#third liners au

[ticklefighthockey]

who wrote that one post that was like “AU where everything about heated rivalry is the same except they’re just decent hockey players” because I think about it constantly

[ticklefighthockey]

Something I find very compelling about the third liners concept and them not being famous/particularly special is that if and when they come out that would make them more famous than they’ve ever been. Imagine the shane angst of the thing that defines his career being his sexuality because his play was never good enough to stand on its own :(

ok but also consider this: I think that in third liners au they don’t get outed at all. because nobody’s looking that closely at them. they aren’t the main characters of any lives but their own. they still have their big emotional breakthrough after ilya’s dad dies, where shane keeps pushing, keeps following when ilya retreats, and finally makes ilya admit that what they’re doing isn’t casual anymore and hasn’t been for a long time. and then idk after that… in some ways their love story is a bit more hopeless than in canon, because they have much less control over where they go and if one of them is playing in a different conference they might be limited to seeing each other only once or twice a year during the season and maybe during the all star break. but they also have all the freedom that comes with not being that important! not being under scrutiny. not carrying the expectations of a franchise or a fan base on their shoulders. maybe after ilya stops going back to russia they start training together in the offseason. ilya moves into the cottage with shane in the summer. they sign together somewhere in free agency for a year or two and share a condo before one of them gets traded. there are probably guys who suspect that something might be going on between them but ilya’s reputation as a womanizer gives shane the perpetual bachelor a lot of cover. nobody’s going to say anything to their faces. you don’t want a dirty player like rozanov gunning for you, and anyway, it’s always easier to just look the other way. if you don’t ask you don’t have to know. so idk I think under those circumstances it’s totally possible that they just never publicly come out at all, at least in the form of issuing some kind of statement (though of course their close friends and family know). or if they do come out more publicly I think, again, it would be on their own terms. I personally think the most delightful option would be for ilya to make a retirement announcement post on instagram where he thanks his friends, his former teammates and coaches, and his husband shane hollander. and then neither of them can ever be reached for comment.

[ticklefighthockey]

I know there’s like four of you who are here for the third-liners au but the rest of you are going to have to hear about it anyway. I’ve got a little 5k premise in mind to get me started writing in the world and then we’ll see if it has legs… I think my ideal version of it would be a series of interrelated one-shots but we’ll see if I can get back in the saddle enough to even write one. here are some things I’m thinking through under the cut

I think it’s important to their dynamic that ilya is the scrappy, fighty player who muscled his way up into the league and is more on the fringes of the league. the kind of guy that hockey podcasters describe as a solid depth guy a lower-end playoffs team might trade for at the deadline to get a little more grit in their lineup. a guy whose name you might recognize if you’re really plugged in but most people have never heard of. he’s signed a lot of one- or two-year deals but often gets flipped at the deadline—sometimes added by a contender, sometimes shipped out because they want to replace him with a more skilled guy. he’s a natural center but he plays wing because that’s where there’s a slot for him. he’s not an enforcer but he’s for sure got a reputation for being a rough-and-tumble guy who lands huge hits and isn’t afraid to stir shit up to get his team going. guys like him in the room and he’s usually popular with whatever fanbase he’s in, but he’s also used to fans or the local hockey media turning on him if things aren’t going well for the team and/or he’s not scoring, because he’s not someone people feel a lot of loyalty to.

shane though… shane’s more of a mixed bag. he was drafted by boston 1OA but never really fit in there, even before his injury—he’s a cerebral player, thinks the game well but isn’t as good at throwing the body around. he got hurt and missed a big chunk of his rookie season, and then maybe got reinjured shortly after coming back and was out again. it wasn’t his fault that the original injury was mishandled, but he got a reputation for being fragile and injury-prone, on top of already not exuding the kind of macho tough guy energy raiders fans wanted from him. injuries slowed his development and the fit with the system was never quite right and the team didn’t manage his load the right way, and when boston continued to miss the playoffs or only perform in the middle of the pack shane became an easy target—his job was to save the franchise and he hadn’t been up to the task. I can’t decide if shane’s already been moved around a lot or if he’s still in boston but is pretty miserable there and knows he’s underperforming but can’t fit the system, can’t satisfy the coaches, can’t browbeat or posture enough to satisfy the fans and the press. idk to think further! crucially I think that through all of this he still clings to his draft pedigree. like it’s not too late for him, right? scouts used to think he was the best of the best, the unquestioned number one. so he’s struggling, whatever, so he’s five years into his career and people openly call him one of the biggest draft busts of the last decade, so his own fans have turned him into a whipping boy, but he’s—he was good. he was the best. he had talent he had potential. all those scouts, all those coaches, all those GMs who shook his hand at the combine, they can’t all have been wrong. but I think, unfortunately, he clings to this in an unhealthy way rather than a hopeful way… he uses it to punish/control/obsessively monitor himself, always trying to optimize every aspect of himself so he can live up to what he was supposed to be… and I also think he clings to it to make himself feel like he’s better than ilya, in moments where he’s hating himself for needing this so badly, for wanting it at all, for letting ilya take him apart. I think he hates that he’s gay, because he sees it as another way his body has failed him, and because on some level he’s internalized what they say about him: that he’s soft, a pussy, not tough enough to play a man’s game. and ilya is tough. ilya’s exactly the kind of player and personality they’d love in boston. ilya fights and scraps and gets his nose broken and goes over the boards on the next shift with blood all over his jersey. but shane’s better than him, even if their stats are the same, because shane was chosen. people looked at shane and thought he was special, and that’s still inside him, that untapped potential. idk I think shane’s so, so mixed up inside about how ilya makes him feel and how hockey makes him feel, and I think he’s just pretty lowgrade miserable and lonely all the time but can’t voice it even to himself because that would be admitting defeat and he can still make this work. he can still turn this around! it’s not too late to become a better version of shane hollander. a version that isn’t just sort of a fuck-up and a disappointment who’s going nowhere fast.

