🧱 not over Take~My~Hand but living my life 🧱

'Ilya gets added to the WAG groupchat as Lily' fic

BUT...

At first it reads like just another fluffy 'all the WAGs are lovely future-allies who adore, respect and ogle Shane (as Ilya expects)' fic.

But gradually Ilya realises they're all micro-aggressively racist and ableist about Shane behind his back, deeply resent his position, talent, and fame and lack of interest in them, and clearly don't think of themselves as racist at all, etc. Extra casual homophobia in there too (not targeted at Shane but literally only because they don't know). And from context he can tell their bfs/husbands on the team are saying worse (except Jackie/Hayden, who aren't included).

And just. Slowburn of Ilya gaining insight into Shane's experience of daily racism and other things they've never talked about, what he's like around straight people, realising that team really doesn't deserve him, etc etc. Feeling anguish and rage over the horrible-person-POV of interactions with Shane where Shane was clearly really nice and had no idea what they were thinking.

"The 81 tattoo?" Shane glanced at Ilya and smirked. "No, I actually settled on something else. That was a good idea though. I picked something similar."

Ilya set his knife down and squeezed Shane's ass to help him resist the urge to lift up Shane's shirt right then and there and get an eyeful of his piercing.

"Another tattoo?" Rose asked. "Ignore me if I'm being nosy."

"I think your nosiness is like the foundation of our friendship, Rose. You're fine," said Shane, smiling. "Not a tattoo. Uh." And he turned to Rose and lifted up his shirt himself. Ilya leaned toward Shane resting one hand on Shane's waist and lifted his own shirt. She should have the complete picture of Shane's thoughtful gift.

"Oh my god shut up, you guys are so cute. Wait hang on. Stay like that for a sec." She dug her phone out of her purse which was sitting open on the bar and took a picture of them. "Ugh, this is adorable," she held out the phone to show them the photo. They were grinning broadly, their heads together with Ilya's hand looking comfortably proprietary on Shane's waist. Shane's piercing had caught the warm glow from the track light so that it visibly glinted. Shane was giving Ilya bunny ears.

"Send me that," said Ilya, gazing at the picture. "Please."

"So Hollander," Ilya said seriously when Shane had his head down over the main course—a beautifully poached cod in some kind of butter sauce and the creamiest potatoes Ilya had ever tasted.

Shane looked up. He had sauce on his cheek. Ilya told himself it would be rude to lick it off in front of the guests. "Yeah?" 

"You've seen Chef Brian now. Did he turn out to be hot?" 

Shane covered his mouth as he let out a little helpless squawk of laughter, "No, sorry. He has a mustache." 

"Some men look hot with a mustache," Fabian objected. "Lots of men." 

"Yeah, but this is a really really straight mustache," said Shane scornfully. "When was the last time you saw a hot straight guy with a mustache? He looks like my dentist." 

Fabian laughed, "Okay, point taken." 

"My dentist in New Jersey was kind of hot," said Ryan thoughtfully. "But maybe I just liked the way he told me to open wider." 

"Inside thought, babe," Fabian said in a loud whisper, pushing his glass of wine away. 

"No, no, let him share," said Ilya. "Tell us more about this dentist. Is he still practicing? Can you give Hollander his number?" 

"I don't think Shane would be into him," said Ryan as Ilya fended off Shane from poking him in the ribs. "He has a mustache."

—————-

First of all, I want to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who has signed up on Kickstarter to get notified when THE WISDOM OF EMPERORS campaign goes live! And seven or eight more huge thank-yous to everyone who has been signal-boosting about it! Without the support of a publisher and their marketing budget, the success of a book is entirely contingent on grassroots support from fans, so I am truly grateful to see such an incredible response already, even before the campaign has launched. Just two weeks to go! Let's keep the momentum going!

On to today's merch reveal! Or, rather, a merch reveal plus a peek at what the first stretch goal will be after the Kickstarter reaches its funding goal... 

