Work Text:
"Oh my God," Fabian gasps, putting his hand over his mouth dramatically. Fabian does everything dramatically. Shane's almost used to it. He was just reaching for the carafe to refill his water, but apparently that caused confusion. "What is that?"
Shane looks down at the inside of his arm. "A bruise?"
"From what?"
"A kid got a little excited with their stick and didn't remember I was behind them." Shane inspects his bicep. "No big deal."
"It looks like it hurts," Fabian says.
Ryan tilts his head. "Puck bruise is worse than a stick bruise. I think."
"You probably had a lot of bruises," Shane says.
Ryan shifts uncomfortably. "Mostly from people's fists. Not usually from the puck."
"Puck bruise," Fabian says, his lips popping the plosives. "Even the sound of it hurts."
"Don't worry," Ilya says. "He has one of those too. Or he will later."
"You make that sound so seductive," Fabian says, fluttering his lashes. He cups his chin in his hand and gazes at Ilya. Ilya seems almost immune to this, although Shane isn't sure how.
Ilya laughs. "Not from me." He leans forward like he's telling Fabian a secret. "The kids, they don't aim so well. But I do."
"That's a relief," Fabian purrs. "I wouldn't want to think of our poor Shane suffering."
"Oh, he suffers," Ilya says in a low voice. "I make sure of that."
"This is getting weird," Ryan says to Shane.
"Uh, yeah," Shane says, pretending he's not kind of into it. Generally, he doesn't like to talk about his sex life — their sex life — but somehow it's different with Fabian. Maybe because Fabian is so openly sensual himself: so out, so femme, so free. Fortunately, the server arrives with their food, which shifts the conversation.
"I like our tradition," Ilya says after dinner, when he and Shane are back at their rental. "Dinner with Ryan and Fabian is nice. It's a good way to start camp this time."
"Yeah," Shane says. "It's kind of nice to have non-hockey friends."
Ilya scoffs. "Ryan coaches at our camp. He's a hockey friend."
"Well, Fabian isn't," Shane says stubbornly. "And Ryan's retired. So he's not a full-time hockey friend."
"I'm teasing you," Ilya says. "Yes, it's nice to have non-hockey friends. Especially queer ones." He puts his arms around Shane. "You know, one day we won't be hockey players anymore. We can be whoever we want."
"We'll still do the summer camps, right?" Shane asks. Some part of him is ready to start thinking about a life that isn't all hockey all the time, one day, and part of him looks into that future and sees nothing but empty ice after the match is done, something dim and scarred, haunted by the memory of bright lights and cheering crowds and the gleam of gold.
"Until we are so old we can't put our skates on, probably," Ilya says, and kisses Shane gently. "Don't worry, lyubimyy. There will always be kids who can learn. You don't have to let go until you want to."
"I did it once," Shane says, half to himself. Leaving the Metros wasn't the same as retiring, but it was hard. "I can do it again."
"We'll do it together," Ilya promises. "When we're ready."
Fabian has this way of making anything sound like a good idea. Maybe it's his velvety voice, or the confident way he moves through the world. When he suggests that Shane work with an photographer friend of his on a series about how pain is commodified and elevated by the world of professional sports, Shane thinks about saying no. But then he thinks about Ilya telling him that he's brave. He thinks about the fashion show. He thinks about everything that he thought would hurt so badly that didn't. He thinks about pain. He thinks about relief.
He says yes.
The photographer is named Kate. She's a friend of Fabian's friend Vanessa. She has a way of looking at Shane that makes him feel like she's already framing the shot.
"Shane Hollander," she says when she meets him. "Always good to know another half-Asian person with a Western name."
"It's so fucking complicated, isn't it?" he says. He can feel himself relaxing.
She lifts her camera and snaps a photo. "Always. At least I have a Taiwanese middle name if I want to use that. Unfortunately, it's a lot easier to get hired as Kate." She looks at her camera and then at him. "Is that a hockey bruise? I didn't know your season had started yet. Looks a little smaller than I expected."
Shane looks at the picture. "Uh. No."
She looks at him. She looks at the hickey. "I have a new idea."
