Chapter Text
When the first Rose Ceremony finally fucking ends, it’s one o’clock in the morning. Shane, a professional athlete who subjects his body to grueling daily conditioning and very few off days, who welcomes physical crucibles that could accurately be called self-inflicted corporal punishment, has never, ever felt so weary inside his own body. He feels like he’s just run an ultramarathon and then played ten rounds of mind-numbing golf on the surface of the sun.
He’s so tired his vision has physically degraded. One of the monitors is playing back the moment that one of the thirty—thirty!—girls was “eliminated.” He has to squint and blink to make the picture come into focus, and then wishes he hadn't. He looks so fucking awkward, standing with his hands clasped in front of him like he's somehow just discovered he has them. All of the girls—women, call them women, Shane—are arrayed in front of him in sparkling multicolored dresses, like soldiers who went to bootcamp inside of a Forever 21.
Shane-on-the-monitor unfortunately looks exactly how Shane felt in that moment: terrified.
For the millionth time, he imagines what his life would be like if he were the kind of person who was capable of saying 'no' to a single thing his mother told him would be good for his career.
Even as he's fighting down the desire to puke staring at his own face, he can't help but feel sorry for the contestants of the show. It helps, in a way he doesn’t like to look at, that their situation is objectively worse than his. It doesn't make him less afraid of them, but it gives Shane the sense of an advantage that they are the ones facing elimination every day. Shane is safe: he cannot be traded off this team.
When Shane’s season starts, he has a few games to get the cobwebs out, a few weeks where everything is shifting enough that the Metros can afford to make mistakes. Not that Shane ever feels comfortable making mistakes, or ever stops beating himself up about them. But there's room for them. These girls—women—showed up facing the possibility that they’ll be knocked out of the tournament before even facing a division rival.
Shane would probably kill himself if he failed at something so immediately upon starting it. But the eliminated girls had seemed, for the most part, okay after the Rose Ceremony. A few of them had cried, but the waterworks stopped around the same second the cameras stopped rolling. Then there was a whole production of putting them in cars and sending them home, which actually meant a nearby hotel. All of them will hang around for a few days in case they need to do reshoots.
Shane, thankfully, does not have to stay at the architecturally offensive mansion they film in. He's shocked they even have houses like this in Ontario; the garishness strikes him as unpatriotically un-Canadian. A car is on its way to bring him back to the house he's rented for five weeks, which is much smaller and much less ugly than this place. He debated buying a house instead of doing a long-term rental, but there's not really anything in this area that suggests it would appreciate that rapidly in value. Someone should have told that to the moron who built this monstrosity before he invested in custom pink marble counter tops for every single one of his bathrooms.
Shane is hiding in one of the bedrooms that's been repurposed as a green room while he waits for the car. The only person sharing the space with him is one of the producers. Tall. There's a cigarette hanging limply out of the side of his mouth with an unappealing amount of ash clinging to the tip. Shane knows someone told him the guy's name, or rather, shouted it at him during the blurry, brisk hour of pre-production. But that was approximately a hundred years ago, before they started filming the Meet and Greets. Shane vaguely remembers that the producer is foreign (French, maybe?). He has striking eyes. Blue, maybe, though it's hard to tell in this light.
Shane's usual strategy for learning people's names is introducing himself. But he can't exactly go up to this person and say, "Hi, I'm Shane Hollander," because every single person located in a one-mile radius knows exactly who Shane is, and it would make him look like such a dick to pretend otherwise. Plus, they've already sort of met.
The guy must feel Shane watching because he turns his head, blinks once, slowly, then points at himself and says, "Ilya."
Shane's mouth drops open a little bit, mildly shocked that this guy—Ilya—is, maybe, being kind of rude. Assuming Shane had forgotten his name. Substituting a one-word statement—first name only, like he's Cher—for a polite introduction.
Then he snaps his mouth closed, because Shane is also too tired for politeness at this point in the night. And he did forget the guy's name. So.
"Ilya," Shane repeats. "Yeah, um—nice to meet you. Again. I mean." He waits for a moment, but Ilya makes no move to fill up the silence that's rapidly becoming awkward. Great.
“I thought they edited it in L.A.," Shane says after a half-minute spent wracking his brain for something to say. "Aren't they the ones who should be watching this footage?"
