Chapter Text
Shane Hollander would later remember that the first time James Moreau spoke to him, he was standing at the edge of a crowded bar in a Montreal ballroom, holding a glass of ginger ale he had not really thought about ordering because he just needed to keep his hand busy, and that the light from the chandeliers above made the room look softer than it actually was, which was probably the entire purpose of chandeliers and charity galas and tuxedos and people saying things like initiative and impact while holding champagne flutes.
At the time, however, what he knew was that his mother had asked him to represent the Irina Foundation on short notice, Ilya had some other obligation no one had really explained and Shane was not going to ask what it was.
He could have asked, hell he wanted to, but.
If he asked his mom, she would have given him something that he would have dissected like it contained state secrets instead of, realistically, absolutely nothing useful, but she also would have used the opening exactly the way she had been trying to use every conversation for the past year and a half. She would have asked when Shane had last spoken to him, or whether they had talked recently, and then Shane would have had to either lie to his mother, which he was bad at in ways that offended him professionally, or tell her the truth, which was that it had been over a year since he and Ilya had spoken to each other about anything that was not the foundation, the camps or something else safe and professional enough to survive being typed and then his mother’s face would have done something. Nothing dramatic. That was the worst part. Yuna Hollander did not do dramatics. She would not gasp or clutch her chest or start speaking in inspirational-parent monologues typical of a regional theater performance. Her face would simply soften, and her eyes would do that thing that meant she was already trying to help him before he had agreed there was anything to help with.
And Shane would lose it. Or worse, he would not lose it immediately, but he would have caved and given her something and be exposed to having a conversation he was NOT HAVING, because once he started there would be no clean way to stop. He wasn’t having that conversation with her. He wasn’t having it with anyone. Rosa had tried, still tried. Hayden tried but at some point, stopped. Jackie always looked at him like she was waiting for him to expose himself but knew better than to ask but even her "hows everything Shane?" definitely meant more than the words themselves. Hell, he had not, in any meaningful way, had that conversation even with himself.
He thought about it, obviously. Constantly. All the time. In the shower, during warmups, on planes, while brushing his teeth, while pretending to listen to people discuss sponsorship opportunities, while staring at hotel ceilings at two in the morning with his hands folded over his chest like a Victorian widow waiting for tuberculosis to finally take him out.
It was there in him like something physical, some internal bruise he kept pressing experimentally just to confirm it still hurt.
But thinking about something was not the same as saying it. Saying it would make it fixed. It would make it real.
Real, real, real.
And once it was that, once it was outside of him and in the air and available for other people to misunderstand or try to help with, there would be no way to fold it back into the quiet place where it lived now. It was terrible, but it was still inside him. That counted for something. No one else could touch it there. He could live with it there. Kinda.
The answer did not matter as much as the damage the question could do. Asking made things move. Shane did not want them moving. Bigger, smaller, different, it did not matter. Any change would become something he had to account for.
Ilya could be at something team-related. He was captain and the season was about to start. It made sense.
Shane let that version of events exist.
That didn’t mean he didn’t want to know. It only meant he was choosing, very deliberately, not to find out. Not now. Maybe not ever. He didn’t know.
They weren’t together.
He reminded himself of that the way he sometimes reminded himself of simple factual things when his brain kept trying to rearrange reality into a more favorable shape.
They weren’t together.
Which should have made certain things easier by now and absolutely did not.
He stepped further into the ballroom. From a distance the room had looked structured, almost orderly, but up close it dissolved into movements Shane could not map quickly enough, conversations splitting and reforming mid-sentence, people touching elbows and backs and shoulders in ways that apparently communicated entire social hierarchies. Everyone else seemed to understand instinctively where to stand and how long to hold eye contact and when a conversation was ending.
Shane could read a goalie’s hips at speed. He could see a zone entry breaking down before the puck crossed the blue line. Give him a system and he could find the weak point. But a ballroom full of rich people touching each other’s elbows was apparently beyond him.
He checked the time.
The main portion of the event had not started yet. He would have to stay. His mom had gone over the schedule with him earlier that afternoon, quietly and efficiently, because she knew he would need the structure. Silent auction first. Opening remarks. Short video. Donor acknowledgments. The Irina Foundation would be mentioned near the end alongside several other mental health initiatives receiving funding from the sponsors. There would be applause, photographs, probably more photographs than anyone warned him about, and then he could leave around eleven which was late. Not real-life late. Hockey late was different, hockey late had rules and Shane knew them, games that started at 8, buses and postgame media availabilities.
