their last game? I always love the commentary you give,” he told Ilya. “It’s way funnier than the actual commentators.”

Ilya grinned. “That is because I know which players are making stupid mistakes – or are just stupid - and I tell you.” He checked his watch. “Shane is at Hayden’s until seven tonight. Some sort of parent-teacher day at the kids’ school. Is silly, to have parent-teacher school day and require parents to get a babysitter for it, but then, Canadian schools…” He rolled his eyes. “Not as firm as Russian.” Russian schools were often-violent shitholes, in reality, but he enjoyed teasing the Canadians in his life with lies about how much better they were.

David laughed and stood, coming around the table to slap Ilya’s shoulder. “Yeah, yeah, we all know what you think about that. C’mon, let’s clean up lunch and then we’ll see what we can find on YouTube from the game.”

Ilya nodded and picked up two plates, carrying them to the dishwasher. “I can stay until perhaps five.”

Yuna stopped what she was doing and threw her arms around Ilya, tucking her face into his shoulder. “Thank you, truly,” she whispered. “I love you.”

Ilya swallowed convulsively, still holding the plates. It wasn’t the first time one of Shane’s parents had said they loved him, but every time it happened, it hit him like it was. Before the Shane and the other Hollanders came into his life, no one had said they loved Ilya in…a very long time.

God, he wished his mother had lived to meet these people.

Chapter Text

Shane, Christmas 2022

Shane was still fighting a hangover when he and Ilya, with Anya in the backseat, drove to Shane’s parents’ house. Because yeah, he’d drunk too much the night before at Hayden’s Christmas party, trying to get out of his head about not having hockey to distract him for the next week. Between his hangover and his sense of dread over spending yet another awkward holiday with his parents avoiding the topic of his mental health, he was less than excited for today.

Ilya kept shooting him worried glances from the driver’s seat, but Shane just shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about it. Talking about it wouldn’t fix anything.

“Sweeheart, relax,” Ilya said as he pulled into the driveway. “It will be fine.”

Shane stared out the window and rolled his eyes. His husband had transformed into the eternal optimist on this topic, always assuring him that things would get better, people would understand, Shane would come to terms with his new reality and they’d live happily ever after. He’d even started dropping hints that he thought Shane should re-surface the issue with his parents.

Nope, not doing that.

Shane was silent as they got out of the car, unharnessed and leashed Anya, and walked toward the door of the house. He could get through this. They were all perfectly polite to each other when they saw each other, and when Shane managed to clear his mind of his anxieties, he could even have a good time with his parents. He loved them, after all, and he knew they loved him. They just had to stay on non-awkward topics.

The front door flew open before Ilya could knock. “Boys!” Yuna exclaimed, smiling widely. “Oh, and you brought Anya!” She dropped to her knees to rub the dog’s ears, cooing low at her.

“Nice to see you too, Yuna,” Ilya said dryly after about thirty seconds of them being ignored in favor of their pet.

She gave him a shameless grin. “Well, yeah, I suppose you can come in too.” Then her eyes moved to Shane and her expression grew stiffer. “Hi, honey.” 

Shane couldn’t decide if her tone was cautious or just unenthusiastic, so he went with the safe response: he nodded and said, “Hi, Mom. Thanks for having us over.”

Yuna’s eyes widened slightly. “Shane, you’re always welcome here. You know that, right?” She sounded a little bit like she was pleading with him, and he didn’t know how to react to that.

“Let them come inside, Yuna,” David said from behind her shoulder, drawing her away from the doorway gently. “It’s cold out.” He nodded to Shane. “Merry Christmas, son. Ilya.”

“S nastupayushchim Novym godom,” said Ilya with a nod as they followed Shane’s parents inside. It was a wish for a good new year; according to Ilya, Christmas wasn’t much of a thing in Russia, though he celebrated it these days for Shane’s sake, and he preferred to give people good wishes he actually cared about.

David ushered them to the living room couch with Yuna trailing behind. “What do you boys want to drink?” she was asking before they’d even sat down, hands clasped together in front of her. “There’s mulled wine, regular red and white wine, beer, and of course we’ve got Coke and ginger ale. Or maybe coffee? Tea?”

“Mom,” Shane broke into her rambling list. “Relax.” He wasn’t going to acknowledge the irony of that command coming from him. “I’ll try the mulled wine. Ilya?”

Ilya shrugged. “Just a Coke, please.”

Yuna nodded quickly, whirled, and was gone before anyone could say anything else.

Shane stared after her for a second before turning to look at his father. “What’s going on, Dad?” Social cues in general weren’t his strong point, but he’d spent his entire life learning how to read his parents, specifically, and something was on his mother’s mind. Something that was stressing her out.

David stared at his hands. “Uh, well.”

“Dad?” he prompted again when that was as far as his father got before he stopped.

“That was a really good game the other day,” David said instead of answering Shane’s question. “We watched, of course, and we were both yelling at the TV when the ref made that horrible call that put Ilya in the penalty box.” He looked poised to go on in that vein, but before he could, Yuna arrived back in the room balancing a tray in her hands.

“Here we go,” she said briskly, and started handing out drinks. Shane got a mug of the mulled wine, Ilya a can of soda, and both parents got stemmed glasses of non-mulled wine. Yuna settled onto the couch next to David, who took her free hand without looking at her. “Did you start?” she asked him, attempting to be quiet, but Shane still heard her clearly.

