Meandering Thoughts

They’re Team Tokenism who are so fucking sick of being the tokens. They just want to play fucking hockey without being constantly dogged about their identities.

I think they initially get a lot of questions implying that this team got built specifically as the Diversity Hire team. The media approaches this like they are a big damage control publicity stunt by the metros ownership.

In way of background:

After they return from Sochi, Shane and Ilya are going to experience a reversal of fortunes. Ilya leaves Russia in disgrace and returns to a team that embraces him. He redeems himself and wins his cup. But Shane leaves Russia as a symbol of national pride and comes back to a team that rejects him. For him, it falls apart. His team doesn’t make the playoffs for the first time since they drafted him. The (correct) rumors that he left before the final game at the Olympics to save Ilya are gaining traction, and people are acting like he betrayed his country and then came back to ruin his own team. He’s getting a lot of shit in the media.

I feel like in every hr fic I have I’m like AND THEN THERE WAS A LEAK but uh. We’re gonna do it again here. And then there was a leak.

The thing is that Russia is absolutely infamous for state-sanctioned cyberattacks. They would be going after everything related to Hollanov to see if they could get dirt on them. And the thing is that, practically speaking, their teams and the broader NHL would not be passive about their safety when they return from Russia. Like. They’d be worried about one of them getting assassinated on NHL ice and having to deal with the fallout. They’d immediately hire a consulting firm to search for weak spots in their security. And I think that consulting firm comes to the conclusion that the greatest point of vulnerability for both Shane and Ilya are their own teammates. But for Ilya the security threat is “these massive fucking himbos will absolutely fall for any honeypot Russia throws at them, we have to be worried about a beautiful female assassin gaining access to Rozanov because she batted her eyelashes at a Raider and now she’s invited to private team hangouts” and for Shane it’s “we’re about to experience the Sochi semi-final round 2.0 because there’s been an alarming amount of hostility displayed to him by his own team and we think if he’s dying it’s going to be because either that a member of his team does it or lets someone else do it.”

I think Russia gets that report. And I think they leak it.

They don’t have a lot to gain by keeping it secret. Everyone already thinks that 1) they want to assassinate the hockey gays and 2) that they tried to kill Shane Hollander specifically in a game. The issues highlighted by the reports are already issues Russia is expected to exploit. They’ll be accused no matter what as the party responsible for any attempt that happens on Shane.

But if they leak it, they get to disrupt the Love Wins 🌈🏳️‍🌈🏒 Hockey is for Everyone 🌈🏳️‍🌈✨🎉 Kumbaya 🎊🏒🌈🏳️‍🌈 narrative that the US/Canada/NHL has been pushing since Sochi. Actually, no, you fuckers aren’t better than Russia. The report is politically embarrassing to them, and Russia wants to spread some of the political embarrassment around.

And they signal to all the hacked off homophobes who want to take out their anger on Shane Hollander that there’s an opening. Maybe Russia doesn’t need to send someone to kill Shane. Maybe someone else will get pissed and take him out during a game.

At this point, Shane is already knee deep in the rebuild. He’s been working with Metros ownership to try and replace the worst of the offenders and bring them back from this. As far as he’s concerned, the problem with this leak is that now someone’s going to tell Obama and also like. Huge amounts of public discourse around whether he poses too many safety and logistical problems to accommodate him playing.

But as far as his team is concerned, he thinks he’s got a chance to fix it. Ownership is working with him. They’ve already traded Drapeau for Hayes. Comeau got traded for high draft picks. They’re in talks to get Price from the Raiders. They’re letting him have a hand in figuring out which players to pick for the rebuild. Like. Shane’s nursing a furious hope that he can pull off some kind of magic and find a collection of non homophobic players who are also magical superstars and can pull off a historical turn around. That. That could happen. The problems outlined in that report are mostly old news to Shane. They’re problems he’s already trying to fix.

Ilya sees that report and freaks the fuck out.

So, I’m usually very reluctant to have romantic relationships develop through fights. I think it’s overused in fiction and usually done in a way that detracts from the characters. I hate fights that are rooted in “yeah I decided to treat this person I’m supposed to love like garbage.” I dunno maybe try not doing that.

If I have characters blow out during their relationship, it’s usually because there’s some weakness in their dynamic that I don’t see them practically addressing before the issue boils over. And the fact that it boils over is meant to highlight the weakness and set them on the path towards healing it.

There’s two weaknesses I see boiling over in the Sochi outing au. The first is the division caused by the fact that they are simply not in a relationship when this starts.

Shane and Ilya both go into this extremely uncertain of the other. This is very early into their relationship. They’ve had penetrative sex one time. They know next to nothing about the other. And they don’t have the history where they have any confidence in the fact that the other actually wants to be with them. And while they’re fake dating, they are going to be very hesitant about what they feel like they can take from the other. They think they have trapped the other in this relationship as it is. They are worried about being an unwanted burden.

