For Sale: Fire Extinguisher, Never Used

All of my Ilyas are very locked in people but snapping birch Ilya is unique in the sense that he has just gone through a very sudden transition from a forced state of inaction to a a state of intense action. He went from having no control over the situation to having the most control in all of Camp Hollanov. And I mean specifically over Shane’s condition and safety. Yuna is masterminding the social media campaign in snapping birch with the help of Rose’s top of the line PR attack firm. But Ilya is the one everyone is deferring to when it comes to Shane.

I’ve mentioned this in other posts, but Shane decided to cover up his own abuse for Reasons I Shan’t Say. He did everything he could to prevent the story from getting out to the public, and in doing so, he limited his own options to stop what was happening. He enabled his own abuse.

Ilya has been losing his goddamn mind.

Ilya has been losing his goddamn mind.

Ilya had the least power to intervene in what was happening to Shane. He’s not a Metro. He’s not even in the same country as the Metros. He can’t be in that locker room or on the ice with Shane. He can’t help him at all. And they haven’t even begun to walk back the rivalry yet. If ilya comes out making broad, sweeping statements in favor of Shane Hollander and accusing the Metros management of abuse, they’re going to open a very big can of worms, and they had no idea what consequences would follow. And, again, Shane himself has been trying to keep this from getting out. Ilya has spent months feeling helpless.

Which is one of the reasons why he dug his heels in so goddamn hard on telling J.J. That was the one shred of control that he had over the situation. He didn’t know how J.J. would take the news and he couldn’t be sure until it was too late. Ilya was not willing to risk anything else going wrong to worsen the situation. And he knew Shane would never out him. No, he does not even want his existence to even be implied to J.J.

Ilya was straight up contemplating murder as a solution before the leak happened. He would do well in prison even if he got caught. Like. He is so fucking far from fucking around right now. He is ready for decisive action.

Ilya’s not helpless right now. He can finally help Shane. He’s got the helm, and he’s got some direction, and he can finally do whatever it goddamn takes to fix this.

I also mentioned this in other posts, but Shane’s cataclysmically bad right now. He has not slept since the night of the 11th. It is the fucking 15th. He is boiling alive in his own stress. Like. This season has been very hard on his body already and then someone went and retroactively Truman show’d him. He is in hell designed for Shane Hollander. He’s. He’s doing bad.

Everyone’s letting Ilya take the lead with him. Yuna’s the general when it comes to the social media campaign but Ilya’s the one setting the terms when it comes to Shane. He’s trying to limit stress so Shane can like. Medically. Get in a position where he can sleep again. No one can even come to see Shane unless they text Ilya first. And the only one who ever overrides Ilya’s decisions when it comes to Shane is Shane himself.

Shane’s. Unwell. He’s letting Ilya take much more of the lead than he normally would because he’s frankly never been less okay in his entire life. Ilya’s shouldering the brunt of the decision-making right now and Shane’s only vetoing when it’s something he really gives a shit about.

For example, Ilya actually tried to ban Shane’s involvement in social media on the night of the 15th.

Ilya’s very very goal oriented in snapping birch. He is picking a goal and bulldozing the most direct path there. Right now, his #1 goal is “get that fucker to go to sleep before he has a heart attack.” Like. He has legitimate heart attack concerns. He sent out one of the assistants they have running the ground-level labor right now to go out and buy him an AED because he’s terrified Shane’s going to have a heart attack and an ambulance won’t get to the cottage in time to save him. That is how extreme his concerns are.

They had Shane draft his own social media on the night of the 13th with overview from the PR firm. At the time, they were focused on matching his tone and speech patterns. Again, Camp Hollanov is constrained in its spin because the public has a massive reference base in David’s phone. People know what Shane Hollander sounds like when he’s speaking privately now. They’ve read years and years of his texts. They thought it’d be a safer bet to have Shane do the initial draft and make it sound more naturally like himself.

That’s over now. Shane reacted very poorly to his return to social media. Having to see glimpses of the leak and what people were saying with it combined with having to give up even more of his personal details? Psychic damage. Extreme psychic damage. Ilya blamed his involvement on the 13th for Shane’s inability to sleep after and tried to outright ban Shane’s future involvement from social media until he slept. No one was asking him to draft or look at shit until he actually slept.

