Chapter Text
The problem about whatever it was Shane was doing with Rozanov was the fact that it had slowly started to become a sort of routine despite the fact their meetings were few and far in-between.
That unnamed, fragile thing somehow managed to consume Shane entirely and feed his brain all sorts of mixed signals he really didn’t need to distract him from building his career and making good choices.
Shane thrived on routines and structure. He relied on them to carry him through his busy daily schedule and turn down the volume on the voice inside his head that kept constantly screaming at him to try harder, be faster and do better. It was a good coping mechanism most of the time, strategic and effective.
Routines gave Shane peace of mind. Reminders he was doing well. Checking boxes, following rules. For that reason, allowing to accept his alone time with Rozanov as a routine and keeping it up was unacceptable. Feeling at ease in a situation that threatened everything Shane had built up in his life? Bad idea. It would only get him in trouble. Shane Hollander in trouble? Unheard of.
For very good reasons.
So really, Shane had to stop hooking up with Rozanov. He needed to end it as soon as possible.
But how?
*
In hindsight, his one big really bad, good for nothing, stupid shit fucking day only managed to derail as much as it did because at the very start of it was Shane (once again) contemplating how to best end that thing with Rozanov.
He hadn’t made any good progress on that decision making process and the next match was approaching fast. Time was running out.
Should he send a message? Should he talk to him in person? Before or after hooking up again? Would they hook up at all? Did he want to? Why didn’t Rozanov text to confirm any plans? Was he fucking someone else, as he probably had been since they had last seen each other? If Shane just ghosted him, would Rozanov even notice? Would he care? …
Shane spent his entire evening drafting and backspacing a hundred imaginary text messages in his head instead of getting a good night of sleep, or any resemblance of rest, really.
*
He had two back-to-back games coming up: A home game against Philadelphia the next day with a flight out to Boston straight after to play against Rozanov’s team the day after. With next to no time at all to finalize his plan on how to go about ending things with the Russian, Shane felt like he had not slept more than a couple of hours.
Shane must have fallen asleep just before his alarm went off and somehow the exhaustion caused him to sleep right through it. By the time his mind caught up with the time after he woke up, Shane was so far behind on his own plans for the day that he almost teared up a bit from the sheer stress of it.
The sinking feeling in his stomach felt very similar to the way it had when he was picturing Rozanov fuck some other guy instead of him. Not that running late and being replaced had anything in common.
He never hit snooze, he always got up straight away. What the hell was he even doing?
Shane had to skip parts of his morning routines to try and catch up with everything he needed to get done. He rushed through a quick shower and chugged a bland green smoothie while trying to pack for the trip and get everything in order since he was not returning to his apartment after the game.
Because he was going to Boston. Where he was playing a game first and then breaking it off with Rozanov. Or ending their… what? Friendship plus? Were they friends? Just plus?
*
The delay dragged on through the day but Shane was reasonably sure he was somewhat back to normal and almost back on schedule when he got into the car to drive to the arena.
It went well enough at first. He seamlessly merged lanes, indicated all his turns and navigated traffic like usual, listening to a podcast. Midway through the drive, he started to regret his idea to wear a sponsor’s shirt for the first time that day.
His mom had been nagging at him to try harder to fulfill his duties and be seen in the gear. He had just grabbed a new shirt from the top of a pile of freshly laundered clothes to ‘please wear in public soon, Shane!’
Shane was, again, just trying to be good and do what was expected of him but his instant reward for that was a scratchy fucking tag irritating the skin on back of his neck and driving him crazy.
He stopped at a red light and brought his hand up to tug at his collar to try and get more comfortable when he heard a sickening loud crashing sound and felt himself getting slammed into his seatbelt. Hi shoulder and his hip took the worst of the hit and he hit the back of his head when he was pushed back into his seat from the sudden impact. The whole car was pushed forward, despite Shane keeping his foot on the brake.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me…”
Shane mumbled to himself and took a deep breath.
He did a quick inventory of his body and how he was feeling but at the forefront of everything was just a very quick heartbeat and an overwhelming sense of relief he felt mostly okay. His chest felt warm where the seatbelt had dug in and he felt a bit dizzy but that appeared to be the worst of it.
He took a deep breath and got out of the car to talk to the person that had rear-ended him.
The other driver was a young woman, or girl maybe, that instantly burst into tears when Shane opened her door. She was clutching her phone and Shane suspected that might have been the reason why she had missed the red lights in the first place.
It took a bit of willpower to stay polite instead of asking first how she ever passed her driving test.
