After telling both @kraeuterhexchen and @ominousmotion about this and both loving it, I finally sat down and wrote my first bullet point story for the HR fandom.
Summary: Set after Shane’s accident in Episode 5, but instead of a concussion, he loses his memory and forgets everything that happened after November 2008. Including Ilya.
TW: Alcohol abuse, brief suicidal thoughts and an author, who is not a native speaker and hasn’t read the books (yet)(Books 1+2 are ordered and set to arrive next week!!).
After the accident on the ice, Shane’s in a coma for a few days & wakes up thinking it is November 2008 & that he needs to pack for the Prospects Cup. He has to skip the rest of the season & move in with his parents for a while.
His phone got broken right before the game, & all of the data was lost — including the text exchanges between Jane & Lilly. With the help of his parents & countless newspaper articles & videos, he manages to recover some of his memories, but he can’t shake the feeling that something very important is missing. Or rather, somebody very important.
Ilya continues playing the season but is a mess. He can’t concentrate & plays the worst games of his life, making everyone wonder when the star player became the star loser.
Off the ice, Ilya is an even worse mess. He isolates himself & pushes everyone away, too scared of accidentally breaking down while not alone & outing Shane & his feelings for him. He drowns his grief in alcohol to forget Shane for at least a few moments & develops an alcohol addiction. Sometimes he tortures himself by drinking while watching old interviews & game videos of Shane, & he always ends up crying himself to sleep on his couch.
The feeling of missing something drives Shane crazy. He can’t sleep & often wakes up thinking about Boston & having the urge to go there. After another sleepless night, he spontaneously flies to Boston. Aimlessly, he wanders through the city until he stumbles upon a very drunk Ilya at a bridge.
Drunken Ilya couldn’t stand being in his apartment anymore, so he wandered aimlessly through the city until he came to the bridge. He thinks about jumping & putting an end to the pain in his heart when suddenly Shane appears next to him. Still drunk, Ilya thinks he is hallucinating & angrily screams at Shane in Russian for forgetting about him & leaving him all alone in this world, just when he had finally admitted to himself that he was in love with Shane.
Shane doesn’t understand a word his rival is saying & people have told him they hate each other, but he can see that Ilya is in a mentally unstable state. Somehow, Shane manages to calm Ilya down & get him to let Shane take him back to his apartment. Even though Shane doesn’t know where Ilya lives, somehow his feet remember the way & successfully lead them there.
At Ilya’s apartment, Shane manages to undress him (leaving him in his boxer shorts) & put him to bed, ignoring the butterflies in his stomach when Ilya lays his head on Shane’s shoulder or the warm feeling left by Ilya’s hands on his skin.
When Shane turns around to leave Ilya’s bedroom, Ilya says, “Shane, stay.” It is the first thing he says to him in English & also the first time that night he says Shane name instead of Hollander. Shane’s mind is telling him to go, but somehow his body doesn’t listen & he lies down next to Ilya, who immediately snuggles up to him. For some strange reason, this feels very familiar, almost like coming home. The two fall asleep & for the first time since the accident, Shane sleeps through the night.
Shane wakes up before Ilya & admires him. He feels the urge to kiss him but decides to get up & make breakfast instead. In Ilya’s kitchen, he suddenly craves tuna melt sandwiches & makes them using a recipe from his head, though he can’t remember where he learned it. Once they are finished, he returns to the bedroom with two plates and finds Ilya quietly sobbing.
Unknown to Shane, Ilya had woken up earlier. He couldn’t remember exactly how Shane had ended up in his bed, but thinking this might be the last time he would ever be this close to the love of his life, he had tried to memorize every little detail about him. Not ready to face Shane, he pretended to still be asleep when Shane woke up & got out of bed. Once Shane was gone, he broke down.
When Shane tries to comfort him, Ilya loses control. He screams in English at Shane, “Why did you forget me? Why did you leave me alone?” & begins to trash his own bedroom. Eventually, Shane manages to stop him & holds him in his arms. While Ilya cries, Shane suddenly sees himself & Ilya in a hotel room, with Shane comforting him the same way he is now. Then he sees the two tuna melt sandwiches forgotten on the dresser. This triggers another memory of them eating tuna melts on the couch in Ilya’s living room. Then, like a sudden tsunami, everything comes back to him.
“Lilly,” Shane breathes out, making Ilya’s head snap up. “Ilya,” he then says — the first time he has used Ilyas first name since they met on the bridge. Shane leans down & kisses him. Ilya is surprised at first but then kisses back once he realizes that Shane remembers them.
No idea yet how the story continues, but Ilya too skips the rest of the season. He makes his alcohol addiction public and goes into rehab. Not wanting to hide any longer, Shane & Ilya make their love public.
it still blows my mind how NONE OF THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN. this was a little canadian production that was going to air on a canadian streaming service and it was MAYBE going to be seen by a few more people outside of canada and MAYBE achieve cult status eventually and these two young guys who were waiting tables this time last year were just happy to be there finally doing creative work that's fulfilling for them and they created a beautiful friendship out of working together and MAYBE they would get a couple hundred thousand new followers out of it to help out their careers and everyone hoped that MAYBE they would get picked up for another season and get to do it again...
now it's the biggest show in the world without even being officially released worldwide and everyone and their mother is talking about it and obsessing over it and analyzing every little detail rewatching it again and again and it became the highest rated show of 2025 and they're playing it at clubs and in gay bars and closeted athletes are sharing their stories with the cast and actual hockey broadcasters are mentioning it podcasters are reacting to it and it's getting awards recognition and these two young actors have charmed the living daylights out of everyone and they got to over a million followers by the time the finale was released and they're doing appearances and interviews and photoshoots and yet it's never enough people want to see them everywhere all the time and they're screaming at them on the street and on tv and THEY WERE WAITING TABLES EIGHT MONTHS AGO
He’s gay. He’s autistic. His special interest is hockey. He’s waisan. He’s a bottom. He speaks French. He wears reading glasses. He doesn’t listen to music. He has an eating disorder. His favorite drink is ginger ale. He’s a sub. He has beautiful freckles. He’s canonically the hottest man in the NHL. He tried really hard and he’s really sorry but he just can’t help it. I love him so much it’s gonna make me puke
The thing is that Ilya has no fucking clue what autism is. He probably read the word when some twitter user called Shane autistic and wanted to look it up but got distracted by a post about Shane's tits or smth.
What he does know though is that Shane folds his clothes before sex. And he smiles at him with adoration when he does it and doesn't rush him or make fun of him for it. He knows Shane doesn't always pick up on his jokes and sarcasm "That's French, Ilya" but he doesn't mind it and would never make Shane feel bad about it or dismiss his response "Yeah I know, Shane". He knows Shane has a PhD in The Arts of Overthinking "Now the bed's all dirty" so he playfully chases his worries away and closes all those open tabs in Shane's brain "What? Shut up". He knows Shane will not rest until he has everything in his life under control so he grumbles when Shane wakes him up in the middle of the night to tell him how they can make it all work but still listens intently to his plan. He knows Shane feels overwhelmed and anxious when stuff doesn't go down as planned "This is my actual fucking nightmare, Ilya" "I'm okay I'm just freaking out I'll be okay in a second" so he softly comforts him and supports him through it "Then maybe it's time to wake up, yes?" "We're good here, your family's here, you're boyfriend's here, we're good here, ok?" He knows Shane has to hear it to believe it "My boyfriend?" so he gently goes "I mean yes, I think so, probably".
He doesn't know Shane is autistic but he knows Shane and he loves Shane and Shane happens to be autistic
