#poprocks writes

[poprocksromance]

Shane shows up to an open practice with a black eye. Shane refuses to talk about it and Ilya keeps trying to hide a grin. Someone takes a picture of him and it goes viral.

The internet is divided: Is the black eye a sex injury or is Ilya an abuser?

The locker room is full of guys making sex jokes at them, to Ilya’s great amusement and Shane’s annoyance. Shane keeps hoping people will stop talking about it, but when the black eye only looks worse at the next game, it’s unavoidable. The media keeps asking cheekily about it and there are think pieces being written online about how Ilya is an abuser and here are all the signs of how he has been abusing Shane for years.

Shane gets his hands on the latter and is angrier at that than he is prideful. So, he drops the video.

The video is from a surveillance camera of the Rozanov-Hollander house’s backyard. Shane is crouched down playing tug of war with their dog Anya. He and Anya are both refusing to let go of rope. Suddenly, Anya drops it and Shane’s hands fling back toward his face and he smacks himself in the face with hands still around the toy. He drops to his back and cups his hands over his eyes.

Ilya runs into view, kneeling next to Shane and is seen as asking him what’s wrong. When Shane explains, Ilya falls over laughing on the grass and Shane throws the dog toy at his head. Ilya gets up and crouches down over Shane and gives him a kiss on the cheek right below his eye. The video ends as he’s leaning down while speaking to give him a kiss on his lips.

Shane captions the video: Word of advice. Let the dog win.

[poprocksromance]

The Great Hollander Witch Hunt

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Rose in the video says, struggling not to laugh. “I’m not laughing at you. It’s just—I had to tell my mom something when we broke things off, you know? So I told her you were focused on your career. And she told me that if you didn’t stop focusing on your career you were going end up married to it forever.”

Rose giggles. “Jokes on my mom. You found the ‘NHLer boyfriend loophole.’ How very Shane Hollander of you.”

The video blows up overnight, along with #ShaneHollanderBoyfriend.

Shane is thrust into a media frenzy of epic proportions. With Ilya still waiting for his residency application to be accepted in Canada, his team goes mum on any boyfriend, NHL or otherwise. But the damage is done and the witch hunt is on.

RPF shippers create manifestos about why their favorite NHL players are dating Shane. Random non-hockey player men keep coming forward saying they are Shane’s boyfriend. Memes abound. Unrelated players are getting forced out of the closet by unrelenting fans. Shane has not seen his boyfriend in a month for fear of discovery. Fans and the media alike are asking Shane and any other player invasive questions.

Shane desperately wishes the video never existed and his life hadn’t been turned into a circus. He is playing the worst hockey of his professional career. Ilya realizes he has to do something before Shane hits his breaking point.

— the fanfic I wish I had the time and mental capacity to write that starts off funny and then begins to slide toward the hell on earth of fame you never asked for and fandoms that believe no boundary is too far to cross.

[poprocksromance]

An Oral Fixation

Shane Hollander was a lot of things. Extremely good at hockey, a household name across Canada, particular about his diet, someone who privately found joy in architecture and interior design.

Shane also had what fans jokingly called online an ‘oral fixation.’ One of the Metros’ girlfriends had sent a video that was just a compilation of Shane putting things in his mouth on camera: Chewing on his mouth guard, biting a pen, gnawing on the strings of his hoodie — the list went on. Shane wasn’t supposed to find out about it, but Hayden had asked the young guys what the fuck they were giggling about in the corner and they reluctantly revealed the video of Shane. He’d spent a week hyperaware of it and tried to stop the habit, but it was hardwired into him at this point.

So yes. Shane liked to have something in his mouth. And his very favorite thing to put in his mouth was Ilya’s dick, which Shane had confessed to Ilya one night when he was loose-lipped and post-coital. Told him he had thought about being made to hold Ilya’s dick in his mouth as long as Ilya pleased. Ilya had pinned him to the mattress and told Shane he was lucky that they had already gone a few rounds or Ilya would have taken him again right then.

Shane thought Ilya had forgotten about the whole thing; he was certainly too embarrassed to mention it in the light of day himself. But then Ilya had cornered Shane against the bathroom door one morning before training and said, “Day off tomorrow.”

“Yes?” Shane responded, confused. They kept the training calendar posted on the fridge.

“Tonight, I have to do boring paperwork for my agent.”

“Okay? What does this have to do with training?”

“I need assistance to keep it interesting,” Ilya said, and put his thumb on Shane’s lower lip and dragged it down. “But I can’t have you distracting me with talking. Do you think I could find another use for your mouth?”

Shane’s breathing went shallow as he realized what Ilya was saying. “I have an idea.” The words were muffled by the finger in his mouth.

“Good. Is good thing you won’t have to explain if you have a sore throat tomorrow, no?” Ilya replaced his thumb with his mouth, a filthy kiss that led with tongue. Shane groaned into it and clutched at Ilya’s bicep. Just as soon as it started, Ilya pulled back and grinned. “Tonight, darling.”

Teaser for a smutty side-story to Better Bets Taken, set during their first summer training together. Hope to post the full thing soon when life calms down a little!