Shane actually cared about that. So he vetoed.

Montreal is his city. He knew they’d want to hear from him, and he wasn’t about to let anything go out under his name without putting eyes on it himself. He didn’t do the initial drafting, but he approved the tweets from the 15th, which is more involvement than Ilya wanted him to have.

But Shane’s operating on nonexistent bandwidth right now. Like. He’s so sleep deprived that his decision making ability is outright compromised. He’s letting Ilya have the run of it for the most part. And Ilya’s fucking running with it.

That all goes to say that snapping birch Ilya is all for solving problems in the most extreme and decisive manner possible. Give him a fucking gun at this rate. He will not hesitate.

He would hate tlg Ilya. Awful fucking creature puppeting his skin. He does NOT claim him. Where is Shane’s whore and all of her guns. Her plague on Ilya’s life can finally be useful.

Like. I think snapping birch Ilya would be the most diametrically opposed version of Ilya That Lives In My Head to tlg Ilya. Like what do you fucking mean he got excited when Shane found himself at the center of a social media scandal because it might be good for Ilya??? What do you MEAN he just sort of checked out and left Shane to it??? Snapping birch Ilya is about to go to goddamn war over here.

They’re just so different and so similar in such a fucked up nightmare realm coraline way. I didn’t even plan that. That just happened.

There are surface level similarities. Both Ilyas want to get Shane to leave Montreal for Ottawa. But the substance of that desire is completely different.

Tlg Ilya fully and explicitly wants Shane in Ottawa for his own interests. His internal monologue is all about having Shane on his team and getting to be with him all the time. He is excited and hopeful at the idea, to the point where he’s like “I need to try to not get my hopes up too high. Shane loves Montreal so much that a few editorials and angry tweets would never be enough to get him to leave it.” Like babe. You mean the smear campaign?? Against the love of your life??? You’re trying to not get your hopes up about the end results of the smear campaign????

Snapping birch Ilya also was desperate to get Shane to Ottawa. But it was fully and explicitly about getting him out of harms way. Like. Snapping birch Ilya doesn’t want Shane to lose Montreal. He just doesn’t want Shane to die. If he succeeded in getting Shane off Montreal and onto another team, it would still be a very bitter and painful moment.

Both Ilyas have their Shanes at the center of a very public controversy. snapping birch Ilya has never been more locked in to deal with it and get Shane through it. But tlg Ilya just sort of checked out. Like. He just doesn’t bring it up for several pages. The closest he gets to even acknowledging that something happened is when he cracks a joke to Shane about how Shane doesn’t have any playoff games to get to anymore. Like Ilya do you think that might be a sore subject here. Now. When Shane’s being dragged through the mud for getting knocked out of the playoffs.

Even the sex of it all is different. I had a different post explaining this, but in snapping birch, Shane and Ilya’s sex life is hitting historic lows. Like. They’re just not having a lot of it. It’s been like that for months. Shane’s been going through a lot physically, and they’ve both been going through a lot emotionally. They could not have possibly been less in the mood with everything going on.

But they do decide to try having sex on the night of the 14th as a sort of desperate stab at a homebrew sleep aid. Medically speaking, sex produces hormones and endorphins that encourage sleep. Melatonin wasn’t doing shit, and Shane was refusing heavy duty medication. They were willing to try sex if it got Shane to sleep.

And I think they felt kind of weird about trying sex as like, a utilitarian problem solving method. I don’t think they like having sex be for anything but sex. Like. It was fully consensual and neither of them were uncomfortable doing it, but I think they both were conscious of the fact that they probably wouldn’t have picked to have sex that night had it not been for utilitarian purposes. This scandal has impacted their sex life and they don’t like it.

The main support tlg Ilya gives Shane post trip gate is offering to fuck the self esteem back into Shane. Shane’s spiralling about his career being ruined now, and Ilya’s like “maybe I should take you back to your trophy room again,” aka the place where he last fixed Shane’s self esteem with his cock. Like. We can just say “I’m sorry you’re going through this.”