Oh God, he hoped they followed the schedule. He didn’t like it when things extended without warning, when people decided to improvise or “keep the energy going,” when a set time became a suggestion instead of a boundary, because it made it difficult to measure how long something would last, and that, more than anything, made it difficult to endure, which he guessed was part of the problem anyway, that he seemed unable to deviate from the plan.
He looked down at his shoes. Very polished. Possibly too polished. Ilya would have said something about them, to make fun of Shane but to get him to relax. Probably that he could see his own stupid face reflected in the leather followed by a "Relax Hollander", god he could hear it. Shane get it together, there is absolutely no reason to think about that.
He moved towards the bar. It gave him somewhere to stand, something to do with his hands, a task to complete. He ordered ginger ale without looking at the menu because there was no reason to look at the menu. He did not drink much. This had always seemed normal to him and deeply fascinating to other people. The bartender poured it without comment. Good.
Shane turned with the glass in his hand and positioned himself at the edge of the bar, angled just enough that he could observe the room without fully participating in it because from there, things became easier. Not easy. Easier.
The bar filled around him gradually, the shift so incremental he did not notice it until voices were suddenly closer and tuxedo sleeves kept entering his peripheral vision. Someone brushed his shoulder accidentaly. Someone laughed too loudly behind him. A woman leaning around him to order champagne smelled aggressively of vanilla and expensive flowers. Someone moved into the space beside him, close enough that Shane noticed the body before he looked at the person.
“We made sure the bar was well stocked,” the man beside him said conversationally. “If you’re looking for something specific, they should have it.”
Shane turned. The man standing there was wearing a tuxedo that fit properly, which Shane noticed because Ilya had once spent fifteen straight minutes in a hotel room explaining that expensive formalwear could still make a man look like a haunted rectangle if it pulled incorrectly through the shoulders. Before Ilya, Shane probably had been one of those men. Except during that one year with the stylist, which he had mentioned exactly once, and Ilya had laughed with that laugh that Shane was now too familiar with and missed with every breath.
Enough.
Back to the present.
The tuxedo on the man fit.
Shane glanced down at his glass. “I’m fine,” he said. “I don’t really drink.”
The man nodded immediately, accepting the answer too easily to make it feel like judgment.
“I thought hockey players were supposed to be heavy drinkers,” he said. “Or at least that’s the reputation.”
Shane waited for the rest of it. There was usually a rest of it. A tequila story involving some player that dated a friend for 2 seconds. Somebody’s bachelor party. A cousin who once did cocaine with a third-line winger in Vegas. Some variation that he understood as you don’t seem like a hockey player delivered by people who meant loud enough, drunk enough, broad enough, stupid enough, women hanging off your arm at two in the morning enough.
But the man only studied him for another second before adding, almost thoughtfully, “You don’t really look like the typical one.”
To Shane it was strange, because he was all hockey. Hockey had practically colonized his nervous system. Probably what the man meant was that Shane was too quiet. Too careful. Too intense. Too weird. Too polite. Not enough of a bro. Too much of one thing and not enough of another. Too boring.
Funny, maybe, that a person could dedicate his whole life to hockey and still somehow feel incorrect inside it, well not inside inside, the rink never made him felt inadequate. Ilya, who was all hockey too, never made him felt inadequate or too much or not enough. Oh god, Shane, stop it.
“Yeah,” Shane said. “I’ve been told that’s kind of my whole thing.”
To anyone else it probably sounded dry or self-deprecating, but Shane was talking about every time someone had reduced him to hockey and then in the same sentence implied he was somehow still doing that wrong.
The man didn’t rush to disagree, which Shane appreciated. “Seems like you are,” he said. “But you’re here for something bigger than that tonight.” He gestured subtly toward the ballroom. “The Irina Foundation, right?” Shane looked at him more directly then. Up close, the man’s face was sharper than Shane had realized at first. Dark hair pushed neatly back, green eyes that looked amber at the edges under the ballroom lighting, faint lines beginning near the corners when he smiled. Serious-looking. Expensive-looking. The kind of face that suggested good schools and prompt email responses. Also, handsome. Not in the overwhelming way Ilya was handsome, where being near him occasionally felt like standing too close to an active weather system. James was easier to look at than that. More less likely to ruin Shane’s life accidentally.