“Start what, Mom?” he demanded, a bit of growl in his voice. If they were planning some sort of ambush, he was not in the mood. “Can’t we just…have a nice dinner and call it good?”

Yuna bit her lip, then took a long sip of wine. “Well, no, honey,” she said as she lowered her glass. “I mean yes, we want to have a nice dinner with you. But also we need to talk to you.”

That sounded bad. Immediately, Shane’s brain started throwing out possibilities of what this could be about. One of his brands dropping him? His parents getting divorced? One of them was sick? They wanted him to quit hockey?

Ok, that last one was probably ridiculous, but he couldn’t help where his brain went when his mother started a conversation off with we need to talk.

He pushed a little closer to Ilya, who wrapped a reassuring arm around his shoulders and kissed the side of his head, his lips a little sticky from the sugary soda he was drinking.

“Just listen, lyubimy,” he urged gently. Then, turning to Yuna, he said, much less gently, “Get on with it. You are stressing him out.”

“W-well,” she stammered. “I’m sorry, Shane. It’s just…we wanted to talk about your, uh…your diagnosis. The autism.”

Shane went rigid and tried to stand, only to be pulled back down by Ilya’s grip on him. “No. No, I’m not doing this,” he said as firmly as he could manage, shaking his head. “It’s Christmas. You don’t get to spend Christmas telling me how wrong I am.”

“Shane…” Yuna said, eyes wide and sounding like she was trying not to cry.

“No.” He shook his head harder and tried again to stand. “No.”

Ilya’s hand came up then and curled around the back of his neck, squeezing in the way Ilya had long ago figured out could short-circuit Shane’s panic reflex. “Sit,” he ordered softly.

Shane swallowed convulsively and settled down again, leaning into that large hand on his nape. He took a breath, then another. Swallowed again. Nodded choppily. “Fine.”

His mother’s free hand fisted on her lap, then relaxed. “I…I’m not really sure how to start,” she said slowly. “Except that I know that both your father and I owe you an apology.”

Shane blinked at that. “What?”

“When you tried to tell us about your, um, experience,” Yuna went on, then paused to clear her throat. “We didn’t listen. And I said some things that, in retrospect, were really uncharitable. Unkind. I didn’t mean to be,” she added quickly, before Shane could even think of something to reply with. “I didn’t even realize they would sound that way. I thought they were just…questions. But they weren’t. And so I owe you an apology.”

Shane’s jaw was hanging open now. That was the absolute last thing he’d have expected her to say after her lead-in. He’d been expecting more you can’t be autistic and no son of mine will be disabled, and instead he’d gotten…what sounded like genuine regret? “Mom,” he started, then stopped, not sure where to go from there.

“I owe you an apology, too,” David said when it became clear Shane had nothing. “I was resistant, even if maybe not as much as your mom, and I immediately started talking about your career instead of your wellbeing.” He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Nothing matters more to your mom and me than your wellbeing, Shane. Your happiness and health.”

“But you said…”

“We said a lot of things,” David interrupted with a resigned nod. “And most of them were wrong. Uninformed, at best. We’ve…we’ve done a lot of research since then. Especially since Ilya read us the riot act.”

He’d done what? Shane stiffened and slow-panned toward his husband, whose brow was furrowed in thought and who didn’t look nearly as guilty at this revelation as Shane would have expected.

A second later, he found out why. “What is a riot act?” Ilya asked confusedly.

It broke the tense, frozen atmosphere better than a banged gong could have, and everyone laughed uneasily except Ilya, who just continued to look confused. “No, seriously, what is it?”

“It means you lectured us,” Yuna explained. “And told us we were wrong and we were hurting Shane.”

“Ohhh.” Ilya nodded. “I did do that, yes.”

Shane couldn’t decide whether he was angry or not at his husband secretly talking to his parents about him. “Why?” he finally managed to ask through a tight throat.

“Because we were hurting you,” Yuna said simply. “And he won’t stand for that. Hasn’t ever stood for that.”

“No one hurts my lover,” Ilya agreed smugly, and Shane knew that Ilya knew exactly how he felt about that word and had chosen it now on purpose.

“Dammit, Ilya,” he groaned, scrubbing his hands over his face to hide the small smile that was trying to emerge. “Be serious.”

Ilya took his hands, pulling them away from his face and leaning forward to meet his eyes, his expression grave now. “I am very serious about not allowing you to be hurt. Even by your parents. So yes, I spoke to them. Gave them information about autism. Told them to do better. For you.”

“And we read the information,” David picked up. “And we thought a lot about what we’d said to you, and how it might have sounded to you no matter what we thought we were saying. And…” He took a sip of his wine and held it in his mouth for a long second, looking like he was taking the opportunity to search for the right words. “We see it, now. How you’ve struggled, how you still struggle. And we learned, some, about how maybe you wouldn’t have struggled so badly if we’d intervened when you were a child.” He drew in a deep breath. “Ilya said you feel weak and like a failure when things are harder for you than the average person.”

“And you are neither of those things,” Yuna said, her voice firm and brooking no argument. “You are incredibly strong. You succeed at everything you do – up to and including disguising how much you struggle. Which…” She sighed. “Made it easy to not notice. Unfortunately. But Shane, my baby…you are not a failure. You are not weak. You are my hero.”

