28, they/them, lotts on AO3! Feel free to ask/message me here, drop prompts/send requests! Please keep all works posted on this blog contained in fandom spaces, especially RPF. Try and keep stuff out of Google results as much as possible! I can't promise a response to every prompt, but please keep sending them, I love to hear people's thoughts and ideas!
Shane doesn't move when he feels the barrel of the gun pressed against the back of his head and hears the distinct click of the safety being turned off.
“I think there's been a misunderstanding,” he says, keeping his voice level.
you see, if something is confirmed canon by word of the author but not on screen, it's an incontrovertible piece of lore if i personally like it and and an irrelevant factoid if i don't
if schaef was on degrassi his whole storyline would've been a parentified teen trying to keep his head above water and look after all his younger siblings, but all he wants to do is play basketball (there was no hockey in early degrassi next gen). so a trusted teacher/coach/whatever senses something is up and tries to help schaef but that only makes him freak out so naturally the only thing he can think to do is plant suggestive pics of himself in that teacher's desk to get them fired. but it backfires and the police place all his siblings in foster care and schaef runs away and starts sleeping in an abandoned van down at the ravine. and he's gay.
Reading Ilya as having suspicions of Shane being either specifically gay or specifically bi is almost a separate question in my mind compared to what I see happening in the tuna melt scene. There's a mindset in certain male homosocial environments where you can be young, horny, get up to whatever with your equally young and horny pals, fool around, tell yourself you're just "blowing off steam" or whatever, and the fact that you will grow up and settle down with a woman will still remain unquestioned. This mindset considers any homosexual experiences in these environments as irrelevant, meaningless, in an entirely separate category than pursuing a woman to date, marry, etc.
What Ilya is volunteering here when he says, "I like girls, but I also like you," is the idea of putting what he has with Shane on the same level as what he might have, in a fully societally-sanctioned way, with a woman. The question isn't really about whether or not Shane likes girls -- it's about whether Shane can acknowledge that he likes men and/or Ilya the same way he might like (might be expected to like, expects himself to like) girls.
Why would Ilya care whether Shane is gay vs. bi? He doesn't. He wants to know what Shane is perhaps getting up to with girls, if anything, presumably in private since he hasn't heard of anything, so he can gauge where their thing ranks in Shane's life, if Shane is even consciously ranking it at all. He's probing whether Shane is interested in/capable of seeing what they have as a relationship, as anything other than "a bad idea."
And Ilya is precisely right to probe this, because Shane isn't acknowledging it to himself yet! Shane is so utterly drawn to Ilya, yet his internal self-talk is still completely about how he shouldn't be doing this, can't keep doing this, he keeps going back to him because his resolve is weak, he'll end it next time, etc. etc. He absolutely refuses to entertain an image of himself as a queer man who is simply and normally and mutually attracted to Ilya, which means he is deluding himself out of the context he needs to interpret Ilya's overtures here.
Ilya begins by describing his relationship with Svetlana as long-standing and intimate both sexually and personally but ultimately not romantic and, more importantly, not threatening to what he might feel towards certain other people who may or may not be sitting on his sofa eating a tuna melt. I mean, for all Ilya knows, Shane might have turned this around and said, "well sure, of course, that sounds the same as what we're doing: we're old friends now who fuck regularly because it's convenient but it's not more than that," and that would be an answer for Ilya. But that would require Shane to admit to himself that yes, he is regularly fucking a man in a way he enjoys and means to continue, and he's still so far from being able to do that! So instead, all Shane hears from Ilya is a locker room brag, just another element of their 'rivalry' where Ilya can beat him by pulling more women than he ever could or wanted to.
And when Ilya offers, "I like girls, but I also like you," what is Shane not able to say in response to Ilya offering that he likes both girls and Shane? That he likes Ilya back. He can lie that he likes women, 'of course' he likes women, but silence re: liking men/Ilya. He has not reckoned with his attraction to men/Ilya in relation to his self-perception at all, and that is why Ilya is asking, what Ilya is nudging him to do, in the most relaxed, comforting, safe environment that Ilya could think of to create for them. The phone call bails Shane out, and he's able to bring things back around to more "meaningless" sex without fielding any more personal questions that he can't answer. But obviously the sex is not meaningless and when Ilya slips up and uses Shane's first name and Shane responds in kind, Shane is confronted with the idea that what they're doing isn't some kind of "blowing off steam" mutually meaningless whatever thing, that that's not how Ilya has been viewing it, so he panics. The idea that Ilya has been pursuing sex with Shane while actively conceiving of himself (and almost certainly, by extension, Shane) as a queer man, and now might even be trying to pursue something more with him, throws water on all Shane's self-delusions.