I do not see them opening up to the other about their emotional struggles in the immediate aftermath of Sochi. They don’t have any kind of basis or framework in their relationship for that. I don’t see Shane telling Ilya about his struggles with his team. He is embarrassed about the fact that he can’t seem to fix his issues with his team on his own, and he’s going to feel hesitant to bring up his personal problems to Ilya. They just have never talked about shit like that before, and he’s struggling with the guilt of “trapping” Ilya as it is. The first time Ilya finds out about Shane’s issues with his team, it’s when the report leaks.

The second weakness is going to be Ilya’s lingering trauma from Shane’s semi final match.

He knows Shane’s a crazy motherfucker who will go back out there following an attempted murder attempt. He is haunted by the memory of it, actually. And he cannot fucking cope with the idea that this could happen a second time. That report sets off his every lingering issue around the semi final match, which Shane didn’t know he had, because Ilya also was not talking to Shane about his struggles during the last season. And that’s also part of the reason why Ilya doesn’t find out about Shane’s issues with his teams leading into this. Ilya hadn’t been watching Shane’s games because he was so fucked up by the memory of what happened. Marley was watching Shane’s games for him and most of his review was “brother, he is NOT dead and NOT in the hospital. Your Man Is Safe.” He missed most of the outward signs that Shane’s relationship with his team were deteriorating as a result, and Shane didn’t tell him about it on the back end. Their communication issues come back to bite them.

Before the leak happens, they’re going to have a little bit of a honeymoon period. Ilya’s family’s bullshit combined with the fact that hockey is foreplay for him and Shane means that he tied a lot of his self worth up into his success as a player. He feels like he has redeemed himself by winning the Stanley cup and shown he was worth saving in Sochi. He and Shane had actively been trying to figure out their dynamic during the season leading up to this, don’t get me wrong, but winning the cup especially emboldens Ilya. He Is Ready To Woo His Own Boyfriend. He asks Shane to spend the summer with him and Shane is like. Yeah I sort of assumed we would be, the press would notice if we didn’t—

And Ilya’s like. No. No, not because you have to. Because you want to. Ilya wants to have the summer with Shane. He’s hoping Shane wants the same thing.

Like. Ilya’s at the point where he’s convinced himself he can win Shane’s love for real. This doesn’t have to be fake forever. He Can Seduce His Own Boyfriend And Shane Hollander Will Love Him Truly. Boris He Must Try. Boris does not fucking care. Jesus Christ he cannot keep hearing about that man’s freckles.

They have a little oasis of time after Ilya’s Stanley cup win where things are really getting better between them. They’re living together. They’re spending a lot of time together. They’re starting to really talk and form a deeper emotional connection.

But they’re still hesitant to burden the other with their issues. They both are worried about ruining the moment they’re sharing with the ugliness of their real problems. And they’re both at this stage of their relationship where they feel like they need to make up for the fact that they forced them into this farce, so they aren’t unburdening themselves to each other. Their talks are sidestepping the real issues, and so those real issues turn into the bomb that goes bang. The report comes out, and Ilya finds out for the first time that Shane was in discernible danger when it hits the news.

He tries to get Shane to force a trade to the Raiders.

As far as Ilya is concerned, it’s a perfect solution. Even if the Montreal public won’t support a trade, the rest of the world will. He’s got a fuck ton of leverage to make this happen now that he’s been Baby Jessica’d. The Raiders were only security threats to the extent that they constantly believed that there were Hot Singles In Their Area Who Wanted Their Hot Hot Hockey Player Bods. The report graded the risk to Ilya on the ice as minimal—The Boston Raiders Had Their Fucking Boy. They’d welcome Shane with open arms, Shane could keep playing, and Ilya would be there personally to make sure that if anyone tried shit against Shane then he could put them through the fucking ice and erect a tombstone right there on the rink as a warning to others.

And Shane’s like. Why the actual fuck would I ever do that.

The Metros ownership is working with him. He has a chance to fix this. It’s a gamble, he’d have to find players that could actually play with him, and they’d have to be good enough to actually be worth a damn watching his back, but it’s a gamble he wants to take.

To be clear—Ilya’s not blind to the fact that this would be a hit to Shane’s career. It’s not that he wants him to lose his captaincy and his team. It’s that he doesn’t want Shane to fucking die trying to keep them. Shane’s career is secondary to his safety in Ilya’s mind. This is a solution that offers shane a way to keep playing with minimum risk. He does not want to gamble another year of danger. Force the fucking trade.

And Shane’s like. Do you have any fucking idea what everyone will say about me if I do that.

He’d just be the guy who couldn’t take it. He can’t handle the game on his own so he had to go hide behind his fucking boyfriend. He wouldn’t have his own career anymore. They play the same position so he’d go from being Ilya’s rival to being on his second goddamn line. He’d lose career opportunities. He’d lose every ounce of respect he had in the league. And he’d already lost enough as it is.