Well, that was laying it on a bit thick, Shane thought. He made a face. “That’s not -”

“No,” she interrupted his protest, “you are. And there’s every reason you should be. Look at what you do, what you are!” She gestured broadly at him. “You’re amazing. And I…we…love you so much.” She sniffled and knuckled a tear away from the corner of one eye. “And it kills me that we didn’t make that clear to you every moment of every day. That we made you doubt us.”

“Mom…”

She just shook her head, turning her face into her husband’s shoulder. “Sorry,” she said raspily. “Let me just…get myself under control. This isn’t about me and I know that.”

“Mom!” His head was spinning, but he didn’t like hearing her diminish herself. “You can tell me how you feel. It’s fine.”

Yuna looked up, bit her lip, and handed her husband her wine glass, then stood and crossed to where Shane and Ilya were sitting. She sank to her knees in front of them and reached for Shane’s hand, eyes wide with sincerity. “I love you, Shane.”

He couldn’t hold her gaze, so he allowed his eyes to dart around the room until he zeroed in on a cobweb in the corner of the ceiling. “I know, Mom,” he told the cobweb. “I love you, too.”

Yuna sniffed again, and he could see her nodding out of the corner of his eye. “Then tell us what you need from us. If you even need anything from us. God knows you’ve been managing your own self for this long, so maybe you don’t.”

It was Shane’s turn to sniffle as it finally sank in: his parents were listening to him. Apologizing. Supporting him. It was his coming-out all over again, and realizing that they would support him now was just as much of an emotional gut-punch as it had been then. “I just need you to listen,” he said shakily. “When I talk. When I need you. When I need…help.”

“Anything,” David said, depositing both wine glasses he held on an end table and coming to kneel next to his wife. “Just tell us and we’ll be there.”

“Within reason,” Ilya cut in, a hint of something dark in his voice. “He does not need to be managed, like a child. He needs to be treated like a person. An adult.”

Both parents nodded forcefully. “Yes, of course,” said Yuna. “You just tell us what you need, when you need it. And…we have been reading. And Ilya has told us some of what he sees in you, specifically. So hopefully we’ll be able to recognize those moments and you may not even need to ask.”

“You’re not very good at asking for help,” David pointed out, and though it could have sounded like a scold, instead it sounded affectionate. “Maybe because you never realized you could. And that’s our fault.”

Shane wiped his hand over his mouth, thinking. “I don’t think I can blame that all on you. I…there’s…” He sighed and decided to just go for it. “My therapist says I have a lot of shame wrapped up in how hard some things are for me, and that I purposely hide the need for help because I assume I not only won’t get it, but that asking will hurt me. And I don’t think that comes from you. You never gave me the impression you didn’t want to help me when I needed it. I think…” He sighed and shook his head, feeling like he was peeling off his clothes in front of the world by saying these things.

“Tell them,” Ilya urged quietly, giving his nape another squeeze.

“I, um,” he went on haltingly, “I also was diagnosed with anxiety when they diagnosed my autism. Apparently it’s really common for those to occur together. Guess I’m one of the lucky ones,” he tried to joke, but no one laughed. Wow, tough crowd. “Anyway, yeah, I, you know, worry a lot. About everything. Including things that aren’t realistic or that wouldn’t worry a normal person. Like asking for help.”

Ilya scoffed at his use of the word normal, and Shane shot him a look. “What?” Ilya protested. “You know how I feel about that word. You are as normal as anyone else. We are all weird in different ways.”

“Gotta agree with that,” David said. “Your mom calls me weird all the time, and she’s not wrong.”

“I kinda,” Yuna threw in, glancing at her husband, “am starting to think maybe the autism thing came from your father.”

That caught Shane off-guard, and he just stared at his parents for a moment. “What?” he finally managed.

David shrugged. “Some of your habits are also my habits, you know? So when we started researching…we wondered. Apparently autism does have a genetic component. But, I mean, I’ve made it to sixty-three just fine, so I can’t be too bad.”

“Dad…” Shane said slowly, trying to sort through a lifetime’s worth of impressions of his father in his head. “Just because you’ve ‘made it’ doesn’t mean you had it as easy as everyone else.”

“Well, we could say the same about you,” Yuna pointed out. She raised her eyebrows at him pointedly. “Would you let your father feel ashamed about it, if he is autistic?”

“No!” he said immediately. His father was the best man he knew, other than Ilya. His role model in more than one way.

“Then why be ashamed of you?” Ilya asked, finishing up Yuna’s thought as if they’d planned it.

He hoped they hadn’t planned it.

Shane groaned and threw his hands up. “I didn’t say it made sense. That’s the whole point of pathological anxiety: it doesn’t make sense. If it made sense, it would just be…reacting to things logically.”

“Hmm,” Ilya rumbled, then leaned in to press a kiss to Shane’s cheek. “We will work on that. Maybe medications.”

“Nope,” Shane said immediately. “They won’t let me play if I go on most anxiety medications.” Yes, he’d researched it after talking to Haas a few times. Most of the meds that were effective for anxiety, especially acute anxiety symptoms, were also considered performance-enhancing drugs because they did things like steady the hands. Haas was on one of the few that were acceptable, but he’d confided to Shane that he wasn’t sure how effective it was and he wished he could go on the better ones.

“Oh,” Yuna mused, “I know they’re picky about medications they allow players to take, but…really?”

“Really.”

“Damn.” She sighed. “So what do we do, then?”

Shane couldn’t hold back a short laugh at that. That was his mother, always wanting to attack the problem head-on. “We don’t do anything. I continue going to therapy and learn some coping mechanisms.”

