heated rivalry fic recs! (absolute favorites in red)
like one of your girls - shane hollander's internalized homophobia and his jealousy duke it out. this was one of the first fics i read in the hr fandom that actually engaged with how a brutal sport and culture would messily intersect with desire and it's so good
tongues a-wagging - shane starts learning russian from a russian player. who isn't ilya. the monologue in chapter 2 actually made me insane
clear to a hedgehog - ilya is a hockey player, shane is a doctor, ilya thinks shane thinks he's a mobster, they still fall in love
the belly of the whale - shane as a creature that rejects all indulgence, except one, even though it won't love him back (or so he tells himself)
Rotten Saints - ilya going through the downward spiral of self-hatred leading him to propose that shane can sleep with other people, melancholy and beautifully written
Teenage Dirtbag - snapshots of ilya's childhood in russia, or my favorite crackfic in the fandom
World on Your Shoulders - a panacea to all the attempted woobiefication of shane hollander, who, as should be remembered, is a hockey captain with all the baggage that comes with it
Luchik, Darling - ilya and irina and russia and that odd grief of realizing your home isn't your home anymore, gorgeous prose
Dig Two Graves - wherein the centaurs-voyageurs feud gets ugly. this one is bleak and brutal but excellent if you're in the mood to get emotionally eviscerated
lone star series - hollanov and the existencial horror of the self and children, told through an abortion, a miscarriage and an adoption
Friendship in Retrospect - cliff marleau befriends ilya in the way one befriends a stray cat
free rein - i'll just drop a quote here: "You are not a god, Hollander told him once. But, oh. When he looked at Ilya like that."
as you mean to go on - babysitting the pike kids and the angst of wishing for the unattainable normalcies of other people's lives
Halt and Catch Fire - a massive data leak forces shane and ilya to go through the horrors of bureaucratized mhl homophobia, unconventional format with extensive research
Gambit - butch4(closeted)butch hollanov, wherein chess is sex
#noticing - svetlana and shane run into each other in a bar during the rose landry era
Pale Imitations - from the author's summary: "everything is about smoking, except for smoking which is about Shane Hollander"
Good Losing - alpha/alpha hollanov and the perversity of sexuality going up against what should be your nature
return of spontaneous circulation series - they're paramedics, written with incredibly verosimilitude as a medical drama (part 3 is also just *fans my face*)
coach, I'm threading needles - shane attempts to get better at saying no to ilya, ilya responds like any sane person would and sleeps with a girl in shane's jersey
we're strangers, we're not friends - ilya's rookie year as a mildly disastrous teenager
A Good Latch - per the author's tags: "tfw you want to knock Shane up and end up contemplating what it means to parent," incredibly fun
Old Habits - shane meets sasha at svetlana's birthday celebration, or: a spiritual successor to the scene where ilya rejects sasha and then looks at his phone at the thread from jane
behind enemy lines - the daemon au where they're also soulmates and find out in possibly the worst scenario (sochi)
autoclave - fuck or die with all the angsty consequences
Observations on Fatherhood - shane and david hollander and the pain of knowing you can only try to protect your child from the world
Wreck My Plans - shane attempts to deal with his feelings for his rival by setting up rules to guide himself by to not get too close. if he's succeeding or not is debatable
The Great Jane Debacle of 2016 - the raiders get stuck with post-tuna melt ilya's crashout, texting fic, hits the sweet spot of crack-angst
Sunday Blue - an absolutely dizzying cnc fic. they're insane about each other and it's so good
A Study in Denial - that feeling when you run into your ex-situationship in the bathroom of the club you're at with your hetcomp girlfriend and you're Totally Over Each Other
four steps to death - or: how to mourn a brother who hated you in a country that's becoming foreign to you
About Summer - the plane disappears, but ilya comes back. so i know i said that DTG was devastating but this. this one actually made me sob—"You will see the blue sky and think I saw that too. And listen to cicadas and you will remember golden dog days and being alive in the wrong hour of the world. You will think summer and then think of these things and then of me."