The mechanics of the show have been explained to him many times. Our story team in Burbank knows what they're doing. We're giving you a hero edit, don't even worry about that. ABC is very invested in making Shane Hollander a marketable property. We're in the MLH business now. We're in the you business now, Shane. The same trite, recycled phrases he's heard a million times before, arranged slightly differently to match a new type of sponsorship deal. A new way for Shane to trade his likeness and his time and his muscles and sweat and blood as currency. Exactly the same as every other time, according to his lawyers and his mom and the entire PR department of the MLH.
They weren't wrong; not entirely. But none of the conversations he had with management and legal really prepared him for what this would feel like, either. A girl is not the same thing as a Rolex watch, no matter how pretty she might look on his arm.
He's rescued from his own thoughts by Ilya answering his question about the team in L.A.
"Need to decide what story we are telling," Ilya says, which isn't really an answer to what Shane asked. Ilya isn't looking at Shane anymore, his gaze is fully trained on the monitor and his brow is furrowed, like he doesn't like what he sees. He doesn't sound French at all. Russian, maybe? Shane has played with a lot of Russian guys. Now that he thinks about it, Ilya reminds him of some of them. Something about the way he's taking up all the space in the already-small room and making it feel even smaller. Or maybe the casual way he's talking about how manufactured this is to the person for whom it's being manufactured.
Shane is aware that he's subject to a different treatment than the men who usually do this show. Behind-the-scenes access, they'd called it, which apparently means he gets to watch this grumpy Eastern European guy give himself lung cancer while his own too-dry eyeballs try to wrench themselves out of his head.
That, and Shane is also getting paid a hell of a lot more money than anyone else has ever gotten to appear in the franchise.
All of these facts make him feel like he's allowed to ask: "What story are you going to tell?"
Ilya just shrugs. Shane has known this guy twenty seconds and he's already figured out that he's kind of annoyed by him. "We will see."
On the screen, Shane is handing a rose to one of the girls. Her dress is so deep in the back that there is absolutely no doubt about the fact that she's not wearing underwear, which was of course the only thing Shane could think about while he escorted her from the limo to the poolside bar where the Meet and Greet had stretched interminably over the first six hours of shooting. She is incredibly pretty, and not in the airbrushed, unsettling-in-person way that a lot of the other girls are. She looks like she was born with those lips and that nose and probably her boobs, too, and she carries herself with the easy confidence of someone who has never had to doubt that people are staring at her and has always enjoyed the sensation.
Shane can't relate.
"You like her?" Ilya asks, watching Shane watch the screen. Shane blinks at him, used to this sort of question from his teammates and knowing that the stakes are somewhat different in this scenario. Knowing this is a question he could have anticipated, and will be asked probably a thousand more times. It's a shame he still hasn't managed to come up with a good response.
"Sure," he answers.
Ilya raises an eyebrow. "Ah, you don't like her? Too bad. She is very good for television, I think. Hot. Energetic. Holds alcohol well. But I think also she is ruthless."
The girl Ilya likes tells Shane she's a Pittsburgh fan, because she's from Ohio, but the part of Ohio that touches Pennsylvania. Don't tell her dad, but she thinks Shane is more fun to watch than anyone on their team. She lays down approximately a dozen opportunities for Shane to display that he does in fact have a personality, that there is something about which he can speak intelligently. She tells him again, eyes sparkling: she loves when men drop the gloves, she loves it even more when they score. She just loves hockey. Monitor-Shane gives her a smile that looks sort of constipated and delivers one of the many lines from tonight that will probably star in his waking nightmares for the rest of his life: "Oh, yeah. Cool. Me too."
Real-Shane finally lets himself sigh. Fourteen hours worth of tension come out with it, loud and pathetic.
To Ilya, he says, “That was bad, wasn’t it?” He means his response to Mrs. Pittsburgh. He means the entire fucking day.
Ilya shrugs. He knows what Shane means. “Was not good.”
Shane winces. “I’m not—I'm not like that. On actual dates. I know how to talk to people. This is just all so—" Fake, Shane thinks. Pointless. Which is, actually, exactly how he usually feels on real dates.
"So…?" Ilya prompts. Shane resists the urge to search his face for proof that Ilya believes that Shane is normally suave and charming on real dates with girls.
"Different," Shane decides. "Um. Yeah. It will get easier, though. Right?"
Ilya is looking at him again in that way that Shane is discovering makes him uniquely uncomfortable. People have been looking at him all day. All his life, really. There’s nothing that should make this any different. Still, the sensation itches with a peeling edge of something new, scraped up from the ordinary and sharp enough to draw blood.
