hpandcarbs

Like they invite him for drinks and he says he doesn't drink during hockey season and Bood just says "Oh that explains why you're so solid at hockey." Or Dykstra plays music and asks Shane if he knows this song and when Shane says he doesn't, Dykstra just says "That's fair, everyone has their own taste." And when they have a team BBQ and notice Shane's ginger ale, Hayes just says "Ginger ale is so good, I haven't had one in forever!"

Shane is just so anxious (in general) and waiting for the other shoe to drop. He finally tells Ilya that he thinks the guys might be making fun of him and Ilya seems shocked. He asks Shane if he wants him to confront them. Shane quickly says no.

Then the next day, Shane overhears the guys talking amongst themselves (they don't see Shane) saying "Hollander is awesome! Obviously at hockey, but I mean in general! Him and Rozanov are such a good match. I can't believe we get Hollander on our team! I swear my wife has a crush on him. He freaking charms everyone. I thought Rozanov was funny, but Hollander might be the funniest guy I know!"

Troy's "redemption arc" was not caused by an external event, he was not outed, Kent did not stop talking to him... He was not "forced" to be better. He CHOSE to call his best friend out even though literally everyone else ignored Kent's behavior.

I think it takes so much courage to just one day decide to be better when you could have kept living your life... Just fine. And even more so when Troy lost so much in the process. Obviously the accusation against Troy are a kind of external event, a wake up call, but it is not directly pushing Troy to be better (and also in Eric's book I believe there is a mention of him already reconsidering his friendship with Kent before the accusations). He could have ignored it. Just like everyone else did.

Also, I do think it is relevant that Troy did not snap because Kent said something too homophobic for example. Troy snapped because Kent was a rapist, someone who hurt women. And canonically, Troy does not have many women in his life except his mother. He did not know the women making the accusations. He simply started fighting Kent because it was the morally good thing to do. Again: no exterior motive forced him to take a stance. He didn't do it for him. He did it for women, who have nothing to do with him or hockey.

And he did not stop there. He actively tried to do better for women. When his mother says he should try to interact with them more, he acknowledges that it is true (and I really wished we would have seen that happen in role model - maybe for unrivaled?)

****

It's 1:30am when Marleau calls. Ilya would have slept through it if Shane hadn't wacked him in the face with a pillow and mumbled "Dude, your phone is ringing, make it stop."

"Oh." Ilya rubs his eyes and picks up his phone. "It's Marly."

He loves when Ilya is a menace. “Asshole” is his favorite pet name for him and “fuck off” is basically dirty talk. Ilya wants to party with Centaurs after a game? “Go have fun babe.” Ilya is relentlessly chirping another player? “Well he didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.” Ilya wants to blow Shane while he’s on a phone call? We canonically know how that goes.

But he does not fuck around with his man’s health and safety. Ilya can get into any mischief he wants until there’s a chance it could actually endanger him and that’s when Strict Shane has arrived. No, ilya cannot smoke cigarettes, Shane is not losing his man to lung cancer. Yes, Shane will lather Ilya up in sunscreen every summer and make him wear a daily SPF 50 moisturizer, Shane is not losing his man to skin cancer. He’s limiting his McDonald’s intake bc his man is not going to get heart disease. He’s making him get safer cars bc if Ilya dies from driving recklessly, Shane will bring him back to life just to kill him again. He wasted almost a decade not getting to be with Ilya the way he wanted and he’ll be damned if he lets anything (including Ilya) shorten their time together.

So now there’s this perception that Shane has Ilya on a tight leash. That he won’t let Ilya ever have fun and that Shane has domesticated him and Ilya is stuck under Shane’s thumb. Meanwhile Shane is actively egging Ilya on when he’s being a little shit. Shane is even bitchier and freakier than Ilya and it is so funny to Ilya that the world is so wrong about him.

It is not so funny to Ilya when someone tries to tell Shane to be less strict with Ilya. That is unacceptable. Ilya loves when his husband is citing statistics about lung cancer to him and making him his gross (healthy) smoothies and making sure he does the appropriate stretches before a workout and making him drink a glass of water in between drinks so he doesn’t get too hungover. Ilya has never had anyone who cared enough to “nag” him every day about his health (the closest was his mother but even then he often ended being the one who had to focus on her health). Shane being strict makes him feel so loved. He’s genuinely upset if Shane tries to “loosen his leash” bc Shane’s lectures are how he knows Shane cares. It’s proof that Shane wants forever with Ilya just as much as Ilya does.

