Ill Gotten Gaines

So.

please feel free to ignore this 🩷

To be honest, Ilya gets it. He doesn't think that any amount of media training could keep him from going fully off the rails if given the chance to talk about how much he loves Shane, how good his cock tastes, how he made Shane cum hands free the first time he was ever inside him. And the thought of literally any of that being chirped back at them on the ice like it's bad or filthy or shameful? No. Not happening. 

So Ilya pouts but understands, and gets over it. That is, until Shane accepts the invitation. Then there are hissy fits and overdramatic shouting matches with zero heat behind them ("Yuna, what the fuck? Why can Shane talk about our filthy sex life?" "Because he blushes when he says the word 'sex', Ilya. And because he's never made a face fucking joke in front of me.") and just so much sulking. 

Yuna knows it's a risk, and there's no way in hell she's going to be there for the taping. But she also knows that Shane's Golden Boy image was shattered to pieces with a single grainy video of him. 

Now is a chance to start over. They've had long conversations about this - conversations over wine, and walks, and in therapy. This being a "rebuilding period" for Shane's reputation, yes, but also for his agency over his own image. And if him going on a podcast to talk about why his knees are perpetually bruised during the summer will give him a sense of control over his life, then this is the penance Yuna will pay for not listening and being in his corner sooner. This is how she will support her son.

So Shane goes on Call Her Daddy, and Ilya sits behind the camera with headphones on, pouting dramatically when Shane is looking, but really just staring with love and adoration at his husband. When Yuna asks how it went, Shane just blushes and Ilya beams and says, "He will break the internet."

And he does. Of course he does. He can't say the word sex without blushing, but it turns out Shane Hollander can employ euphamisms and imagery like a goddamn romance novelist. 

Gif Sets are instantly made of him saying things like:

"It felt like cannonballing into a cold lake: every inch of me was suddenly alive." about Ilya handing him a water bottle when they were eighteen, or;

"It was a revelation." about their first hookup, or;

"It's the only place other than hockey where my mind goes quiet." about their sex life in general.

Entire OpEds are written about Shane's quiet devastation at the end of his Metros run ("They were going to hang my jersey in the rafters. Now they burn it in the streets."). During the Metro's next game, a huge number of fans turn up in his jersey, holding signs that say "We're Sorry." 

A fan account turning his quotes into steamy romance novel covers gets over 1 million likes on the cover they made of Shane's ridiculous cologne ad photo with the words, "I spent years surviving on the minutes we could steal" written over the top.

Ilya can't get enough. He starts calling Shane his poet, his author, his cunning linguist. He buys tank tops of his favorite phrases and wears them all the time. He and Rose even wear matching ones when they're shopping in LA that say Ravenous over the grainy footage that outed them to start with. Ilya frames and hangs the paparazzi photos.  

Eventually time goes on and the internet finds something else to obsess over and Ilya forgets all about it. That is, until Shane shakes him awake at 3am, looking haunted as he says, "Ilya, Ilya I need to tell you something." 

Ilya's brain is still in Russian mode, still in fight or flight when he mumbles, "What is it?"

"The podcast, Ilya, I..." for a second Ilya thinks he's having a massively delayed panic attack about the whole thing, but then Shane says, "I. I hired someone. An author. To write the talking points."

Hockey players are total gossips, so it would take zero seconds flat before the rumor was in every locker room.

It's all, "did you hear that Shane Hollander got cursed with a vagina for three days last month?" and "I heard from a friend who heard from a friend who heard from a second line player in Montreal that it really fucked up the team dynamic."

Which of course leads to this crazy trend where players are all trying to curse their enemies with a vagina. Etsy witches make a killing at $10k a spell, there's a curse market boom that's so large that Bloomberg does an investigative piece on it, and at least one player (*coughDallasKentcough*) tries to sue the person he bought the curse from for it not working. He ends up losing the suit, having to pay for damages, and waking up with a micropeen that gets tinier every time he does something awful.

Shane (and his penis, which is back and fine and still quite large, thank you for asking) is so deeply embarrassed by all of this that he almost skips the All Stars Game because he's worried about gawkers in the locker room.

Yuna fields a lot of brand calls that she will never, ever, tell Shane about including several for feminine hygiene products. What, the money was good.

Meanwhile, in typical fashion, Ilya hosts a press conference (shirtless) where he says, "I love it, keep the curses coming. I have Baba fucking Yaga on my side, so every time you try my dick just gets bigger."

And no one knows if he's serious or not. Except Shane, Shane knows, because if he wasn't a size queen before my god is he now.

"Scott and I take baths together. Those two sauna."

So, yeah, even Ilya doesn't remember if she had freckles or not but when he dreams of her they're there, across the bridge of her nose just like Shane, and they stand out more when she smiles (just like Shane), and then she's walking away and he's chasing after her (just like...).

