(Of course, Shane is not choosing Sweden. Shane is choosing to Fade Away. Look at him he is Fading :) wait no stop looking!)
(But Montreal is scared and angry because what if he DOES choose Sweden? What if he leaves them? What if the hockey prince of Canada abdicates his throne? For fucking Sweden?? Unacceptable)
(The Choose Sweden billboards get vandalised by so many Montreal citizens. There are hunting parties that drive around to find the billboards and vandalise them so they cannot tempt Hockey Jesus away from them. Some of the billboards get burnt to a husk. It becomes a whole legal thing. The government has to get involved. Please stop burning down Sweden’s billboards, we are working on it, please don’t start a war)
(Montreal, holding a lit Molotov aimed at Sweden: GET YOUR SLUT HANDS OFF OUR HOCKEY BOY)
While in reality:
Shane has no idea this is happening. He is simply Too Offline
Shane is trying so hard to goddamn Fade already and yet he persists in the hearts and minds of men. Thank you so much for these I love them so much
CHICAGO MENTION!!! …HONESTLY KIND OF A BUMMER CHICAGO MENTION BUT I’LL TAKE IT! Really what is more the Chicago Experience than seeing an underwhelming cubs game and having a bad time at Navy Pier before committing egregious traffic violations? Love this city <3
Fun fact about driving back west, if they go through Kansas there’s a point just after Kansas City where you stop being in the vaguely hilly Midwest that makes up Iowa & Missouri and the ground just sort of falls away and the sky gets really big. Which sounds beautiful and poetic but can and will just give you vertigo if you’re not ready for it. Also there’s too many gas stations to really feel the majesty of it all. Great crashout angst material especially if you have to pull over at one of the gas stations to cry out the adrenaline from the Holy Shit The Sky Just Got Big vertigo. And then you get hit with a fuck off massive thunderstorm. And are stuck at your panic attack gas station until it passes.
Another fun fact about driving through Kansas is even at its flattest it’s juuuust hilly enough to make the “how far away is that cow, actually” game interesting bc the hills make judging distance and size surprisingly fucking hard. The *actual* winner of the flattest, worst state to drive through is Nebraska. (And eastern Colorado which is not not west Nebraska.) Do with that what you will.
This is the exact kind of regional knowledge I love to get
"he was miserable and everyone fucking clapped" - I am losing it almost as much as Ilya was 😭
Love the way you thread the cartoon zany-ness of the Raiders' Hunt for Hollander with the underlying dread and horror that Ilya is feeling, it's sooo good
Shane has so many people who love him desperately trying to find him and help him (Ilya - and his team by default, his parents, presumably Hayden and JJ...) but who is doing this for my girl Rose? Does she have anyone in her life in LA who is also crashing out like Ilya?
I really do love the dramatic irony that comes with having the same event be both comedic and emotionally devastating. It’s my favorite thing. And it makes up so much of the Raiders/Ilya plot in this au.
The Raiders’ entire schtick is so funny to me. The worlds most looney tunes ass men on an epic quest to make their best buddy Wife so he will crawl out of their collective ass. They have one brain cell between them and it left for goddamn war the day Shane Hollander bolted from their cap’s house without pausing long enough to grab his fucking underwear. They love Roz to the ends of the earth but Jesus fucking Christ this one’s really taking them to the ends of the earth, isn’t it? They’re trying to pull a reverse hangover. They have the groom and they’re trying to find his spouse-to-be so they can fucking get rid of him and go get blackout drunk.
Ilya meanwhile is trapped in a psychological horror film.
It’s like he’s trying to Groundhog’s Day his mother’s death only his mother’s role has been recast with the love of his fucking life. He is such a goddamn nightmare for the Raiders to deal with but that’s because he’s so fucking desperate to find Shane in time. The Raiders think Roz is crashing out for Want Of His Man and they’re trying to pull him back from the fucking ledge. But Ilya is purposefully trying to hurl himself over so he can grab onto Shane before he’s too far gone.
Like. Fundamentally, they do not understand that they are operating in different genres of story. The Raiders are in a zany 2000s dramatic comedy. They are planes trains and automobiling this shit. But Ilya is headlining some agonizing 1980s Slavic introspection on the torment of man.
And so much of that can be seen in moments like where Ilya is crashing out over Shane kissing that guy at the ball game. The Raiders are out here like, uh, yeah, of course Roz doesn’t want Hollander entering his slut era, dude’s a straight up 11 and Roz is trying to lock that shit down. That’s His Man. He doesn’t want him fooling around with other guys.
Which, on a level, they’re sort of right about. Ilya is fundamentally a Jealous Bitch and that is his beautiful Canadian boy. Do not even think about gazing upon him with lustful intent because only ILYA gets to do that. Those are his freckles to kiss. His mouth to spit in. Is there no respect anymore. If he ever gets the number for Rose Landry’s shitty 2004 hot pink Motorola razr flip phone he is saving that contact as The Woman Shane Tried To Love Instead Of Me.
