This is for @citrusses, who asked for HR recs. These are not new recs, quite the contrary, these are all older stories that I've downloaded to my Kindle for frequent re-reading because I love them so much.
1) and i spit out the seed . AU, of the canon divergence kind. Basically Ilya and Shane get outed much earlier than in canon. Amazing characterisation and dialogue. The first HR fic I read basically.
2)Now, I normally don't care for AUs where they boys have a different profession, because despite how relatively little hockey there is in canon, the world of pro hockey is so much part of who Ilya and Shane are, and their dynamic, that I feel taking it away would make them unrecognisable...This fic here is the one exception so far. Ilya is still a hockey player, Shane is a surgeon. And it makes so much sense! Please give it a chance, you won't regret it.
clear to a hedgehog . 12 K
Every Boston Raider knows that although their captain has a girl in every port, he’s got a soft spot for the one in Montreal. Dr. Shane Hollander knows it’s better to have a semi-regular source of casual sex than try to make a relationship work during residency. Ilya Rozanov knows that the doctor he’s fucking in Montreal is unaware that he plays hockey, and in fact probably thinks he’s Bratva.
3)english as a second language | 7.1K | set post 1.06, at the cottage | Shane's been fucking Ilya Rozanov for a decade and yet somehow the more time they spend together the more he realizes how little he actually knows about Ilya, like, as a person. As a partner. Again, he wishes he spoke Russian. That they had any shared native language besides sex and hockey.| This is one of my all-time favourite fic in this fandom. And I have read A LOT of fic, not literally all of it, but surely it is not for lack of trying. This is absolutely perfect Shane POV. And it features a lovely reflection on language and what it means. I teach English as a foreign language, so any story that focuses on this will always have a special place in my heart.
4)Too ripe not to split | 2.6K | Ilya rocks his hips up. “No, Hollander. Keep up. I want to meet your dildo.” He enjoys enunciating the word. Tries to give it a bit of a whiny Canadian inflection. “You remember? You told me about him, back in Vegas.”| Hot, hot, hot. Supernova hot. Perfect character voices too.
5)A Dozen Forget-Me-Nots | 6K | Hayden doesn't have hanahaki and if he does, it's purely platonic and if it's not, nobody ever has to know. Especially not Shane| This is Shane/Ilya but also Shane/Pike and Pike/Jackie. But you should read it! Like, I didn't even know this fandom trope, hanahaki diseases, before reading a couple in HR fandom, and it's not something that would appeal to me, but I love a good Hayden POV and also pining/unrequited love, and Pike can be such a moron, but he's a loyal moron. This was lovely.
6) Home Ice Advantage | 51K | Shane gets traded to Boston AU | One of the best AUs of the canon divergence kind out there, because it is plotty but not drawn out. I've already read it a few times and I fervently hope the author will continue the series.
7)black dog | 68 K | Ilya is not going to steal Shane Hollander's dog. That would be illegal. And wrong. And someone would probably find out and make Ilya give him back.| Magical realism. Sucked me in, took me by surprise and blew me away. I'm not saying more because it totally pays to go into this completely unspoiled, just know that I normally can't stand magic realism and I'm so glad this story wasn't tagged as such, otherwise I'd have never given it a chance and I would have seriously missed out.
8) Torture Me (With All I’ve Wanted) | 7K| Regina to Edmonton was nine hours by bus if the weather was decent; it took a bit longer if — for example — your bus lost power on Highway 11 just past Dundurn, Saskatchewan. | AU, canon divergence. During the World Junior CHampionship, the Team Russia bus breaks down and players get split up on the other buses. Guess where Ilya ends up? Amazing, amazing fic. Toomuchplor is probably one of the most talented writers in this fandom. This really captures well that liminal, dreamlike quality of nighttime driving, and our two heroes are believable teenagers.
9) Change Your Win Conditions | 102K | Sometimes life came at you with a clenched fist and Ilya had never figured out how to duck. So here he was, twenty-eight years old, single, dealing with the fallout from injuries given to him by the game he loved, and the second youngest assistant coach in the league to one of the worst teams. Stability was hard to come by, but he was managing. Then along came Shane Hollander to knock him on his ass, one more time.| My obsession with AUs in the fandom stems probably from the fact that canon is so perfect as it is and there's only a certain amount of missing scenes/fill-in-the-gaps I can take. But taking out characters, changing their context/giving them a new challenge and seeing how the consequences spins out and yet they find their way to each other is the most interesting kind of intellectual exercise, to me. Mostly because it comes with all the feels! And this story is a stunning example of all that. What a journey.