“Hey, it’s okay. Are you hurt?” he asked her instead.
It took ages to talk her down enough to get her to give a halfway coherent reply, so to err on the side of caution Shane called an ambulance and the police.
Shane really tried not to rush the proceedings, he knew everyone was just doing their jobs but he was running late for the game if he didn’t continue driving to the arena like twenty minutes ago.
A young officer caught him checking the time on his Rolex for the third time in the past minute. His brown eyes widened and he pushed his elbow into his partner’s side.
“Hollander has got to get to the game,” he reminded him, sounding more excited than was appropriate if he wanted to appear professional.
“Sure you don’t want to get checked over by the medics?” the second cop asked Shane, not for the first time.
Shane nodded and tried to force a smile that would say ‘I am absolutely fine and there is no way I am going to pass out from internal bleeding if you let me go this instant!’.
It seemed to work because at last they wrapped everything up and allowed Shane to go on with his day.
Since the girl was in a shock and taken away in the ambulance, a tow truck had been called to get her car out of the way.
The bumper on his own car was dented and hanging a bit lower on one side than the other but the car looked alright to drive overall.
“We’ll give you an escort,” the older cop decided. “Might still make it on the ice in time if we hurry, make sure the new talent gets us a win tonight” he told Shane with a wink.
They made it to the arena in barely enough time for Shane to catch glares from pretty much everyone he passed. He changed in record time and barely made it. He had to grovel and beg to still be allowed on the ice but eventually got an annoyed nod from his coach after he had stared at Shane with an expression that had been exceedingly hard to read.
“Fine. We’ll talk about this after the game, Hollander.”
That sounded ominous.
*
It was hard to tell if the foreshadowing threw Shane off or if he was just destined to fuck up the game from the moment he opened his eyes in the morning.
Maybe he should have just stayed in bed and cancelled his whole life.
No matter what Shane did on the ice, he never managed to get into the right headspace. He got chirped at constantly and checked into the boards multiple times, each time aggravating him more. The longer it went on, the more Shane lost his head and the more stupid mistakes he made. He missed easy passes, lost the puck for no reason at all, allowed people to get catch him and check him into the boards in the first place. He was just royally fucking up, no doubt about it. He felt like he was tripping over his own fucking skates.
The chirps typically motivated him to perform better and shut the other team up with skill and a bit of magic on the ice.
That night it just drove him crazy and got his blood boiling. He was done being the nice guy.
It didn’t help that his whole team played like shit as well. Nobody seemed to line up as they usually did for some reason. The whole game was a complete mess. They didn’t stand a chance.
Shane winced when he thought about his parents watching this. They came to every home game, no exceptions. He really wished they hadn’t bothered coming to this. They must have been ashamed to see him struggle and fail like this. He was playing his worst game in the past decade and it was beyond embarrassing.
Time seemed to slow down, magnifying every moment Shane wished not to have to work through anymore. He tried very hard not to think of consequences but he knew as well as everyone else in the room how the team’s night was going to end in the locker room with a result this abysmal.
They had let everyone down. The owners. The staff. The fans. The families. Themselves.
Shane wondered if he could have continued his streak of evading disciplinary action if he had only managed to get his head to stop torturing him but he figured showing up late had already sealed his fate, even if he hadn’t really been to blame for that.
He was to blame for his shit performance though. For not managing to get over himself and just play the stupid game.
His stomach did a funny flip as Shane chased after the puck and tried not to think about the wording of the disciplinary clauses in his contract. They had, for the most part, been inconsequential for him. He still remembered the rules though, just in case.
The league had always allowed for teams to opt for physical reprimands, mainly because supposedly “It fucking works!”
In contrast, monetary fines for misconduct tended to get drowned out by the insane sums players got thrown their way at the professional levels. It was a no-brainer for most teams not to ask their players to pay fines but instead settle any and all matters with a bit of tough love.
As a club, Montreal was pretty big on discipline. Since Shane was very good at flying under the radar and dazzling with good performances, so he had managed not to meet the team paddle thus far. It was mandatory to watch and witness the teammate’s punishments though, so Shane had a pretty good idea what he was in for after the whistle.
Going as long as he had with no incident was very rare. Unheard of. Shane had prided himself on his clean streak and worked hard to maintain it. Now he had screwed it all up and even the typically loving home crowd called for some justice for their wasted time and money.
Predicting how he was going to react to the discipline was tough.
