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Your famous golden touch by anonymous (shane x ilya, 30k)

“Well, Rozanov can’t afford the rehab he needs to get back to the league,” Shane said. “So I’ll pay for it.” ... As Shane spoke, Ilya largely kept his eyes on the money manager. He’d never gotten to watch someone realize Shane was insane before. Although, having given it more thought, it wasn’t insane to Ilya. If Hollander had been taken out of the game he’d feel the same way. There had been times, over the years – when he was on a five game road trip against mediocre teams with lackluster crowds – where what drove him to put on a show was the knowledge that Shane had put on a show the night before. It was obviously the same for Shane. Ilya was surprised no hockey nerd had ever tracked how their successes clustered, how Shane having a big game was so often immediately followed by Ilya having a big game and vice versa. If Ilya had lost that, he’d have lost a lot of the magic of hockey. He understood how Shane felt, but he was the only person on earth who could.

Every time this anon (of the perfect for now series) posts something I know it will be my new favorite thing. So, here it is, my new favorite story. This week anyway. Ilya gets gravely injured and has to claw his way back into the NHL. Shane wants to help the only way he can: by becoming his sugar daddy. This author has such a magical way of capturing the mess between these two without losing sight of how much they fundamentally like each other.

Dawn in the Altered World by idiopathicsmile (shane x ilya, 52k)

That afternoon, Ilya and the others tie on their skates and cautiously take to the ice. Ilya divides them in two (half are “Boston,” half are “Raiders”), they designate goals with mounds of snow, and then they are playing something close to actual hockey. It feels like freedom. It feels almost like before. Everyone is horribly rusty, but by the end, they are grinning like they’ve won the Cup again. Like fish who have been returned to water. Ilya skates to the edge of the pond. The surface is uneven, imperfect, and yet still somehow it is the best ice he has ever played on. When he looks up, one of the old farmers is watching him. “Good game,” says the farmer. “Really goddamn good game.” Ilya nods. “You know who you looked like, out there?” the farmer continues. “Ilya Rozanov?” Ilya guesses.

A Station 11 AU. You could read and enjoy it without having read the book, but then you'd be missing out. (Is there fanfic for station 11? There must be.) The world ends but hockey doesn’t. I really enjoyed this tale of two damaged people literally and figuratively finding their way back to each other from the wilderness.

a pox on all your houses by apocryphal (19k, shane x. Ilya)

"When is that from?" Ilya demands, the moment Svetlana answers her phone. "Is that from today?" "Obviously the test is from today," Svetlana snaps. "The chlamydia is from six weeks ago when you couldn't shut the fuck up for five minutes during my movie, and I had to pause it and wear you out like some kind of fucking puppy with the zoomies." "Well, you picked a terrible movie," Ilya reasons. "I picked up chlamydia, you asshole."

Just the most adorable story about STDs that you can possibly imagine. Charming from beginning to end.

future tense by @radialarch (2k, shane x ilya)

No one would have called it incriminating. The Metros captain, having a wild night out with the boys. The hockeysphere had mostly reacted with amusement. So Hollzy does know how to have fun. But Ilya looked at the stranger's fingertips pressed to the small of Shane's back and thought: this man is going to fuck him. There was no mistaking the intent. Ilya knew it with the certainty of someone who had been fucking Shane Hollander for ten years. The thing was: it had been Shane who'd said, "You can."

A tasty little slice of jealousy digging into some of the uncertainties of the Ottawa plan.

the intricate brocade of this happiness by waxing__crescent/@always-waxing-crescent (10k, shane x ilya)

Yuna must know how it feels from the other side as well; to be a son leaving a home. The distance hurts from any direction.  Ilya thinks about his parents, how he used to sleep in their bedroom. Maybe, what she doesn’t want to realize is that the reverse isn't a relief either. It feels worse to stay. There’s no way out unscathed. “Sometimes,” Ilya says, “it still feel like all I am is my mother’s son.” He shouldn’t be saying it. She couldn’t possibly understand what he means: Ilya hasn’t told anyone about any of it, any of his life, like the pain won’t leak out if no one knows the details.

A beautiful and clear eyed examination of the boys' first Christmas together, planting the seeds of Ilya's mental health struggles in Ottawa. I particularly enjoyed Ilya trying to negotiate his relationship with Yuna while grappling with his own family history.

lotophage by @citrusses (9k, shane x ilya)

"That's Ilya Rozanov," Yuna supplies, when the camera zooms in on one of the players. He looks unremarkable to Shane, the way all of the helmeted players in identical gear flying across the rink do. Another faceless white uniform on white ice. "He plays the same position as you."

“Forward," Shane says cautiously, trying not to phrase it like a question.

"Center," his mom corrects gently. She's so gentle with him, no matter how many mistakes he makes. It's the curdling sort of gentle that makes Shane want to rip off his own skin, and all he can do is endure it. He has no right to insist on not being treated gently. This woman is his mother, even though Shane, as he is now, is not really her son

Shane loses his memory after a bad hit, and from the outside looking in, it doesn’t look like a life he wants back. Ilya flits around the edges of the story, heartbroken twice over, although it's actually Yuna's pain that I found the most poignant. Citrusses does a beautiful job of capturing a Shane that isn’t our Shane but still feels like a version of him.

they always placed you for the leaving type by epigraphs (10k, shane x ilya)

When the English gets too hard, when he crosses the threshold to utter exasperation, Ilya puts his tongue to an entirely different use. He leans over and hooks a finger under Svetlana’s jaw, tugging her close. Their mouths meet, a crash of lips and teeth and tongue, both of them high on the endorphins fizzing in between their bodies as they fuse themselves together. 

A delicate look at Ilya and the English language through the years.

a body in your passenger seat by brawlite (5k, scott x ilya)

You want me to leave ugly car? I leave ugly car. But—” Rozanov trails off, looking at Scott like he's studying him before raising his eyebrows and tilting his head just so, like Scott’s supposed to follow his invisible, and probably insane, train of thought.  “But fucking what?” Scott asks.  Rozanov hums. He smirks, lips quirking up in a way that makes Scott kind of want to punch him. He wishes they were still on the ice, just so he could. Free reign.  “I don’t think you want,” Ilya says, smug. 

I have such a soft spot for well written stories with Hunter and Rozanov and I particularly enjoyed this prickly pwp. Kip and Shane don't make an appearance but they haunt the narrative anyway.

Your Dog by medric/@bluegrasshole (9k, Cliff-centric)

Where did Rozy learn to do all that, anyway? If he was anything like Cliff in high school, and he probably had to be given how fucking talented he was to go first overall for an Original Six team, then it was all hockey all the time, with barely any free moments for socializing or fucking. Not to say that Cliff was a virgin or anything when he got to Boston, God no. He was a big hockey-playing fish in a small Canadian pond and hasn’t had his nose broken yet, so like, definitely in high demand by the local hotties. But Rozy knows so much about this stuff — women and how to dress for them and what to say to them. And they just love him, everywhere he goes. Cliff too loves him but for different reasons, probably.