Summer arrived starving this year. Even the air conditioning going at full blast can't keep the heat from wrapping around them like a hungry python and squeezing. The electricity bills on this place must be a nightmare. There's a reason they usually don't film the show this time of year, but of course now was the only time Shane had five weeks free for ritualistically pitting strangers against each other in the name of finding the love of his life. The love of his life, who would surely be an aspiring Instagram influencer from the armpit of Quebec, selected from a roll of casting tapes by a director in California who has never met him.
Shane shifts uncomfortably on the folding metal chair that's wedged in the corner and is probably ruining the wall-to-wall white carpet some asshole thought would be a good idea for a ground-level bedroom. In a house he rents out to film crews. Who smoke inside.
Ilya seems to notice him fidgeting. Or maybe that Shane is staring at the cigarette between his lips.
"You want?" he asks, proffering the pack of cigarettes at him. Shane's mouth swings open again in shock before he can stop it. He has to work on that.
"I'm a professional hockey player," Shane answers blankly. "My breathwork instructor would kill me if I fucked with my lung capacity. One of those might actually kill me."
Ilya stares at him for a second, then starts laughing. "Wow, okay. Personal breath instructor. Very cool, Hollander. This is the badass athlete stuff that little kids are dreaming about. 'One day I will be famous hockey player. One day I will pay someone to teach me how to breathe air.' Not like this is something that every person is born knowing how to do."
"Fuck off," Shane barks out, shocked and clipped. Ilya just keeps laughing, pocketing the cigarettes and smiling at Shane. He wasn't really smiling before, but now that he is Shane can see all of his teeth: unstained; surprising given that Shane has seen him smoke at least five cigarettes today and drink four cups of watery coffee from craft services. He wonders if Ilya had braces as a kid. The bottom row is crooked, but maybe he's the kind of person who didn't wear his retainer as much as he was supposed to and let his mouth get crowded in by its own chaos.
“No, for real, this is good to know about you,” Ilya says sternly. “You are… regimented. I can work with that. Maybe for a date you and the girls will do yoga.”
Shane thinks about it for a second, even though Ilya is probably teasing him the way everyone does about his exercise habits. About most of his habits.
As far as date activities go, yoga would involve a lot less talking, and Shane is at least pretty unselfconscious about his body when he's using it for something physical. Well, for exercise or sports. 'Yoga' hadn't been on the list of group date activities that Shane and Yuna had vetted and approved before production started, but it's not like it's that hard to acquire a few exercise mats at last minute's notice.
"Sure," he says. "I'd like that. Thanks."
Ilya laughs once more, but his eyes look a little softer. "Okay, Hollander."
Shane's phone vibrates with a text from someone else on the crew, signaling the arrival of his cab, and he gets to his feet, stretching his arms above his head. It's so late, but he'll probably do a cool down routine when he gets back to the rental. He needs to wake up early to start his workout; his muscles will thank him if he wrings them out a little bit tonight. One of the team trainers is staying at the same hotel as the eliminated girls, and he'll be over first thing in the morning to kick Shane's ass and force-feed him protein powder.
Shane is anticipating this with a lot more excitement than he is tomorrow's "group date" with a dozen of the remaining girls.
"Nice to meet you," he says to Ilya again as he leaves, because even if Ilya is a bit of an asshole, Shane doesn't have to be. Minus the part where he told Ilya to fuck off.
"I will see you tomorrow," Ilya calls back. "Bright and early!"
"Our call time is nine!" Shane yells over his shoulder as he steps outside and gets punched in the face by a wave of humidity that is at least mercifully free of the smell of cigarettes. Bright and early. Give him a fucking break.
The first group date is, obviously, a disaster. Shane actually wakes up believing it won't be so bad. Yesterday had been exhausting, but it ended up okay. Maybe, he thinks, this will be just like everything else that Shane has done, been awkward at, and eventually figured out how to navigate in a way that doesn't make him want to die. He goes for a quick run after he wakes up and watches the sun rise over nondescript houses from under his baseball cap. Then his trainer makes him do squat jumps and single leg deadlifts until he can feel the tendons in his lower body strain and ache. A shower, a protein shake, and a three-egg-white omelette later, he's pulling up to the day's shooting location in his own car.
