georgie

New WIP!!!!

the burden of proof

11/18 Chapters

Legal drama Hollanov AU - second chance romance/angst with a happy ending ❤️ guys I promise please join me on this ride you will not regret it

~this has not been beta’d yet, so please excuse any typos!! this is subject to change by Sunday’s chapter upload~

Ilya became aware, after quite some time, that his coffee had gone cold.

He had not drunk any of it. He had been holding it, both hands wrapped around the cup, the warmth of it long since transferred into his palms and gone. He understood, distantly, that he had zoned out while he was looking outside, but had not seen anything. The images had technically been received by his eyes but went nowhere, processed by nothing, and disappeared.

This was the thing about the bad weeks. The episodes. Not that the world became dark or frightening or overwhelming in any cinematic sense. Just that it went… thin. Like a painting with not enough pigment, the image technically present but the depth absent. Color without saturation, sound without resonance. He could see the street. He could not feel the street beneath his feet. He could hold the coffee cup. He could not taste what was in it as the liquid hit his tongue. Maybe he just wanted to smell it. It smelled Iike Shane. Black coffee with cinnamon. He liked the punishment of it all.

See you Sunday!!! Catch up on the last chapter before the new chapter drops!!!

He had spent his entire life learning how to become that man. Faster than everyone else. Stronger. Better. The best player in the world. On the ice, he knew exactly who he was. He was untouchable there. A god in skates.

But in the bedroom, stripped of every layer except his own skin, he was only Shane. No adoring fans. No flashing cameras. No captain's "C." No armor.

Just flesh and blood. Just a heartbeat that stumbled when Ilya looked at him for too long. Just a man hoping, for once, that he could be good enough without the roar of a crowd propping him up.

Had that been the problem? Had Ilya wanted the god, only to find the man beneath him?

Months had passed without a word, and every day the silence answered the question a little more cruelly.

Away from the rink, Shane had always been softer than people expected. Quieter. Less certain. The confidence that fit him so naturally beneath arena lights slipped from his shoulders the moment he stepped off the ice. Without his gear, without his reputation, without the game, he wasn't invincible.

He was just Shane.

And maybe that would never be enough for Ilya.

Away Message

*BRB REMINDING U WHERE CH. 3 LEFT OFF*

POKEPOKEPOKE sHayNa+iLyA<33333 1st SL33POVER

~zOe && sHaNe…bAcK 2GeThEr???!~

:-((((( ilya was NOT allowed 2 go 2 camp this yr WTF ILYA’S DAD

BIG NEWS when SHANE got BACK (((sveta+ilya=dating)) omfg???

$H@N3 I$ G3TT!NG W3!RD W/ F00D shiiiiiit

&&&&& ilya iz (getting sad**like mama**)

+kk G2G reading ChAptEr FoUr+

NOW POSTED!!!! HAPPY NEW CHAPTER SUNDAYYYYYY!! After 11 chapters….Shane and Ilya finally are alone together in present day (for more than just a quick conversation on a street corner or in an elevator or a at a diner). This time it’s just the two of them. Alone. In Shane’s hotel room. How will their conversation go?

“Ah,” Ilya said, “but at least your asshole is a winner.”

“Yeah,” Shane rolled his eyes, “I’ve got a great asshole.”

Ilya stared at him.

Shane stared back.

Then they both registered the goofiness of what had been said and started laughing, really laughing, and let it pick up momentum like a runaway train. Shane’s collarbone made its objections known and he pressed his good hand to it and laughed anyway, and Ilya’s face went fully red in a way Shane had not seen since law school, and they sat there on opposite ends of Shane’s hotel bed and laughed until it ran out of fuel and settled down. The quiet in the room came back almost as quickly as it had left.

~this has not yet been beta’d so please excuse any errors, and this subject to change~

Ilya. In the doorway of his hotel room. Looking… god, the way he always looked, utterly unfair in his beauty, it had always been unfair. Absolutely breathtaking in an effortlessly cool way. It felt extra unfair given the current state of Shane.

But more than that, for a moment Shane simply stood there and felt the full impact of it. Because it had been ten years, and here was this person, in his doorway, in his hotel room. The physiological experience of being this close to Ilya, completely alone for the first time in a decade was impacting Shane greatly. This was different than in the courthouse, or the few moments alone in the elevator, or even in the hospital when anyone could have walked in. This was a private hotel room. Complete privacy. Alone. Just the two of them. No one would disturb them. Oh god, Shane was spiraling. He needed to say something. Just… speak. How long had he been standing here not saying anything?

His stomach landed in his shoes. He was starting to feel queasy. Wait, was he going to…? Yep. He was.

“Um, hi,” Ilya said after the world’s longest silence. “I am sorry to startle you, can I—“

Shane flung the door open and ran across the room with urgency. He had mere seconds before he lost complete control of the situation all over Ilya’s shoes. He made it to the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind him where he was loudly, violently sick into the toilet.

Catch up on chapters 1-10, see you on Sunday when I upload the new chapter!!! 💞

NOW POSTED!!!