From Ilya's perspective, Shane's response is devastating. Ilya may as well have fallen for a straight guy, for all that Shane is available to him, for all that Shane is able to acknowledge his queerness to anyone at this point, including himself. Shane publicly dating Rose is the final nail in the coffin -- Ilya has clearly spooked him so badly by trying to talk about their relationship in any terms other than "a bad idea" that Shane had to get a celebrity girlfriend to push their hookups back into meaninglessness.
It's not until Shane tries and fails at dating Rose and she sorts him out that Shane can come back to Ilya, self-delusions discarded, and answer all these questions honestly: I actually don't like women that way, I think I'm gay, yes completely, I do like you, I can't keep pretending I don't.
Heated Rivalry: nothing but some heartburn, baby by SirMxALotts
Posted by: mific
Fandom: Game Changers series
Characters/Pairings: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Rating: Explicit
Length: 4639
Content Notes: Discussion of unplanned pregnancy and of abortion as a treatment option. Brief mention of a tapeworm analogy.
Creator Links: SirMxALotts on AO3
Themes: Crack treated seriously, AU, Canon LGBTQ+ characters, Mpreg, Established relationship
Summary: Most people in Shane’s position would call a doctor after two positive tests, but Shane isn't most people, so instead of doing that, he takes 17 tests over the course of two days.
Final result: 16 positive, one negative.
Reccer's Notes: A classic crack trope this time: Mpreg. The reason why a man could become pregnant in this AU isn't given, nor why Shane did nothing to prevent it (or didn't expect it), but it has happened so he faces a choice. This is where the "taken seriously" part comes in, as it's the same difficult choice any woman faces with an unplanned pregnancy. Rather than an unrealistic tropey outcome, Shane (after ignoring the whole problem for a while) finally talks to Ilya about it and makes his decision. I enjoyed the realism and the way Ilya was supportive without trying to persuade Shane one way or the other. We don't see the final outcome, but the story covers enough so that we know Shane's decision.
mens health posted a vid of Hudson’s workout routine and he kept talking about how Connor is in much better shape and it’s pretty obvious that he puts a lot of pressure on himself to keep up with him.
he said they taught each other stuff in the gym and then “even though he’s just bigger and better in any department. you know, you can always still learn from the smaller, less built guy” boy are you okay?? 😭
oh and in the beginning he casually mentions his dad had him working out since he was six?? def a lot to chew on for fic purposes… let me open a google doc
BOY ARE YOU OKAY??????? we gotta dig into this more... we gotta get inside that boy's psyche. i have probably said this several times now but i DO think that hudson's insecurity/self-doubt covered by his confident cocky bravado could/should be the secret emotional heart of the hudcon dynamic... and then i think connor's slightly wavery sense of self / tendency to get overwhelmed and curl up into himself like a little pillbug combined with his outwardly much cooler, scene-y LA gay energy will chemically interact with hudson's insecurities in fascinating ways... both of them acting totally differently with each other than the roles they're playing in public, but then both of them getting a little in their heads about the public face being the real version of the other one, like maybe the private little dynamic wasn't ever real... but also they’ve got that classic symbiotic weirdo codependent besties who can read each other's minds 90% of the time thing... but then the 10% of the time they can't creates a whooooole lot of angst because neither of them have developed any tools for actually communicating when the mindmeld breaks down... idk i gotta think about it some more!!! anyway tl;dr i'm into the idea that deep down hudson's a little bit (a lot) afraid that connor's cooler than him, sexier than him, has a better body, is a better actor, is more experienced with gay sex, and connor meanwhile feels like hudson has this whole vibrant social life, all these friends, this whole brash public bravado thing where everything seems to just roll right off him, and also hudson's straightish. mostly straight. probably straight? at least straight enough that connor knows to keep his own feelings on a tight leash.