“Is not fix for everything, therapy,” Ilya added, “but he says it helps straighten his brain.”

“I said ‘untangle’,” Shane corrected absently. “Nothing’s going to ‘straighten’ me at this point.”

Yuna tittered and then slapped a hand over her own mouth in horror at the sound. “Oh my god, Shane!” she admonished.

“Well it’s not,” he pointed out, quite reasonably he thought. “The whole world at this point knows I’m not straight, and all of us here know I tried to be and couldn’t.”

His mother’s face fell at that, and Shane wasn’t sure why. “What?” he asked warily.

She wrinkled her nose. “Just…I don’t like thinking of you forcing yourself to try to be something you’re not. And I mean, Rose is a lovely girl, but I wish I’d known. That you’d been able to tell us. Then.”

How had they gotten on the topic of Rose? Shane was a little lost, and he looked at his husband for help. Shane helped Ilya when he couldn’t grasp English; Ilya helped Shane when Shane couldn’t grasp people. It worked for them.

Ilya ran his fingers lightly through Shane’s hair and explained, “She means she is sad that you felt you needed to date Rose even though it made you uncomfortable, just because you didn’t know you could safely tell your parents that you are gay.”

“Oh.” He considered that. “But I made a good friend out of it. It’s fine.” It had been a rough time in his life, but he’d long ago made peace with it in a way that, apparently, his mother had not.

Yuna shook her head wonderingly. “You’re so strong.”

“Stronger than either of us,” David agreed. “For one thing,” he added with a chuckle, “I bet his knees wouldn’t be killing him after five minutes of kneeling on this floor.” He pushed up slowly, his knees popping audibly as he stood. “Ouch.”

Ilya laughed. “Hockey doesn’t make you hurt less. It just teaches you to deal with it more quietly.” He paused, a pained look suddenly marring his face. “That…perhaps applies to more than sore knees.” Then he turned to Shane. “You will not deal with your pain quietly now,” he instructed. “You will speak.”

“Ilya,” Shane started to protest, picturing himself informing his coach that no, he couldn’t play in that game because his hip hurt, and his coach laughing him out of the rink.

Ilya held up a hand to stop him. “Is metaphor. You will speak about pain in your head. At least to me. To your parents. We must know.”

Oh, that was less absurd. “I’ll…try,” he allowed, not quite willing to flat-out commit to that level of openness.

“Try hard,” Yuna urged. “We have a lot to make up for, here. Let us.”

“I don’t -” Shane began, but the sound of a piercing noise from the kitchen interrupted him and made him jump. He slammed his hands over his ears and screwed up his face. Anya barked loudly by his feet, only adding to the cacophony.

“The bread!” Yuna gasped. She leapt to her feet and was out of the room before anyone could say anything else. Seconds later, a billow of smoke could be seen emerging from the kitchen as the noise continued.

David winced. “Guess we’re not having fresh bread with dinner,” he said, loudly to be heard over the noise.

Honestly? Shane had forgotten they were even here to have dinner. He felt like he’d been to war and back in this conversation.

The noise – Shane realized now it was the smoke alarm – abruptly cut off. “Everything’s fine!” Yuna called to them. “Just a slight miscalculation!”

The three men exchanged looks and, unable to stop themselves, burst out laughing.

Chapter Text

Ilya, summer 2023

They arrived at the Pikes’ house twenty minutes before they’d told Hayden they’d be there; Shane had rushed Ilya out of the house, insisting that they were going to be late because Ilya always underestimated the amount of time it took for him to do things like select a pair of shoes.

And yes, fine, Ilya did tend to run a bit late on most things, but he always managed to get places on time. Mostly. Still, he acquiesced to Shane’s wishes with only a slight roll of his eyes. He knew his husband was eager to get to the kids and that his excitement could come across as irritated impatience when it really wasn’t.

“Shane. Shane!” he said, sighing as Shane ignored him and dug around in the back of the SUV for the bag they’d brought with them. “Shaaaane.”

Shane’s head popped up on the third repeat of his name. “Yeah?” He shouldered the heavy bag with a quiet grunt.

“Breathe, lyubimy. We’re just babysitting. We’ve done it before.”

“Yeah, but not for ages,” Shane pointed out, then sighed. “Probably because I’ve been a mess and nobody wants a mess watching their kids.”

“Hey.” Ilya seized his husband’s face in his hands and forced him to a stop. He gazed down into dark-brown eyes and tried to sound as dead-serious as he could. “You are not a mess. You were not a mess. You are someone whose life changed and who was…coming to peace about it. And Hayden probably didn’t want to put more stress on you, knowing this.”

Shane wrinkled his nose and shook his head loose. “Maybe. Or maybe he didn’t want someone who doesn’t speak ‘human’ well watching, you know, small humans.”

Ilya couldn’t help but snort at the absurdity of that. “That is bullshit. For one thing, you’ve been watching his small humans for almost ten years. For another, his own child is one who also ‘doesn’t speak human well’. And for a third, Pike adores you unreasonably.” He took Shane’s hand. “Come, we go inside. You can ask him yourself.”

“Not happening,” Shane said immediately, but he allowed himself to be drawn up the front walk.