He's agreed to a driver for Rose Ceremony days, but refuses to be chauffeured otherwise. Production keeps insisting on the car service on the grounds that the shoots run so late, but Shane is pretty sure they're hoping he'll be too drunk by the end of the night to drive himself home. Both Shane and the MLH's lawyers have final cut over any footage that gets aired, but that doesn't mean he trusts the producers not to try to sneak in some good material of him being intoxicated and stupid. He understands enough about reality television to know that these sets run on drama and hard alcohol.
Lucky for Shane, abstaining has never really been a problem.
He wonders, in a mostly academic way, how the girls' first night was. Half of them had been very drunk by the end of shooting, their hair fighting desperately against the pageant curls pressed into them at the start of the day, mascara smeared across the curves of their soft cheeks. He'd watched the producers take each of them aside at regular intervals and then seen them come back looking varying shades of determined and despairing. The latter seemed to precede a conversation with another contestant or a little bit of yelling; the former unfortunately signaled that she was going to approach Shane and try to touch his arms.
The touching thing is a lot. It’s a natural byproduct of the close quarters combined with the assumption that he'd welcome that kind of thing. Because it's a dating show. It's Shane's dating show. Everyone here looks at Shane like he's the central attraction at a petting zoo because he is.
Shane reminds himself again what his mom and his manager and the commissioner had all tacitly implied: that the exposure from this would give his career the shock of a second life it desperately needs. He is twenty-seven years old, and he’s never won the Stanley Cup, despite the fact that he's played technically brilliant hockey consistently since going first in the MLH draft. But winning seasons aren't enough to sway the predominant narrative about his career: Shane Hollander has not brought a Cup to Montreal. The team hasn’t ever been enough to take it all the way to finish; Shane, as their captain, hasn’t been able to take them there. And he is not an exciting player off the ice; he's not charismatic on screen in a way that guarantees him a position doing commentary once he retires.
This show is a way to change all of that.
Retirement is something that Shane sees in his mind the same way he saw the monitors last night: the picture is always out of focus. He's aware that it will happen to him eventually, but it's not something he can think about too much without making himself feel sick. So he leaves the logistics of planning for that to those more capable—mostly, to his mom and his lawyers. Shane focuses all of his energy on playing great hockey.
This show is yet another way of outsourcing his life to more knowledgeable professionals who can optimize it for the best possible results. He'll propose to a girl at the end of five weeks. That fact looms on the horizon the same way his retirement from the MLH does: it's as unthinkable as it is inevitable. It's going to happen to him no matter what he does, so he tries to put it out of his mind and trust the team he's hired to get him to the point where he has to follow through with it. All of these girls have been screened and background checked. All of them have already agreed to ironclad pre-nups that his lawyers gleefully informed him were "borderline unconscionable." The whole thing is obviously insane, but it's really good for his brand and for the MLH. Those are good reasons, objectively good reasons, to do it.
There are so many reasons it's a good idea. The people Shane trusts told him so.
The arcade where they're filming today is already swarming with trailers and camera equipment and members of the crew wearing all black, all of the machines and men sweating under the morning spill of July sun. A half-dozen of the girls are clustered around the entrance, squinting against the light and already done with hair and makeup, looking comically out of place with their perfectly painted faces against the grimy exterior of a Toronto bar that's in all likelihood mostly frequented by teenagers. At least none of them are wearing evening gowns today. If anyone touches him, he won't have to worry as much about accidentally grazing a boob or putting his hand too-low on a naked back.
One of the PAs meets Shane before he's even fully out of his car, happily bouncing on his toes and holding a clipboard.
"Mr. Hollander, hi, wow." The kid has a distinctly Canadian lilt to his voice and is staring at Shane like one of them is about to melt; Shane is very capable at this point in his career of recognizing a fan. "I'm Tyler, I'm here for anything you need today. Thanks for being on time. Wow, you're even a little bit early. I'll take you to hair and make-up, do you want anything to eat? Drink?"
"No, thank you," Shane answers. "I ate." The thought of touching the pawed-over pile of croissants and bagels on the craft services table makes Shane want to empty the breakfast he just ate onto the concrete.
A couple of the girls wave at him as he walks by, and Shane awkwardly raises his hand to salute back, but luckily Tyler is half-jogging them forward and Shane doesn't have the option of stopping to chat.
They end up in a trailer further back in the parking lot. The same producer from yesterday, Ilya, is already there, and he smirks at Shane when he walks in.