Directorially this makes sense: the audience “reads” the screen left-to-right, so having them facing to the left is more narratively intuitive. I get it, however my brain can’t stop thinking about the why.

Is it because Ilya is tucking Shane away from the windows? Because he wants his pillow to smell like him after (as long as his beautiful neat freak of a boyfriend doesn’t want to change the pillowcases after, sweetheart, I swear we didn’t get cum all the way up there)? 

What if it’s because Ilya knows that Shane prefers to sleep on his right side? Usually that’s great, it means he’s tucked onto Ilya’s chest where he can bury his face in Shane’s hair and feel his breath against his neck and give him all the little forehead kisses that they both require. But sometimes the urge to spoon hits, and Ilya refuses to make Shane give up his right side sleeping coziness, can’t conscience the idea of being the little spoon, so he just wraps his arms and legs around Shane like a giant tentacled sea beast and rolls them bodily over while Shane curses and wriggles and battles with the pillows until everything is just right and then sighs and falls asleep even faster than normal. 

Well, not sleeps. Naps.

The thing about being a professional athlete, the best kept secret that no one says, even to each other? This shit is exhausting.

So between flights and practices and hours-long games, you have to learn how to catch sleep whenever you can.

Hayden has become a connoisseur of the nap. All he needs is a suitably soft hoodie for under his head and a pair of headphones and he can conk out pretty easily. (Honestly, this is one of the biggest fights he has with his kids. What do you mean you don't want to nap? Naps are great.)

Everyone on the Metros has their own nap style and it's cool, Hayden can't judge. Except Shane.

Hayden has roomed with him often enough to know Shane's nap time routine down pat:

Curtains closed, socks on, over the covers, nothing covering his ears but it must be quiet, nothing covering his eyes but it must be dark, hands resting on his stomach and his legs stretched straight out like he's auditioning for the role of Cadaver #2 on CSI Canada and not getting the part because he looks so. damn. tense. And if you interrupt the delicate falling asleep process (that mostly looks like Shane scrunching his face together and, I dunno, pooping himself?) so help you God.

Shane naps real fucking weird.

So when Shane and Ilya come out (are outed, Jesus Christ and fuck you Gary) and Yuna posts a photo of them cuddled up on the couch, Hayden thinks he's slipped into an alternate reality. It's the only explanation for it, that or a complete mental breakdown. But no matter how many times he blinks or refreshes Instagram, the image stays the same:

Shane Hollander, passed out on Ilya Rozanov's chest, sunlight streaming through the open windows, bare toes tucked against the arch of Roz's foot, hand resting easy against Roz's chest while he looks at his phone with one hand, fingers of his other one tangled in Shane's hair.

It is the most non-hermetically sealed nap Hayden can imagine, and he must be having a stroke. There's no burnt toast smell, but no other explanation for the way Shane looks so at peace, asleep in the eye of the hurricane that is Ilya fucking Rozanov.

Jackie catches Hayden zooming the photo in on Shane's face and laughs and laughs through his rant about ideal nap conditions.

But it's not funny, and Hayden can't even say why but he's seething with... something. Something he refuses to examine too closely, won't call jealousy no matter how much it turns his stomach and washes the back of his tongue with a bitter feeling.

Hayden spent a decade navigating dark hotel rooms at 2pm, using headphones religiously, buying the fluffy socks so his feet wouldn't be, and here he quotes, "too damn stompy," and what? Ilya Rozanov stomps in with his cigarette smelling ass and his (probably) flat feet and his total lack of sleep hygiene and Shane sleeps through it like he's comatose.

It's stupid, and petty, but he's hurt. Hurt enough that Jackie notices and the laughter fades into concerned eyes and a gentle hand on his arm. And then his wife, who is way too smart for him, gives his arm a squeeze and says, "Just because he feels safe with someone else now doesn't mean he didn't with you, too."

That's when Hayden weeps, sobs loud enough that Jackie buries his face in her shoulder so he doesn't wake the kids, and lets the story he's had in his head of Hollzy and Hayd completely dissolve. Because no, he didn't. He tucked away a fundamental part of who he was and an entire goddamn relationship for the entirety of their friendship, and that's not safe. That's scared, that's hiding, of course he couldn't fucking sleep.

Eventually Hayden cobbles himself back together, pulls his face from Jackie's soaked shoulder, and gets his wracking breaths under control. When he finally looks at his wife (his beautiful wife, who heard the news about Shane and Ilya and immediately invited them to dinner) her eyes are red rimmed and her nose is a little runny from crying and he couldn't love her more if he tried. And if he can help Shane have his person the way Hayden has Jackie, then he's gonna fucking try harder.

So he clears his throat and says, "No he didn't. But I can do better, now."