Shane had merely caught a few warning swats from his captain’s hand a couple of times but really nothing worth mentioning or losing his mind about. That was just embarrassment, playful warnings. Full punishment though? Whole other story. He only had his observations and other player’s stories as a frame of reference.
Shane sighed deeply as the puck, once again, ended up getting intercepted and he had to turn right back around and try to prevent Philadelphia from scoring a 6th goal.
Maybe it was the nerves, maybe frustration about possibly maybe ending his thing with Rozanov later. He hadn’t actively tried to get into more trouble but it seemed trouble was still seeking him out.
The game was almost over, not a single goal in sight for Montreal, when some asshole on the other team tripped Shane and grinned down at him on the ice after he fell.
“Suck my big winning dick, Hollander! I know you love it, baby!”
Shane grit his teeth, got back up and dropped his gloves. Screw everything.
*
Nobody talked on the way to the locker room. What was there to say? They all just went through the motions and even in the locker room itself, conversations were hushed.
Shane carefully stripped out of his gear and made sure to put everything down neatly. He decided to keep his base layer on for the moment. The room was cold and he’d get to show more than he wanted shortly either way.
When he was sitting down on the bench, catching his breath, his hand absent-mindedly rubbed over his collarbone where he was sure he was currently bruising from his seatbelt in the car accident earlier. What a fucking day.
As he looked around, Shane clocked everyone else’s actions. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry to undress. A lot of players were looking at their phones or just mumbling curses to themselves.
Hayden caught his eyes and raised an eyebrow in question.
“A fucking police escort, Shane??” he mouthed at his friend.
Seemed like that little adventure had found its way into cyberspace. Hayden had been on twitter a minute ago. Shane just shook his head and stared at a crack in the wall opposite. He had seen cameras aimed at him upon arrival, so it was no big surprise it had blown up by now. Fucking hell.
J.J. was no help either. He threw an empty water bottle in his direction and Shane, slow to react, didn’t manage to dodge it. It bounced off his head, fairly close to the small cut on his eyebrow that had barely stopped bleeding through the band-aid. Picking that fight had been a choice.
“Couldn’t you have waited one more season to get your ass beat, Hollzy? I had fucking money on you! Now I don’t just lose a game, I lose five grand as well!”
Shane’s stomach cramped up again but he was spared a reply when the door opened at that moment and Coach stepped in, holding the dreaded paddle. He had a small entourage with him but Shane’s eyes were locked on the wooden monstrosity that was about to light his butt on fire.
It somehow looked bigger, more menacing, than it ever had before. Dark wood with a gleaming smooth finish, glistening in the light. Quite thick. Not too wide but long enough to cover two naughty buttcheeks at once if so intended. The sight closed up Shane’s throat, made it hard to swallow or even breathe.
“We’ll deal with Hollander first,” Coach stated plainly. “He’s got a lot to answer for today and he’s needed at the press conference in twenty.”
Just as fucking well. Another thing to write down on the long list of shit fucking things piling up on Shane that day. If he had half a mind to see the positives, at least he would be excused after his turn and he wouldn’t have to spend half the evening watching the rest of the team get swats.
He truly hated being a spectator but he was probably about to find out that he hated starring in the show even more.
He knew a few teammates who were likely to gloat at his misfortune. Not everyone was a fan, there were a few undercurrents of jealousy that he picked up on sometimes. Seeing the golden boy finally get his comeuppance? That was surely going to make this entire ordeal very worth it for some of the guys. Especially those who made the right call in the betting pool, apparently.
It was a lion’s den.
Shane stayed seated but took the offered clipboard from the assistant coach, quickly scanning over the unfamiliar paperwork. Nobody else got their lawyers involved for this, yet Shane felt like maybe he should. Or his mom – no. Just no. He could do this.
“First time, huh?” the coach’s assistant commented in a hushed whisper.
He stepped a little closer and pointed to a few key passages of the form to help Shane out.
Shane knew better than to appreciate it. It may have seemed helpful but really, they just wanted to get on with the program and rush him through proceedings.
“Implement is self-explanatory. Coach has filled in the number of strokes, to be taken bare,” Shane heard, eyes flicking over to the indicated spot on the paper.
That fucking number.
Past punishments Shane had witnessed started replaying in his head. Had any of them entailed that high a number?! He had never even done this before, not at this level. Most punishments he had seen were six swats. Maybe twelve on a bad day.
The taller man seemed to sense Shane’s train of thought. He cleared his throat and clarified a bit more.
“The reasons for the punishment are listed here, those three bullet points. There’s six swats for each, adds up to the total above. Eighteen.”