As a baseline policy, they are not saying shit to anyone.

They have to run their lives like they are goddamn deep cover spies. They absolutely cannot risk emotional confessions to their team about how this was never real. They have an actual world power after them. Russia is not letting this go and would fucking jump at the chance to tell the world that the gay hockey Romeo & Juliet love story was never real. And they cannot risk the possibility that they tell a teammate, and that teammate goes home and eventually tells their dearest partner of five years who they love the truth that they learned today with complete confidence in the fact that it will remain a secret… and that partner was a Russian plant all along.

Other people share secrets. Other people get drunk and blab by accident. Other people have secret gambling addictions and get desperate enough for money that they decide to sell to the press. You have fallings out with other people and they decide, you know what? I have a fun fact I can still share. They have so much to lose that they cannot risk this information getting out. This is strictly need to know basis.

Shane’s parents find out immediately. They need to know. Their involvement is critical in keeping the lie running, and I don’t think Shane would be able to stomach lying to his parents for the rest of their lives. Boris and Thompson are both also need to know. They are just in such close proximity to Shane and Ilya at almost all moments that it’d be impossible to keep it from them, and they are also running so much of their overall security. They need to know what kind of potential targets they need to be worried about, especially if they find people who come looking for info about the hollanov early years.

I think Hayden knows though, in part because of how I imagine the dynamic with J.J.

J.J. had a rough fucking time in the major junior hockey system. He was a top performer but he was still very much the odd man out. He was ostracized by his team. This was in part because of his race. He was the only black kid in the room. This wasn’t a fact that went over well for him.

But it’s also was because he wasn’t an asshole. One of his teammates passed around photos of his girlfriend in the locker room without her knowledge. J.J. told her, and from then on, he was on the outs with his team. He had the reputation of a guy you couldn’t trust. A guy who wouldn’t have your back. They made his life hell and it was hammered into him, again and again, that it was his own fault that he was so alone. He betrayed them first. He couldn’t be trusted. He wouldn’t have his teammates back when they needed it.

J.J. came into the Metros the year after Shane and Hayden. Shane and Hayden had been rookies together. They had famously been rookies together. Shayden had a little bit of a WillMack style craze in the in-universe media. Everyone loved Shane Hollander, and the Metros media personnel decided that his friendship with Hayden humanized him. Hockey God Shane Hollander also likes to hang out with his best buddy. Shane and Hayden had a very set dynamic by the time J.J. got there.

J.J. came in the first year Shane was captain. Shane was young and under intense scrutiny, and J.J. had known about Shane Hollander since he was 14 years old. Shane had been famous for J.J.’s entire tenure in the major junior hockey system.

J.J. always kind of wondered about Shane. If being so famous made it any better for him in there. If. If he also dreaded going into the locker room. Probably not, right?

Not long after Shane became captain, he ended up with some tension with some of the more veteran players. He wouldn’t let them haze the rookies. The vets insisted it was an important bonding experience, part of team chemistry, it’d make them closer, and Shane just insisted hazing never made him feel close with the guys hazing him. That all came after, when they actually played. C’mon. We’re skipping that step.

He took shit for it, but he wouldn’t budge, and he had such a quiet but visceral hate for hazing that it took J.J. off guard.

And that’s. That’s the moment J.J. decided he really, really wanted to be friends with Shane. He just. He didn’t want to be the odd man out on this team. And he didn’t want to hate the locker room ever again. He thought Shane got what it meant to dread your own locker room and he. He suspected Shane would get a lot that the rest of the team wouldn’t.

He felt on the off step at the start? Shane and Hayden were such close friends already, and he was new and felt like he was elbowing his way into it. But he did it. The three of them, they all ended up falling into something together. Best friends he ever had.

J.J. knows the truth from Sochi, or at least most of it. He’s fuzzy on the exact details but he, Carter, and Scott know broadly that they’re all just selling a story. He’ll keep the secret until the day he dies.