But also that’s a very surface-level reaction. Ilya’s a rational adult. He can and does set it aside his knee-jerk emotional responses when it’s called for. He’s got got deeper concerns driving him.
Ilya is absolutely fucking tormented by the possibility that Shane is sleeping with other people right now. And that goes much deeper than just Ilya being jealous at the idea of Shane with someone else.
Ilya knows Shane’s self-destructing. He’s worried he’s going to hurt himself with sex.
Like. He fucking hates all the jokes about how Shane Hollander’s finally getting over his bisexual love machine, haha, look at him go, he fucked that super jacked smoothie-making art student. Everyone clap for Shane Hollander entering his slut era.
Ilya’s not just jealous or worried about Shane getting over him. He’s scared.
The entire world is suddenly fucking jazzed at the fact that Shane Hollander is a gay freak sex legend who is on the market for the first time ever, get in now before the opportunity is gone for good. But Shane’s not really in a super great mindset to be making healthy freak sex decisions. He’s suicidal. He’s self-destructing. He’s in the kind of mindset where he may not pump the brakes when he needs to and the person he’s with may not give enough of a shit about Shane as a person to even think about whether he’s okay while they’re having sex.
Ilya doesn’t want Shane to get hurt.
He’s been having the least casual sex imaginable with Shane Hollander for almost a fucking decade. He’s extremely attuned to how that man reacts to intimacy. He can tell when Shane doesn’t like something.
Ilya could tell Shane wasn’t comfortable during the kiss cam incident. He could tell Shane didn’t like it. But apparently no one else could, because they all fucking cheered.
Or maybe they could tell. And they just didn’t fucking care. Maybe they knew he was miserable and they fucking cheered for it.
Critically, Shane let the kiss cam thing happen to begin with. He let it go on for a while. He didn’t like any of it. But he still did it.
It was a confirmation of some of Ilya’s worst fears. Shane’s in a bad enough mindset where he’s letting things happen to his body that he doesn’t like. He’s not stopping it. And the public is jumping at the opportunity. They aren’t stopping him. They’re cheering.
Ilya’s very afraid right now.
Rose does have people raising hell for her. There’s more in depth posts about her trapped in my shameful graveyard of unfinished asks, which. Will hopefully one day escape their tomb. Her asks tend to take way longer to type than Shane’s because there’s so little about her in canon, so I have to type out way more Explanation and Backstory. With Shane I can lean a little more on the context of canon so they go faster. They’re in progress. But here’s a broader overview of the answer to your question in the meantime:
Miles is raising hell for his girl. His boot is on throats. More on this in a Half-Finished Ask but for now just know that he is not taking this lying down. There are other people in Hollywood that are also rallying but like. I don’t even have names from canon I can lean on for them so it’s. It’s a lot of typing.
Rose’s brothers initially try very desperately to find her. But eventually they stop, because they think it’s what’s best for Rose.
I have an explanation in progress for how they take the leak like, emotionally, so I won’t get into that, but just know that when Rose first fucks off, they run the circuit trying to find her. They ask around in LA. They are in New York City begging a very distressed Carter Vaughn for any hints as to where she and Shane Hollander may have gone off to. Carter is. Despondent. He did not fuck that man someone please believe him. Then they’re going back to New York to beg that one jacked art student for any leads he may have. Kip also did not fuck that man and would love it if someone believed him.
They have to stop their search briefly. Because Rose’s parents try to take this opportunity to seize control of her assets in a conservatorship.
For those who don’t know, conservatorships are legal devices that allow someone to seize varying degrees of control over family members who cannot care for themselves properly, i.e., a financial conservatorship where you take over the finances of someone substantially unable to look after their own economic interests. Sometimes child stars end up in them after they crash the fuck out from the abuses of fame, with Brittney Spears being a notable example. Rose is out here crashing the fuck out with the greatest hockey player of all time. She is very much at risk.
Rose’s parents were cut off years ago. They want to worm their way back in and see an opportunity with this. Rose’s brothers are the ones who fight to stop them. And the details of what happens during that arc makes them realize that maybe they need to trust Rose to save herself. The Landry brothers become the only ones in the fic who recognize that the crashout is something that Shane and Rose need to heal right now. They have to let it happen.
The Landry brothers presence and role in this is very different than in snapping birch. In snapping birch, Rose had a much better family situation. She’s very close with her brothers. They’re comfortable with each other and they love each other dearly. But in the child star crashout summer au, Rose and her brothers are borderline strangers. Their relationship was shaped by their parents abuse. Rose was isolated from them at a very young age.