Shane realized, abruptly, that he was staring. What did the man say again? Oh right, he knows Im with the Foundation but said it as a question.
“Yes.” he finally replied.
“I’m James,” the man said. “James Moreau. My family’s company is one of the sponsors.”
Shane felt his shoulders loosen a fraction, which was embarrassing because apparently all it took these days was a handsome man clarifying why he knew Shane’s name before Shane could spiral about it privately in a hotel room later.
“I went through the program earlier,” James continued. “Made sure I knew who everyone was.”
“That makes sense. Smart.”
“You’re towards the end,” James said. “After the remarks.”
“Ten-thirty,” Shane said immediately.
James smiled slightly. “If everything stays on schedule.”
Shane looked at him.
“Yes.”
“Don't worry, they usually do,” James said. “At least for the parts that matter.”
That was a very normal sentence. It was also somehow one of the best things anyone had said to Shane all evening. Which was insane.
Shane liked it immediately, which was probably deranged behavior because all James had really done was imply that events should proceed according to the printed itinerary, but after spending almost two years feeling like every part of his life had quietly dissolved into uncertainty because once things went off-course he never really figured out how to bend with them instead of breaking, the idea that another person also believed schedules and plans should mean something to be respected landed in him with bizarre force.
“Good,” Shane said exhaling at the same time.
James took a sip of whatever amber-colored thing he was drinking.
“Do you go to many of these?” James asked after swallowing.
“No.”
“That was an immediate response.” James said with a small smile that made Shane feel surprisingly at ease.
“I know the answer.” god that sounded bitchy.
“Fair.” James said and followed by a small chuckle.
“Do you?”
“Go to many of these?”
“Yes.” James exhaled softly through his nose. “More than I’d like. Fewer than my father thinks I should.” That sounded like an entire emotional ecosystem disguised as a sentence. Shane nodded. They kept talking. Not awkwardly either, which was suspicious. James asked questions in a way that made Shane feel like he was being listened to rather than interviewed. Hockey questions, mostly, but not stupid ones. Questions that followed Shane’s answers logically instead of veering into unrelated anecdotes about someone’s cousin who played junior hockey or something like that.
The bar grew more crowded. They shifted a few steps away from the main flow of people without really deciding to. Shane was still talking twenty minutes later. Strange but not a problem. James followed Shane's responses and explanations easily. He listened in a way that made Shane continue speaking without realizing he was doing it. At some point Shane became aware that he had been describing early-season team chemistry for an alarming amount of time to a man he had met less than an hour ago while holding melting ginger ale at a charity gala. Great. Excellent work, Shane. They would put this on the foundation website beside the giant ceremonial check trying to paint him into this endearing hockey obsessed weirdo.
When Shane finally stopped speaking, James let the silence settle instead of rushing to fill it. “That’s interesting,” he said in a not exaggerated way. Not the way people usually said it after Shane accidentally talked too long about hockey, like they were trying to reward a child for explaining trains correctly. No overly bright smile, no surprised blinking, no wow, you really know a lot about this. Just interesting, it seemed honest. Which somehow made Shane feel less self-conscious instead of more, a genuinely shocking development.
Shane nodded. “Yeah.”
Incredible conversational instincts tonight. Shane, wow.
James studied him for a second. “You look like you’re used to answering questions,” he said, “but not always like you want to.”
Shane hated how accurate that was.
“That’s accurate.”
“I’ll try not to make it worse and give you a break.” No joke attached to it and not like Shane had creeped him out. Just a statement and some reassurance. Shane liked that too. James glanced toward the ballroom, where someone with an earpiece, apparently from the organizing team was attempting to wave discreetly at him while looking visibly panicked in formalwear.
“I should make sure everything is moving the way it's supposed to be,” James said.
“That makes sense.”
“But,” James added after a beat, “would it be alright if I got your number?”
Shane’s first thought was confusion. His second thought was that asking why would probably make the interaction strange.
James waited calmly. No pressure.
“Okay,” Shane said and gave him the number.
James entered it, apparently sent Shane a text, which Shane could tell because his pocket vibrated at the same time James slipped the phone back into his pocket.
“Good to meet you, Shane.”