“this is ilya, i will never listen to your voicemail” and shane takes that to heart!!
he thinks ilya doesn't ever listen to his messages, so maybe he starts leaving one here and there. maybe they're nothing really, just a note to say he tried to call. sometimes leaving off with "oh, this is shane. by the way" he calls when he knows ilya won't be able to pick up; "hey, uh. i know you won't get this, but i was thinking about you. i miss you. i know you're just in ottawa but... sometimes it feels a lot further. i love you." and sometimes he'll be watching a game and god. he wants to talk to ilya about that play, so he'll leave message about it. shane never really tells ilya that this is something he does.
ilya knows, of course. watches his voicemail fill up little by little. always makes sure there's space for new ones. has ones that he listens to so often that knows them by heart. memorizes the way shane laughs because he thinks no one will hear it, the sound of his breath on the other line between words. he listens to every one of them.
Took a crack at this -- thank you for letting me play with this amazing premise!
I’ll Talk (Like You’re Listening)
Summary:
Hi. This is Ilya. I will never listen to your voicemail.
The greeting wasn’t a joke or an exaggeration—it was the truth. Shane leaves messages anyway, confessions to a digital void that will never judge him, never push him away.
At least, that’s what he thinks.
Excerpt:
Shane had first heard that message when Ilya disappeared from Boston’s lineup in Nashville. No explanation, just “undisclosed reasons” and a media blackout that meant someone was injured or got arrested. Shane had called from a hallway outside the dressing room, heart hammering, and gotten the voicemail. That flat recorded statement: I will never listen.
Shane had left a message anyway. “Hey, just—saw you didn’t travel with the team. Are you okay? Call me back.”
And… Ilya… had called back, eventually, saying he’d seen Shane call. His father was dead. He was in Moscow. No, he hadn’t listened to whatever boring message he’d left. The greeting wasn’t a joke or an exaggeration—it was the truth. Ilya saw missed calls and responded to those. The actual messages disappeared unheard into the ether.
But when Shane said I’m so sorry, Ilya had made a tight, throaty sound that Shane felt in his own chest.
Before hanging up, Shane had told him: Call me if you need to talk. I’ll listen.
And sometimes they did call, and picked up the phone. And sometimes they didn’t. Ilya never left voicemails. Shane knew Ilya would never listen to any voicemails left for him, but… Shane… kept leaving them anyway. Voicemail-Ilya, with his lush accent around boxy English words, didn’t shut him down.
At first, he left nothing. The missed call notification was enough; a small proof that he’d tried, that he’d thought of Ilya in whatever spare moment he could find between practice and film review and the endless grind of the season. But then one night, alone in his Montreal penthouse with the rain hammering against the window, Shane had called knowing Ilya would be out with his team after their win on the ice, and knowing he wouldn’t answer.
The beep had sounded, and Shane had opened his mouth to hang up, to let the silence speak for itself. Instead, he’d said, “Hey. Just me. I’ll try you later.”
A pause, then: “This is Shane, by the way.”
As if Ilya wouldn’t know.
As if there were anyone else in the world who called him at midnight just to hear the sound of his own thoughts echoing back.
It became a habit after that—little messages left in the gaps between their schedules. Shane would call when he knew Ilya was traveling, or in a game, or three time zones away and definitely asleep. The voicemail would pick up, that familiar recording would play, hi, this is Ilya. I will never listen to your voicemail, and Shane would fill the space with words he couldn’t quite say face to face. Voicemail-Ilya didn’t say “we can’t” or “don’t” or switch to Russian that Shane couldn’t understand.
“I… uh saw your goal tonight. That backhand was disgusting. I mean that as a compliment, obviously.”
“There’s a new Thai place near my place. Thought maybe we could try it—ordering in obviously—when you’re back in town. If you want.”
“Hey, uh. I know you won’t get this, but I was thinking about you. And I… I guess I just realized how long it’s been since I’ve seen you. It feels like I’m on an island, maybe my own planet and you… I don’t know? Somewhere? Somewhere I can’t reach. I know you’re just in Boston but—sometimes it feels a lot further.”
A breath. The rustle of sheets as Shane shifted in bed.
“I… I think I might miss you.” And then: “Fuck,” just before he hung up.
I loved this comment on I'll Talk (Like You're Listening) so much that I couldn't resist. Here's ~400 words of crack.
Terabyte
Ilya held the phone away from his ear and looked at it incredulously before dragging it back. “What you mean, five hundred gigabytes is ’plenty’?”
“Sir, that’s actually quite a generous amount of storage for personal use—”
“Is not personal use. Is professional.”
“I see. What kind of professional files are we talking about? Video editing? Photography?”
Ilya’s thumb hovered over the screen where Shane’s last voicemail sat, timestamped 2:47 AM, duration 00:47. “Audio files.”