10) Drop the Gloves | 8.4K | Shane has been trying to figure out how to ask Ilya to stop using condoms. He finally works up the courage the night Boston eliminates Montreal from the playoffs.| mcshrug writes some of the hottest sex in this fandom (and the bar is quite high). I don't think I need to say more than this. :D
11)i know where to draw the line | 61K | “Hollander’s Metros have had a challenging few years, with back-to-back knee injuries and a concussion keeping the two-time Stanley Cup winner and Olympic gold medalist off the ice for three consecutive postseason runs. Hollander is apparently back to fighting trim, but everyone’s wondering if that will still be true come April. The Metros have promised that they’re behind their franchise star one hundred percent, but there are signs they might be hedging their bets. The Metros announced last week that they have penned a deal with San Francisco’s dynamic young Russian star, center Ilya Rozanov. The move has sent shockwaves through MLH, as San Francisco was widely expected to sign a contract extension with Rozanov, who became a restricted free agent in June.” OR the 2016-2017 MLH season in a world where Shane was born three years earlier and Ilya was born three years later.| magneticwave is an amazing writer. Their other AU (clear to the hedgehog) was quite possibly my all-time fave AU in this fandom - and I have a thing for AUs!...until this one came along. I love how the age gap and Shane's maturity change their dynamic in some ways but also not fundamentally. This is SO well-written and engrossing. And there's so much hockey! And it's central to the story. I'm running out of superlative adjectives to describe this story. It's pathetic.
12)A Well-Organized Life by @409-conflict 11.8K | Shane Hollander is a man who thrives on structure, routine, the solid ground of a ten-year plan. Ilya likes that about him, likes the embracing squeeze of having a life organized in tandem with Shane. No one would call Ilya a man who thrives on structure. But it’s there, if not in his DNA then in the patterns of his brain. A call-and-response of: they do this, I do that. When Ilya’s life is flayed open for the world to dissect, how will they push-and-pull their way back towards what was once a well-organized life?| I normally don't rec WIPs, I'm making an exception for this because I was familiar with the author from The Pitt fandom, they are extremely talented, and I love their characterisation of Ilya especially here, it's so full of details, and his voice is perfect. I think this fic needs way more kudos and comments than it currently has. Go forth and make the author feel the love!
13)the art of long-term cohabitation | 5.5K | “Sometimes, I wish he was a worse person,” Ilya admits one night, while he and Yuna are doing the dishes. Shane and Ilya had come over for chicken parmesan, and it had been a lovely dinner, right up until David, clearing the plates, mentioned that he had met a guy at the store the other day who was a big fan of Shane’s, had a kid who idolized him. David asked if Shane could sign a piece of merchandise for him, maybe record a video. Shane said yes, because he had a rule, about doing things for child fans. Now, Shane was off shooting a video while Ilya did the dishes, and Ilya already knew the way it would require Shane to drag his public face up from the depths of his stomach, the work it would take him to shed it afterwards, the way it would taint this evening.| The summary doesn't really do justice to what I feel is the strength of this piece: it delves into the negative side of being in a committed relationship, the fighting, the difficulty in adjusting to being with another person who is, fundamentally, very different from you, and also how clinical depression might factor in from both sides. I'm making it sound boring and/or sad, when it's not. It's just so real and thought-provoking. And it has great characterisation. This anonymous author has such an excellent grasp on how Shane and Ilya work.
14)Alligator Bites Never Heal by @flawlessassholes| 72K | Remember when Sidney Crosby caught a puck with his jaw? That doesn't happen to Shane. That happens to Ilya.| One of my fave AUs is finally complete! Definitely on a par with 'Concussion Protocol'. Superb! I'm sure you all know it already, judging from the number of hits, kudos and bookmarks.
15) anybody like you | 50K | It gets lonely at the top. In Sochi, unrivaled generational hockey talent Shane Hollander reconnects with his old skate training buddy, Joe.| This is an AU in which Ilya is a figure-skater, while Shane is still Shane. It is, quite simply, one of the best character studies for Shane out there. And what I love the most about it that tit shows us how toxic hockey culture is, how much of a fish out of water Shane is most of the time, and how it shouldn't have to be this way. And the author does it by giving Shane...friends. Non-hockey friends. And they are some of the most glorious OCs out there. There's of course, a fantastic slow-burn Shane/Ilya, but that is not the main draw here. It's, like, the cherry on top of an already awesome cake. This has been downloaded and gone to my absolute favourite collection on my Kindle.
16)Carrion Comfort| Flight 771 shouldn't have been any different than any of the hundreds of other flights that Shane has taken over the course of his career, aside from the fact that it was taking him towards his lifelong dream—towards the Olympics.| You know I normally don't rec WiPs but if you like survival stories, you HAVE TO go read this story and leave a comment every chapter, because it's seriously amazing. Mind the tags, as it is a serious and obviously well-researched story that is not afraid of going dark places. The characterisation is just perfect. And as a language nerd, I just love how Russian is used in this story (yeah, I don't unbderstand a single word of it, but that's what makes it great, that's how we're supposed to feel and the author trusts their readers!). This author deserves all the kudos and comments.
17) Concussion Protocol| Instead of Shane, it is Ilya who suffers a concussion during the Boston-Montreal game in April 2017. Dazed and agitated, Ilya briefly starts speaking and responding only in Russian and the medics can’t calm him down. Luckily, Shane started studying Russian after Ilya spoke to him in Russian on the phone from Moscow. For no particular reason. Certainly not because he’s fallen in love with Ilya Rozanov. | 49K | I have a thing for canon divergence AUs and this is one of my favorite. The sequel is equally good.
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