He tapped the pen to a section about two thirds down the page.
“Here you can choose to accept or refuse the punishment or to challenge one or more of the reasons and then you need to sign on this line here.”
Shane’s heart beat out of his chest and his vision turned a little blurry.
He hurriedly tried to take everything in.
Refuse. The option was there, staring at him.
He could always refuse and walk away from this but he knew in reality he would not just walk away from a punishment or even just the team. If he refused, no other team would take him. He’d be labeled as insubordinate. Hockey was over, if he did this.
Challenge one of the grounds for punishment? That was done sometimes. Shane knew he could plead not guilty on being late and quote circumstances out of his power but if he did, they might fault him for not reporting his accident and following proceedings to get cleared for the game. There had not been enough time. The point was moot. Better not to draw attention to another possible fuck up.
His signature looked a little shaky but he managed. When he looked up, Coach gave him the tiniest of nods in acknowledgement.
*
The space around Shane’s cubby had cleared up to make room. Shane got up and tried to wipe his sweaty hands on his shirt without giving away how nervous he was. How scared, really.
“Your total includes all your transgressions today, Hollander. Would you please speak up and list them so the rest of the team can learn from your example not to repeat them?”
Coach phrased it as a question but there was no mistaking that it was an order.
Shane’s face burned with the shame of it all. His cheeks flamed and he must have looked absolutely ridiculous.
He felt all eyes in the room staring at him as his teammates waited to watch him get punished. They were dying to see him fall apart and show weakness.
Shane lifted his chin defiantly and forced himself to make eye contact with his coach for the reply. His instincts were screaming at him to appear more submissive and angle for a little leniency, to keep his head down and let his fair fall over his eyes so he could hide and make himself small. He knew he couldn’t do that though. Not in a shark tank and not if he wanted to stay in the game in the long run.
Rozanov crossed Shane’s mind again, unbidden. He acted out all the time. If he had survived whatever punishments Boston dished out, surely Shane would be just fine after this was done.
Right?
“I was late to the game and almost screwed up the line-up by that,” Shane started.
That hadn’t been forgotten, so he listed it first. The rest was a bit trickier to translate from the formal wording on the paperwork. He wasn’t even sure what had happened without watching any replays and trying to take someone else’s perspective. For the moment, Shane could only offer his own interpretation and hope that was enough and hit the mark.
“I played worse than a rookie. My head wasn’t in the game and I let the team down. I did not do anything to help us win or at least score one goal. I…”
Shane trailed off but there was zero reaction to his explanations, except on the team. He heard a quiet
“No shit” from somewhere at the back of the room. The static noise in his ears prevented him from making out who was saying it though.
Shane swallowed thickly and then blurted out the last thing on the list.
“I picked a needless fight, got a penalty. Embarrassed the team further.”
As expected, next up was the ever-present rhetoric question. Just a formality, really.
“Yes, you did. So, do you have any good reasons for any of the things you just told us you did? Anything to consider before we follow through with the punishment?”
Shane had a lot of reasons for all of it, really. None of them would change the outcome though, so he shook his head and bit down on his tongue until he tasted metal.
“You might think you are a star player, Hollander. Important enough to get a fucking police escort to the stadium and make a fuss about your person. But right now you are just one sad little boy, getting his ass beat for fucking up. Got that? You better shape up and do it quick because we have another game tomorrow and I expect everyone here to show me the opposite of what you have done today. Never let your team down like this again! Watch and fucking learn!”
The lecture washed over Shane like a wave, words breaking over his head and dragging him down with the current. He hadn’t asked for the police to escort him, it was a consequence of—
“Drop your pants and bend over the bench! We are limited on time, Hollander.”
The order was clear, even if Shane’s mind was getting a little clouded. His hands worked on autopilot.
He could follow orders. Do as he was told. Be good.
Shane slowly turned to face his cubby, hooked his fingers into the waistband of his leggings and boxer briefs and finally pushed them down to his thighs before bending over in one swift motion. His fingers grabbed on to the bench so hard his knuckles turned white. He needed to flex all of his muscles so the tremor in his body wouldn’t be too visible to everyone watching. The cold air on his bare skin raised goosebumps.
His ass clenched involuntarily at the anticipation. Coach was stepping closer with the paddle, getting in position.
He felt so exposed. So vulnerable.
Shane vaguely remembered Hayden telling him that tensing the muscles only made it hurt worse but for the moment there was nothing else that Shane could really do. He was notoriously bad at taking good advice, apparently.