“Audio files don’t typically require that much space unless you’re working with uncompressed formats. Have you considered converting to MP3?”
“No.”
“Well, that could save you significant—”
“I need original quality.”
The customer service rep paused. “Are you a music producer?”
“No.”
“Podcaster?”
“Chert voz’mi, net! No.”
“Then what—”
“Look.” Ilya switched the phone to his other ear. “How much for two terabytes?”
“Two terabytes? Sir, that’s—can I ask how many audio files you have?”
Ilya scrolled idly, glancing at the ever-growing list. 1,847 voicemails. He’d organized them by month, then by time of day, then by—he stopped scrolling. “... Many.”
“Right. Well, two terabytes would run you $99.99 monthly—”
“Fine.”
“—but I really think we should discuss your storage management strategy first. Are these files backed up elsewhere?”
Ilya thought about the external hard drive in his desk drawer. And the second one in his closet which Svetlana had asked about twice. And the USB drive in his gym bag that he refused to explain, because professionally on the ice and extremely unprofessionally off it, he was obsessed with Shane Hollander. “Yes, I am not stupid.”
“Then you could delete some of the physical copies—”
“No! I mean. I need all locations. For safety.”
“For... safety?”
“What if house burns down?”
“Well, that’s exactly why you have the cloud backup, sir. The physical drives would be destroyed, but your files would be safe in the cloud—”
“But what if cloud… breaks?”
A long pause. “The... the cloud doesn’t really ’break,’ sir. There are redundancies built into—”
“Everything breaks. Is technology. You never have phone die?”
“That’s not the same as—”
“Or computer crash? Lose everything?”
“Sir, cloud storage has multiple server backups across—”
“So you admit. Needs multiple backups.”
The rep’s sigh crackled through the speaker. “I’ll upgrade you to two terabytes.”
“Good. And for comparison, three terabytes is how much?”
ok i've been sitting on this ask for a few days while i catch up on reading but i've accepted i will never be fully caught up so here are the fics i keep returning to reread again and again, in no particular order:
Compatible by @jewelledfoxes (18.7k) alternating pov, free use as character study, i love their sexually complementary psychological baggage and the incredible svetlana cameo
Aching, Aching, Aching, and Alive by verbaepulchellae (17k) shane pov, fisting, gratuitous descriptions of ilya's hands, learning to ask for what you want and to adapt when things don't go the way you want
Drive It Like You Stole It by @monstersinthecosmos (12.5k) ilya pov, blurring the top/bottom dom/sub binary, long distance, sexting, fetishizing hockey injuries, imperfect kink negotiation
Dog (3.4k) and Leash (7.2k) by @agoodsoldier ilya pov, devoted guard dog motif my beloveddd, with bonus exploration of the objectification and commodification inherent to being a professional athlete
Before Swallowing by @theburialofstrawberries (2.1k) shane pov, mommy kink but they're both cis men is a truly galaxy brain take
i see you, i know you, i love you by allapologies (2.4k) ilya pov, shane dealing with hockey-typical racism, idk this felt important and affirming to me as a fellow gaysian
February 14th, 2016 by @tallsinspace (5.3k) shane pov, my needy neurotic king losing the idgaf wars
untouched by @ahotknife (12k) shane pov, the opposite of safe sane and consensual but you can still tell they care about each other even though they're soooo bad at communicating and negotiating kink
Holding Patterns by @thecouchsofa (5.8k) shane pov, shane tops and tries desperately to last while ilya calls him a good boy that's all
i can take a little bit more by bee_slut (1.6k) ilya pov, hypersexuality as a coping mechanism, mild dubcon until they communicate about it
a history by laundry (lovesjar) (7.8k) shane pov, dead dove do not eat, childhood sexual abuse, repressed memories, *richard siken voice* the enormity of my desire disgusts me
Ilya Rozanov Gets Railed by GlitterCity (13.7k) shane pov, literally exactly what the title says, feels real and lived-in years post-canon
nothing but some heartburn, baby by @lottswrites (4.6k) shane pov, telling your situationship you're getting an mpreg abortion
"How do you write such realistic dialogue-" I TALK TO MYSELF. I TALK TO MYSELF AND I PRETEND I AM THE ONE SAYING THE LINE. LIKE SANITY IS SLOWLY SLIPPING FROM BETWEEN MY FINGERS WITH EVERY MEASLY WORD THEY TYPE OUT. THAT IS HOW.
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