The Golden Dragon

via @discipleofkleio

fall in love again and again...

they're unwinding for the day together just casually playing footsie while doing their own thing on either end of the couch and then ilya just says something in passing without thinking about it, feels shane go very still, and looks up to see shane make eye contact and slooooowly start pulling his feet away

The whole team settles in with rapt attention, ready to roast the shit out of Roz over it via group chat, only to see. Well. It's a series of interview clips over the years. It's made up exclusively of three things. One, clips of Hollander "stealing" linguistically challenging questions that the whole team knows Rozanov hates. Two, clips of Rozanov derailing questions that are about Hollander's "representation of his community," which gossip on the street says makes Hollander uncomfortable. Three, Hollander and Rozanov commenting individually on the rivalry, with vicious comments such as. "He's of course a great player, but he'll find us difficult to beat." Such fire in Rozanov's comments are especially damning, given his whole chirp-king-schtick. The video editor, with all the obsession and perception of a true fangirl, makes sure to circle every instance where you can see the shadow of Hollander and Rozanov pressing their feet together - and in one instance holding hands - beneath the interview table. (You wouldn't see it unless you're looking for it - or unless someone circles it in red for you.)

The video finishes, and the team sits in a kind of shocked silence as the next video auto-plays. This one is a compilation of Rozanov chirping Hollander on the ice. Here, the editor has helpfully drawn an arrow to Hollander's face whenever he blushes. The editor has also inserted text overlays with comments like. "Look at how fiercely Rozanov insults his rival." And then puts smaller arrows pointing to Roz's body language, with helpful texts like "excited wiggle indicating absolute fury," and "besotted grin indicating deep hatred." The sarcasm is distressingly accurate in its point.

(Listen, the whole team knows what Roz looks like when he's chirping someone. This - this is not it. This is not it at all. This is him when he's being silly with people he really likes. What is going on.)

The video finishes, and this time someone has the presence of mind to stop the auto-play before another mind-breaking thing comes up.

Someone else, trying to lighten the silence with a joke, and maybe dismiss it all as a fever dream, says, "Montreal Jane? More like Montreal Shane, am I right?"

And. Well.

Once it's out there, there's no coming back from it.

Ilya would sit his team down and be like: Boys. You know how the second greatest hockey player in the league fucks up our chances at the cup pretty regularly? Well what if I told you I’ve decided to take one for the team and solve this problem for us once and for all. That’s right, I’ve leveraged my incredible body and sex appeal to seduce Shane Hollander to Boston at an extreme pay cut, thus basically securing us every cup until the end of time. Now everyone be nice to this hot piece of ass I have secured for hockey reasons because I’m such a baller.

I think they would crown him a champion. I think they would be like “the gay thing is weird but we can’t argue with results and anyway Ilya’s fucked all the pussy from Boston to Montreal it makes sense he’s branched out. Boston would be like “we literally don’t care if they’re fucking on center ice if they’re winning cups they’re winning fucking cups”. Shane would do a joint dunks commercial with him and eventually become the people’s sweetheart. Maura Healey would personally petition for Ily to get citizenship.

Shane: Jesus, I can't believe I'm going to let that asshole fuck me 'til I cry tonight.

Hayden: You know, you don't have to.

I’m imagining her/maybe Shane playfully ribbing him about how he has no real financial manger or decent investments and what do you MEAN you just let a paycheck like that sit in your account while buying luxury cars every five minutes no wonder your net worth is shockingly low for your value, etc etc. and he’s not even offended he’s surprised and pleased that his new family is so invested in him and also enjoys watching where Shane gets some of his crazy. Like Ilya Mommy Issues Rozanov is “yes please ma’am optimize my finances and worry about my wellbeing harder” while he shovels whatever David made for dinner in his mouth.

But then at some point while she’s (lovingly) harping on his financial irresponsibility he just kind of quietly mentions that actually so much of his paycheck was going back home to his family when he was younger that he needed to blow shit on cars or whatever pretty quick if he didn’t want it to disappear. And she realizes that yeah he’s a little dummy who spent a concerning amount of money on VIP sections last year and thinks bank account interest is investing but he was also a child supporting his entire family in a foreign country with no one bothering to look out for his best interest or explain planning for a future.

David gets treated to impassioned rants every night about how “David I’m not convinced anyone even read that boy his contract in Russian”.

She starts managing him as well, obviously, and she’s kind of disturbed by how easily he just signs whatever she puts in front of him and doesn’t bother asking questions before agreeing to hand over all his management to her. He just seems thrilled she got him a Lamborghini partnership and an invite to fashion week.

The only time he puts up a fuss is when he realizes she’s not planning to take any significant cut of his money because “you’re family sweetheart” and he looks like he got smacked in the head with a shovel and has to go outside on the porch with Shane for a suspiciously long period of time.

ilya's reputation as a "womanizer" and a "ladies man" takes hold pretty early in his career

he's got a girl in every port, the man's having a lot of sex everywhere

(most of his teammates know that he's got a special fondness for jane in montreal, but that's neither here nor there)

shane genuinely isn't jealous, what ilya does when they're apart isn't his business, as long as he has ilya's undivided attention when they're together, which he absolutely does

someone makes a joke on twitter that all of the women he's banged ought to start a club

this leads to someone making a shirt that says "i hooked up with ilya rozanov and all i got was this lousy t-shirt" and starts selling it on etsy. a bunch of other people make copycat shirts and variations

the fad fades pretty quickly, but there's a brief moment in time where they seem to be everywhere, and jane texts lily every time he sees someone wearing one out in the wild

lily mostly responds with laughing emoji, but one time he responds with "i think that one's real i remember her" and shane has to remind himself that he's not jealous and it's not his business and he has to delete the picture so he doesn't go back and study it

not long after boston wins the cup, a package arrives at shane's secret sex condo, it's a version of the shirt that says "i slept with STANLEY CUP WINNER ilya rozanov and all i got was this lousy t-shirt"

shane is mortified, but also more than a little turned on. at some point he wears it under his other clothes when he meets up with ilya for a hook-up and ilya goes absolutely feral when he sees it

years later, when the whole dallas kent situation hits the fan, people start taking to twitter talking shit about other NHL players (and other pro-athletes in general) who treated them poorly

someone tweets out "i've never really talked about this because i'm not one to kiss and tell and it's really no one's business, but i just want to say that in like 2014 i hooked up with ilya rozanov and he was the most considerate lover i'd ever had. i was relatively inexperienced and so down bad for him that i would have done anything he said, but he checked in with me every step of the way, and *also* gave me crazy orgasms to boot"

and women start coming out of the woodwork responding to the thread with similar sentiments, that he'd set the bar for future hookups and relationships

and people are like "damn, consent king ilya rozanov, didn't have that on my bingo card this year" and "this man was really fucking his way across north america as a service to *us* teaching millennial women to have higher standards for their partners"

someone tweets out "i hooked up with ilya rozanov and all i got was multiple orgasms and really high expectations about consent" and it goes stupid viral

several months later when the fanmail debacle happens and hollanov are outed, that particular corner of social media has another meltdown along the lines of "and he's even bisexual? this makes so much sense"

someone jokes about getting shane a shirt, since he's a member of the club, this tweet makes its way back to harris, who feels like he should warn shane and ilya

ilya posts a picture to instagram of his husband lounging, wearing The Shirt, his underwear, and nothing else. the shirt is very obviously not new, has been worn and washed many times