[ticklefighthockey]

i've only known third liners au for an hour and a half but if anything happened to it i'd kill everyone in this room and then myself etc

thank u so much laura i feel like this one isn’t really resonating with the masses but it’s resonating with ME in my HEART and BRAIN. maybe if you’re not a hockey fan you can’t quite grasp the incredible pathos of the third-line journeyman who gives everything to a sport that chews him up and spits him out, leaving him with a body decades older than his actual years and a hollow sense that yeah, he made it to the show, but when he dreamed of it as a kid it was different. in his dreams they remembered his name.

[ticklefighthockey]

I think but am not positive that it might be juicier if shane was still the 2OA (or maybe even the 1OA, with no ilya there!) but then he gets injured a couple months into his rookie season and the team really fumbles both his injury rehab and then his player development. and so his whole career has just been like. sports commentators and fans discussing how much of a bust he was, what a waste of a pick, etc. and I think this torments shane but also deep in his heart he holds onto his draft pedigree (ex gifted child syndrome as one of my anons said lol) and one of his biggest fights with ilya has to do with ilya (accurately) accusing shane of thinking in his heart of hearts that he’s better than ilya because of it. ideally during or after some grimy undernegotiated d/s sex where they’re both working out their anger on each other

[ticklefighthockey]

i fucking loveee the third liners au. because yes ofc them being amazing players is so interesting and is a huge part of the show, but changing that up makes for SUCH interesting dynamics. shane hollander, for whom EVERYTHING is about being the best, everything he does is for hockey and he gets rewarded for that. no he's not the most sociable and he can never feel fully comfortable so he is, in many ways, constantly on the outskirts of his own life (except for, notably, with ilya), but he always has his insane hockey to fall back on. he's constantly praised for his skill, which in many ways bothers him bc he doesn't love the attention and the spotlight and the pressure, but ultimately it's this, yes i'm the best, yes i've been killing myself for this and it's WORTH it. who is shane without that? when he's sacrificing everything but he can't manage to pick himself back up. i imagine there's a lot of resentment there, towards himself and towards his team. i feel like it really fits to have him just be stuck in boston because it emphasises this idea of being trapped. he keeps TRYING and TRYING but he can't fucking do it, he can't save himself with grit and determination and obsessive control over everything, all because of this idiotic series of mistakes made by the people who are STILL in charge of him. i think he would maybe try to repress it but deep down he would be thinking, i had so much potential and they fucking wasted it. like yes he for sure is angry with himself but i love the idea of him placing some of the blame externally. i feel like it adds this bitterness to his character that you only get glimples of in canon (when he snaps at his mom "does that mean too white?" when he's telling ilya that it's his fault he hasn't come out to his parents yet. like there's this aspect of resentment towards the people around him that he refuses to explore or think about but it's THERE) i have more thoughts about this and about ilya but i think they have to marinate more... idk this au is sooo delicious and intriguing to me i just had to share my thoughts. ty for your genius brain

ahhh thank you this ask was so fun to read and chew on!! yes yes yes to all of this. i have always loved thinking about the experience of the draft "bust"... the high first-rounder, maybe even the 1OA or 2OA, who just didn't pan out. i think it must be so painful to have felt like you were anointed, you were chosen, you were recognized by the entire hockey world as the Best Player of Your Year (and, if all went well, ideally one of the best players of your generation)... and then you just couldn't put it together. or you got hurt, or you struggled to adjust to nhl-level play, or you were playing in the wrong system under a head coach who didn't like your style of play or a staff who didn't know how to develop you properly, and all that bright prospect energy just sort of... fizzled out. you're not the golden child anymore, you're the scapegoat or the franchise disappointment. the waste of a pick.

and i think you're so right that those guys get to be the 1OA because they have insane talent and an even more insane work ethic! they're obsessive, they're driven, they've trained so hard for so long to get to where they are. and i think it would make shane INSANE to feel like, as you said, he was working SO hard, just grinding day in and day out, and he just can't get any traction. and yeah i think all the things about him that can be excused if he's a superstar would become things he had to conceal or repress or apologize for when he becomes a whipping boy instead... like why isn't he better in the room? a more positive, motivating presence? more social, more energizing, more of a glue guy? why's he so fucking stiff and awkward? why won't he give the media the mea culpa throw-myself-on-my-own-sword quotes they want from him? or idk, if his style of play is really cerebral and he doesn't play an ultra-physical game, that becomes a source of criticism too - why isn't he tougher? why doesn't he land big hits? why isn't he throwing his body around out there instead of trying to make these complex plays?