The Landry brothers ended up banding together in their late teens/early 20s to try and unfuck what their parents did to them. They had their own messy healing process and realized too late that Rose was probably just as hurt as they were, if not more hurt. But by that point, they barely had a relationship with her and didn’t know how to fix it. They can’t exactly open with “hey so we all talked about it and we now recognize that our parents pitted us against each other growing up so we’d hate each other instead of recognizing that we were all victims of the same abuse and now we’re wondering if you want to come try to be siblings after 15 years of almost unbroken radio silence.” Like. They can’t just jump her with that. So they send her Christmas cards every year inviting her to come stay a while hoping that maybe one day she’d take them up on it.
The Landry brothers see a lot of themselves in what Shane and Rose are doing right now. They weren’t exactly paradigms of mental health when they were first cutting off their parents. But it’s when their parents try to take away Rose’s freedom again that they realize that Rose is doing exactly what she needs to right now. For her entire life, people have been trying to wrest control out from under her. Her parents did that. Her rapist did that. Her stalkers did that. She needs the freedom and the autonomy fuck off and do whatever the fuck she wants for a while.
She and Shane aren’t just self-destructing mindlessly. They are trying to save themselves. And maybe that’s the only way out of this for them. As it stands, Rose’s brothers can’t see them getting any better just by sleeping in the fucking guest bed with the brothers nearby to be sympathetic and sad. Maybe. Maybe they’re already doing exactly what they need to do right now.
The Landry brothers agonize over the decision. They stay up all night talking about it. But they realize that they don’t know Rose no matter how badly they wish they did, and they do not know how to save her. But they think she knows how to save herself. She’s getting her legs back under her. They have to trust her to do that. And the best thing they can do to help her is to keep their parents at bay in the meantime. If this crashout is what she needs to live, then by fucking God, they will defend her right to crashout to their dying fucking breaths. She is not losing anymore control over her own life than she already has if they have something to say about it.
Rose needs to save herself. Her brothers are doing their best to protect her ability to do that.
And they’ve got hope for their relationship. She told Shane Hollander during the sleepover that ruined both of their fucking lives that she’d stayed away all these years because she was afraid they didn’t mean their invite seriously. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to try again. She was just afraid they’d reject her when she came. So maybe, just maybe, she’ll still take them up on their offer.
They’ve left the porch light on for her. And they’re hoping that when she’s ready, she’ll come home.
who actually got to kiss shane on a kiss cam? please elaborate
Some random fucking guy with a dream.
TW for suicidal thoughts and self destructive behavior
The kiss cam incident happens as part of a saga I like to call “Shane and Rose’s adventures in Chicago.”
The Boston Raiders feel personally victimized by Shane and Rose’s adventures in Chicago. The Boston Raiders feel that Shane and Rose’s adventures in Chicago sort of ruined their fucking lives.
SHANE AND ROSE’S ADVENTURES IN CHICAGO, ABRIDGED:
One of the factors complicating Shane And Rose’s Epic Quest To Find A New Thing To Dedicate Their Entire Lives To So The Emptiness Of Existence Doesn’t Send Them Screaming Mad Into The Desert is the fact that they have absolutely no internet access. This is due to their own personal choice. They cannot risk anything with a screen that’s more technologically advanced than their shitty hot pink Razr flip phones from 2004. This is an absolute fucking corner stone of their mental health.
Shane and Rose are in hard core avoidance mode. They medically cannot handle facing what’s happened to them. They are trying to triage the situation. They’re going to figure out how to want to be alive first and then they’re going to go back and address the fuck ton of trauma rotting in their guts like nuclear waste. They’re doing absolutely every single thing they can to avoid having Any Awareness Whatsoever of what people are saying about them because neither of them are admitting it out loud but they’re both worried that if they actually have to grapple with it it’s going to turn their reverse suicide pact into a suicide pact. So right now they simply cannot fucking risk internet access. If they see a fucking screen then they are dodging and they are weaving.
There are inherent issues with this strategy. For one:
How. How the fuck do find ice sculpting lessons if you can’t google it.
Shane and Rose have a collection of phonebooks and a final thread that they’re hanging onto with every ounce of strength in their bodies and also two shitty hot pink razr flip phones from 2004. That’s. That’s all they’re working with right now.
To fill in the gaps, they’re willing to diverge from the List Of Possible Life Passions they wrote in a fugue state in New Mexico and just try whatever they see a fucking billboard for. Sure. Maybe they could be cheesemongers. The opportunity to find out is only 63 miles away, and they don’t have anything scheduled. Ever. Ever again.
Eventually they find themselves in Chicago. They saw a billboard for the Chicago school of shoemaking and leather arts and said to themselves. Hey. We’ve got time.
Forever.
Because our lives are empty.