“You too.”
James inclined his head slightly and disappeared back into the ballroom.
Shane remained there for another minute pretending he was not aware of the exact absence James had left behind.
The rest of the gala proceeded almost according to schedule.
Almost, because the opening remarks ran six minutes long, which Shane noticed immediately and no one else seemed to care about, and because the promotional video froze briefly on a woman mid-blink in a way that should not have been funny and somehow still was. The Irina Foundation was mentioned at 10:37. Seven minutes late but acceptable. There were photographs. A giant ceremonial check. Several people saying “wonderful” in increasingly meaningless ways. James reappeared briefly near the photographers and quietly streamlined the process with such ruthless efficiency that Shane nearly thanked him emotionally.
By 10:58, James approached again.
“You’re free,” he said.
Shane felt his mouth twitch. Huh.
“Good. Thanks, I think.” That was a strange thing to say no?
James smiled. "You're welcome"
That was it. Nothing dramatic happened. Which was probably why Shane thought about it later. Because James had not cornered him or overwhelmed him or demanded anything. He had simply given Shane the exact information he most wanted to hear in that moment — that he could leave — and then allowed him to do just that without making him feel like he was failing to meet expectations.
Shane returned to his apartment, removed his tuxedo with the exhaustion of a man dismantling evidence, brushed his teeth, made sure his alarms were set, they always were but double checking was important, and laid in bed staring at the ceiling. His phone rested on the nightstand. James did not reach out that night, that would have been too much, Shane did not know why he was thinking about that. James had only asked for his number. People did that. Professional networking existed. Rich people loved professional networking. Probably tomorrow James would send him an article about charitable initiatives or tax structures or whatever family-company men discussed recreationally.
Shane closed his eyes.
Opened them.
Turned toward the phone.
Still nothing.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered to the empty room.
***
The message arrived the following morning while Shane was eating oatmeal that had gone cold because he had been reading about preseason injuries on his phone and forgotten it existed.
Good morning. Hope you got some sleep after our very punctual gala.
Shane stared at it.
Then reread it because apparently the phrase very punctual gala required analysis now. It was a joke. Not the kind that demanded a response.
He typed:
I did.
Deleted it.
Typed:
Yes.
Deleted that too because apparently he had regressed conversationally overnight.
Finally:
I did. Thank you.
Reasonable.
James replied two minutes later.
Good. I had a great time talking to you.
Shane’s stomach did something embarrassing. Not butterflies. He was not in a CW show. More like a sudden internal misstep, a skate unexpectedly catching on rough ice.
He typed:
I enjoyed it too.
Formal. Fine. Normal?
James reacted with a thumbs-up and then sent:
I’ll let you get back to your day. Good luck with preseason.
He gave Shane a beginning and an ending. Shane did not realize how badly he wanted both until they were there.
The messages continued after that. Not constantly at first. Small things. Good morning texts. Questions about hockey mainly some hockey articles James clearly only half understood but still shared with Shane to keep the conversation going. Shane always answered. Sometimes even immediately. Other times after overthinking punctuation for ten straight minutes.
By the third week, the good morning texts had become daily enough that Shane had stopped being surprised by them and started being something worse, which was excited. Not visibly excited. He was not unwell, well... He did not grin at his phone like a man in a toothpaste commercial. But he noticed the time now. He noticed when the message arrived late, yes, one minute after 8:30 AM was late. He noticed, with mild horror, that some small part of his brain had started arranging the beginning of the day around the possibility of James Moreau asking whether practice was terrible or whether his hotel curtains had behaved overnight referencing a single message Shane had sent a few weeks into this dynamic about some god awful burgundy curtains in a hotel in Toronto that seemed to not be able to close completely letting the city lights keep him awake for most of the night and then let the sun come in too early in the morning.
James had also started sending occasional photos, casual enough to remain deniable. A mirror selfie in a new suit asking whether the tie looked pretentious. It did not. A picture of a terrible hotel breakfast where James’s surprisingly toned legs were accidentally visible through the glass table underneath, which felt statistically unlikely enough to maybe not have been accidental at all. Shane noticed, unfortunately. He had eyes and he was lonely and he had gone a very long time without being touched in a way that made his body feel like it belonged to him and also like it might not survive belonging to him, which was not something he was going to examine in the middle of a team flight while Hayden sat beside him eating pretzels loudly and watching a home renovation show without headphones like an actual criminal.