Ilya knocked on the front door and moments later, Jackie opened it, looking frazzled. “Oh, good, you’re here.” She was holding the baby on one hip, and she shoved her at Ilya without hesitation. He took her reflexively, and Jackie pushed a hank of her uncombed hair behind her ear. “We’re behind. The girls wouldn’t clean up their tea party, and then Amber barfed, and Arthur is in a mood. Just, uh…” She gestured toward the living room. “Have a seat while we get things under control. There’s drinks in the fridge.”

“Anything we can do?” Shane asked without hesitation.

Before Jackie could answer, Hayden walked into the room still buttoning the fly of his pants. Ilya wolf-whistled and Hayden scowled at him. “You, shut it. Especially while holding my kid. Jesus. Honey, have you seen my cufflinks? The initial ones?”

“Oh, my god,” Jackie sighed, pushing her hair back again impatiently. “They’re in the jewelry box, same as they always are. Let me guess, you looked and didn’t see them?”

“Well…yeah.”

“Daddy!” came a high-pitched shriek from up the stairs. “Jade took my favorite squishmallow and won’t give it back!”

“Jade, play nice with your sister!” Hayden called back, rolling his eyes at the adults. “You have your own stuffies!” He looked at his wife. “I’ll check the jewelry box again, but I swear they’re not there.”

“Oh, for god’s sake, I’ll look. I’ve gotta do my hair anyway,” Jackie sighed. She grabbed her husband’s arm and towed him out of the room and toward their bedroom, leaving Shane and Ilya – and Amber – gaping behind them.

“It’s chaos,” Shane whispered in what sounded like mild horror, eyes wide.

“Still want kids after we retire?” Ilya teased with a raised brow, bouncing Amber on his hip.

Shane smiled slightly and shook his head. “Seriously re-considering my options, at the moment.”

“Unca Shane?” said a small voice, and Arthur, who had turned five not too long ago, wandered into the room. His eyes were red and he was repeatedly squeezing and releasing a tiny stress ball in his hand.

Shane immediately went to his knees and offered a hug. “Hey, buddy. How are you doing?”

Arthur shook his head and sighed deeply, the sound strangely adult coming out of such a small person. He didn’t move into Shane’s arms, and after a second, Shane dropped them. “Bad,” he said very seriously.

Ilya almost laughed at the gravity in his voice – how bad could a five-year-old’s life be – but stifled it just in time. He didn’t look forward to the lecture he’d get from Shane if he let it out. Instead, he looked down at the two-year-old in his arms. “And how are you, Amberochka?”

Amber lifted a small hand and yanked on one of Ilya’s curls. “Want juice,” she said insistently.

“Then juice you shall have,” Ilya agreed, and carried her into the kitchen. It took him a few minutes to locate a covered cup and a bottle of apple juice – organic, he noticed, how trendy – and then he carried her, drink onboard, back into the living room.

He found Shane on the couch with Arthur curled up against his side. They were deep in a serious-looking conversation, and Ilya tried to eavesdrop without being too obvious about it. 

“-can always ask your daddy to call me, ok?” Shane was saying. “Maybe you could spend a night or two with me and Uncle Ilya sometimes.”

Ilya’s eyebrows went up. Sure, they babysat the Pike kids, but they’d never brought them all the way to Ottawa, especially without their parents.

Arthur shook his head, hard. “No!”

Shane blinked, then nodded. “Ok, well, you don’t have to, bud. It was just a suggestion because you said it gets so loud here. It's really quiet at my house. And you'd get to play with Anya.”

That seemed to catch Arthur’s attention, and he visibly reconsidered. “I want my pillow, though. And Fluffy Bear.”

“Absolutely,” Shane said with a firm nod. “You can bring anything you want that would make you comfortable. We could even set up one of our guest rooms the way you want it, so it feels familiar.”

Ilya couldn’t stop himself from laying his free hand over his heart, which was aching at the sheer adorableness of this scene. Shane was connecting with a child who represented an opportunity to do better for this generation. He could give Arthur the care and experiences that he, himself, hadn’t had when he went undiagnosed, and Ilya was 100% on board with that. Then and there, he resolved to completely remodel one of the guest rooms if that’s what was necessary to make Arthur comfortable spending more time with Shane.

Unable to resist, he strode farther into the room, drawing the attention of both man and child. “Ah, my favorite boys!” he announced loudly, startling Amber into spitting a little of her juice onto his shirt. He ignored it. “Are you making plots without me?”

“No, Unca Ilya,” Arthur said, his little face so serious. “Unca Shane says I can sleep at your house sometimes, like when Jade and Ruby won’t stop yelling.”

“If,” Shane added quickly, “your parents say it’s ok. I haven’t asked them yet.”

Ilya could fix that. “Pike!” he bellowed in the general direction of the stairs.

Hayden’s head appeared over the banister that edged the second floor. “What?”

“We’re taking your child.”

Shane made an abortive noise, while Hayden looked first alarmed and then contemplative. “Which one?” he threw back. “You can have the twins for cheap.”

“Daddy!” complained one of said twins from deeper in the house.

“Hayden!” echoed Jackie, coming up behind her husband, hair now arranged neatly. “What have I told you about selling our kids?”

“‘Make sure you get a good price’?” Hayden ventured.

“Oh, my god.” She sighed, then leaned over the railing. “You can’t take one of the kids tonight, Ilya, you’ve got to babysit all of them. Shane promised.”

“Not tonight,” Ilya agreed readily. “But we will take Arthur sometime. Or this beauty,” he added, nodding down at Amber, who was now dozing on his shoulder.

