i've been working on this one for a while, hoping the first chapter will be ready by friday. So to light a fire under some asses (mine) and ideally intrigue you please accept this snippet. In which ilya rozanov pines like he's sprouting evergreen needles (this is basically the entire fic)

in summary:

June 2010. Ilya Rozanov is delayed after the CCM shoot. By the time he gets to the locker room, Shane Hollander is out of the showers and Ilya’s entire plan is ruined. 

Only not quite fully ruined. Hollander invites him to dinner with his parents as a thank you for arranging the shoot and Ilya, in a burst of insanity, agrees. He hits it off with Yuna and David. They all exchange numbers. He and Hollander become friends. 

At no point does Ilya stop wanting more from him. 

June 2016. Ilya Rozanov is a superstar. A Cup winner. An MVP. Women want him, men want to be him. He’s fucking miserable. 

He’s in love with his best friend. He can’t deny it anymore. Only now Shane is dating a movie star and happier than Ilya’s ever seen him. Ilya can’t ruin that for him, can’t ruin their friendship by asking for what he knows Shane can’t give. No matter how much it kills him. 

A charity event in San Francisco. A catastrophic computer failure. A fateful decision to drive, not fly. Two days in a car, just the two of them. Alone. Together. 

Ilya’s sick with excitement and with dread, because how can he keep his secrets with Shane so close for so long?

What he doesn’t know is that Shane has secrets too. 

-

Once they’re on the state highway and out of the heavy San Francisco traffic, Shane relaxes. Ilya can almost see the tension drain from him, the tiredness and frustration still clinging to him from the night before dissolve away. He stops tapping on his thigh and sinks deeper into his seat, face tilted up to the sun. Soft golden rays highlight the sharp lines of his nose and jaw and cheekbones and Ilya just yearns. 

Shane is so fucking beautiful. He always has been, even as a tightly-wound teenager in a frosty parking lot. Ilya remembers that day well, or parts of it at least. Remembers Shane’s smile and his freckles, the warmth of his hand, the delight in his eyes when Ilya chirped him. He’s only grown more beautiful since and never more so than when he’s relaxed like he is now. An evil voice in Ilya’s mind whispers that he would look much like this in bed, after he came. More flushed, probably. Sweaty, breathing hard. Soft—his eyes, his smile. His voice as he moaned Ilya’s name. 

“Fuck.” 

Ilya drags his mind away from thoughts of soft and sated Shane and back to the car, which helps only a little. Shane turns his head and looks over with a little smile. 

“What?” he says. 

“Nothing,” Ilya replies. “Mind was wandering.” 

“Don’t get in a crash and kill us.” 

“I am a good driver.” 

“You’re reckless.” 

Sometimes, Ilya concedes. Sometimes he gets urges, to drive as fast as his fast cars will go, see how much speed he can handle before he loses control. He’d never actually push it too far—he wouldn’t, it’s not like that—but the urge is there. 

It’s not there now, though. Not with Shane in the car. Ilya is sometimes careless with himself but never, never with Shane. 

“Look, I am below speed limit.” He gestures at the speedometer. “Boring driving to keep boring passenger off my fucking back.” 

Shane just shakes his head. The wind catches in his hair as he does and blows it across his face. It’s longer now than it used to be—before her—long enough to brush past the collar of his shirt and sweep across his forehead, thick and dark and so fucking soft. Ilya has rested his cheek against it when Shane fell asleep on his shoulder. He knows the touch of that hair. 

Shane runs his fingers through it now to brush it back, tucks it behind his ear. Ilya grips the steering wheel hard, to numb the itch in his own fingers. His fingers always want to touch Shane, to sink into his hair and stroke down his cheekbone, trace the contours of his muscles as they clench beneath his skin. 

Ilya bites back the curse word this time, swallows it down deep into the place where he locks away all his feelings for Shane, the best he can. His best it seems is not very good today. It’s rare that they have more than a few hours together and almost never completely alone; already Ilya feels strung out and threadbare and their road trip has barely begun. 

thank you so much!! you get it!!

i'd intended to say in the author's notes but forgot, that i wanted to write this fic because it's always bothered me a bit when people say they've "been together" for so long. They haven't. They had two hookups, two years of sporadic texts, sex, ghosting, sad sex, then two years of hooking up. That's not "together," i'm sorry but it's just not. i wanted to write a fic in which they actually were together the whole time.

i think it's telling how much and how deeply this premise resonates with so many people, actually.

surprise! i really intended to take a break from this verse but there is no heart for me like yours just surpassed half a million freaking hits which is insane and deserving of celebration. Have a soft and sappy puppy fic you absolute lunatics.

credit to @jmuabb for the "anya adoption day" request in the expanded universe.