Anyway they decide to hit up a cubs game while they’re there. Rose knows Shane very well, they share a soul, but sometimes he just gets. Quiet. In a way that makes her secretly terrified that maybe the pact won’t work. And she just has to sort of fucking guess how to pull him out of the funk.
Her boy is a Purebred Jock of considerable pedigree and she thinks maybe he misses sports?? Testosterone?? Men in tight pants?? They are two people lost at sea trying to fling driftwood to each other so they don’t drown but also the entire time they’re struggling to keep their own head afloat. Rose Is Trying Okay.
She thinks maybe baseball. He’d like baseball, wouldn’t he? America’s pastime. Super popular sport. And maybe he’d even like being a baseball boy. He could do a space jam. Yeah. A space jam. Maybe his new life passion is just Another Sport But People Try To Kill Him Less. Shane will love baseball.
Shane absolutely fucking hates baseball.
There’s so much standing and waiting and running but only for short periods of time and no one even tries to fight each other. When the players get mad the teams just stand in a line facing each other and making angry eye contact. That’s embarrassing. You’re embarrassing yourselves. Punch each other.
Rose: Shane you barely ever fought when you played
Shane: I liked having the OPTION
Shane does not want to be here watching this fucking baseball game. He does not want to do that at all.
He doesn’t want to do anything, actually, in a way that’s starting to really scare him. Some days are just. Really bad. This is one of the worst he’s had so far.
Shane woke up feeling like there was spit on his skin and ice pressed against his cheek and a third feeling he’s never been able to place, something sticky and hot and cold at the same time next to his brow, until this morning he finally realized it was the feeling of his own blood caught between his skin and the ice. And then the sleep cleared from his brain and he threw up in the shitty motel trash can because he couldn’t make it to the bathroom in time.
He’s. He’s been angry pretty much every single second of the day since.
It’s like acid under his skin. He’s angry and he’s humiliated and he just wants to not think about it anymore. He’s so tired of being angry. He’s so tired of it hurting all the time. He just wants to stop thinking every day. He wants to live but he doesn’t want to live like this and he doesn’t know if it’s possible for him to live any other way now. He just. He’s so angry. It boils under his skin, every single day, every single moment. He doesn’t know how to get better. And he’s terrified that this is all a big waste of time because. Because maybe sometimes all roads lead to Rome. Maybe there was only ever one way this was going to end.
It’s just. A bad day. He doesn’t want to talk, really.
Of course, People Notice that Shane Hollander and Rose Landry are sitting watching this cubs game in the fucking nosebleeds. There’s a lot of whispering and Shane’s pretty fucking sure multiple people are filming them. Jesus can they fucking go yet
The kiss cam lands on them
Fuck
They famously don’t want to kiss each other. And normally they’d just kiss each other on the cheek or something and not give a shit, it’s not like they’re shy with each other. Shane has been inside of Rose in an act that still sort of haunts both of them. But. Really tears down those physical boundaries. They’re fine with a fucking cheek kiss. But Shane doesn’t want to do a fucking cheek kiss. He doesn’t want to be expected to kiss rose at all. He wants everyone to fuck off and leave him alone. They already fucking broadcast his sexuality and his stress ulcer and his eating disorder and the play-by-play of that one kind of degrading thing that he enthusiastically let Ilya do to his body in 2015. They got enough out of him already. He’s just fucking done.
They don’t kiss.
The camera. Lingers.
Just when Shane thinks that he’s finally won this staring contest with The Entire Stadium, someone starts shouting to wait.
There is some random fucking guy absolutely goddamn booking it to their section. He scales over the seats in multiple rows. He nearly takes out a family of four. He flirts with bodily injury, both his own and the injury of others. The man runs like God’s fucking flood is coming and the doors to the Arc are about to close.
He reaches Shane and rose. He shakes one of Shane’s hands in both of his.
And he’s like. Hi, hello, super cool to meet you, Shane Hollander. Sir. He doesn’t mean to put Shane on the spot but this is sort of a long held dream of his. Since 2015. Specifically.
And Shane is like. 2015…? Oh Jesus Christ. The Calvin Klein photoshoot.
And the guy’s like. Yes. Huge fan of his work. Huge. No pressure, he’ll walk away right now if Shane wants but also. Could not let the opportunity pass without shooting his shot. He’d like to offer himself into service for this once in a lifetime opportunity.
He doesn’t look anything like Ilya.
His hair is brown and floppy. He’s attractive and fit and has a bright white smile with very straight teeth. Shane doesn’t really want to kiss him all that much, if he’s being honest.
But also the anger is still itching beneath his skin and he’s so tired and frustrated that it’s unbearable. He just wants to feel something, anything other than what he’s feeling right now.
So he’s like fuck it. How old are you?
The guy swears he’s 24.
And Shane is like. Uh-huh. Do you have ID to prove that?