Jackie looked apprehensive about that. “Arthur doesn’t like to sleep anywhere but his own bed…”

“We buy duplicate bed.” That shouldn’t be too hard, right? How many different types of kids beds could there be?

“Ilya,” Shane said with a sigh, sounding like he was already exhausted. They hadn’t even gone bed shopping yet; how could he be exhausted?

“Arthur, bud?” Hayden asked, looking down at his son. “Do you want to stay at your uncles’ house someday?”

Arthur chewed his lip for a long moment, and then nodded tentatively. “I think yes. But maybe no? What if I don’t like it when I go there?”

All of the adults considered that. Finally, Shane said, “What about if you come over for the day sometime, first? You can check out our house, see what you think, tell us how you want your room made up so you can be comfortable.”

“Dude,” Hayden interrupted, “since when does my kid have his own room in your house?”

Ilya shot him a look. Why couldn’t he just go with it, when Shane and Arthur were so clearly bonding?

“Since today!” Shane answered happily, not catching the interplay. “I figured he might be more comfortable if we let him customize a space for him. It’s not like we don’t have enough guest rooms. And, you know, it would give him chances to, like, decompress from here. Your house is chaos, man.”

Hayden nodded as if he couldn’t argue with that. Probably because he couldn’t. “I mean, fair. It is. Ok, we can try it.” Then, shrugging off the topic, he turned to his wife. “We need to be out of here in like five minutes, so put on your earrings or whatever.”

Jackie rolled her eyes. “So glad my husband is such a romantic.” Still, she turned and went back into the bedroom, appearing again a minute later with her earrings in place.

The couple came down the stairs trailing one twin – Ruby, Ilya thought – who was whining loudly about wanting to go to dinner with Mommy and Daddy and not stay home with the babies. Jackie stopped short at the bottom of the stairs and just looked at her daughter, who immediately snapped her mouth shut. Behind her, the second twin ran into her back because of the sudden stop.

“Why doesn’t that work on you when I do it?” Shane asked Ilya out of the side of his mouth.

Ilya considered that as he let Amber down to toddle toward her parents. “Jackie is better at it than you. If she looked at me like that, I shut up, too.”

“Asshole.”

“Swear jar, Unca Shane!” piped up Arthur.

Shane sighed and pulled a loonie out of his pocket, handing it to Jackie, who grinned at him as she swept past. She deposited it into the rather large swear jar the family kept on a shelf. “Pleasure doing business with you, Shane.”

Shane grumbled wordlessly.

“Ok, we are outta here,” Hayden spoke up, taking his wife’s arm. “Bedtimes and emergency numbers are on the fridge. Rozanov, I swear to god, if you get my kids hopped up on sugar and let them stay up late I will end you.”

Ilya grinned and blew him a kiss. He was absolutely going to get the kids hopped up on sugar and let them stay up late.

“I’ve got this,” Shane assured Hayden, elbowing Ilya. “I can wrangle the kids and my husband. Go have your fancy dinner.”

That wasn’t what Ilya wanted now, though. He didn’t want Shane to occupy his night by wrangling all four kids; he wanted him to have an opportunity to really bond with Arthur. He thought it would be good for both of them to recognize themselves in each other. So as soon as Hayden and Jackie had shut the door behind them, Ilya deployed his secret weapon: “Jade, Ruby, Amber, come, we are having girls’ night! I let you paint my nails and put makeup on me. Maybe then we do fashion show for your brother and Uncle Shane.”

All three girls squealed excitedly, though he was pretty sure Amber didn’t know what any of what he’d just said really meant, and came piling toward him. Ilya allowed himself to be brought to the ground, laughing. “No, no. We do this upstairs. Come, come!” He stood up with a twin dangling off each arm and grinned at his husband. “Come, give me kiss before they put lipstick on me.”

Shane was shaking his head in feigned despair, but he set Arthur slightly away from him and stood to give Ilya the requested kiss. “I hope they put you in pink,” he said, smirking. “And glitter.”

“I look fantastic in glitter,” Ilya agreed easily. “You and Arthur have quiet evening. Make popcorn, watch a movie.”

“Ew,” Arthur said with a firm shake of his head. “Popcorn is gross.”

Shane pointed at the little boy and nodded. “What he said.”

“Fine!” Ilya exclaimed with a huff. “Eat carrot sticks, then. More popcorn for me and the girls.”

“Popcorn!” chorused the twins at full volume, then they began to bicker loudly about who would get to eat more of the popcorn. 

Immediately, Arthur slammed his hands over his ears and grimaced, beginning to rock slightly forward and back.

Shane quickly sank back onto the couch next to him while Ilya shushed the girls. He put a gentle hand on Arthur’s shoulder, one of his “safe” touch zones. “Hey, bud, it’s ok. Let’s go in the kitchen and see what there is to snack on that’s not icky popcorn.”

Arthur cracked one eye open and studied Shane for a long moment, then nodded. He stood, keeping his hands over his ears even though his sisters had quieted down, and followed Shane into the kitchen.

Ilya lowered his arms, letting Jade and Ruby slide to the floor, and grinned. “Poshli, girls. Upstairs.” The twins scrambled up the stairs and Ilya bent to pick up Amber and carry her up.

Tonight was going to be good, in more ways than one.

