Archive of Our Own

Brian exchanged a few more messages with his husband before putting his phone down and returning his attention to his laptop. The ad campaign he had open to review at the moment was nowhere near as compelling as the ads he was picturing in his head for CCM. He had no doubt that there were several people at CCM looking to drop both Hollander and Rosanov over this very public outing, and Brian had to come up with a way to stop that from happening for several reasons.

There had been talk of dropping Rosanov already a few years back when he had traded from Boston to Ottowa, people believing that he was washing out of the sport taking a trade to a lesser team. Brian had convinced them to keep him however, there was no denying, rubbish team or not, that Ilya Rosanov had a lot of pull and appeal with the general public. The Russian man seemed to have a natural confidence and a healthy ego to match.

Brian remembered dealing with him for the first time in person at the shooting of that very first ad, he had been young and cocky and had reminded Brian of himself a bit. It had been Ilya's pitch that he and Shane star in the commercial together, Brian originally had two separate campaign ads for them, but had combined them to capitalise on the rivalry that the league was starting to build up between them. It had worked brilliantly and Brian had been slightly annoyed that he himself hadn't initially pushed for them to co-star in the ad series.

Brian didn't normally oversee the shooting of commercials, but with the last minute changes he had wanted to be on hand to help the creative team if needed. He and Justin had used the fact that the commercial was being shot in Toronto as an opportunity to visit their son Gus and made a few days of the working trip.

Shane Hollander had seemed shy and anxious at first, but once he was on the ice, especially with Ilya Rosanov he seemed to come alive. Brian had pointed out their chemistry to Justin on the shooting day and again as they were looking through edits and finetuning clips for the ads, but his husband had scoffed at him, telling him he thought everyone was fucking or that they should be.

It had been nearly eleven years since that ad campaign had been shot, and they had done various others over the years separately, but Brian was now thinking in terms of another collaboration. He knew CCM weren't all a bunch of homophobic dicks, they wouldn't have managed to work so well with him and Justin for this long, but there were definitely some among them. 

He was sure that the homophobic voices among them would be drowned out by the more sensible people at CCM, they weren't stupid dropping them for this could open them up to all sort of discrimination complaints. It would be stupid in a numbers way as well, to drop two of your biggest marketing assets, especially when Brian would now be able to market them and therefore CCM to a whole new market of gay men who would be thirsting over them as a newly available potential fantasy option. There was also the fact that he knew that even the most powerful of men at CCM didn't want to go up against Yuna Hollander, Shane's manager and mother was a fierce individual and could be cutthroat in getting the best deal for her son. If she was working in the interest of both of them she was sure to be a force to be reckoned with, and certainly not one that Brian wanted to cross.

Approving the ad in front of him, he got to work on several different options and ways to market this forced outing in a way that benefit them all. If it meant that he got a chance to work with both Shane and Ilya again in person it would give him a chance to find out when it all began with them. He might be able to win another bet with his sweet naïve husband.