Heated Rivalry Thoughts

I love them finding solidarity as Non-white players, I love them speaking French with each other bc it denotes their closeness, I love them being presented as best friends, I love them kind of ganging up on Hayden for any number of reasons because he's easy to bully (affectionate), I love Shane and J.J as any type of duo, I love them as friends, as a 'we kissed once while drunk/high/whatever and decided that it wasn't for us and moved on", as J.J being Shane wingman pre-hollanov reveal or in fics when they're not together yet. I love them as an alternative pairing if Shane and Ilya had actually become just friends (even though that would never happen bc they're insane-in-every-universe-and-timeline soulmates but shhhhh) and J.J and Shane got together. I love them going places together and taking each other out to dinner w/ the team or just haven and the pike family. I love them trying fusion places. I love the idea of them trying said fusion places and attempting to do it on their own master chef style and all hijinks included.

I just love the Shane and J.J dynamic so much and I wish and hope we get to see more of it.

Also I know we talk about what Shane's gender bent name would be if it would be Jane or something closer to Shane like Shayne and Shayanne and I've seen someone on twt use Jaqueline as J.Js fem/genderbent name which is great and I like it. However Since j.j shares a name with a Haitian revolutionary, I think fem j.j should to so: marie-jeanne, named after Marie-Jeanne lamartinière. This name also goes provides the nickname of M.J due to being a compound name.

One way or another, Ilya gets some of his childhood items back (presumably from Svetlana).

The items are things ranging from grocery receipts with Irina's rushed handwriting on the back to a faded copy of his birth certificate, a note and an old, yellowed at the edges photo of her and Ilya, with him tucked against her side and smiling. He looks a lot like her, same hair, same nose and bright eyes, same bright and blinding smile only contracted by the barely perceptible grey in Irina's gaze. Among these things is Irina's note to him, slipped in between the cover and an elastic band of her notebook. Ilya knows the note by heart, even if he hasn't seen it in many years, he knows it best by the torn edge made by him trying to hastily shove it in his drawer at 15 when he'd been expected to be over it, or at least to hide it better. He's never opened the journal. He does now.

Shane sits with him as he pours over the items, gingerly picking them up from time to time and filling in the blank spaces and time frames of his spouse's childhood. The notebook stays on the table for a few hours after everything else has found its place in their home.

It's midnight or later when Shane feels the bed shift and hears Ila’s soft sigh, something heavy for all its quietness. He hears the floor creak, Anya's paws across the wood and the silence that follows her plopping down near Ila’s feet in the living room.

He debates getting up; this is Ilya's life, his memories, but something in his chest withers at not being there again, for the younger version of Ilya that had Svetlana and nobody else to turn to for comfort. He joins Ilya in the living room, grabbing a blanket from beside the couch before quietly sitting down next to him.

The Journal sits on the table, pristine and leather-bound in a deep plum purple. Ila picks it up and opens it, Irina's handwriting scratchier and clunkier than he remembers it. He glances at the date 'November 18th of 1981" he does the math. It makes her sixteen, newly sixteen, her birthday only having been a week ago. Her entry is long, she talks about school friends, graduating, skating on the pond, brutal practices and the feel of the skates as they cut through Ice. She talks about her friend, Stefania, about their routine and the way they swap hair accessories and gossip. The entries continue through the years, her handwriting becomes more defined and the writing moves away from figure skating from friends and schoolmates and by the time Ila is born, her penmanship is smooth, expected of a woman married to his father. In one of the last entries, Stefania is mentioned, with two paragraphs dedicated to her. She talked to Stefania in person. They met in a quiet shop tucked away from the noise of Moscow. She writes about their conversation. Stefania is leaving, leaving for England and never looking back. Irina describes the meeting as pleasant, something she'll miss almost as much as her sons.

Ilya stops reading that entry then and there. He moves to something else, to the letters she wrote to Ilya and his brother. He doesn't go back to her fourth to last entry, not until he's made a piece with the rest of it. He finishes the entry containing Irina's recap of her favorite memories with Stefania, of her goodbyes to her best friend tinged with something he hates that he's able to name.

They seem genuinely friendly with each other and Carter is one of , if not the only person who gives him a nickname by way of using his last name.

There aren't many fit with this dynamic so I'm doing what I have to and working a piece myself.

Since fandom has agreed that Hockey RPF exists in the HR, its my headcanon that Shane and Carter or 2419/1924 have a small, but dedicated fanbase the size of a school bus.

Like in our fandom spaces, there are accounts dedicated to both the friendship and romantic relationship potential to their dynamic.

They mention each other very rarely interviews but most often in post game where the metros/voyageurs have just played the admirals.

I also in general want to see them more in fit and stuff as a duo because they seem like they'd be a fun and sweet duo.

I really wanna go with calling them 2419 but I kind of know shipping name conventions (tops name goes first ect) and don't know if that applies to jersey number combinations and if the Hockey RPF fandom even does that anymore so 1924 is another option