Not a huge fan of the red on the usual cover? Prefer a book that will coordinate with any outfit so that strangers on the subway will think you're impressively stylish? Planning to get the standard hardback rather than the Collector's Edition, but still want to jazz it up a little? Planning to get both versions and want them to look equally twinkly when they're side-by-side on your shelf? The Goth Version has you... covered... (Look, I grimaced too as I wrote that.) 

Available as an add-on when we reach $500 over our funding goal, The Goth Version is an alternate colorway dust jacket in black/grey -- and yes, it'll still have the gold foil on the cover! :) Which do you like more, the black or the red? Let me know in the comments!

ALSO, over on Kickstarter, there's an exclusive excerpt from the book, featuring Gaius Talius (the scribe of a 2000-year-old manuscript found in an archaeological excavation) having a Very Bad Day. Read it here:

So excited to reveal the cover to my new book today, The Wisdom of Emperors! You can check it out on Kickstarter, along with the full summary!

Inspired by the story of the Ancient Roman emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous, The Wisdom of Emperors is a second-world adult fantasy novel written in the style of a fictional academic text. It documents the translation and study of a world-changing artifact discovered in an archaeological dig: a manuscript which provides the clues to finally unravel the mysteries surrounding one of the most famous emperors of the ancient world. 

The Kickstarter campaign is for the deluxe collector's edition, but you'll be able to preorder the standard hardback/paperback, PLUS the early-access ebook, available to backers well before general publication to everyone else. And there's going to be some really, REALLY cool merch as well (genuine papyrus bookmarks, designed and blockprinted by my own hands!)

anyway, now that we've established that the ocean has living things in it and the environment is important to that, this is a post about shane hiring a personal stylist. i think it's reasonable to assume we're meant to understand shane's desire for a partner who can dom and his pattern of hiring other people to make decisions about his house and his clothes for him as coming from related psychological places. if someone else picked out his suit for him, he's not responsible for the decision to wear it, and so he can wear it without being paralyzed by the shame associated with actively choosing and wanting it. wanting to look desirable, caring about clothes, having taste– all of these are things that in shane's world are unacceptably unmasculine. so he hires the personal stylist – a socially permissible thing for a straight male celebrity to do – and then says oh i just didn't want to look worse than everybody else, i never really cared about clothes. and ilya sees through this immediately, pointing out shane's implicit desire to invite the gaze ("you have new clothes to show off..."). the personal stylist gives him permission to try things he might otherwise be too afraid or ashamed to try, but the core motivation is still his own desire.

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 millenial 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 fanvid 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

For a long time it was the only part of his life that was just his. It was confusing and messy and it hurt at times, but at least he felt alive. He felt like a person, not a commodity.

the point is that when a #2 draft-pick career-overachiever is desperate enough for your cock to drop the knee at the doorway of your first sexual encounter when he couldn't clock your flirting or his OWN flirting for over a year, and didn't initiate anything until you jerked off in front of him and pushed him against a wall and slid your thumb into his mouth but now! now he leans into your kisses like he is trying to breathe through your lips and clutches at your waist in awe and shoves his hand greedily into your pants to get you hard enough in 12 seconds to suck and THEN asks you with a panicked look on his face if he was bad -- you say, ah no, opposite. too much, too good!

too good of him to be so longing and so eager and so ready for you to take. too good of him wanting to be so good right off the whistle. to want so hard and so wet and so deeply, its consumed the back of his brain and made the back of his throat ache and made him moan around you while he tried to balance covering his teeth and sucking and pulling back your foreskin. too good, that he wants you so so fiercely.

and you double-check your instinct, you ask, is your first time with a man, first time feeling this? leading shane to vocalize it. leading him to his desire. yes, he lunges for your lips. yes, he was curious.

did you like sucking my cock? and he skitters away from it, tries to make his desire less, but you have his desire in your hands and you are scruffing it and forcing it to look at the flame. don't play it off. did you like it. yes? and shane who says of course it was different in a lifetime from now, gives it up instantly and says, yes.