how about some hidden gem fic recs? hr stories i can't stop thinking about & have been shocked to see have hits in the triple or quadruple digits, in a fandom where a big fic will occasionally creep into the millions? let's hear it for the pure gold that's sitting in the ao3 feed, just waiting to be discovered & enjoyed & shared... anyway here are some of my favorites with under 10k hits <3
Casablanca Games by @jenyakeefe
Ilya looks up from the chessboard and catches Shane staring. Ilya winks. Shane averts his eyes. Ilya moves his bishop and says, “Check.” Three moves later and he’s won. “Good game,” Shane says stiffly. His face feels hot. His heart is pounding. “Hah! Very good game! Yes!” Ilya bounces in his chair, his smile as wide and triumphant as if he’d just won the War. “What do I get?”
it's a casablanca (1942) au... it's a wwii spy thriller... it's a chess match... it's love!!!
The Apartment by allapologies
“You are acting like no one has ever done this to you before.” “Not true,” Shane mumbles. “No,” Ilya agrees. “You do this with Butler. In my house.” He leans in, whispers right into Shane’s ear: “But he is bad at it, I think. Or you would not be acting like this, just from a little touch.” Ilya reluctantly lends his apartment to the captain of the Boston Raiders, who uses it to conduct an extramarital affair. Unfortunately, his captain's mistress turns out to be Shane Hollander.
okay yes it's another classic film au (the apartment 1960). i like what i like! this time the shape of the plot is modernized and mapped onto hockey, with gasp-inducing results!
A Side Door Into the Dark by magnetica
Amundsen-Scott Station, Antarctica In grad school the only flirting he had mastered was the strategic deployment of phrases like ‘oh, really?’ and ‘is that so?’ It was brought to his attention by one of his more regular hookups in the kitchen of his apartment while they were cooking dinner, and he had said whenever Shane wanted to fuck he started talking like a coastal elite college girl who’d never had to ask for it outright. Now, in this strange point of contact with Ilya where it was obvious something vaguely carnal had passed between them, he thought about emulating his particular brand of assured charm. Whatever ideas he’d concocted devolved rather quickly into his own unintentional directness, and he said, “Does it scare you?” “Does climatology scare you?” Ilya’s face was measured and calm, his foot still pressed against the curved joint above Shane’s heel. “Yeah,” the word came out like a laugh, “it does, actually. A lot.”
what if they were researchers wintering together in the isolation of antarctica... what if they got to connect far, far away from the outside world... and then what if the outside world suddenly appeared on the horizon?
Leave Your Life Open by @sexcromancy
It doesn’t take Ilya long; he was worked up already. And the knowledge that this is the bot that so often bested him on the ice, about whom a commentator once said “matches Rozanov in everything and beats him with the cool head advantage,” makes everything hotter. His supplication for Ilya. Taking orders. Ilya always thought sex with a robot would feel like that in a cold, abject way. He likes push and pull with girls especially, he likes when they obviously want it. But the bot – Shane – does suck dick like he wants it; like he needs it, really.
i thought i knew what this was going to be, and i have never been more delighted to be 1) pretty much right, and 2) completely wrong, both at once. it is so, so much more than the premise. must-read! shanebot my best friend shanebot!
Language Acquisition by @space-bakery
Ilya was nineteen when he moved to the US. Nineteen years of Russia. Over half a decade of Russian summers after that to re-up. His brain, Shane knew, operated in Russian.
it's about language... it's about communication... it's about love!!!
North American Sentimentalities by courierstruck
Over the course of the three days, there are plenty of opportunities to tell Shane about Moscow. There’s dinner the first night. They’re having pasta and salmon and Ilya’s whining about the amount of chicken and beef they’ll have to eat now that bulking season is approaching. Shane says well, they’re high protein foods. Like Ilya isn’t also a professional athlete who’s been doing this for just as long as he has. That’s not what he shoots back, though. He says, lamb is a great source of protein but we never have lamb. Okay, good lamb’s hard to find. You know what has lamb? Pelmeni! We should get Russian take out sometime soon, Shane says. I’ve always wanted to try. And always means nothing in this sentence, because always is only as long as they’ve known each other for. Forget about take out, Ilya could say then. The best pelmeni can only be found in the motherland. Russia, Moscow! I am going there in ten days for a box of my dead-dad’s things and maybe, my dead-mother’s suicide note. But of course, he doesn’t.
home... the things you leave behind when you leave it... the things you carry with you... the people who help you carry it!
okay that's it for now, hope you enjoy :)