There's are two portraits of Shane with his face bruised like he took a hard hit to the head. In one, he's wearing eyeblack smeared over his cheeks; in the other, eyeliner and mascara make the bruises look almost like inexpertly applied blush. In the portrait with the eyeblack, his head is tilted down toward his right shoulder. He looks up through the sweep of his lashes, slightly coy. In the portrait with the eyeliner, he's bold, his chin high, holding the viewer's gaze with confidence.
There's a video clip from some game broadcast of Ilya slamming Shane into the boards. They're both grinning, eyes wide and wild under the clear visors of their helmets. The clip is from some season when Ilya still played for the Raiders and Shane played for the Metros. Shane thinks it's from the months before he was dating Rose, when he and Ilya were hooking up regularly and never talking about it. The thump of black on blue shakes the camera. It's displayed side-by-side with a full body shot of Ilya pressing Shane into a wall in a much different way. His hand cups Shane's chin, his fingers in Shane's mouth. Shane's head is tipped back and there's an expression of bliss on his face. There's a sense of force in the way Ilya's muscles bulge against the sleeves of his t-shirt. He's not holding back. It's clear that Shane doesn't want him to.
There's a portrait of Shane in his black compression shorts from the hips up, holding his hockey stick with one hand, his other arm crooked up behind his head. His bare chest and arms are marked with puck-shaped bruises. Surrounding that is a montage of single shots: Shane with each invidual bruise, a season's worth of contusions. They're all marked out on his body in makeup in the final composition, overlapping blotches, yellow and green and purple and licks of crimson. It's almost gruesome.
There's Shane in his black boxers, his bare chest and arms patterned instead with hickies and the arc of Ilya's teeth. Each lovebite corresponds to one of the bruises in the other photo. There are so many. Shane looks eaten alive. It's vastly different from the photo of the bruises.
"I like that one," Ilya says in Shane's ear. He's wearing a suit and carrying a flute of champagne and Shane wants to drag him into a dim corner and kiss him until they're both breathless and aching.
"Of course you do," Shane says.
"I'm an artist, yes?" Ilya smirks. He presses gently against Shane, his hip nudging against Shane's ass.
"They should have given you a credit," Shane agrees. The hickies aren't makeup. Ilya insisted on doing each of them himself. Kate studied the photos and marked off the location of each one. Shane remembers everyone else leaving the room, the hot brush of Ilya's mouth over his bare skin, the rush of pain and pleasure that dazed him as Ilya sucked and scraped and bit. He can see that in the photo too, the unfocused look in his eyes and the way his lips are parted with desire.
"Oh, there," Ilya says, pointing at the paragraph on the wall that explains the art. "Effects by Ilya Rozanov."
"You do have an effect on me," Shane teases.
"Fortunately, the camera did not go too low," Ilya says, sounding very satisfied.
Flanking the first shots are other versions of the portraits: Shane taking off a white suit jacket, the deep scoop neck of the silky shell underneath in stark contrast to the bruises in one portrait and the lovebites in the other. It's fashion. It's fresh. Pain as accessory, Kate said when she was telling Shane her concept, and the intimacy of consensual violence. She wanted to blur the line between cosmetics and contusions, between hockey and sex. From the murmur of conversation in the room, she succeeded.
There's a photo of Shane levering himself out of an ice bath. His back is to the viewer. His muscles strain like a swimsuit model's. His skin is pocked with the perfect circles left by cupping. There's a photo of him wearing the bottom half of his hockey gear. He's sweaty, like he just played the period of his life. Above his waistband, his hips show the ovals of clutching fingertips. There's a photo of his spread thighs striped pink, the aftereffects of Graston scraping, a perfect lipstick print high on his inner leg. That's Ilya's handiwork too. It took a couple of tries. Neither of them minded. There's a photo of Shane's feet swollen and red with lace bite, his skates discarded on the floor next to his toes. In the next frame, his sore-looking feet have been pushed into high heels, shiny black patent leather that gleams as bright as the blades of his skates. Shane is glad the lace bite was simulated and he didn't have to walk in the shoes, but he's a little pleased by the way his feet look in them. In another photo, Shane is wearing a sling and a jockstrap, leaning against a counter drinking a cup of coffee with his uninjured arm. There's a handprint visible on his bare ass cheek.