YEAH HE WOULD HAVE QUALMS ABOUT*WHO* HE WAS GOING TO SEE IF HE KNEW, BUT HE DOESN'T ACTUALLY CARE WHAT SHANE IS DOING

GOD the idea of bb shane having a habit of tattling on himself because A. he wants to make sure mom and dad are up to date with everything he did all day B. does genuinely want to be Good Boy and will just own up C. doesn't always realize what he did is or isn't "bad" ("i told christy at school today that her dress looks like boogers" "oh, honey, why would you say that?" "??? because her dress looks like boogers??")

and the idea of yuna and david having flashbacks to bb shane tattling on himself when he's standing in front of them with ilya

shane: "fuck off"

hayden: jesus what a dick

Ilya's own internal narration calls Marley his best friend, but when he leaves Boston for Ottawa he leaved everything Boston behind. Obviously we see in the book that he cut off Svetlana by just drifting away, but the fact that he started a set of yearly hockey camps with Shane Hollander and didn't ask Marley to coach even as they started to expand/get bigger...

Idk I just think that it's something that flies under the radar that Ilya's "best friend" is a surface level relationship that he doesn't want to touch the project that bears his mother's name.

Troy shows up and gets close enough with Ilya in the span of a little more than a month that Ilya comes out to him (literally the first person outside of the Hollanders and his literal therapist). Ilya invites Troy to coach at the hockey camps without telling/asking Shane so it's clearly something he's allowed/okay with doing.

He exchanges porn videos with Marley, Marley shows up at his door at the All Stars game to go clubbing, Marley "congratulates" Ilya for having a threesome (when really he's fucking Shane).

But Marley isn't at the hockey camps.

He recruits Ryan Price. He recruits literally all of the GCU hockey players (even if we don't see Scott and Eric at the camps in the text since their first summer would be summer 2021) but not Marley.

Hayden is there from the start. JJ is there from the start.

Hayden and JJ aren't All Stars. Marley is.

David who's assigned to go on a trip to Russia after Hollanov's been outed, because he's been picking up Russian and it would be a good temperature read on the Russian counterparts.

David who visits Irina's grave and spends time cleaning it up, lights a candle and sits until long after it's burned out.

David who tells Irina about Shane as a child, who tells her about all the ways Shane and Ilya fit together, who tells her about the puzzle nights and the cookies and cream ice cream and the blanket they keep specifically for Ilya on their couch.

David who reassures Irina that he helped Ilya with his cuff links on his wedding day, tells her not to worry about her boy.

David who tells Irina that her son is so loved and cherished.

David who plants a little maple tree as a "sign of friendship" in a park across from the cemetery Irina is buried in. He got to pick the place, and he made sure she would be able to see it.

Edit may 3: Hey if you're here from threads :) Love getting jump-scared with my own tumblr post getting screenshotted (this is fine i promise, they credited me properly) but jfc. Right in front of my salad???

Cue like, all of the Cens rookies/younger players discovering they're bi/pan/gay/queer and Troy having to explain to Ilya that it was a joke no he didn't purposefully make them have gay awakenings he thought it was harmless!

Ilya is losing it and trying not to, Shane is trying to figure out if Troy was trying to haze the rookies/younger players, Scott is getting updates and has discovered that this "ally proof" has spread to his rookies and beyond.

He’s seen Shane Hollander laugh. That forced, professional, made-for-the-cameras laugh. He’s seen Captain Shane laugh, with a short, restrained smile before he gets right back to business. He’s seen My Best Friend Shane laugh at dinner with Jackie and the kids, in a way he’d thought was real for over a decade because it looked like it reached his eyes.

Then he watches the way Shane—not Captain, not the kids’ Uncle Shane, not post-game press Hollander; this is the real Shane—lights up when Rozanov whispers something in his ear. There’s no other way to describe it. Shane leans in to listen to whatever Rozanov has to say and the way his face breaks open into pure, unfiltered joy is just…

Damn, Hayden thinks to himself. Where was this Shane the whole time?

Shane laughs so long and so hard that he can barely breathe. He’s red in the face, wiping away tears and gasping for air as he tries to hold in the giggles—and that’s the only way to describe the sound; these are uncontrollable, soul-deep giggles. He loses the fight over and over, dissolving into laughter every time Rozanov looks his way.

He was here the whole time, Hayden says internally. We just didn’t see him.

He thinks back to every locker room conversation, every victory party, every team dinner where Shane had seemed happy. Every shared hotel room and late-night talk where he’d asked if his friend was okay because something had felt off and he’d assumed that behind closed doors and closed-off smiles, Shane was lonely. Every conversation they’ve had with JJ since The Video, where Shane looked down and clammed up. Every practice where he stopped looking angry when Comeau stopped passing to him and the other players followed suit, and he’d just looked blank.

I’m good.

I’m fine.

You worry too much.

What are you, my mother?

Rozanov—Ilya—hauls Shane into his lap by the waist and plants a wet, sloppy kiss onto his freckled cheek. The Shane Hayden knows—knew?—would’ve made a face at the extreme physical contact. This Shane laughs harder and revels in the affection, tilting his head and giving the other man access to his neck.

Fuck, we didn’t see him, Hayden thinks. I didn’t see him. I didn’t hear him. I let him disappear right in front of me.

Who gon check me? More importantly, who would check Shane? Because would he be wrong?

Shane: