thy morning must have night

dee. she/her. welcome to the mudpit where i roll. sometimes i write things. ao3 | masterlist

[flyora]

Harris do his best as always

[lavenderprose]

hello, would you mind expanding on your shane thrives in grroups of large men tag bc i would like to hear more if you're willing.

Okay so I'm gonna try to put this into words but I also need you to bear with me because it's gonna sound a bit wild at first.

Shane Hollander is a pick me.

STOP THROWING TOMATOES HEAR ME OUT. Yes I know pick me is a loaded term. I've known a couple of pick mes and they were actually really lovely girls who had been so conditioned to behave only in the most male-attention-oriented ways that it literally broke them. Yes I know this is not the universal experience but honestly I think it's more common than anybody realizes. We live in a society etc. etc.

So enter Shane Hollander who grew up in locker rooms. He has spent most of his life courting and thriving on male attention purely by necessity. If you want to do well at sport you need to perform at a level that catches the attention of your (male) coaches and your (male) teammates and your (male) rivals on the opposing team. As a gay man, this almost definitely crossed some wires for him. He wants every man in that room to want to be him. He wants every man in that room to want him, sickly and carnally. And some of this is latent and internalized to hell while some of it he is painfully aware of, most notably when he is jerking off and allows himself to think about kneeling in a room full of men who are all fighting over who gets to fuck him first--

I mean, you get the POINT.

So yeah Shane thrives in groups of men. He's their guy, he's their good hockey boy. The inherent assumed heterosexuality of the spaces he orbits in allow him to flirt kind of WILDLY with some of these guys and nobody is any the wiser because these highly masculine spaces are also, paradoxically, highly homoerotic to the point where male bonding is valued highest above almost any other relationship one can have. And Shane, who is Actually Gay and genuinely does WANT that attention, even latently, is very good at male bonding (read: flirting.) You'll look great in silver, Vaughny. See You In October [wink].

Crucially, Shane doesn't really realize that he's doing any of this.

It's probably part of how Ilya clocks his shit. The way Shane behaved around him at the CCM shoot is probably not all that different from how Shane approached other men in his social sphere who he wanted to impress or to be impressed by him. But Ilya, who is enlightened to those tactics by being actually queer, sees it for what it is.

The other major key factor in Shane's ability to thrive in rooms full of men is that he very early on becomes an object of envy for these guys. He's hockey Jesus. He's a generational talent. Honestly, some of these guys probably WOULD like to fuck Shane Hollander if they had it in writing that it didn't make them gay, no way, doesn't count if it's Shane Hollander, that's basically the same as putting your dick in hockey itself,

And yeah maybe that's also something that Shane has fantasies about.

Then again, the pick me analogy isn't perfect because Shane actually IS in a position to be coveted by the people whose attention he craves, just not in any way that is actually accessible to him. And not in any way that he would actually admit to himself he wants.

Again, this is part of the reason why his relationship with Ilya goes down the way it does. Part of Shane KNOWS that he is Ilya Rozanov's perfect little slut and that Ilya Does Not Know How To Quit Him. At some point years down the line Shane will actually be able to admit this to himself and it WILL make him a slightly worse version of himself, but only in ways that make Ilya that much more insane about him.

[ilyashaneconnorhudson]

x

[tieflingteef]

making every conversation into being about The Character with the same reliability and conviction of a youth pastor going “you know who else partied? our lord and savior”

[ahsoka-in-a-hood]

Apparently some people still need to hear this so: using an 'ai checker' is still using ai. If you are feeding someone's fic to one of these checkers, you will still not be sure their fic is ai because they are not 100% accurate, but you can be 100% sure that you are using ai. For fic. Furthermore you are doing the work of an ai scraper for them. You are, personally, feeding the machine. There is no actual excuse for using an ai checker on fanfic as a hobby. YOU are the problem.

If you think a fic is ai, mute it and move on. That's it. That's all you do.

[ahsoka-in-a-hood]

Um. Yikes

[russianblush]

#the ungodly amount of restraint its taking for ilya not to reach out and touch him

[ilyapasta]

Connor Storrie was born to do the Ilya Rozanov cathartic entryway cry while Shane drives away the morning after the gladiator costume sex evening. Jacob Tierney knew this. He knew that jerking it in the shower and the russian monologue was only the beginning.

[vesnuszki]

i wanted to say something about cliff and ilya rating each others nudes

first of all they absolutely rate each others nudes, sometimes they send them not even with the intention to send the nudes so someone else, just for the hell of it, just to have the other saying hell yeah brother looking good, just to boost self esteem

second of all while the idea of them 10/10ing each picture is funny and appealing to me, i had a vision in which i saw the most meticulous earnest constructive criticism in order to help the other achieve absolute perfection

-(a dick pic, full light) move your hand down a bit, will make it seem bigger and maybe turn down the light a bit, give it an aura of mystery

-(navel to mid thigh, a giant hickey right where the pubes line starts) damn roz, who did this to you? (ilya says you should see the other guy. marley doesn’t catch on)

-(mirror selfie, full frontal) marley don’t you have a mirror outside of the bathroom? the toilet in the background is a bit of a buzzkill

-(hands down pants, dick fully erect) love the vibe but there is a giant hole in your boxers, maybe change those

-(bedroom vanity mirror, sweaty abs) damn roz someone in the bed with you? the lightnings dope but don’t send this to anyone with someone with an ass like that in the background

[lavenderprose]

I know we joke about it all the time but hotel room walls are...GENUINELY very thin. The bit in the HR novel where Shane and Ilya fuck in the shower so that the water drowns out the sounds actually rang as extremely accurate to me. Like, the lack of boundaries that must exist not just for the Centaurs but for ANYBODY who spends a significant amount of time sharing hotel room walls with their teammates is just unbelievable.

Like, on any given roadie the people sharing walls with the Hollanovs can expect to overhear:

- One side of phone calls between Shane and his mother where every third word is FUCK and Shane's voice gets higher the more he works himself up about whatever league drama is pissing him off that week

- Ilya yelling in Russian (Non sex reasons) (He and Svetlana are talking about Matheson in Colorado. Again.)

- Ilya gets hay fever real bad in Seattle and spends an entire night sneezing at EAR SPLITTING volume, each sneeze followed by a, "AHH!" from Shane as he is startled awake. Again.

- The Christmas wish lists of every Pike child and how they're going to be divvy'd up for the year. This conversation takes place in September.

- "I'm telling you, the penalty kill could be a work of fucking art if Haas--oh fuck, right there, don't stop--"

- As stated before, an objectively obnoxious amount of showering is happening. At one point LaPointe turns to Bood and says something to the effect of, "Crazy that Hollander takes TWO showers after every game, I guess he really is superstitious," and Bood just. Chooses not to engage.

- A thunderous and almighty BANG. This is the sound of Ilya's suitcase hitting the floor after it inevitably slides off the bed.

- "Shaaaaane, look at the livestream from the dog hotel--look at how cute! She is so sleepy, she's holding her banana like a baaaaby--"

- Vin Diesel's voice, unimaginably loud, at one AM

- Russian Yelling (Non sex reasons) (Sasha did something stupid)

- "Unh unh unh UNH UNH UNH--" (Squeak. Squeak.)

- Celtics game. Twenty minutes beforehand: "Fuck, Shane, how do I get ESPN on the stupid--Roku stick thing--"

- "Okay, look, your dad played the word veer--is not real word, right? Like, deer with a V? It's real? Shane, we can't let your dad win--no, it's not cheating, he gets Yuna's help--"

- Stuff about Rose Landry's upcoming film that they should probably all sign NDAs for even thinking about.

- Russian Yelling (Sex reasons. Probably. It sounds...ardent.)

- One time, for an entire night, silence. The day immediately preceeding this night and the morning immediately after are best left unspoken about.

- The sound of Shane's fuckass electric toothbrush for WAY too long. Seriously man it cannot be healthy to brush your teeth for that lo--oh. Got it. Okay. Where are my earbuds.

- "I mean, it's not like I'm sixteen anymore, right? It's just that sometimes I think she looks at me and sees a fucking kid still, and I get it, I get it--and fuck, babe, I know it's not fair to feel this way, she's the only mom I'll ever have, and you don't even--ugh--"

- "I'm so terribly sorry the hotel misplaced your bags, Mister Rozanov. If there's any way that we can...make it up to you..." [Giggle. Kissing sound. Kissing sound. Moan.]

- Banging on the wall and, "KEEP IT DOWN, ROOK," the one. Singular. Time. That Holmberg manages to pull on their West Coast roadie. Which may or may not be the beginning of his villain origin story.

[thesedarkcafedays]

Heated Rivalry Week 2026 Day 3: Favourite Kiss/Hug

Worth the wait?

[russianblush]

me @ my mutuals

[thirdity]

“You write the beginning and then you go back and rewrite the beginning, and you never got off page one. It’s kind of a syndrome, and I have a rash piece of advice which is — Go on, page two, page three, and never look back. Get something finished, no matter how lousy it is. […] Perfectionists cannot get going unless they kind of do violence to their own instincts, and just blast ahead.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Last Interview and Other Conversations

[aggot]

everyone wants masc carpenter trade until his rough calloused handjob sands your thing down small and smooth as a river stone

[cucurb]

hey guysss so unfortunately the rumors are true and im leaving the narrative. Buttt the good news is my absence will create such a gaping hole in your lives that it will become a sort of presence itself, and so in a way it will kind of be like i never left! But i am. Leaving just to be clear.

[shilyas]

condo stairway scene gets me every single time bc of the way ilya lingers. the way he takes way too long to tie his shoes & adjust his jeans, the way he stands for a moment even though his cab is definitely there & the way he teases shane as he slowly lowers himself to give the sweetest, most unhurried kiss goodbye.

[gloryhollanovjah]

I just don't think we're talking about Shane at the aquarium enough

[homunculus-argument]

A free-range group therapy called "get herded, idiot", where you and everyone in your group is set loose to run around on an open field while a highly trained shepherd dog tries to keep you all in one group. I am not sure what benefit this would have for anyone involved.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

This would fix everyone involved including the dog