It is, all in all, unabashedly sexual. Shane doesn't think he'll ever feel the same about a puck bruise again. He's embarrassed that anyone is seeing him this way, and proud too. It's all very confusing. Kate recontextualized his pain into beauty. She showed the violence of the way the players touch each other, and the intimacy of it. They can't be gentle on the ice. The physics of the sport aren't conducive to it, and the crowd won't allow it. A punch can be a kiss, in the rink; sometimes it's the only way to get close to someone. Shane's not sure that's always healthy, but it's the life he's lived.
"Shane, wow," Fabian says. "These are incredible."
"That's all Kate," Shane says, brushing off the compliment. "I just did what I was told."
"And you're so good at it," Ilya says with a smirk.
Shane tries not to blush.
"Really interesting," Ryan says. "Made me think about...stuff. In a different way." He sighs. "My whole life in hockey was pain. Causing it. Feeling it. It wasn't like this. Maybe I can see it another way."
Fabian pats his arm. "Or maybe you don't like pain. That's okay too."
"Kate made it look good, but it didn't feel good at the time," Shane says. He deliberately doesn't look at Ilya, because he tells the truth when he looks at Ilya, and some of it did feel good. The biting. The sting of Ilya's hand on his ass. Even the Graston scraping in a way: it wasn't sexy, and it hurt like a motherfucker, but it was a productive pain. Shane's had enough physical therapy to know when pain is good for him. Most of the injuries depicted on the walls of the gallery aren't anything he'd like to live through again, but at least they served this purpose. Kate made they interesting.
Hockey is a complicated game. Shane knows this; he's been studying it since before he could read. But his analysis is mostly limited to the rink, to the teams, to the players. He hasn't always considered the other dimensions. Hockey is a brutal game. There would be collisions and injuries even if everyone skated their most politely: the ice is hard, and the blades are sharp. But it's true, too, that the violence has been encouraged by the league, monetized by the league. That's how guys like Ryan Price get turned from players into enforcers, just there to start and end fights.
Hockey has marked his body. Ilya has marked his body. Shane might not have seen how similar those bruises look if not for Kate. And the league takes advantage of that too: sex sells. The bodies of players are marketable beyond what they can do in the rink. Shane knows that, at least. He's been doing commercials for years, since that first joint appearance with Ilya in the CCM campaign the summer before their rookie year. But he's in control of those opportunities, outside of what his team asks, and he's always had the leverage to be able to say no to the league. He's Shane fucking Hollander. The league needs him. They let him set his terms. Ryan doesn't have that kind of freedom. Max Riley can't exert that kind of pressure.
Shane is glad he did this with Kate, even though it's weird to have his parents and his teammates walking around looking at his half- or almost-naked body. The most revealing photo is probably the one with Ilya, even though they're both fully clothed, but Shane doesn't think that what it shows will be much of a surprise to anyone. Anyway, he could always say Kate asked them to do it.
Peeling off the layers of his gear was like peeling back the layers of ideas the league and the fans have wrapped around him. Looking at the photos makes him reconsider who uses his body and how. The league doesn't hesistate to sexualize the players if it's lucrative; the fans do the same even when it's only for their own enjoyment. The sport and Shane's body are so intertwined, they're inextricable. No wonder he was on that weird diet for so long. He felt like he owed his body to his team and to the league. And he does, in a way, but there are times when it's only his, to do with what he wants, to share with the people he loves.
Now he's shared it with Kate too. He knows she'll sell these photos — that's how she makes her living, sharing the work of her heart and soul and eyes — but at least he feels he made the choice to show this part of himself. Maybe he won't have control of the images after this, but he's glad to have been a part of this show. It was different. It was terrifying. He feels free.
He catches Ilya around the waist at the end of the reception. Ilya looks so handsome and Shane tells him so.
Ilya smiles. "You are drunk."
"I'm just buzzed," Shane says. "And happy. Let's go home."
"What, so I can give you little kisses?" Ilya teases, too quietly for anyone else to hear.
"So you can show me I'm yours," Shane says.
Ilya makes a noise like Shane bodychecked him. "I think everyone knows now."
"All the hickies are gone," Shane tells him. "What if I forgot?"
"I guess I have to remind you," Ilya says. "Such a terrible responsibility."
"I think you can handle me," Shane teases.
"I think so too," Ilya says, his voice full of promises.
They leave the gallery hand-in-hand. Behind them, the lights illuminate the angles of their printed bodies, the marks they've left on each other.