By the fourth week, James invited him to a screening.
There’s a documentary next Thursday about Guy Lafleur, James texted, and Shane stopped eating lunch for several seconds because Guy Lafleur was hockey in the religious sense.
James’s family company had helped sponsor the event. Cocktails before, documentary screening, small reception afterward. Mostly industry people, some former players, donors, hockey-adjacent enough that Shane being there would make sense to everyone because everyone knew Shane was a hockey nerd, which was not offensive because it was accurate.
No pressure, James wrote. But I thought you might actually enjoy this one.
Shane stared at the message too long, thought about telling Rose but then that would lead to other conversations about certain active hockey player and he decided not to. he could have used Rose to know what to expect about a movie screening, to understand if this invite by James what was he thought or knew deep down it was but no. He was actively avoiding things that led to other things and conversations.
Then typed in his conversation with James:
Thank you for thinking of me.
Deleted that, too intense, before finally allowing:
Sure, sounds fun. Thanks.
James responded:
Of course.
Shane arrived twenty minutes before the screening began, which was, in his opinion, the exact correct amount of time to arrive anywhere. Early enough to be polite. Late enough to avoid forty-five minutes of networking near passed appetizers. James was near the entrance to the theatre speaking to an older man with the kind of focused attentiveness that suggested he had been raised believing eye contact mattered. No tuxedo this time. Just a dark suit and an open collar, no tie, which Shane somehow understood immediately was probably as casual as James Moreau ever got.
He looked—
Good.
Annoyingly good.
Not flashy. Not loud about it. Polished and intentional. Dark hair pushed back less carefully than at the gala, enough that it softened him slightly. Faint lines beginning at the corner of his eyes when he smiled.
Shane noticed all of this against his will. Humiliating. The suit fit perfectly, obviously. James looked like someone who's clothing always fit because somewhere downtown there existed a terrifyingly expensive tailor whose entire workload could easily be altering Moreau family jackets. He also looked expensive differently than hockey players did. Less athlete but still manly. James looked like someone who answered emails immediately from his phone, without having to think much about it. Which should not have been attractive. And yet.
James looked up then, saw him and smiled. Not broadly. Not enough anyone nearby would notice the smile was for Shane. But it id softened his entire face while looking straight at him.
Oh. Shane thought that was unfairly effective. He felt at ease almost immediately.
“Sorry,” James said to the woman beside him, though his attention was already fully on Shane. “If you’ll excuse me.” Shane never knew how to leave conversations without making them feel like emergency evacuations."You made it,” he said, still smiling when he reached Shane.
“Yes,” Shane said. Excellent start. Compelling presence.
James’s gaze moved over him once, quick enough to remain deniable and slow enough that Shane still felt it anyway.
“You look good,” James said quietly and Shane understood immediately that the compliment was different now. A bit more personal. Oh. Okay. So that was happening.
The screening itself was easy because once the lights went down no one was expected to perform socially anymore. Shane could sit in the dark and watch hockey projected thirty feet high without needing to constantly monitor whether his own face looked appropriately engaged or interested in whatever conversation.
The footage used for the documentary had that grainy softness older hockey always seemed to have, the players moving with that strange floating violence the modern game lacked now, every shift somehow slower and yet more dangerous-looking, like everyone on the ice had collectively decided survival was optional as long as the passing looked elegant enough.
Shane got too invested almost immediately. “They keep saying natural talent,” he muttered during one of the interview segments, already irritated now. “But that’s not even the interesting part.”
James turned slightly toward him instead of the screen.
“Oh?”
“Because nobody gets that good accidentally,” Shane continued quietly, already too far in to stop himself. “People always want greatness to look effortless afterward because it’s more romantic that way, I guess, but that’s not how it works. You can literally see him thinking three plays ahead here.” He gestured vaguely toward the screen now, fully invested unfortunately.
“Look at that edge adjustment before the defenseman pivots. He already knows where the lane is opening before the guy even commits his weight.”
James looked at the screen for approximately one second before looking back at Shane instead.
“And this bothers you.”
“Yes,” Shane answered immediately. “Because then people act like players just emerge fully formed out of the Canadian wilderness already knowing how to skate and score fifty goals and emotionally obliterate entire franchises.”