"Good morning, Mr. Hollander," he says to Shane. Tyler called Shane 'Mr. Hollander' like the words themselves were an offering on a ceremonial plate; this man says Shane's name like it's a private joke between the two of them. Shane feels a little shorter than he did when he stepped out of his car. Shane is a relatively tall guy; not as big as a lot of MLH players, but in a room full of anything other than professional athletes, he usually doesn't feel shrimpy. Ilya, however, has a tiny bit of height on him, and Shane can feel it like a weight pushing down on the top of his head until his toes depress the floor beneath him.
"Good morning," Shane says back. Tyler maneuvers him into the makeup chair, where someone immediately materializes to start rubbing something cold and wet onto his skin with a device that looks like a sponge.
"Primer," the woman brandishing the sponge says.
"Okay," Shane says, dazed. There's already another person doing something to his hair.
"So, Hollander," Ilya says. Shane tries to turn to watch him and finds his head yanked firmly back by one of the pairs of disembodied hands. "Today, you are getting to know the girls. Yesterday was first impressions, today is your first group date. Small talk is good, and is good if you have one-on-one conversations with each of the girls. There are many girls, so is fine to play favorites. Is better, actually. Will help us plan the future episodes."
"Um," Shane says. Another wet makeup product is being rubbed on his face. He closes his eyes. "What should I talk about?"
He hears Ilya laugh. "I don't know, Hollander, what do you usually talk about on dates?"
Shane wrenches one eye open to see if Ilya is laughing at him. Shane is a public figure, and it's the producers’ job to know things about the people on this show. It's not exactly a secret that Shane has had about two girlfriends in the last ten years. But Ilya doesn't look like he is laughing at Shane. There's a steadiness to the way he's concentrating on Shane’s face that Shane almost recognizes from looking at himself in the mirror of the locker room before a game.
"Shane!" someone calls from behind him, sparing him having to answer Ilya. Mrs. Pittsburgh has pushed through the crowd of makeup artists and PAs and is smiling wide at Shane. "I know we're not supposed to talk when the cameras aren't rolling but I just wanted to say, genuinely, I am such a big fan. I am just so excited to be here."
“Oh, yeah. Thanks—” Shane has no idea what this girl's name is. Courtney? He vaguely remembers that at least two of the contestants have the same name as Kardashians, and he's almost positive this is one of them.
Helplessly, he looks over her shoulder to find Ilya there. Ilya winks at him and mouths, Kendall.
"Kendall," he repeats, then realizes he's said it more to Ilya than to her. He wrenches his eyes back to Kendall’s pretty face. "Thanks, it's, um, an honor to play professionally."
Her smile looks stapled to her mouth. But she has nice eyes, actually. And she's not looking at Shane like he's a wax figurine or a meal or something to pity, which is usually how he feels when beautiful women look at him. "You're an incredible forward, Shane, I—"
"Okay, okay," Ilya interrupts. He puts a big hand on her shoulder, pulling her back a little from Shane's chair. Shane watches the way his fingers curl around her scapula; for a guy, Ilya has kind of elegant hands. "Kendall, sweetheart, I think that is enough cheating for this morning. I do not know who let you back here, and I will not ask you, but this is a warning, okay? No monopolizing the Bachelor when it's not your turn."
Kendall gives Ilya a grin, and all her affable Midwestern charm looks immediately shark-like. "Oops. Sorry."
Ilya laughs. He is probably someone who girls never look at like they feel sorry for him. Kendall is already leaning into the grasp he has on her like she doesn't even realize she's doing it.
"It was nice try. Okay, bye bye now."
She melts back into the crowd of jostling people and Shane tries to think of what he might talk to her about while they play pool or Big Buck Hunter or whatever dumb games await them inside the Arcade. Maybe they won't have to talk at all. Maybe she's as into shooting fake deer as she is professional hockey.
"Rozanov!" someone barks, and Ilya turns around. "Get over here, we need you."
Rozanov, Shane thinks. He likes that he knows Ilya’s last name. Everyone here knows everything about Shane. It’s good to have another piece of someone else that he can rub against the knowledge he already has. Ilya Rozanov has a first and a last name. That’s almost enough pieces to make an entire person.
"I must go," Ilya says to Shane. "Are you okay?"