LINK

Late June 2019

It had been a very long day. 

Daughter-Finding Day, Ilya had christened it that morning. The day they went out in search of their dog. Which he had decided in advance would be a girl. 

“What if you fall in love with one and it’s a boy?” Shane asked him as they got in the car. 

“Then it will be Son-Finding Day,” said Ilya, in a tone that suggested this conclusion should be obvious. “But this will not happen. Our baby is a girl, I feel it.” 

Shane just shook his head. 

Ilya had a list of five animal shelters in the Quebec City area and a detailed plan of attack based on Google reviews, proximity to their house, and to what extent the shelter specialised in dogs. Shane was immensely proud when he saw it, and not a little bit turned on. What Ilya hadn’t planned for—what neither of them had—was not finding her. Or even him. At any of the shelters on the list. 

Shane and Ilya both were exhausted by the time they pulled into the parking lot of the final shelter on their list, this one in a rural community south of the St Lawrence. Exhausted in body but also in spirit. This place was literally their last resort. Shane could see the frustration and disappointment on Ilya’s face and in the set of his shoulders, when he’d been so happy as they’d left the house that morning. 

He took Ilya’s hand in both of his and kissed the back of his knuckles. “Don’t worry, baby,” he said. “We’ll find her. Maybe not today, but shelters get new dogs all the time. We’ll keep looking.” 

Ilya nodded and attempted a smile. “I wish we could take all the ones we met but none of them were the right one. I don’t know why, but—” 

“You’ll know her when you see her,” Shane finished for him. “That’s what you said, right?” 

“Yes. I will feel it.” 

“Okay, then. We’ll keep looking until you do.” 

Ilya tugged him closer by their joined hands and leaned across the gearshift to kiss him. “I love you.” 

“I love you.” Shane rested their foreheads together for a beat. “Let’s go find our dog.” 

They didn’t find her at the final shelter. 

Ilya was drooping as they drove away, mouth and shoulders and eyebrows drawn together. “I had such a good feeling about today,” he said, staring moodily out the window as the countryside went by. “I felt like she was out there, waiting for us to find her. I felt—stop!” 

“What?” 

that is amazing you may be a little insane but i love it!! thank you!! also yes i would love to see the behemoth book-bound, if you or anyone with that skill set takes a fancy to it please, you have my enthusiastic support.

fyi (for everyone) right now i am working on a little addition to the further adventures collection and also a new fic in which ilya appears as a fir tree

(he’s pining, you see)

thank you! i think there will be more owls definitely, as i love them too. (There will also be more rainy day shane since that’s been a frequent request from others!) i’ll have to think about bringing scott in some more and actually anya adoption day is tickling my brain a bit so that is def a possibility too.

ooh, amazing! i wish you the very best of luck. CELTA is hard but it's hands down the best entry-level qualification you can get, you will be well prepared to teach when you're done. You didn't ask for advice but i will offer some anyway, here it is:

do allll the reading

pay close attention to all the different teaching methods you learn and particularly to what situations / topics / approaches they work best with. Lots of teachers have their pet style that they always use but i have found that i use all the methods and it just depends on the students and the situation. So it's good to have an arsenal of approaches

remember that students are never judging you as much as you'll feel like they are (unless they are swiss. Ngl the swiss might be judging you). Teaching adults is very different to teaching kids, it's not really a teacher/student relationship. It's more of a client/consultant one, though even that doesn't really cover it. You're not really an authority figure but you are expected to be an authority on the language and some people find that stressful. The number one thing you should NEVER do in a classroom is make something up. If you don't know an answer it's 100% okay to say so, to tell them you'll consult your colleagues and get back to them, or to turn it into a learning opportunity. My favourite approach is to say, "What an interesting question! Let's find out!" then look it up together. If you're honest with students and meet them where they're at, they will respect and learn from you