[poprocksromance]

Better Bets Taken

Chapter Eighteen out now! (or start at Chap 1)

Snippet:

“Shane. I’m going to ask you something and you can tell me to mind my own damn business, okay?” Shane had a bad feeling about this. “Okay?” “Remember how you told me you and your mystery man, from before you were with me, got back together?” “Yes.” Shane agreed warily. Rose had asked after Shane’s love life in Vancouver and Shane couldn’t lie to her face that there was no one. He hadn’t told her who it was, however. “Is your mystery man Ilya Rozanov?” Shane couldn’t speak. He knew his silence was more damning than anything else he could say, but all he eventually could muster up was, “Are we seriously that obvious?” “Oh thank God, I thought I was saying something insane.” Rose half-laughed. “But also holy shit, Shane.”

[poprocksromance]

Better Bets Taken

Chapter Sixteen out now! (Chapter One here)

Snippet:

“You are trying to turn me on,” Ilya whispered in Shane’s ear as he slammed into his open arms after Shane scored a second goal against Team Metropolitan. The fans had voted for team captains this year and Ilya had edged out Shane for the Team Atlantic captain. Hunter had won the Team Metropolitan captaincy easily on his side, his popularity still buoyed by fans who supported him for being the first out player in the NHL.  The game was, of course, meaningless and half the guys on the ice were some level of hungover from the night before. Shane and Ilya were some of the sharpest guys on the ice, along with Hunter, because they had been busy last night having copious amounts of sex. That made it sound like Hunter was also there, which he emphatically was not. He was, after all, in a very public relationship with Kip Grady. He probably moped around in his hotel room all night staring at a picture of his hotter and younger boyfriend while Ilya was busy railing Shane. “Is it working?” Shane said back, before taking on the weight of their winger from Tampa Bay as he flew into a hug with them. They had spent much of the press time talking about their new “frenemy” status and had been paired up constantly for photos and questions. Ilya greatly enjoyed being able to sling an arm over Shane’s shoulder and rib him publicly. He even got away with squeezing his ass with nary a blink from reporters, much too used to grown hockey players feeling each other up. Shane had glared daggers at him while Ilya smiled sunnily back.

[poprocksromance]

Irina Rozanova and her son Ilya are refugees who have arrived in Ottawa and are part of a settlement program that places refugees with local families to help them navigate through the process of finding housing and employment. Through work connections, David finds out that there is a woman and her 15 year old son who need a place to stay and that the son plays hockey and he’s good at it. Very good.

David and Yuna agree to take in the pair, thinking this will be great for their 15 year old hockey wunderkind son, Shane.

Irina is quiet and unobtrusive, her English poor. She mostly communicates through her son. She doesn’t talk about life in Russia and has unexplained scars on her body. She insists on helping cook, and their dinners become an odd mixture of Canadian-Japanese-Russian dishes.

The son is the polar opposite of his mother. He speaks much more fluently than his mother, though still trips up on words and needs the Hollanders to speak slowly for him to parse their words. He’s loud and boisterous and plays hard-hitting, aggressive hockey.

They manage to get him onto Shane’s team and the two click on the ice in the way they do not off ice. Shane is put off by Ilya’s cocky and roguish attitude and Ilya finds Shane’s studiousness and reserved nature boring. The only way it seems they can find common ground is when they’re playing alongside each other, Ilya on Shane’s wing.

That is, until Ilya figures out Shane’s little secret: Shane is attracted to him. He starts walking around shirtless and challenging Shane to wrestle with him and bragging about having sex with a hot girl back home in Moscow. Finally, Ilya cajoles Shane to a team party and then corners him a bedroom. He backs Shane into a wall and kisses him and jacks him off. Shane comes embarrassingly fast all over Ilya’s hand and Ilya makes him lick it off. Then Shane slides to his knees and blows him.

In the aftermath, Shane panics and tells Ilya he’s straight and that no one can know. Ilya promises not to tell a soul and Shane swears off ever touching Ilya again.

But we all know how that story goes.

[poprocksromance]

Better Bets Taken

Chapter Seventeen out now! (Chapter 1 here)

Snippet:

Shane rubbed his sweaty palms against his dress pants for the third time, cursing Ilya for getting Shane to agree to this. It was terrifying enough to be meeting the woman that Ilya had mentioned for years, who grew up with Ilya and knew him better than almost anyone. Now Ilya wanted him to go out to a bar, in Boston, after the Metros had been thrashed with a 4-1 loss against Raiders. Shane barely wanted to be seen by the media after that shitshow, let alone the people of Boston. He could see the headline now: Metros Captain abdicates his duties to go out with rival Boston Captain. The Montreal media would have a fucking field day. Ilya had promised that the bar was lowkey and also gave zero shits about hockey. It was Red Sox themed and Ilya had gone there before without being looked at twice. When he’d rushed out the door after the game, Hayden had shouted that Shane should say hi to ‘Lily’ for him, after ribbing him for putting on nice clothes just for a fuck session. Shane hadn’t corrected him. He wasn’t admitting to Hayden that he was actually meeting his partner's best friend.

[poprocksromance]

So some vague spoilers for the next chapter of my fic where Ilya and Shane start training together in summers after they get together. In this chapter, they hang out with Boodram and his wife Cassie and watch a fun movie!

What’s the movie you ask? I, Tonya. Because who wouldn’t like to watch a movie about a skating scandal with some hockey bros released circa 2017?

I am watching the movie myself for the first time to have context for the scene when they watch it. And I knew there was some DV in it. Correction: There is a LOT of domestic violence in it.

And… now I’m going to have to rewrite part of the chapter because unfortunately for Ilya, this is going to make this experience A Bad Time.