James’s mouth twitched.
Shane kept going because apparently public self-control had abandoned him tonight.
“But nobody gets that good without becoming slightly insane first. That’s the actual point.”
James laughed softly then, not even pretending he was still watching the documentary anymore.
“You care about this a normal amount,” he said.
Shane frowned slightly. “I’m being extremely reasonable actually.”
“Mm.”
“I am.”
“You sound exactly like sports analysts when you talk about skating mechanics.”
“Oh my God.”
James was smiling openly now.
Not mocking. Worse. He seemed almost fond. “You’re kind of a hockey nerd,” James said.
Kind of?
Shane stared at him.
“That feels insulting under the circumstances.”
James laughed again, quieter this time, something warm underneath it now that made Shane abruptly and irrationally aware of how close they were sitting. Not touching. Nothing dramatic. Just close enough that Shane had spent nearly two hours aware of James beside him in the way people became aware of fireplaces or thunderstorms or songs playing quietly in another room. Also, James smelled good. Not aggressively good. Leather and tobacco underneath something warmer, faintly floral in a way Shane could not identify except that it smelled expensive and clean and adult, like the lobby of a hotel where the staff definitely judged you silently upon entry.
The lights came back up slowly after the documentary ended and Shane blinked hard against them, momentarily disoriented by the return of other people.
“You looked offended at least four separate times,” James said as they stood.
“It was a structurally inconsistent documentary.”
“That sounds serious.”
“It is serious. It's Hockey.”
The reception afterward was held in a smaller room attached to the theatre, all low lighting and expensive cocktails and groups of people speaking about legacy with the kind of seriousness usually reserved for constitutional law or medieval warfare. Shane got it. He intended to stay for thirty minutes. Long enough to be polite. Long enough not to seem abrupt or strange or emotionally compromised.
Instead, nearly an hour passed... and he was enjoying himself? At some point he checked the time and experienced genuine confusion. Fifty-three minutes. Jesus Christ.
This was partially James’s fault.
James had become more openly attentive after the screening, though only in ways Shane seemed capable of noticing. Or maybe everyone noticed and were simply too rich and emotionally stable to stare openly at developing situations.
James stood slightly too close in crowded spaces. He remembered details Shane mentioned casually weeks earlier and brought them up in conversation like it was normal and they knew each other like that. He touched Shane’s elbow while moving around a passing server and left his hand there long enough that Shane became briefly aware of his own bloodstream. Nothing inappropriate. Nothing obvious.
At one point James returned from the bar carrying another ginger ale Shane had not requested because apparently James had simply noticed Shane’s drink was low and solved the problem automatically like some kind of deeply competent man who knows things.
“Thanks,” Shane said carefully.
“You’re welcome.”
And then James smiled slightly in a way that suggested, for reasons Shane could not fully explain, that this interaction was no longer entirely about ginger ale. Interesting.
At some point Shane ended up trapped in conversation with a retired Hall of Famer who had apparently played briefly with Lafleur and who Shane was embarrassed to not recognize immediately. “Hell of a player,” the man said warmly, gripping Shane’s shoulder with the alarming strength retired hockey players seemed to preserve specifically for handshakes and acts of affection to other players. He complimented Shane on his last season and on a particular playoff game against Minessota where Shane scored a hat trick. This should probably have affected Shane more than it did. The man was a Hall of Famer. A literal Hall of Famer. Shane should have had approximately six thousand questions for him immediately. Instead, he kept getting distracted because James stood several feet away speaking with one of the producers, one hand loose around a whiskey glass, head tilted slightly while listening attentively and his eyes were doing a thing powerfully attractive. This was ridiculous. Shane was currently ignoring hockey royalty because some man had nice eyelashes. Humiliating.
The Hall of Famer was still speaking.
“…your edge control reminds me a little of—”
“Sorry,” Shane interrupted automatically, horrified. “No, sorry, I’m listening.”
The man laughed.
“You sure?”
Fantastic.
Wonderful.
Now retired hockey royalty thought Shane had sustained a head injury at a documentary screening.
At some point after that conversation ended Shane found himself standing alone briefly beside one of the cocktail tables, holding a ginger ale full of melting ice he had stopped drinking several minutes earlier, while across the room James looked up and caught him staring and something in Shane’s chest shifted strangely at that, at being noticed without immediately feeling cornered by it, because most attention throughout his life came with expectation attached, something to perform or answer or become, but James looked at him like noticing him was enough on its own.