resist the urge to be gentle. This one is big. idk your background ofc but as someone raised in the USA i started out teaching trying to boost everyone's self-esteem, sometimes to the detriment of their learning. What i learned by doing that is that most students don't like it. They want correction. They want you to interrupt them whenever they make a grammar error (don't do this--there's a time and place for error correction, you'll learn about that on the CELTA). What they want most is correction that is specific, detailed, and replicable. They don't just want to know that they said something wrong they want to know why it's wrong and what would be right and how they can avoid the error in the future. If you're a native speaker of english this means you will have to learn a lot about your own language in order to provide this kind of guidance. It's not enough to say "i know this is wrong because it sounds wrong to me, a native speaker." You'll need to offer more than that. If you're a non-native speaker you can carry over your own experiences learning english into your classroom BUT remember that native language has a huge influence on learning as does the method of instruction. Different countries have VERY different approaches to language teaching and that will affect the way the students you see are comfortable learning. So what worked for you might work for them but it won't necessarily.

there is zero possibility of learning everything you will ever need in a four week CELTA course. You'll learn a lot but most of your professional development will be on the job. Most language schools throw newly qualified teachers right into the classroom in a sort of sink-or-swim approach BUT most of them also have senior teachers whose job is to guide you, absolutely make use of them and their knowledge. They are an invaluable resource and like all english teachers love to yammer about their experiences and profession (self-own, saira)(lol).

i genuinely love this job and i hope you do too. i can't lie, i am offensively underpaid, and i earn near the top of what it's possible to make in this field. It is not a career you'll get rich doing but it's a great way to travel and meet people from all over the world and learn about different cultures, languages, ways of life. i think over the past 20 years i have taught or worked with people from more than 150 countries, every continent except antarctica. i have former students who were able to get better jobs, get education, improve their lives in measurable ways because i helped them develop a skill they needed. It is immensely rewarding.

I’m sad it’s over but saving it on my kindle for a re-read ❤️ Look forward to seeing what else you write.

Ilya Rozanov has been drafted by Boston, the number one pick overall, but his father doesn't want him moving to America and so takes steps to block his visa. He's going to have to go back to Russia and stay there forever and that, thinks Shane Hollander, is wrong.

It's so wrong that Shane can't stop himself from doing something about it. Even though that something is the most reckless, the only reckless thing he's ever done in his life. He marries Rozanov in secret, to keep him out of Russia and put him on a path to Canadian citizenship.

Shane's got a five-year plan to get him there and when you have a plan nothing can go wrong. Right? Right. When you have a solid plan and a marriage that's on paper only there's no risk of feelings getting involved. Not on Rozanov's part and certainly not on Shane's.

Right???

(or, the story of how Shane Hollander fell in love with his own husband)

LINK

“Look at all of these fucking assholes playing on my team now,” Rozanov crowed as he surveyed the room. “Some of them I really fucking hate.” 

“You’ll get over it,” Hollander said. 

“Somebody will,” Rozanov agreed. “They will also get over hating each other, since they all wanted so fucking badly to be here. They will not hold grudges. There will be no grudge-holding on my team, Hollander.” 

No one seemed quite certain how to respond to that, then a voice from the back of the room piped up. “Rozy, you prick, you plan to say that to our fucking faces or just whine to your husband behind our backs?” 

Rozanov turned a terrifying, delighted grin on the man who’d spoken. Borgen, Jace thought. Defenseman from Vancouver who bore more than a passing resemblance to the Mountain from Game of Thrones. 

“I would always rather speak to my husband than to your fucking face, Borgy,” Rozanov said. “But since you ask, yes.” He clapped his hands together. “Every asshole in this room listen up. And yes, that is all of you.” The grin was gone, in its place a look that every one of them had seen on Roz’s face before, on the ice right before he fucking demolished them. “This team you play for now will be unlike any you have ever been on, and not just because your captains sleep together.” 

Hollander rolled his eyes but he said nothing. Neither did anyone else. Jace glanced around but none of the other players were reacting to Rozanov’s words in any way.  

The scowl that formed on Rozanov's face encompassed them all. “That was a joke, dickheads,” he said sternly. “First rule of being on this team is you all fucking laugh at my jokes. Will not be hard, they are always very funny.” 

“If it helps you can laugh at him not with him,” Hollander said, and that startled genuine laughs from Jace and most of the rest of the team. Rozanov sighed dramatically, but Jace’s keen eye spotted fond amusement in the glance he shot at Hollander.