Shane’s in a self destructive spiral but he’s not in such a self destructive spiral that he’s letting some fucking. 19 year old shove his tongue down his throat. Or, worse, younger. Some people just look older than they actually are, and shane’s always been bad at telling ages. He wants a government ID
This guy needs his fucking wallet. Oh my god oh my god oh my god SOMEONE THROW HIM HIS FUCKING WALLET
One of the guy’s friends makes his own sprint up with the guy’s wallet in hand. He delivers it with a smile, as well as a fist bump and at least four excited slaps on the back. The guy hands his ID over like it’s a winning lottery ticket.
Ugh. His name is fucking Matt. That makes this worse, somehow.
Shane hands back his ID. So. He really is 24.
Uh-huh. And, Matt adds, he has an Olympic-level talent at hockey. He swears
Shane tells him he’s hurting his own odds.
Then, he stands up and kisses him.
He lets it go on for too long. Definitely lets it involve too much tongue. And he realizes half way through that Matt’s like, fucking fist pumping, which makes him feel gross. And the entire stadium is cheering, which makes him feel humiliated.
He ends the kiss. Matt looks like he feels weak in the knees.
Shane feels just as shitty as he did before, except now he has a strangers spit in his mouth.
Matt asks if anyone has a pen
Shane lets him write his number on his palm. It’s nicer than rejecting him on the fucking Jumbotron. Matt says to call him if he wants to do something, anything while he’s in town. He is down for anything
Literally anything
Matt returns to his seat. He high-fives people the whole way
Shane asks Rose, very quietly, if they can please, please leave now.
He doesn’t want to go to learn shoemaking after. No, he doesn’t want to talk about it. Rose should still go. He just wants to go for a walk alone or something. Yes, he’s just going for a fucking walk.
Yes, he promises.
THE PEOPLE IN CHICAGO WHO NOTICE THAT SHANE HOLLANDER IS ALSO IN CHICAGO KISSING FLOPPY HAIRED BOYS WITH TONGUE:
The press, rabid.
The entire gay population of Chicago, wants to shoot their shot.
The motherfucking Boston Raiders, experiencing a real monkey paw of a granted wish right now.
On one hand, in an act of the fucking divine, Shane Hollander decided to move this crashout to Chicago on the same weekend that they had an away game there. The Raiders would almost let themselves hope that he did it on purpose to see Ilya, were it not for the fact that he was going viral letting an audience member round first base at a cubs game. And not in a baseball way.
And that’s. That’s the other hand.
Ilya Rozanov takes the video of his beautiful Canadian boy on the kiss cam granting liberties to some frivolous whore about as well as Chernobyl took the reactor core melting down.
But That’s A Problem For Later. For fucking once, they’ve got concrete knowledge that Shane Hollander is within a hundred miles of them. They cannot let him slip from between their muscular fingers. Carmichael, Google the nearest wedding chapel, because their boy is finally going to be Wife.
They’re supposed to be headed for the airport to get on a plane back to Boston and instead they all fuck off into the greater Chicago area to hunt down Shane Hollander like a prize elk. They are desperately combing social media for any hint to his current whereabouts. They are splitting up to cover more ground.
Finally, Connors finds a post claiming that Rose Landry was spotted at the Chicago school of shoemaking and leather arts, which sounds like the exact kind of bullshit they’ve been on lately. Hang on, Hollander, the Boston Raiders are BRINGING you your man.
Except Shane’s not at the Chicago school of shoemaking and leather arts. He’s at Navy Pier trying to remind himself that it’d be a fucking bitch move to try to drown himself in Lake Michigan after he promised Rose he’d be fine without her. It’d be the shittiest thing he could possibly do to her, actually. She’d blame herself for leaving him alone. So he’s not going to do that. He’s just going to stand here and scrub Matt’s phone number off his palm with spit and his shirt sleeve.
Shane’s just so fucking tired.
He makes himself keep walking. Walking is better. He thinks less and remembers less and dwells less if he’s on the move. His life is shark rules, now. Stop moving, and, well. You know how the saying ends.
So he moves. He moves right into a mob of reporters. Fuck.
This isn’t super unexpected. The kiss cam bullshit is probably, surely, definitely the first time he’s ended up in the news since the ol’ hate criming and life ruining thing, he’s positive. And they haven’t been doing this for a super long time, so while he has surely Somewhat Faded, it’s not surprising that the press would show up the very first time he resurfaces, because there have been no other times, he’s sure.
And it’s fine. It’s so, so fine. Shane can handle reporters. He and Rose were both immaculate planners. It’s why they were so good at life, until they weren’t anymore.
