Some of my favorites Part 6

Part 1 here - Part 2 here - Part 3 here - Part 4 here - Part 5 here

Oh, hello. Still here, still reading. Not slowing down. Writing full on theses about these fics now. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Super Straight Broz (Live) by Stickyslut17 - Shane and Ilya are straight. Just two straight bros who call each other bro, live together in bro harmony and just bro out all the time, when they aren't exclusively having sex with women, that is. Because they are both straight. They are also struggling financially, so when Ilya is streaming Smash Bros. and someone offers him a tip to take off his shirt, he's totally fine with it. The next thing you know the bros are streaming together, doing very straight, very non-gay things to each other on camera for insane money. It is hilarious in a smart, dry way and also they have a very sweet, intense friendship that probably won't end up with them getting married. (This is a 5/7 WIP that is updating every 2 or 3 days.)

halt this eclipse in me by bisoubug - Ilya is a demon and Shane is possessed by him in a cold Saskatchewan parking lot. God, is there any form of Ilya Rozanov that isn't max-sexy, max-charming, max-loverboy? If so I'm not interested in reading about it. Even disembodied and possibly from hell, he is a fucking dreamboat. Shane is a sweetheart in this one too, and a very, very brave boy.

HOLLANDER & ROZANOV ARE DEAD by eurydicees - If you liked The Hottest Cold War by Vee, you might like this, though there's no poly-Barbie-Dream-House here. It's Hollander & Rozanov's love story from the perspective of Scott Hunter, but written in the style of/inspired by absurdist theater like Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead and Waiting for Godot which, let me tell you, briefly describes my own personal dream fic, and it's really lovely and bittersweet. There's scraps of the story from Ilya going to Ottawa up to their outing, with Scott observing Ilya struggling during that time. He is not sure about Shane but has his guesses, and considers them, their story and what they're going though. "Perhaps this is the punchline, then: Ilya Rozanov, notorious playboy, famously hard to tie down, falls in love. He falls in love, and the person he loves so terribly deeply does not want anyone to know he is loved in return." 🥺 [No one dies, in case I need to say that. R&GAD is about two under-explored side characters and what they get up to around the edges of Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Scott's perspective on the main action mirrors that. R&G die, spoiler, if you can spoil a 600 year old play, but no one dies in this fic. Hope that's clear lol]

Lapsus Linguae by whyyesindeed - Shane accidentally calls Ilya "Lily" in bed, and it's very, very funny. Yeah I don't know, this is just a little fluffernutter but I'm sitting here laughing just thinking about it.

Charged Up by HardPass - Instead of catching both boys at the cottage, David finds just Ilya while Shane is out for a run. David wants to know why he's there so Ilya pretends not to speak English. It is hilarious, with lots of dry, throwaway lines that had me giggling, reflecting Ilya's humor and David's sweet earnest cluelessness. Re: Shane describing the cottage's water filtration system: "It was going to be so fucking boring Ilya was half hard over it already."

Don't Feed Me (I will come back) by Captain Grayson (Ada_Parker) - Ilya was drafted to Boston, and then went back to Moscow before he signed and vanished without a trace. After his own career is cut short by injury, Shane becomes a sports biographer, and with a few successes under his belt, he decides to write Ilya's biography, and goes to Russia to interview people who knew him and maybe find out a bit more about his disappearance. There's a lot of good stuff revealed about Irina, the rest of Ilya's family, his childhood, and his demons. While Shane's uncovering all that, a stray dog is curiously hanging around his rental place...

Save Me by orangememory - Holy crap this one was ultra hot. At the first MLH awards, Hollander wins Rookie of the Year and finds Rozanov on the roof, but instead of passively accepting Roz's bad mood and being too scared to ask for what he wants, Hollander finds his backbone and tells Roz, “I care.” They fuck about it. Some unexpected Bottom!Ilya (well, for me anyway, I am so bad about reading tags, but it was for the best with this one because I LOVED IT). Exquisite dirty talk.

Wolfvogelstraße 84, 10707 Berlin by variazionibelliche - Shane and Ilya are sex workers at a massage parlor in Berlin 2012. Shane's pretty much Shane with a bit of a different background, Ilya is a little different, though the aspects of his personality that are different are a nice surprise to discover (I'll just say he's the same person but more literary/academic, which is a fandom trope I really love). A lot of side characters are present in various forms, and it's a sweet exploration of Shane and Ilya's deep natural connection. There's some really amazing sex that gave me butterflies, which surprised me considering the frankly insane amount of smut I've been reading, and it's in stark contrast to the transactional sex the boys experience for their job, which I guess is kind of the point. It's very romantic and thought provoking, about sex, intimacy, language, poetry and family, and I really, really loved it. The author writes from first hand experiences in a similar situation, and the very specific time and place are fun to explore.

The Minor Fall, The Major Lift by shadow_lilies - Shane’s an artist/painter who stopped playing hockey after his parents died in an accident. Ilya’s Ilya in Ottawa, it's unclear at the outset how he ended up there after Boston. Ilya's trying to decorate his apartment when he comes across and is intrigued by Shane's art - Ilya reaches out to him to commission some pieces and things escalate from there. There's a couple of interesting dynamics with Shane being financially insecure and Ilya being a millionaire hockey player, as well as with Shane having lost his parents and struggling with that. Their dynamic reminded me a bit of the one they have in hey, you could hold me closer by totheverge so if you liked that one, you might like this.