But I think he would struggle lying to Hayden. J.J. knows what it is to be the odd man out. He doesn’t want that to be Hayden.

Hayden also believes the lie the least at the start.

He can tell something is fucking up. He doesn’t believe the story and he’s pushing for the truth. He’s stuck between being scared that Shane’s stuck in a fake relationship with a guy who molested him on a balcony in 2011 and being scared that it isn’t all a lie and Hayden just came off as so homophobic that Shane told J.J. and not him. I think they tell him because they trust him so highly and to preserve his relationship with J.J. and Shane.

And let me tell you, Hayden fucking hates Ilya at the start of this fic. He is killing that man with his mind.

Hayden absolutely hates the idea of Shane being trapped in a long term relationship, possibly including marriage, with someone he wasn’t even dating at the start, particularly because this happened because Shane went for a handshake and Ilya went for second base. Like. He is very much focused on the part of that video that ended with Shane shoving Ilya off of him, having to stop Ilya a second time when he went in for another kiss, and storming off upset. He’s not giving so much credence to how long Shane spent kissing back.

Hayden also has a very specific fear that he’s grappling with, and it’s the idea that Shane will feel obligated to have sex with Ilya.

Shane and Ilya absolutely have to keep up appearances of a dedicated and monogamous relationship. They cannot afford to be caught sleeping around. If they’re getting sex, it needs to be from each other.

And Ilya had a reputation for sleeping around before this. He had sex very regularly with a lot of people. Now his only way to get it is out of Shane. Hayden is very worried that Shane’s going to keep sleeping with Ilya because he’s trying to satisfy him enough that he doesn’t blow the entire secret by fucking around with someone else.

It’s important to note that Hayden is coming into this very unwilling to give Ilya the benefit of the doubt. Again, his intro to Hollanov is a video that involves them fighting about something, Shane turning to leave upset, offering Ilya a sportsman-like handshake, and Ilya backing him against a wall and shoving his tongue down his throat. Shane eventually pushes him off, and Ilya tries to go back in again. Shane ends up shoving Ilya against the wall, and then he storms off, visibly upset. Like. As far as Hayden’s concerned, he already hated Ilya at the outset and he also has video proof that Ilya has already crossed Shane’s physical boundaries once and managed to ruin his fucking life in the process.

And Shane’s not exactly making tender proclamations of his secret love to Hayden. He doesn’t talk about his emotions. He comes back from Sochi and, from Hayden’s perspective, spends the next few months boiling in his own stress from the consequences. And before a Boston game, Hayden sort of probes if Shane wants to just stay at the hotel instead of with Ilya. He doesn’t have to go spend the night with him if he doesn’t want to. Shane is very stressed in the moment and blows him off with a “Jesus Hayden of course I do” which, to Shane, means “if I don’t go over there there are going to be international news stories about how Hollanov is breaking up 3.5 weeks after the entire world rallied to save their love and people will want us drawn and quartered in the streets for it and I really don’t want to deal with that” not “I have to go sexually service Ilya Rozanov to keep a lie made for his benefit afloat”

But Hayden hears “Hayden should go buy a gun. That’s what Hayden should do.” Like. He is KILLING that man with his mind. Hayden’s gonna need some time to come to terms with Hollanov.

I think they tell Cliff because Ilya really needs someone in the aftermath.

I talked about this in another post, but Svetlana is stuck in Russia doing spy game shit. And yes I will get her out of Russia before the fic ends I would never leave her in there but it would be a long and involved process. Ilya is absolutely fucking terrified for her. He is waking up every day and looking for news that’s the daughter of the minister of sport has been arrested or murdered. It’s giving him nightmares.

Ilya has just lost his family, and while those guys fucking sucked, they were still his family. Ilya’s shown to still love them even though they’ve hurt him. He said it killed him that he wasn’t able to take care of his dad when he was sick. Now he will never see any of them again.

He’s been spat out by his home country. And that place also fucking sucked and he dreaded going back to it, but he didn’t hate all of it. He never gets to go back. His name is mud. He’s being trashed as one of the worst traitors in Russian history. Like. It’s miserable.