They were aware of the possibility that they’d run into the press at some point. They were also aware of the fact that hearing and perceiving the bullshit questions reporters were bound to ask them correlated negatively with their continued survival. Shane’s got a fucking iPod nano and the best noise canceling headphones on the market. He does not, however, have a way to upload new music to it. He cannot hook it up to a computer to download new music because he cannot touch a computer, ever. He’s got whatever songs were loaded onto that thing before it ended up in a pawn shop in Alamogordo. So Shane is just blaring the most emo grunge bullshit playlist like a middle schooler in emotional crisis circa fucking 2008.
He is so, so fine right now.
Shane decides the move is to text his crashout bestie his current location and a warning that the press caught up to him. Then, he thinks he will simply power walk in the opposite direction of his problems and hope that that works, in what is ideally a metaphor for his own life. Maybe If He Just Keeps Walking In The Opposite Direction Of His Problems One Day He Will Simply Outrun Them.
But the reporters have legs too. They follow him.
That goes on for. A while.
When Shane texted Rose, he told her he’d try to shake the press and meet her back at the motel. But she cannot abide by that. That is HER crashout bestie and she is NOT leaving him to the hoards. She WILL save her man.
Rose sees a guy with a motorcycle.
Admittedly, she misses the drama of her action movie star days.
She buys the motorcycle off of him with her Rolex. Normally, this guy would be way more hesitant to sell his motorcycle one exchange for a watch whose actual value he doesn’t know and which may be fake, but he recognizes Rose and realizes 1) that this watch is almost definitely fucking real and 2) he can sell it for a fuckton of money as The Rose Landry’s Rolex. Here’s the fuckin’ keys, ma’am. You have a great day.
Rose screeches off into the streets of Chicago to go Get Her Man, which means she just misses fucking Ilya Rozanov screeching into the parking lot to Get His Man. And it’s. It’s the same man.
The Raiders see the news that Shane Hollanders been spotted at navy pier only after they’ve disturbed the making of shoes in every room in this fucking building. He’s not there. FUCK.
It’s like, a 20 minute drive. But they aren’t all at the Chicago school of shoemaking. They split up originally. Some were still making their way over.
Cliff Marleau is ten minutes from Hollander if he fucking runs.
Cliff fucking runs. 
Shane’s. Shane’s trucking along. He’s just hoping the press will get tired and give up if he ignores them long enough. This. This is getting exhausting.
Rose fucking Landry screeches up to him on a motorcycle and tells him to get the fuck on.
Shane does not do that.
Where. Where did she even get that.
Rose says she bought it. It doesn’t matter. Get on.
It sort of matters. Like objectively it sort of matters where she got it. Where exactly did she buy it from?
And Rose is like. Just some guy. Jesus. She gave him her watch for it. It’s fine, get on.
And Shane is like. Oh.
Did you get a title for it?
And rose says. GET ON THE BIKE
And Shane is like. If you didn’t get a title then he could report it stolen later. Do you have any idea how much ass Shane would have to kick to survive in prison. He’s a gay Asian celebrity. A known bottom. He’d be in fights every day.
Rose is so sorry that she didn’t stop to find a notary public to sign off on her fucking title transfer before running to save him, Shane, her very best friend in the whole wide world. Could he pretty please get on the fucking bike now.
And Shane is like. Save me? From what? From the same thing that’s already happened continuing to happen just from slightly different angles? They already took his picture, Rose. What is he afraid of, more pictures from a few seconds later?
And rose is like. Shane there are people filming this. Could you. Could you maybe just get on the bike and we can hash this one out later.
But Shane does not do that.
Seriously, what are they going to do, fight him? He could kick their ass. Where’s the fire, Rose?
Rose would be more pissed at him if this wasn’t the closest he’s gotten to a smile in days.
Okay. Oka—okay. you’re so funny, Shane. You’re so, so funny. Uh-huh. Netflix is calling tomorrow with the comedy special. But for right now could you get on the bike?
The guy she bought this from could have stolen it and then they’d go down for his crime. Think about that, Rose.
And rose says:
GET ON
THE BIKE
Shane finally gives up his stand up routine. He rounds the back of the bike to open up its storage compartment and pulls out the helmet rose had been ignoring in her rush to save a total fucking asshole. He takes his sweet time putting it on Rose.
Rose. Boils.
Shane informs her with a sickeningly smugness that it’s illegal to drive one of these things without a helmet. Didn’t she know that?
Rose: if you do not get on this fucking bike—
Shane, fully grinning now: there’s no excuse for motor vehicle code violations, rose
Rose, knows for a fact that this man drives like someone who’s trying to kill himself and others: YOU ARE SUCH A FUCKING—
Shane gets on the bike.
Approximately 1.5 seconds later, Cliff Marleau sprints around the fucking corner like he’s being chased by wild dogs. He sees them and shouts, “HOLLANDER”
Shane stares at him and says, with profound fucking confusion, “Cliff Marleau?”
Rose guns it.