It's the sort of platitude that Shane gets all the time. The kind of question asked that already assumes the answer; a supposition instead of a query. And of course he’s okay; he’s an adult. He doesn’t need a babysitter. He doesn’t need a bodyguard fending off nice girls who want to tell him he’s a great hockey player.
"Yeah," Shane answers. "I'm great." His voice barely even wobbles.
When they break for lunch, Shane is sweating more than he usually is by the end of the second period of a game. Over the past three hours, Shane knows he's given off the impression that he's forgotten how to shoot pool, how to speak, and possibly how to stand upright. Possibly that he never learned how to do any of those things in the first place. It's worse than yesterday, where the introductions had at least felt scripted and there'd been the choreography to follow of walking the girls from the limo to the pool.
He’s hiding in the green room again to eat the ground turkey his trainer brought to set, which means he has no choice but to watch the agony of the morning play out again on screen before him.
Shane is quickly growing to hate the monitors. If hell exists, Shane imagines it looks something like this: being forced to watch himself, from three different angles, splutter over his own tongue talking to a woman whose name, like all of the others', he can't remember. Probably Ilya will be there too, like he is now, arms exploding out of a black tank top and frowning at Shane's miniature form on the screen.
At that moment, Ilya looks over at him, eyes traveling from Shane's face down to his shoes. Hell would be better than this, actually. At least in hell, Shane would presumably have died, and that would mean he was done filming the fucking Bachelor.
"So, Hollander," says Ilya. "You are really bad at talking to beautiful women."
Shane feels his face heat. He doesn’t say anything.
"I am wondering. Do you only sleep with fans? Are you being so awkward because Heather—" right, Heather, "—is not hockey groupie? Because this poor girl tried to tell you about her dream of veterinary medicine, you punish her by forgetting how to speak English? You punish me by making me watch something this boring?"
“Shut up,” Shane mutters. He honestly feels a bit relieved to be scolded like this. At least if Ilya is being an asshole, Shane can be one back.
Ilya abandons his post at the monitor and comes to sit next to Shane. He leans back on his big arms and studies Shane’s face. He’s gotten way too close, even worse than the makeup artists and the crew and the girls who keep circling him like moths trying to press through a well-lit window at night. Ilya's already broken through the glass.
"Why are you doing this?" Ilya asks him. "This show. I do not think you need the money. Every day so far you look like you would rather have your balls cut off than have camera pointed at you."
"Um." The honesty of the question is so surprising that Shane finds himself kind of wanting to answer. He wishes he had an answer.
"Tell me," Rozanov prompts, and he sounds so confident about it that Shane almost does tell him: because it was asked of him. Because in about a decade—if he's lucky—he'll have to retire and he's worried there's nothing to keep him from floating into outer space without the tether of professional hockey to anchor him to the earth.
Of course, Shane says none of that.
“It’s a good gig. The MLH is trying to make inroads with the female demographic, and ABC is going to be airing more games this fall. They thought a player doing this show would help, and they asked me. It’s the same as any other time I’ve been an ambassador for the League.”
Ilya raises his eyebrows. “Very nice answer. Good media training. Good for MLH. Sad for me, though. This very boring answer does not help me make a better show.”
“Sucks for you,” Shane says, surprising himself. Ilya snorts, and Shane lets himself feel a little bit pleased.
“Hollander,” Ilya says seriously, “if we do not have good show, I will be in trouble.”
“Sorry?" Shane offers, and takes a sip of water. Today's set is too hot, same as yesterday.
“Yes, it is very sad. You make me very sad. How will you make it up to me?”
Shane almost chokes on his water. “Excuse me?”
Ilya stares at him intently. “I need something for LA, Hollander. Something that is not so boring."
"Well, you're the producer," Shane says lightly. "Can't you just—tell me what to do? That's your job, isn't it?"
He doesn’t really think about what it sounds like until he’s said it. Humiliation crashes over him like a scalding wave. Jesus Christ. It’s bad enough this guy thinks Shane has absolutely no game. Now he’s gone and practically begged Ilya to teach him how to talk to women. Shane considers again what a blessing it would be if the floor of this trailer opened up and swallowed him whole.
But Ilya, to his credit, doesn’t look like he’s going to laugh in Shane’s face for being an unfuckable loser. He looks considering.
“You would listen to me?” Ilya asks slowly. “You would do what I say?”
Shane swallows. “I mean. Sure. Obviously I suck at this.”
Ilya starts to smile. “Ah. But you are lucky today. Because I do not.”