“Count them!”
With that last warning, Coach raised the paddle for the first time and brought it down hard across both of Shane’s buttocks. The loud cracking noise was startling and with a miniscule delay, the pain registered. It was a sharp sensation. Nerve ends fired, desperately trying to trigger a flight reaction in Shane to escape.
The first hit was such a shock, Shane almost forgot to count.
“Ah—One!” he remembered at last.
Once the first hit had landed and Shane got a taste of what was to follow, Coach did not waste time and continued paddling Shane relentlessly.
There was no discernable pattern. Beyond the little moan that slipped out with the first count, Shane tried his hardest to be stoic as he took his punishment.
He knew, also from Hayden and maybe from watching others get theirs, that this tended to make Coach hit harder instead of easing up. Shane suspected it was more about submission and being broken but that was something he refused to let happen. If he showed how much this was affecting him, how the pain was killing him, it had all kinds of implications about other things in his life he was desperately trying to control. If he lost control in this setting, there was no predicting what else he may lose control of. He couldn’t just open the floodgates.
Despite his best efforts, Shane’s eyes started watering after the first six hits although he had tried to blink the tears away. Biting down on his lip did nothing to distract from the blazing inferno on his butt, so Shane gave up trying and opened his mouth a bit to exhale audibly with the next count.
“Ohhh! S…seven…”
At the beginning, Shane could feel each stroke like a line of fire blazing across his skin. By ten, his whole backside felt like he had been pushed into a pile of burning embers and made to endure it. Searing his skin, pain seeping deep into his muscles. He felt bruised and broken.
“FUUCK! —Ah…. Sir! Um…Thirteen…“
Coach was focusing his hits lower than before. The two previous hits had lit up his upper thighs and then the worst of it was aimed low at the spot where Shane’s buttocks merged into his thighs. How he was expected to sit down on the plane or even very soon at a table for the press conference was a mystery. Impossible to do, for sure.
In the haze of the agonizing pain, Shane barely noticed that his shoulders were shaking. He only realized he must have started crying when a stray tear dropped down on the back of his own hand.
The wait between fourteen and fifteen was long. Shane barely managed to form coherent words but he was supposed to count out loud. His whole world was fire and misery. He wanted to beg for this to stop but he managed not to. He had an audience, he had to endure. So he forced the numbers out of his mouth with a delay that held up the whole ordeal.
Coach seemed to sense his limit and he delivered the last three swats hard and fast. He no longer waited for Shane to count, seemingly wanting to get this over with all of a sudden.
Shane had lost track of time, maybe he was already late for the press.
Once it was finally done, a comforting hand settled on the small of his back and rubbed in comforting little circles. When he was sure enough he wasn’t going to throw up, Shane let Hayden help him stand upright. His teammate had been hovering, bottom lip bitten raw from worry, concern written all over his face. Ready to pounce and take care of Shane as quickly as possible.
“You okay?”
Shane snorted, triggering a new wave of fresh sobs before he remembered where he was and tried harder to take steady breaths and fucking stop blubbering.
“Sh-sure,” he said and quickly wiped his forearm over his eyes, trying to get rid of the evidence he couldn’t even take his consequences like a man.
Hayden quickly wrapped him up in a hug and helped him step out of his pants. He was impossibly gentle. Shane hated every second of it.
“You’ll hit the shower anyways,” he whispered. Shane tugged off his shirt and turned to follow Hayden’s instructions.
Shane barely noticed Coach moving on to the next unfortunate player that had fucked up enough to step into Shane’s footsteps.
He was overwhelmed and blindly signed at the bottom of his paperwork when the assistant handed him the clipboard once more for his own signature, that of a witness and Coach, of course. Punishment completed.
*
Shane grabbed a towel and needlessly busied himself for a moment by re-arranging his belongings. He needed to get a grip, get back in control. Breathe in and out. Stop crying. His eyes were burning but the tears finally dried up. He could do this.
As Shane went to grab his phone, his hands were shaking so bad, he dropped the small device on the floor. He instinctively tried to bend over and pick it back up to check for damage but the pain flaring back up with a vengeance stopped him short. Moving was such a bad idea.
“Hold up, I got it!”
Hayden rubbed his shoulders again and did as he promised, picking up the phone. As he did, Hayden glanced at the screen, trying to see if it still worked. He frowned and put the phone back into Shane’s bag for safekeeping.
“Seems like it still works. Who’s Lily by the way?”
Well.
Fuck.