She barely heard Shane say the guy’s name when she did it. It takes her fifteen minutes to place where she’s heard it before. He’s a hockey player. He plays for Boston.
He’s not…?
And Shane is like. No. No, no. It wasn’t him. Shane barely knew that guy. He thinks they’ve talked maybe twice in Shane’s life. He probably just. Was in town for a game and saw Shane by coincidence. He must have been surprised to see Shane. That’s. That’s the only reason why he’d call out to him, right? It could only be that.
It’s fine. He just. He uh. He hadn’t realized the Boston Raiders were playing Chicago this weekend. It’s not a big deal. Just. Surprised him a little.
He didn’t think he’d ever see any of them again, is all.
Rose watches him carefully. He played Boston a lot, didn’t he? Was he friends with any of them? Does he maybe want to see if he can talk to them while they were all in the same city? Rose will go with him, if he wants to try.
It takes Shane a long time to answer.
No. No, he—
He sort of wants to get as far away from this fucking city as he can.
THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF SHANE AND ROSE’S ADVENTURES IN CHICAGO:
They have to ditch a fucking motorcycle because Shane REFUSES to go down for a theft that never happened. He’d have to start his own prison gang to survive, Rose. While he thrives in leadership roles he does not want that one. And also they are not towing that thing across the United States. It stays in Chicago.
The guy whose motorcycle that used to be is able to buy a lovely condo with a view after he sells The Rose Landry’s Rolex. Yayyyy homeownership 🎊
The guy whose tongue got to spend 12 and a half seconds in Shane fucking Hollander’s throat gets his five minutes of fame and multiple Etsy witch curses levied against him by a hacked-off Ilya Rozanov. He gives Shane Hollander rave reviews. Shane does not know this. He is simply too offline. But if you asked him, he’d say that other guy was fine, he guesses. He wasn’t super paying attention at the time. Didn’t leave much of an impression. He was sort of going through something in the moment.
Cliff Marleau is suddenly and inexorably connected to Shane Hollander in the public eye considering multiple reporters recorded him hauling fucking ass around a corner in a desperate attempt to speak with Shane. Much to his offense, no one thinks that he could be Shane Hollander’s disrespectful bisexual lover. Everyone immediately agrees he is not good enough at hockey for Shane Hollander to want to fuck him. Which. Wow. Fuck you too, actually.
There’s like a seven and a half minute span where the Raiders are worried they’ll connect Cliff’s desperation to find Shane to his motherfucking boy, Ilya Rozanov, who is objectively good enough at hockey for Shane Hollander to want to fuck him. This. Also does not happen.
Instead, the Internet decides that Cliff is gay for Shane Hollander and possibly in general and was trying to shoot his shot. Which. Not a super fun time for Cliff, dealing with that rumor. When the shit eventually hits the fan with the NHL, he finds himself schlepping up to its New York offices to have awkward meetings with executives about how he totally feels safe in the League. Yep. Super safe. Safe as a house. Haha what do you mean does he feel safe enough to come out. Come out as wha—ah fuck
He runs into Carter Vaughn a lot at these meetings. The eye contact is. Beleaguered.
Ilya watches the video of Shane on the kiss cam enough times that the Raiders feel the need to hold an intervention for him. It is one of many. Practice does not make them easier over time, they find.
Look. They know how much Hollander means to him. And they know he’s worried that Shane will move on before they can find him. But it’s not healthy for him to torture himself with the footage of Hollander kissing another dude. They know its a blow to Ilya that Hollander’s opening himself up to seeing other people, but right now it’s just kissing. Plenty of people like to just mess around when they’re getting over a relationship. Ilya still has time to woo his man.
And Ilya is like. No. No, they are wrong. That is not the issue.
The issue is that that is not how Shane Hollander kisses.
But like. Objectively it is. That’s visibly Shane. Kissing. On video. So it is how Shane Hollander kisses.
Oh, and they are experts suddenly? No. There is only one expert in the world on how Shane Hollander kisses and it is Ilya. He is the founding father of the subject, actually. Developing this field has been the accomplishment of his life. His honor. And he was dedicated to his work. He catalogued Shane’s kisses with the devotion of a scholar and a saint, all of them, every last one. He experimented with them and memorized them and learned how to elicit each and every type. He knows how Shane Hollander kisses. That isn’t it.
He didn’t like it. That’s what no one else is seeing. Shane did it, but he didn’t like it. He was miserable the whole kiss, but he didn’t put a stop to it. He just let it go on. And everyone fucking clapped.
ah. a nuanced story that allows for imperfect victims and portrays the confusing and contradictory nature of being human – particularly in a context that explores abuse, harassment and trauma. i wonder what people on the internet make of it... oh. oh no. oh no no no no no
I was in a long-term relationship that fell apart partially because I was ace and my partner was very much not, and every time we looked for relationship help we got told that I was the problem. Not just that a significant mismatch in sexual desire could be a problem in a relationship, but that it was My Fault, Specifically, for not being willing to suck it up and have a bunch of sex I didn't want. To my ex's credit, he cared about consent much more than any of the professionals we talked to and refused to pressure me even when my (lesbian, billed as progressive and pro-LGBT) therapist was actively telling him to.
