Reading list: July (Hollanov)
For a moment this month's theme was doom, gloom and chlamydia, but then I read some more fics that don't put them through the meat grinder. ❤️ denotes favourites.
💠 more Hollanov recs | acari recs masterlist
🔸️another day, another struggle by blushgush (E, 116k)
Shane Hollander’s hopes for the NHL were ripped from him by an ACL tear and replaced with doctor prescribed opioids at age 18. Four years later, hockey is a distant memory and his days consist of strange men and chasing a feeling drugs can never seem to provide anymore.
Ilya Rozanov’s family returned home to Russia when his father’s mental state deteriorated and the government wasted no time snatching back his work visa. Ilya stayed behind in that godforsaken city to do the only thing he had ever been able to support his family doing: sell dope.
Ilya sees a lot of sad people. Shane sees a lot of horny men. Neither of them are prepared for what they see in each other, and what it means for the boxes they’ve allowed themselves to be put into.
Shane is an addict and sex worker, and Ilya is a drug dealer in this AU. This isn't tropey at all, but rather more realistic. It's harrowing at times but ultimately hopeful and uplifting. I couldn't stop reading I was so fully encrossed.
🔸️Antipathy by AC91 (Yuna & Ilya, Yuna & Shane, G, 10k)
Yuna can’t help it. There’s just something about Ilya Rozanov that rubs her the wrong way.
I like fics where it takes the Hollanders some time to truly warm to Ilya. This Yuna POV is great because she struggles a lot with what her son could possibly see in Ilya. She's unfair and judgemental until she gets over it, which makes it feel real.
🔸️a pox on all your houses by apocryphal/ @the-apocrypha (T, 20k)
"Chlamydia?" Ilya has never heard Hollander's voice reach such heights in the absence of a cock. "You have chlamydia?"
"I did not get it on purpose," Ilya complains.
Absolutely hilarious. Love the snappy dialogue.
🔸️Dawn in the Altered World by @idiopathicsmile (E, 53k)
The Boston Raiders are making decent time heading up into Michigan when one of the horses almost breaks an ankle on what’s left of the road.
A highly lethal—and highly contagious—virus has swept across the planet, taking down the power grid, toppling society, and leaving behind only a tiny fraction of the population. For a while, it seems like everything is over. This is not the case.
Or: The world ends. Shane Hollander starts playing for Boston. Yes, in that order.
They find each other again even after the end of the world. This made me smile, and also want to check out the book this AU is based on.
❤️ Lean on me not by slagglass (M, 46k, WIP)
“Honestly, dude, you’re fucking handling this like a champ.”
He’s not. He’s handling it the way he has to, the only way there is to handle it. “Well, I am champ, so.”
He sounds like he’s about to say something else heartfelt and misinformed, so Ilya flicks on the radio.
Ilya gets outed fall 2014. Objectively it's good for gay hockey but it sure doesn't feel like it.
This is an Ilya character exploration fic that makes my heart ache but also makes me want to reread it right away and chew on it some more. If you enjoy Ilya shame theory meta, this fic is for you. This fic also gives good Sveta & Ilya, and I am hoping for more Sasha.
❤️ Reward Is Always Measured Backwards by Fangirl_Shrieks/ @parcai (E, 20k)
The rules of the sex interview were not explained because the rules were the point. The room needed to see the specific heterosexual performance that proved you were the right kind of boy—the kind who had done the expected things and would keep doing them and had nothing to hide.
Shane had the girl ready. He’d built her in the shower a week ago, just in case.
Or: Shane learns, in order, how to skate, how to perform, how to survive a room, and how to want something he will not name for years. Featuring minor hockey, the OHL, one fabricated girl named Jess, and eleven pages of notes on one Ilya Rozanov, who he has never met. Yet.
This is such a meaty exploration of hockey culture and Shane growing up in it. I want to dissect this Shane, he is so interesting.
🔸️Staring at the Sun by Nerve_Itch/ @muffichka (E, 91k)
The first sound Ilya hears is a thin, discordant symphony of beeps and whirs. Something vibrating.
The next thing he hears is…wet. A sort of shaking, gargling sound, that feels like the ugliest crying he’s ever heard. And through it, Shane’s voice.
“I’m with him now, mom. He’s— he’s not fine. He’s not. I know—”
Ilya wants to ask who's not fine, but he can’t feel his own body, his mouth, enough to ask.
“Yeah,” Shane is saying, only slightly calmer. “I know. He wasn’t breathing—"
Ilya knows there's a link, between the clinical musicality of medical settings, Shane’s audible, awful distress, and his own physical incapacity. It’s just, it’s so tenuous, and the air around him is so thick, so heavy. It would be easy, to sleep, a little.
Footage of the last game between Ottawa and Montreal is everywhere; it’s breached containment from the sports world, and now it seems like everyone is baying for Montreal’s blood. Except, Ilya is oblivious. Not exactly blissfully so, but as the fight for accountability within the league rages on without him, Ilya just wants someone, anyone, to tell him what happened.
This fic is putting Ilya through a meat grinder, physically and emotionally. The result is a deeply satisfying hurt/comfort fic with Shane & Ilya's relationship as the beating heart at its center.
❤️ tender by bysine/ @barkerandlovelace (T, 18k)
Ilya had dismissed the feeling out of hand, except he has now just spent half an hour in the bicycle shop considering the difference between 190 gsm and 250 gsm merino wool and which would best keep Shane warm while wicking sweat during his morning commutes.
This is yet another thing Ilya has never done before. The only person whose sweat he has ever contemplated the wicking of has been himself.
No meat grinder! Read this if you enjoy sparse, precise prose that still opens up a whole world, or if you always wanted to see Shane bring his hockey intensity to a public service procurement job.
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