Chapter Text

Sports Weekly, September 21, 2023 issue

“Hollander, Rozanov’s Irina Foundation expands its reach”

Melanie Waters

Ottawa, Ontario – Shane Hollander is sitting down with me in his kitchen for a rare longform interview, but he looks uncomfortable about it. His husband, hockey player Ilya Rozanov, is nowhere to be seen, and I’m informed upon asking that he’s out for a walk. I ask Mr. Hollander if he’s ready to start our interview, and he nods uneasily but doesn’t explain his uncertain posture. So I just take out my voice recorder and suggest that we get the interview started. He gives himself a visible shake, then nods again. “Sure.”

Sports Weekly: So, Shane, how have you been doing lately? It’s been more than a year since Sports Weekly has spoken to you rather than just about you and your fantastic seasons with the Centaurs!

Shane Hollander: I’m doing very well, thank you. How are you?

SW: Oh, I’m fine, fine. So, the reason we set up this interview is that you and your husband are rolling out a new initiative attached to your existing nonprofit foundation. As I understand it, your goal is to provide support for neurodiverse people as well as people with mental health issues. Now, my first thought upon hearing that was that I’m not sure what the difference between those is. Don’t neurodiverse people have mental health issues? Can you talk a little about that?

SH: Well, neurodiversity isn’t mental illness, that’s the bottom line. A neurodivergent person – that’s a person who has conditions like ADHD, autism, anxiety, or dyslexia/dyscalculia – is someone whose brain functions differently but not, or at least not necessarily, wrongly.

SW: But those things are disadvantages, though, right? And they affect the brain. So 'mental health' and 'issues'…

SH: <Hollander makes a disapproving noise and I wince> They’re mostly disadvantages because of the way our modern society is set up. And that’s because society is set up to prioritize the “average” person – you can call them 'neurotypical,' as opposed to 'neurodivergent.' So for example, Canadian society puts a lot of emphasis on literacy. Schools go crazy to make sure their students can read the written word. Any job you apply for, you’re expected to fill out a written application. And absolutely, literacy is valuable. Writing is a vital invention of mankind. But it’s not the only way to convey information. For millennia before we invented writing, oral tradition passed down history and stories. In the modern day, things like audiobooks and text-to-speech apps exist. But we continue to look down on users of those things as illiterate and thus somehow defective. They’re not. Dyslexics, on average, are every bit as intelligent and capable as people who can read easily – as long as the playing field is equalized and their different style of engagement is taken into account. The same goes for someone with ADHD or an autistic person.

SW: Wow, ok. I learned something today, I guess! <I laugh. Hollander doesn’t.> You clearly feel strongly about respect and rights for neurodiverse - neurodivergent? - people. Would you tell me a bit about what resonance this issue has for you?

SH: <pauses, thinking> Without going into personal details, there are…people in my life who fit under the 'neurodiversity' umbrella, and I see how they have to struggle and sometimes flat-out fight to be seen and respected. Especially, I have seen how it can weigh on a child to know they’re different, but not understand why – especially when you have their peers, and sometimes even adults, telling them they’re not only different but broken. While Ilya and I think it’s desperately important that those with mental illness be supported in their struggles – after all, we created a whole Foundation for that – we’ve discovered that when it comes to, you know, things going on with brains, neurodivergent people need support just as much.

SW: Speaking of your husband, fellow hockey player Ilya Rozanov, which of you had the idea to extend your foundation’s scope to include neurodiversity?

SH: Oh, I’d say it was mutual. We know a lot of the same people, obviously, so we’ve both seen people who we believe could benefit from increased support. It’s a topic that’s come up for us a lot in the last couple of years, and eventually we just sort of looked at each other and nodded that yes, we should do it.

SW: Now, the prospectus you gave Sports Weekly for the programs you intend for the Irina Foundation to implement says you will focus heavily on children. ‘Early-life interventions’ it calls your programs. Why are you choosing to focus on children?

SH: Well, your entire life is built on the foundation of your childhood. The experiences you have before, say, ten or twelve are formative to a personality in a way that can’t be matched by nearly anything that happens outside of childhood. So our thinking is basically that if we can get children in a good place, it sets them up to struggle less as teenagers, as adults, as eventual parents of their own children…

SW: But you do list some programs for adults, primarily support groups and assistance with skill acquisition. Why include those, if you’re so focused on children?

SH: Because not everyone on the neurodiversity spectrum gets that so-important childhood diagnosis. Many, many people grow up simply thinking they’re odd, lazy, or unlikeable. If they’re lucky, they’ll learn in adulthood that it’s not a defect but a brain that operates differently; if they’re unlucky, they may spend their whole life unaware that there’s nothing ‘wrong’ with them that some small accommodations couldn’t help with. We want to try to catch both of those groups in one way or another: for those who are diagnosed in adulthood, we want to offer them support and ways to learn how to cope and make important adjustments to their environment. On the other hand, for those who feel the symptoms but don’t know what they are, and/or those who may never be diagnosed officially, we want to be a place they can go to feel that they’re not alone and maybe experience that moment of self-discovery they wouldn’t otherwise have found.

SW: Are you worried about splitting the Foundation’s resources? Why not start a different organization for this new set of goals?

SH: Ilya and I see both neurodiversity and mental illness as falling into the category of 'mental health,' and to us, that’s what we created the Irina Foundation to support: mental health. Neurodivergent people experience significantly higher rates of violence, both self-inflicted and not, than neurotypical people, just as do mentally ill people. Ilya lost his mother too early, and we want to do everything we can to prevent as many people as we can from experiencing that pain.