But it meant that we had absolutely no help or support when we were trying to work on the relationship in ways that *did* value my autonomy. There's basically no advice for people who want to try to make a relationship where there's a big desire gap work that isn't "well you should just have sex anyway" or "just break up lol". And that sucks!
Sometimes breaking up is necessary, and that's what ended up happening with us because there were other reasons we worked better as friends, but there *should* be better frameworks for discussing what people want and need that don't automatically assume that one partner's feelings are automatically more important or valuable than the other's.
I was dating someone who wanted to be accommodating and work with me to figure things out but lacked the EQ to do so in any effective way. It was my first relationship and I was still figuring out what being ace meant for me. It’s been eight or nine years, but I still remember very clearly the moment I realized we’d been approaching the entire discussion as if my orientation was the problem to be solved, and that it would be equally as valid to say that hers was.
She was significantly less impressed with this revelation than I was, but I tried to hold on to it ever since (although obviously the real problem wasn’t either one of us, but the mismatch and the lack of tools to deal with it). I think it’s super important to remember that we aren’t the ones in the wrong while our theoretical partners are the ones in the right. I was surprised by how much I’d internalized the assumption and I don’t think I’m the only one.
The other frustrating aspect of this is allo relationships will often have periods of time where libido does not match (I'm not derailing and this will swing back to asexual people)
Just after giving birth, during a family crisis, during a mental health episode, during health problems, during stressful periods at work
There are a lot of times when one person is horned up and raring to go and the other has no interest
And the solution often presented is that the person who is going through something should just put out because they are the problem instead of like...finding ways to engage in non sexual intimacy to reaffirm closeness
An asexual person is going to get 10x the amount of pressure and blame put on them and no advice on how non-sexual intimacy can help their relationships and if they get that at all it will only be to sell it as a bridge to sex they don't want.
I really hate the selling of intimacy as only equaling or facilitating sex. Intimacy comes in many forms and should be explored more by every couple as a non sexual act. And it the given importance it deserves. In fact I would argue if we as a society put more value on non sexual intimacy more relationships would be happier and healthier
And asexual people would stop getting shit for being themselves.
i don’t think you understand i totally thought we were gonna die locked up in this castle but this fucking genius was like “im going to invent a way for humans to fly”. shout out to my dad he’s a real one fr
LMAOOO this dude told me to be careful as he affixed the wings to my back…..dad no offense but you just invented flying and we have to go high enough to avoid the king’s archers. soo
i don’t understand why but he’s coming closer. he is not supposed to stray from his path, lest the sun fall from the sky. why does he look so anguished to see me?
i pray to him just in case. i am grateful he tried. my palms are red and cracked from where they touched divinity. the ground does not look any closer than it was
i have not seen my father since we took flight…i hope he escaped. i hope he will not witness this. i wish i could tell him how joyful these wings made me before the wax melted
please please please i have no coin for the ferryman if i am to die now i will never reach the realm of hades please turn me into a bird any bird or a bug or something anything please please pleasepleaseplease
honestly i'm still thinking about how "by skittles" definitely becomes an internet meme, quoted endlessly in posts and retweets of celebs people think are gay, to the point where most people eventually forget where it even came from and think it's just a fun little joke about the rainbow, and the people who do remember are like "haha isn't our shane soooo funny i love him" with zero thought
Shane Hollander being a bitch in the family groupchat has materially changed skittles’ public image and the entire pr team is in TEARS
Hi!!! Are there masterposts to access your commentary on all your AUs? I've lowk been reblogging like crazy but if there was one masterpost it would be way easier and your analysis is amazing?? Like geniunely you should write an essay on everything HR fans are missing about hockey culture because I'm learning so much from your blog and it reframes Shane in a whole new light. Like I'm from California and don't give a shit about organized sports in general I had no idea hockey was that insane in Canada?? Point being I want to know more about the summer crash out AU and can't find it and already reblogged the masterpost for the Sochi AU and would love something similar for snapping birches if possible no pressure ofc!!
Hi! I unfortunately do not make masterposts for my AUs. I try to tag “snapping birch” on everything dealing with snapping birch, but other than that, there’s no centralized post with everything.
While I do not have my own masterpost for the child star crashout summer au, the incomparable @triassictriserratops has been a hero of the fucking ages and compiled one, which you can find here.
liking a ship but disliking the distinct set of stock fanon that they have been assigned is like one of those punishments dante came up with when he wrote the worldbuilding for hell in inferno