All he’d ever be is Ilya’s fucking work wife—to the public, the press, their colleagues. It would be the only thing anyone ever thought of him. Only thing they ever said to him. Couldn’t fucking cut it on his own, ruined his own team and the only one that would play with him was his boyfriends, now all he’s good for is getting on his knees in the locker room and sucking Ilya’s fucking cock—

I’ve mentioned this in other posts, but the issues Shane has lingering from major junior hockey keeps asserting themselves in this narrative like Address Me. The idea that he’s going to lose his career and reputation after everything he fucking paid to get through his junior hockey years is absolutely tormenting Shane. He feels like he has paid so fucking much to make his career what it was and now it’s all falling apart after a few years. The fact that the metros owner is willing to work with him on a rebuild turned into Shane’s lifeline. Shane is not at all willing to consider giving that lifeline up. He is hanging on with both hands.

Ilya doesn’t understand that. He has no idea what the major junior hockey system is like or what Shane went through in there. Shane hasn’t told him. What he does understand is the fact that Shane is willing to risk his own life to play hockey, because Shane did that already in Sochi. The idea of it happening again is killing him. It turns into a massive blow out fight, and Shane ends up leaving early to go handle the fallout with Metros management alone. He tells the press that Ilya didn’t return to Canada with him because he needs to spend more time in the U.S. to meet residency requirements, but it’s more that they’re just not talking after that fight.

So Shane goes into this rebuild with this very desperate mindset. He feels like this is his last chance to keep his career. And the Metros ownership is dealing with the fall out of the entire world being worried that Baby Jessica Is Back In The Well. He gives Shane a lot of leeway in a desperate attempt to keep him, and Shane takes every inch that he’s given. By the end of it, the owner makes it clear that the fans want Shane to be their captain. But they also want the team to win. Shane reads between the lines and understands that he really pushed the boundaries with this rebuild. Like. He asked for a fucking woman to be on the team. If this fails, he will burn through the public’s goodwill in record time. They will decide that Shane truly ran the team into the ground.

And that’s kind of the assumption that people walk into that season with. Everyone thinks that the metros rebuilt with multiple gays, an Asian American man who was languishing in the AHL, Rose Landry’s brother(???), and a fucking woman is an overcorrection for the fallout from the ol’ “the metros are the most likely ones to kill Shane Hollander” bombshell. Look, we are so so not homophobic, we got a fuck ton of gays and ones even a woman now. And they assume off the bat that this team build is going to fucking suck. One is a fucking woman.

And it’s frankly a very unfair assumption. Like. Their team build is sort of fucking epic. Their first line consists of three Olympians, a guy who just won the Stanley cup, and one of the top wings in the league. The guy who just won the Stanley cup is the weakest link there. They have so much talent and skill on this team.

But people act like they are not there because they are good. They are there because they check a box of a minority identity. And when their winning streak starts, a lot of their success is diminished as being due to their identities.

It’s like what happened with Jeremy Lin with Linsanity. People tried to detract from it, saying that the only reason why he was receiving so much hype was because he was Asian. But he was pulling off things that no other player in NBA history had.

The first wave of questions is all going to imply that this team’s composition is just one big stunt. Then when they start winning games, the hype around them is going to be dismissed as being because they’re X identity. People are just supporting you because you’re a woman, because you’re gay, because you’re Asian, etc. Then the success continues and people want them to make these massive statements on discrimination and the odds against them as if they weren’t up against enough without having to directly call out systemic discrimination within the NHL too. They get the model minority questions. They are treated as if they are Representatives Of Their Identities As A Whole. They get every loaded question in the book and they are so fucking tired.

There is a scene where Shane is eventually going to snap during an interview and say that sexuality, gender, and race did not play any role in building this team. They took all of that out of it, actually. They hired based off of pure ability and ended up with the team of a lifetime. And if people want to say that they’re all here as diversity hires, then they can try to fucking beat them for once, because as of right now, they’re undefeated. Their record speaks for itself.

Shane’s going to a little bit break from his mold during this season. He’s going to get caught on camera grinning like an asshole when Hélène beats the ever loving fuck out of Dallas Kent. Someone’s going to try to go after Hélène on the ice and injure her much in the way Yuna was injured, and Shane’s going to beat the eve loving fuck out of them. He’s going to for the most part keep to his strictly controlled media persona, but he’ll defend his team hell or high water.

And he’s going to be caught on camera smiling a lot more. He’s going to be laughing more. They go into this season with the understanding that they are going to play every single game of hockey like it’s their last. But the feeling turns into something that’s so goddamn electric. They all love hockey so desperately. This season turns into a kind of love letter to the sport. It is the first time most of them have gotten to play at the professional level and not have to worry about bullshit from their teammates or hazing or whatever prices they’ve paid to exist in pro hockey. They are having so much fun together.