The fourth day of production is an off-day, the last one they'll get for the next two weeks. Shane takes advantage of the extended time off to drive to a nearby gym with his trainer. The morning runs he’s been going on every day are good cardio, but after seven seasons in the MLH he's well aware of the limitations of his own knees and happy to use the stationary bike for cross-training today. They do draw a few looks at the gym; in Toronto, Shane is still pretty famous. There will probably be pictures of this on Twitter. Maybe he should buy a cheap bike for the apartment so he doesn't have to come back here.
Unfortunately, cross-training on a bike leaves him with plenty of time to let his mind wander, and the direction it chooses to travel is replaying the humiliation ritual of the group date at the arcade and the "one-on-one date" that followed the next day.
It got off a bad foot when the blonde contestant on the date had to remind him of her name: "Tiffani, with two 'i's." Things hadn't improved much from there, but at least he’d had Rozanov coming over to him between takes and giving him instructions. What to say, where to stand. He’d made Shane change his shirt twice when he’d showed up, even though Shane’s contract gave him approval over his wardrobe and he was supposed to be allowed to dress himself. Rozanov told Shane to hold Tiffani’s hand at the end of their date, and Shane had done it, and everyone on set had been really obviously relieved that he’d gotten to the equivalent of elementary-school first base.
He calls his mom after working out and talks around naming his own fear and embarrassment about how he’s coming off on camera. His mom gently and not-too-subtly reminds him of the many reasons it's in ABC's best interest not to make him look like an idiot. He eats some of the boiled chicken that his trainer brought over this morning. He watches an hour of game tape from the playoffs last season. They'd been knocked out early, and Shane's already revisited their entire run at least three times, but he watches it anyway, hoping for a new angle into his own failure. He finishes that and finds it's only four o'clock in the afternoon.
He sits on his couch and stares at the blank screen of his powered-off television and thinks about being called 'boring' by his producer. Shane is boring. That's the whole problem this show was meant to solve.
He texts his mom and asks if she can order him a bike for the rental. He texts a couple of his teammates some of the thoughts he had while reviewing their last playoff game. He eats more chicken. He gets in bed at eight o'clock and reads until he falls asleep, because he can’t help it. He’s tried in a lot of different ways not to be himself, and he always ends up the same.
Group date number two takes them to an indoor ice rink in Toronto. "Hockey" had been one of the activities he and Yuna approved. Plus it's Shane's entire brand, and the reason ABC hired him for this job, so it would be really weird if there hadn't been at least one hockey-focused episode. It's pretty clear a week in that Kendall, the world's biggest hockey fan, is going to be one of the girls he goes on a "hometown" date with; he'll probably have to do something like this with her dad to demonstrate how perfect they are for each other. Won't that be fun.
The cameras don't follow Shane into the locker room, thank god. He hides in the empty room that smells like soap and antiseptic and too much layered sweat for either of those scents to mask. He hides until he knows he can’t, then he laces his skates, drops onto the ice, and lets the relief of the familiar cold air bite into his skin and soothe the burning embarrassment that has caught and re-caught on his every spoken word after each time the director called “action.”
They’re filming B-roll of Shane alone on the ice while the girls tape confessionals and get ready. Shane tries to forget the camera is there. He's used to being filmed while he skates. This shouldn't feel any different than it always does. From the sidelines the gaggle of producers, including Rozanov, bark out a few instructions for the right poses and marks he needs to hit, but mostly they just let Shane do what he wants while they watch.
When the crew finally takes a break, Shane skates over to the boards where only Rozanov is still sitting. He's wearing his headset and nodding like he's listening to someone talk, but when he sees Shane approach he pulls the earpiece out and walks over to him.
Shane notices with a start that Rozanov is wearing skates.
"Um," he says. "Are you—joining us?"
"Yes," Rozanov says simply. "Need producer on the ice. I am best skater."
"How do you know?" Shane asks. "Did you guys like, have a contest before filming?"
Rozanov's mouth, Shane has noticed, is really, really good at staying still. He doesn't give himself away with twitching lips as often as most people do. So Shane feels it like a punch in the stomach when Rozanov's eyes light up and a smile curls up the whole left side of his face.
"A contest? Like, a race?"
"Yeah, sure," Shane says. "Though that would make you the fastest skater, and it's not just about speed, being the best. There's a lot of other—"
Ilya waves a hand. "Boring, boring. Okay. Let's race."