i think it would be SOOOO delicious if shane compares himself to ilya in pretty painful ways. ilya's the tough guy player that a city like boston would love, and shane's the pussy who can't play a physical game... ilya fights and shane doesn't, etc... and i think that would get all tangled up in their sexual dynamic too: shane's soooo sososo attracted to ilya's whole macho dom masculinity performance, but he's got so much internalized homophobia and messed-up gender feelings about it too, like... ilya's the top, ilya's the "man," ilya's the guy who hooks up with women too... and shane's the bottom ie the "woman," the weaker, feminized one, the one who deserves to feel more shame about his own desires... idk you could REALLY brew up a nasty cocktail of horrible feelings there. and i could see shane trying to manage those feelings in different ways... like leaning into his desires at some moments (getting off on being forced/humiliated in bed, or feeling like he deserves to be humiliated, like if ilya's fucking him it should be in a way that shames shane and makes him feel like shit, because he can't allow himself to enjoy it), and then at other times trying to bolster his sense of self by looking down on ilya, looking for reasons to feel superior to ilya, because it's painful to feel like the weaker one, the loser, whatever. and then i think it would be soooo interesting to think about how ilya's extremely strong instinctive desire to be gentle with shane would manifest here... like to what extent does he understand that shane is working out all these horrible feelings and needs ilya to help him hold them? to what extent does he recognize shane's shame, even if just unconsciously, and how does he try to give shane what shane needs from him? or does shane have a gift for really getting under his skin, for hurting ilya's pride or provoking him into reactions he's later ashamed of? just the agonizing push-pull of that dynamic... i think it would be so so yummy to write.

ok but back to your ask lol sorry i got sidetracked. YES who is he without his success and skill?? what is he if hockey is all he is but the hockey thing isn't really working out like he thought it would?? and i so agree about shane's bitterness (expanding on the tantalizing little glimpses we get of it in canon!), and i think maybe part of his emotional journey as a character would be like, moving out of that defensive angry embittered stance of "everyone fucked this up for me (but deep down i also fear that i was never as good as people thought, i was never going to measure up, because i'm flawed and broken and i was never really Good or worthy)" into like... idk... letting himself actually grieve and finally let go of the dream of the life he thought he'd have, while also making peace with the life he does have, and over time coming to understand that if he'd had the life he wanted he couldn't have built the life he has now. but i think he has to actually BUILD that life to appreciate it, and i don't have a clear sense yet of what the Events to get there would be!! there have to be things that happen that bring him and ilya closer together and help build that trust that develops between them in canon. someone said in the tags/replies that maybe ottawa is their saving grace in this verse?? and maybe it is! like maybe shane does finally wind up getting traded (probably after he and ilya broke off their situationship for good, for maximum angst), and he and ilya have to learn how to coexist, and they fall in love for real. but idk i'd really have to think about how to structure it to make it work... it's a lot of ground to cover, both chronologically and emotionally!!

[ticklefighthockey]

hi i wanted to let you know im constantly thinking about your third liners au it’s been on my mind since like the moment you mentioned it and i love your mind pls never stop xx… it just seems so painful and real in a way canon frankly isn’t (not to hate on canon but it’s just plainly obvious it avoids dealing with some issues) and it’s exquisite i love catching the opportunity of making characters i love suffer… and the dynamic… it’s sooo bad it’s fucked up and it’s beautiful. just. thank you.

thank you I really like thinking about that one too!! someone (wish I could credit them for this but my notifs are a mess I can’t find anything) was suggesting that it might be kind of emotionally :| for ilya to feel like what shane wants from him in bed is the same violence or roughness his teams want from him—like, shane not letting him be tender or gentle but wanting the macho dominant hypermasculine version of ilya that ilya has to perform on the ice. I was thinking about that a lot today… like how much shame shane carries and how much he might need it to feel rough/like his partner doesn’t really care about him, to atone for the fact that he needs it at all. idk you could really ramp the angst up or down depending on your preferences! and while I talk a big game on tumblr I also really need my angst fic to have a lot of unspoken tenderness between the characters where you can tell they’re trying, in their fumbling way, to be good to each other. it’s just that there are also so many layers of internalized shame and bullshit for them to unpack and they have so few tools for doing that work or communicating their needs and fears. so I think shane would really want the sex to be rough and without gentleness but deep down like anyone else he needs to be loved and taken care of and ilya has to walk that line between giving shane what he asks for/expects and giving him what he needs. which I think is delicious to contemplate.

[ticklefighthockey]

can we actually please recenter your journeyman AU...

we really need to... we need to recenter it... currently rummaging around in my brain to see if i can offer a single interesting thought here. stay tuned