Which was, well.
Dangerous probably.
And stranger still was the realization that Shane felt calm.
Actually calm, which was different from numb and different from detached and different from the thing he usually did at events, where he kept his face arranged correctly and waited for the evening to release him.
Calm.
Which did not happen to him often around new people, especially attractive men who were very clearly flirting with him in what Shane was beginning to understand was an extremely controlled, almost elegant manner, subtle enough that nobody else in the room would think twice about it and yet somehow constant once Shane started noticing it.
Ilya had never flirted like that. Ilya flirted like arson.
James felt different, less like surviving a natural disaster. More like being quietly handed something warm before realizing you were cold. That thought alone should probably have concerned Shane more than it did.
When James returned a moment later, stopping close enough that Shane caught that tobacco-and-leather scent again, Shane realized suddenly that he needed actual clarification before his brain collapsed in on itself completely. Because James had been flirting. Probably. Almost definitely. Not just tonight either. Shane had begun, over the past hour especially, to reconsider basically every interaction they’d had since the gala under this new and deeply destabilizing possibility. The texts. The good mornings. The screening invitation. The way James listened to him like he was saying something worth hearing instead of merely waiting politely for his turn to speak. The compliments. The touching.
Jesus Christ.
Except there was also the possibility that James was simply one of those men who moved easily through the world touching people lightly when speaking to them and remembering details and holding eye contact without realizing the effect it had on others. Emotionally stable men probably existed outside of movies. So maybe this was normal.
Maybe James touched everybody’s lower back lightly in crowded rooms. Maybe he smiled at everyone like that. Maybe the problem was that Shane had once been loved by someone loudly (as loudly as Shane himself allowed) and for the last almost two years has been trying unsuccessfully to relearn normal human proportions. Ilya had moved through life like Shane existed at the center of it and now even relatively ordinary attentiveness landed on Shane with wildly disproportionate emotional force.
Or maybe James really was flirting with him.
Honestly, at this point, both possibilities felt equally dangerous.
If James was straight then Shane had just spent the last hour privately assigning romantic subtext to what might, in retrospect, turn out to be nothing more than an emotionally stable adult man attempting friendship.
Which honestly said more troubling things about Shane’s social environment than it did about James. Most of Shane’s friendships, outside of Rose, had been formed inside professional hockey, which meant his baseline understanding of male affection had been developed almost entirely by emotionally immature athletes whose primary love languages included hitting each other hard enough to qualify for league review.
“Can I ask you something?” Shane said before he could stop himself.
James’s expression shifted immediately, more attentive somehow.
“Of course.”
But asking directly what he wanted to ask also felt impossible because the risk was not merely being wrong. The risk was exposing the existence of the question at all. Because straight men did not accidentally ask other men if they were flirting with them and Shane had spent far too much of his life surviving carefully to suddenly become reckless now.
Which was how he ended up saying, quietly and without looking directly at James:
“Do people know?”
And then immediately regretting every decision that had led him to this exact moment in human history. Because maybe that was still too direct. Maybe James would say know what? and Shane would simply have to walk into the Saint Lawrence River and accept his fate.
Jesus Christ.
Why had he said that.
And then James looked at him for half a second. Not confused. Understanding. About what Shane was asking, what he was saying and was not allowed to survive publicly.
“Some people,” James said carefully. “My family knows. Close friends. I’m not exactly hiding my life.”
Not exactly.
Shane understood that category instantly.
“But,” James continued gently, “I also don’t really advertise it.”
Relief moved through Shane so fast it almost embarrassed him.
James studied him another moment, quiet and steady in a way that made Shane feel bizarrely visible without feeling exposed.
“You don’t have to explain anything to me, by the way.”
There it was again, room. Space. James kept giving him room.
Then someone brushed behind Shane and James’s hand landed briefly against the small of his back to steady him automatically before disappearing almost immediately afterward. Shane felt the shape of it there afterward.
God.
That was-
Dangerous, actually.
Because Shane suddenly understood with horrifying clarity that he wanted James to touch him again.
Not desperately.
Just enough to keep feeling this calm.
He did not know what to do with that. Wanting James to touch him again would have been easier to understand if it had felt like panic.