one of your eyes is always half-shut (something happened when you were a kid) - alexei rozanov's run out of luck in a long luck-less life with a mother who hated him and a brother who's too soft
Change Your Win Conditions - ilya's career-ending injury before he and shane can get back together means he becomes the centaurs' coach. shane finds him anyway
Dinner Tonight? - when you realize you're married and haven't been on a date before, which must be rectified in the most chaotic and perfect way imaginable, feat. a meet-cute in the grocery store, wedding ring theft and the misuse of the word "bro"
Table for Two? - in a similar vein to the above, ilya attempts to ask out shane for years during their situationship, one of the best takes on the oblivious trope i've read
Tuna Melts and Longitudinal Studies - the tuna melt incident, before and after, as seen by ilya's reddit posts, with some absolutely devastating banger lines snuck in with the crack
Fuckboy Fuzz - scott hunter and that olympics story where a medalist used his speech to beg for his girlfriend back, skip-style
Asylum - hollanov's centaurs stanley cup win sparks a backlash while ilya's trying to get canadian citizenship, feat. internet hate campaigns, lawyers and immigration (and also spine-chillingly good writing of how good exactly shane and ilya are on the ice together)
smoke on skin - rose landry's relationship to fame, identity, smoking, and ilya rozanov
it waits for you in the shadows - the ilya domdrop fic
Only You (Could Ruin Me Like This) - shane drunk-dials ilya after the club scene
Buzzer Beater series - orgasm denial, the ocean scene in part 2 is insane
and i'll show you fearless - under-negotiated kink as character study my beloved, incredible writing: "Shane is staring up at him with the moon in his mouth, bright and defenceless. Ilya gets the idea that even if he’d thrown a fist into Shane’s face at this moment, Shane would either let it pass through him like air, or else he would ask how many more times he could be hit."
wait for a different ending - another ilya goes to russia for the last time fic, feat. impulsive dog adoption
holy matrimony - that feeling when you marry the love of your life hastily in secret in a tiny office and for years it's a secret and it's enough but now you're faced with all the things you could have had at the wedding of the other big gay couple and it's tearing at your heart
virtue theory - shane hollander vs. the awful reality of the possibility of failure even if no mistakes were made
mosquito - in complete contrast to the above, ilya rozanov & the trainwreck experience of never denying yourself anything and then crashing out after being denied
anybody like you - shane and shane's figure skating buddy joe, or: closeted man is amazed at his comfort in a new group of friends, not knowing they're queer
6:00am, day after christmas - another shanebortion fic, nobody is having a good time but they're trying
sun bleached flies - svetlana on slowly finding your best friend unknowable, feat. the nuclear poison atmosphere of the rozanov household
no roses for my grave - ilya on the pain of being grigoryevich and, as fiona apple once said, "hunger hurts and i want him so bad, oh it kills"
pierce through me (hit me so physical) - ilya gets his ears pierced and shane is So Normal about it
oh come on shotgun bride - short but excellent fic with yuna & ilya
winners-verse series - so you know how by moving to ottowa ilya's ended the rivalry by downgrading? and how love and resentment don't cancel each other out but can grow together like a twisted tree? how the best intentions can have painful results and sometimes the only thing to do is to learn to live with it? this series is genuinely so fucking amazing, part 2 especially with the realization that love made me do this incredibly stupid thing and i hate it but i can't stop loving you. good stuff (also part 3 just dropped and it is !!!)
snapping birch - david hollander's phone gets hacked, prompting an outing and a twitter meltdown, directly engages with how exactly did it come to the point that shane didn't want to come out to his parents despite them trying to do their best
another uninnocent, elegant fall - aka what a messy celebrity ilya life would look like
Geryon - ilya, less than healthy sexuality and consent issues on all sides
Game Day - last addition, but i just finished this, great dark humor and an absolutely hysterical twist (but also remember it's dark humor)
edit: ok so this got more attention than i expected, ty! also go and comment on the fics!