He also lost so much of the freedom that he loved in his life in America. He can’t go out by himself at all. He needs security at all moments. He has to be careful about what he eats and where he goes and who he’s with.

Shane and Shane’s parents would be a very limited support system. His dynamic with Shane has never been more uncertain. He feels like he trapped Shane in a relationship Shane may not want. And Ilya very much did not get to meet Yuna and David as the man their son was in love with and who’d been in a relationship with him for 8 years. No, the first time he ever spoke with the future in laws was a private meeting in the fucking White House that consisted of Shane and Ilya immediately copping to the fact that the relationship was fake and Yuna saying, with extreme pain, “Shane. Shane. You two are the face of gay marriage now.” And Shane saying “I KNOW IM WORKING ON IT”

They’re trying to make Ilya feel welcome to the family but it’s. Stilted. Ilya feels like he trapped their fucking child and they must hate him. Twice a week he gets a bewildering call from David Hollander to “check in” and once a month the Hollanders fly down to come see one of his games and take him out for dinner at a restaurant that has to be preapproved for security reasons two weeks in advance. Surely this is for appearances and not because they want a real relationship with him.

He’s struggling hard. He needs someone. He keeps crashing out to his bodyguard, who has the emotional range of a walnut. Boris needs Ilya to have someone. He is so tired.

Cliff is his ride or die. His boy to the end. In my mind, Ilya straight up lived with Cliff when he first moved to America. He’s like Ilya’s big brother, and he more than proved his dedication to his boy when Ilya was in Sochi.

He and Shane talk about it and they decide to tell him as long as Ilya drills into that man’s head that if he tells anyone Ilya may die in real life. Like. Telling anyone’s a risk but it’s a risk they decide to take. Shane was already kinda worried about Ilya being too isolated after Sochi. He inherently had J.J. since J.J. was in the Ally Squad, and Ilya agreed to let him tell Hayden. Shane knew Ilya needed someone and knew that he and his parents weren’t cutting it.

Shane is extremely worried about Ilya in the aftermath of Sochi. He spent a lot of time locked in a small room with Ilya. They couldn’t hide from each other much there. And he also knows that he and Ilya don’t have the kind of relationship where they’re emotionally supporting each other. Like. He’s limited in how much help he can give. Ilya doesnt really love him after all.

They decide to gamble on Marley. Cliff Marleau is now Hollanov’s #1 shipper.

Unlike Hayden, Cliff gets the front load of “I have trapped Shane Hollander in an unwanted relationship but it’s not that I don’t want it he doesn’t want it. I have never wanted anything more than him. I yearn for his freckles.”

And Cliff’s like. No brother.

Your man wants you.

I’ve seen it.

Cliff Marleau saw the broadcast of them in front of that fucking car. The photo? Gonna win that fucking Pulitzer. Because that love is real. Shane Hollander’s heart IS already his. #trust

Cliff is hyping Ilya up to woo his fucking man. He’s intervening because Ilya’s giving himself panic attacks watching his fucking man play hockey under threat of assassination. He is deleting Twitter off Ilya’s fucking phone because Russian twitter is. Brutal. He is. Tired. But He Will Stand By His Motherfucking Boy No Matter What. Come At Him Russia. He Will Hold The Line.

They’re not risking anyone else. The stakes are just so fucking high. They cannot risk the entire world finding out that their half a billion dollar rescue effort that will affect international relations for decades to come was based on a fake love story. Enough people want them dead as it stands, and their jobs are dependent on the goodwill of their respective government. The NHL can boot them if they fall out of international favor.

The most their teams find out is that they get an inkling that Shane and Ilya are fighting after they fallout because they’re subjected to their manful pining.

The most I see Shane telling Hélène is that Ilya wanted him to join the Raiders for his own safety after his disastrous last season and that Shane refused. She could tell something had happened, and making this season work was just as important to her as it was to Shane. Like. If Shane fucked this up, he was losing pro hockey for himself. If she fucked up, she may lose it for women as a whole. He didn’t think she’d sell him out to the press and if she wanted to sell him out then she’d already clocked that he’d had a falling out with Ilya.