PIE DOUGH HATE BLOG

The humidity in New Jersey right now is 89%.

I need every European to shut up immediately and forever about the US if you don’t understand the very basics.

So this is one of the wild things about Tennis Club, right?? That actually having sex with a bunch of guys is LESS suspicious than having just one regular hookup in one city a few times a year.

Shane got halfway through his rookie season, so it's not like there was a huge baseline of him not going out before then - that's easily explained by him being really locked-in for his first professional season. So at this point, "normal" for Shane is that he goes off on his own a lot, often doesn't come back to his hotel room at all when there's no curfew, and everyone just assumes he's having sex with women but being discrete about it because he's not one to flaunt his hookups. He doesn't have to explain himself, really.

when he was crashing out about trading to ottawa, he said, "You know, it's just gonna be really hard to leave melissa," and hayden was sitting right there like. "melissa?? it's gonna be hard to leave MELISSA??"

Shane is by far closest with Martin, his Montreal bestie. But he also has a special friendship with Price!! Astute readers might have noticed that, early on, he's the one that points out when Price is getting overlooked, and the two of them have a lot to talk about when it comes to managing anxiety.

Hollanov, Shane/Others, Ilya/Others, Scott Hunter/Many, Ryan Price/Many | Explicit | secret gay hockey player network AU, feat. my army of hockey OCs

Chapter preview:

"You're going soft again," Jeremy observed.

On the bed, Hollander groaned and covered his face with both hands. In French, he muttered, "Sorry if you fixing the lighting isn't doing it for me," but then he obediently jerked his cock back to hardness.

"I'm almost finished, I promise." He adjusted the lamp at the end of the bed so it shone between Shane's bare legs, illuminating his hole and balls. Jeremy frowned. It looked vaguely menacing, having a spotlight on it, but the photography books Hollander checked out from the library insisted that lighting was the key to clear, attractive pictures.

He raised the camera, eyes on the preview screen, playing with the angles.

"Remember, like two-thirds of the frame," Hollander advised.

"Hold the bottom of your dick like just a second ago," Jeremy requested. "Like you are making an offering of it, you know?"

"Like this?" He braced his thumb and forefinger around the base, pressing it up to an aggressive angle.

Jeremy snapped a photo. "Okay, now tip your knees out a little and let it lay flat on your belly."

Hollander obeyed, but it was already going soft again, and he could see the nerves on his friend's face. With a sigh, Jeremy set the camera aside and crawled up between his legs.

"What are you doing?" Hollander asked, but the corner of his lips crept up, dimpling his cheek.

"I think in porn they call it 'fluffing'," he advised, then took Hollander's cock into his mouth with a hum. It was a familiar weight on his tongue, and by now, they knew each other's tricks, had talked about what they liked the same way they talked about what the other guys in the club liked.

A hand settled into his hair, just petting. "Shit, Marty..."

He pulled off and looked. It was a really nice dick. Jeremy liked to think he could find the beauty in any dick if there was a nice enough guy attached to it, but Hollander's took no effort to get there. Straight as an arrow, not too big, circumcised but not so aggressively that it pulled his balls tight. He kept his pubes tidy, but not enough that it looked like primping.

Because he was laying in his own light, Jeremy pushed up and shifted to the side, grabbed the camera, and took a few more.

"Okay, okay, show me," Hollander huffed.

Jeremy settled onto the bed next to him and pulled up the last photo on the preview screen.

"Oh," Hollander said, slipping back into English. "That's not..."

Not right. Jeremy agreed. He frowned at the screen, clicking through the others, trying to figure out what made them so unsettling. "Maybe a dick isn't supposed to have so much light on it," he theorized. "You know, for faces it's good. For your balls..."

"And maybe not the digital camera," Hollander agreed. "It's too clear. Looks like we're trying too hard."

Which they were, certainly. Last spring, they'd spent two hours on the couch going through all of the dick pics the other guys had sent to the group chat while Hollander freaked out about what constituted a good or bad dick pic. Rozanov's, they both agreed, was objectively bad. Too dark, kind of blurry, way too close. But instead of lowering the stakes, for some reason it made Hollander determined that he could only send a dick pic if it was objectively perfect.

That was when the research began.

With coding and art by the compulsively productive @mock-speed

and we all fall down by lowkey existential despair (@themauvesoul)

Rated E

The truth was, yeah, Shane married Ilya, but he’d married hockey first. He married hockey the second he signed his rookie contract with the Metros, and his courtship began long, long before. And his marriage to hockey wasn’t like his marriage to Ilya. Hockey wouldn’t ever love him back. Ilya wasn’t going to chew Shane up and spit him out at some nebulous point after he turned thirty and before he turned forty, his joints busted and his mouth full of dentures and his brain fucked to hell and back. And that marriage—his first marriage—had always come before his second, illicit shotgun wedding.

It wasn’t ideal, maybe, but that was just how things were. Hell, it was probably the same for Ilya, too. The fuck was Shane supposed to do about it? Nothing, nothing, nothing. He liked his life just the way it was. He didn’t want to do anything different. He still doesn’t. And that’s the worst, most shameful part of it all: at the end of the day, some part of Shane will always wish he could wind back time like adjusting a watch; erase that Instagram post before it ever hit the internet and go back to the life they’d had before; the life that was slowly killing them both.

In my head his podcast would start off with good intentions, but he’s collected a LOT of dirt during his time as a professional hockey player, and he’s retired, so he has no real obligation to stay quiet anymore. Plus he’s got a lot to be mad about, and he’s at a time in his life where he feels safe enough to actually Be Mad. So it’s like. Episode one is normal boring hockey commentary, episode two is normal boring hockey commentary, episode three is normal until about halfway through where he’s talking about a guy he used to play against and he’s like oh yeah I always hated playing that guy. He never actually used my name, he’d just call me *[SLUR REDACTED] instead. One time he told me that they never should’ve let my grandparents out of the internment camps, and I was pissed, but also kind of impressed that a stupid-as-shit guy like that actually knew enough about history to say that. I guess racism will have you doing anything, including read. There is then a long awkward silence before the cohost goes ANYWAYS about that new power play lineup LA is running…..

Fourth episode him and his cohost are talking about coaches and coaching styles and Shane casually drops oh yeah everybody always knew to steer clear of that guy. He had a reputation. Cohost is like reputation for what? And Shane is like oh you know. If you stand too close he’ll grab your ass. Guys on his team really gotta watch the rookies because if they go into his office alone… cohost is like Jesus. And nobody came forward? Shane is like oh people tried, it just never went anywhere. Team management buried it.

Fifth episode they have to derail the hockey talk to address the latest Hazing In Canadian Juniors Teams Scandal, and Shane is like no yeah I absolutely believe those kids. When I was on juniors the nineteen year olds I was billeted with literally waterboarded me. Like, held me down with a tshirt over my head and poured whiskey on my face until I almost drowned. They could say they got their fingernails pulled out with pliers and I’d believe them.