SW: Yes, about that. I’ve of course read the Foundation’s documentation, which mentions Ilya’s mother’s death, but can you tell us a bit more about what happened to her and how it’s influenced both of your charity work?

SH: Her story is not my story to tell. What I can say is that Ilya loved his mother very much, and from what he’s told me about her, she was a lovely woman who I would have liked to have met. We created the Foundation so that people in her position would have opportunities for the support she didn’t get.

SW: I mean, I’m not asking for her death certificate or anything, but a little more information…

SH: I suggest setting up a meeting with Ilya if you want more information. Next question.

SW: Uh, ok. Well, let’s back up a step. How have you been doing lately? You went through a period recently where your game seemed to be suffering, but it seems to be on the upswing again.

SH: Everyone goes through ups and downs. I’m just really glad that my team and the people in my life who love me are deeply supportive. 

SW: Any particular reasons behind that slump?

SH: <Hollander pauses for a long time before answering> I think, as the kids these days would say, I was 'going through some shit'. I try not to let my life affect my game – once I’m on the ice, everything usually falls away - but sometimes it leaks in. And I think that’s true of everyone who plays, at any level. We do our best, but to bring it back to what we were talking about earlier, brains are stubborn and they’ll do what they want sometimes.

SW: What kind of 'shit' were you going through? I mean, if you’re willing to share that. Does it have anything to do with this new Irina Foundation initiative?

SH: <Hollander smiles ruefully and shakes his head> You already know what I’m going to say to that, Melanie. As someone in the public eye, people get to see a lot of my life whether I like it or not; there are some things I still can protect and I’m not willing to share those.

SW: Ok, fair enough. I had to try. Let’s jump topics, then: talk to me about your marriage and what it’s like playing on the same team as your husband. You’ve been signed to the Centaurs for two years now!

SH: I think the team has gelled really well. Ilya is a fantastic captain. I mean, I already knew that from watching his work in Boston, but now being someone allowing myself to be led by him… <Hollander shoots me a look as I open my mouth> No, I know what you’re about to say, and don’t say it. Someone has to be the captain, he’s good at the job, and that has no bearing on our relationship outside the rink.

SW: Ok but…you’re both centers, and you served as Captain in Montreal for years. Do you ever butt heads on the ice?

SH: Oh, absolutely. Anyone on the Centaurs can tell you that we fight all the time about hockey. It’s always going to be interesting when you take two people who are used to leading and make them cooperate. But at the end of the day, we make a fantastic team when we do cooperate. So we try to do that as much as possible.

SW: What do you think your chances are for the Cup this year?

SH: Haven’t you heard that hockey players are all superstitious? I’d never dare try to predict my team’s final standing out loud. That’s the fastest way to tank us.

SW: Oh, but come on, can’t you just see it? You and Rozanov having your very own Scott Hunter moment, center ice after winning the Cup?

SH: <Hollander grins and shakes his head> Nobody’s ever going to top Scott Hunter’s Scott Hunter moment. I mean, would I like to win the Cup and kiss my husband over it? Heck yeah. But for sheer bravery, sheer audacity, you can’t beat Scott being the first.

SW: Speaking of Hunter and coming out, you and Rozanov have teamed up with him on league-related LGBTQIA+ topics multiple times. Do you consider yourselves 'activists' or 'pushing the gay agenda,' as some critics have said?

SH: I consider myself a human being with empathy for other human beings. I don’t see anything particularly radical about having empathy. As for the 'gay agenda', right now it includes morning skates, walking our dog, and arguing over what to have for dinner. Not exactly something for anyone to fear.

SW: What are you having for dinner? What’s the argument?

SH: Ilya always wants unhealthy crap. Pizza, tuna melts with extra cheese, poutine. He loves poutine. I prefer clean eating, so if you leave it up to me, we’ll have grilled salmon and roasted root vegetables or something like that.

SW: That seems very on-brand for each of you, come to think of it.

SH: You’re not the first to say that. <a dog barks in the distance> Oh, sounds like he’s on his way back from walking Anya. Unless you want him to jump into this interview, we’d better wrap up.

SW: Well, actually, that would be -

SH: <Hollander shakes his head firmly> Trust me, you’ll never get out of here if you let him start talking, especially about the Foundation. You think I’m passionate about mental health? You should hear Ilya. It’s been really nice speaking to you, Melanie. If you have any further questions, you can send them to our Press Coordinator at <email redacted>.

Shane and I are just standing up and shaking hands when the kitchen door slams open and a whirlwind – by which I mean, Ilya Rozanov – blows into the house. Rozanov immediately throws himself at his husband for a hug, then stops short when he notices me. He gives me an abashed grin and then turns back to Hollander. “Was ok?” he asks.

Hollander nods and smiles. “Melanie and I had a nice chat. She’s on her way out now.” I hide a wince. I know when I’ve been dismissed.

Rozanov nods, then turns to me. “You want cookies?”

I blink. “Pardon me?”

He’s already turned away to open the oven and pull out a plastic container holding what looks like, yes, cookies. “Cookies,” he says again, brandishing the container at me. “Chocolate chip. I made yesterday. Take some for the road.”

And that’s how I find myself, five minutes later, pulling my car out of the driveway of two of the greatest hockey players ever, a chocolate chip cookie stuffed in my mouth.

I’ve had worse interviews!