Shane's jaw falls open. "What?"
"Let's race. You and me. See who is faster."
Rozanov doesn't wait for Shane to answer. He hops over the boards and pushes himself onto the rink with a shove of his arms, which flex noticeably against the clinging wool sweater he wore to work that day. Usually he just wears those stupid sleeveless tops, but his arms are somehow more obvious in this. Rozanov probably stretches out his sweaters pretty quickly.
"Well?"
Shane blinks and looks up to find Rozanov staring at him expectantly. He smirks and skates backwards, presumably to emphasize his chops as 'best skater on the Canadian production crew of The Bachelor.' He's not bad; a backwards swizzle probably made the rest of the crew 'ooh' and 'ahh.' Shane, who has been skating since he was three years old, is not impressed.
"Okay, sure," Shane says. "Let's race. You versus the five-time winner of the All-Star speed skating contest."
"Ooh, All-Star Game," Rozanov snorts derisively. "Impressive."
Shane can't help it. He laughs. Rozanov is right, All-Stars sucks. "Yeah, whatever, fuck you. What do you think, once around the rink?"
Rozanov shakes his head. "Two times."
"Your funeral," Shane says. "You want to count us off? 'On your mark, get set, go?'"
Rozanov nods. Starts counting down.
A lot of the things about Shane’s job that take place off the ice don’t come naturally to him. But when it comes to the actual physical act of hockey, there's nothing more natural in the world. Shane knows that in so many aspects of the sport he is better than anyone else playing right now. It hasn’t been enough to win him a Cup yet, but sometimes when he’s playing a game, when he’s chasing the puck and his skates are tearing up the ice beneath him fast enough to carve a mark before the sharp potential of it can melt, he believes again that he’s meant to be here, that the thing he’s hunting is something he will one day catch and hang on his wall. Point to it and say, I did it, it was worth it, this proves it, it’s done.
A no-stakes race against a reality television producer, while the camera isn’t even pointed at them, is not the place where Shane would expect to encounter that feeling, which is rare and growing rarer with the clock counting down on the final game of every season he plays.
Somehow, it is.
"Huh," Shane says when they're done. He's breathing very heavily. Panting might be a good word for it.
"Hmm," Rozanov agrees. There's some sweat plastering his hair to his forehead, but he doesn't even look that winded. Whatever. It's not like Shane hadn't noticed that the guy's in great shape.
Shane asks, more curious than pissed off, "So. You do this a lot?"
Rozanov shrugs. "A few times."
Shane raises an eyebrow. "I think maybe more than a few times." His heart is hammering. He didn't really think the guy would make a race of it, so he'd headed into their second lap trailing and had to burn a lot of energy to catch up. In the end, he'd won, but Rozanov had been practically photo-finish distance behind him.
He's very, very fast.
"Were you—a figure skater?" Shane asks. "How—where did you learn to skate like that?"
Rozanov leans against the boards, shaking his head. "Not figure skating. хоккей."
That's one word in Russian that Shane actually knows. Shane stares at him.
"You played hockey?" Of course he fucking did. He's almost two meters tall, and he's built like he could lay a guy out with a good hit and then eat his liver. He skates beautifully. God, he was so fucking fast. Shane wonders the last time he'd been on the ice. "Did you ever think about going pro?"
Rozanov stares at him, face still as ever, then shakes his head again. Slowly, he says, "Maybe once, but—" he pauses. Sometimes he does that, when he's searching for an English word, but Shane doesn't think he's translating. It looks more like he's deciding what to tell Shane, which for some reason makes Shane's chest constrict. "Something happened," Rozanov decides. "Could not play anymore."
Shane hears that for the end of the conversation about Ilya Rozanov's hockey career that it is.
"Oh," Shane says. "Well. That's too bad. It would have been fun to play against you."
Rozanov smiles. "Ah, but then we could not do this. A date together." He gestures to the side of the rink, where the confessionals must have wrapped up and the flock of girls and cameras are making their way back to the ice. "Very scandalous date. Twelvesome."
"Ha." Shane swallows. He needs to rehydrate after that race. His throat is really dry. "I think that's just called an orgy."
Rozanov grins again. "No, Hollander. This is called 'great television.'" He skates right up to Shane, popping the imaginary bubble of personal space that feels so much more porous around Rozanov than anyone else on the crew. "Come on, let's get you to flirt with some hot women. Don't worry, I will tell you what to say."