Away Message

*BRB REMINDING U WHERE CH. 2 LEFT OFF*

2003 wAs a CLUSTERfuckkkkkkkk

~zOe dUmpEd sHanE & caLLeD hIm gAy!~

TEEHEE the BOYS were GIDDY for CAMP!!!! ~i wonder y~

(((then ilya **IGNORED** shane)) RITE after ShAnE gOt vULnErAbLE?????

oooo mAyBe iTzzzz cUZ iLyAAA haD sOm3 f@miLy SH!T hApPeN :-(

RIP irina :-((((

+dOnT cALL dOnT tExT iM bUsY rEadIng ChAptEr THREE nOw+

Happy NEW CHAPTER SUNDAYYYYY!!!!! ⚖️

“You are frozen,” she said. “You have been frozen since graduation day and you have built a very beautiful, very functional life inside your pretty little igloo, and I am proud of you for it, I mean that. But Ilyusha.” She reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. “You have both spent ten years becoming new people, maturing, and those two people have never tried to talk about what happened back then, or tried to see if you make sense together now. I gave Shane this same advice.” She squeezed his hand once. “He cannot travel for three more days. Getting discharged from the hospital tonight. He is at the Boston Inn. Room 1919.”

She said GO GET YOUR MAN, ILYA!

~this has not been beta’d yet so please excuse typos, and it is subject to change!!~

He went to shower. He had decided, standing in the weight room, that tonight he was going out. The clubs. Loud music and dark rooms and people who wanted nothing except his body, something he had been giving freely for a decade because it was the only version of intimacy that didn’t cost him anything. Intimacy cost him a great deal once. He wouldn’t let it happen again.

Right as he was putting on his final touches, Jo Malone London Myrrh and Tonka Cologne Intense mixed with Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille Eau de Parfume, he heard a light rapping on his door. Before he could answer, Svetlana was already letting herself in. Ilya had given her a spare key years ago because, frankly, she always ended up finding a way into his apartment anyways, and this way he didn’t have to ask as many questions.

“I am going out,” Ilya called out from the hallway, walking towards her and then blocking her from coming further into his home.

She did a full scan of Ilya. “Make me a tea,” she demanded, and shoved past him into the kitchen.

“Sveta—”

“Tea, Ilyusha.”

He made the tea.

Catch up this week!! New chapter this Sundayyyy!!! 💞

NOW POSTED!!!

The year is 2003, Shane and Ilya both turn 12 that summer, and to say it’s an eventful year is an understatement (especially for Ilya ❤️‍🩹 iykyk).

NOW POSTED!!! Happy Sunday!!!! ☀️🌈⚖️ Fight off the ~sunday scaries~ by reading the newest chapter of my fic!!

I love you, he said, because it was true and because he had nothing else. Ilya, I love you.

No, Ilya said. You don’t.

Ilya stormed out with the door slamming behind him. The apartment was suddenly enormous. Utterly hollow without the one person inside of it who mattered. Shane had stood in the middle of it for a long time. Long enough that the evening light changed and went dark. It still smelled like the dinner they had just cooked together.

He had loved him. He had always loved him. He had just, somehow, not understood until that very moment, the one moment it mattered, what love required of a person. What it required you to choose, and what it required you to give up, and what happened when you got to the moment of choosing and chose wrong.

He had stood in the dark for a long time.

~this has not been beta’d so please excuse any typos/errors, and this is subject to change~

Every time Shane heard another story about him, pride and bitterness twisted together inside his ribs until he couldn’t separate one from the other anymore. Because how was he supposed to hate Ilya for becoming extraordinary when Shane had loved that brilliance first? Shane had seen it when they were young and exhausted, eating vending machine dinners in the law library at two in the morning. He had watched Ilya become himself in real time.

And that was the cruelest part of all this.

Nobody knew Ilya the way Shane did. Not the version in expensive tailored suits delivering intelligent objections. Not the legend people whispered about outside courtrooms. Shane knew the boy who fell asleep on open textbooks and drooled into them. The boy who got turned inward when he missed his mother. The boy who would press cold hands beneath Shane’s shirt just to hear him yelp. The boy who once looked at Shane across a shitty kitchen in Ann Arbor and said, with terrifying conviction, I think maybe I was made for you.

Shane swallowed hard against the sudden tightness in his throat.

Because this week, for the first time in years, he had seen flickers of that boy again.

It involves Greek gods that’s all I’ll say 🫢

A new socmed fic I just published on AO3!! I had a lot of fun with this fic! I was dying for a way to bring AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) into this fandom 😀 So what better way to do that, than a good, old fashioned, long-term, long-distance childhood friends-to-lovers social media fic 😍 They were kids/preteens in the PEAK time of AIM, so it’s not a far stretch to assume they must have been using AIM. I remember when I was on it (aging myself here) going throughhhhh it. Every conversation felt like a revelation, every away message felt like code, every long-distance friend I chatted with felt like they were right next to me. When you’re that age and the internet is right at your fingertips, relationships feel so BIG. I hope you feel that as this fic progresses. ❤️