Chapter Text
december 2016
shane dating a girl was all it took for ilya to become a chronically online idiot.
he searched for anything that could be a good enough distraction, and once he saw that the typical male athlete interests weren't working, he somehow stumbled upon something interesting on youtube.
dan and phil.
obviously gay, but still closeted twink youtubers. something he could relate to. well, to a certain point.
they reminded him of shane, at times, but not in a way that would make him cry, but in a way that made him like them subconsciously.
he came across their boncas (british online creator awards?) performance of 'the internet is here' and laughed his ass off seeing them sing and dance in their atrocious, glittery suits with even worse prop hats.
it was somehow charming.
(like shane)
svetlana almost caught him watching them once, but he switched quickly to a boring talk show... that was covering the news about shane and rose. just his luck.
svetlana then managed to bore the fuck out of him talking about rose landry, her movies, her outfits, her everything... one would think that she was obsessed with the girl. as long as she wasn't talking about shane.
aaaaaand obviously she did switch to shane, and ilya had no trust in his emotion-concealing abilities at the moment, so he just threw a pillow at her, heading to the bathroom to shower, hoping she'd stop mentioning them.
dan and phil were a great distraction. there was so much content to watch, he even searched for videos from tatinof on twitter, after which he had to delete every evidence of looking that up, because who knows which teammate could get a hold of his phone.
like that was the most incriminating thing he had on there. and definitely not messages with 'jane'.
he loved that dan was a cheeky little shit, just like him. but he had much more freedom to display other parts of his personality too. and he could freely interact with phil, in public.
well, probably not as much as he'd like, if they were really a couple like everyone speculated, but still, more friendly than he could ever be with hollander.
they had pictures, videos, and lives together. and he had what? a couple of selfies from an award show. and his memories.
until dementia takes those away, he thought, he was always pessimistic, thinking he'd get it from his father's side.
the fandom was so unbelievably crazy, there was just everything you could think of: fanart, fanfiction, crazy people, even crazier people who stalked them... yeah, there were definitely parts of it that ilya did not like, he felt terrible for them, knowing exactly what big exposure and being famous could do to you. no privacy. being careful with every move. being terrified of being outed.
he did his best not to be an obsessive fan. he was a grown man already. an athlete, but still amongst the intelligent minority of them, as he'd say. he sometimes even wondered if this was too goofy or just made for younger audiences, but as dan was his age, just a couple of days older, he could justify it to himself. and others didn't need to know either way.
as soon as he saw them play the impossible quiz and keep failing miserably, he knew he had to try it and finish it in unbelievably little tries. he was being competitive even with people who didn't know he existed.
it wasn't successful. his reaction to the 'use all skips' question was even worse than dan's. he almost lit his apartment on fire, he got drunk and almost texted shane. that would've been even worse than dying in a house fire.
maybe something that came close to that in terms of humiliation was that he watched the youtube rewind, to see phan, obviously. he cursed himself for clicking on that awful thing and giving it a view.
once he got desperate enough, when he felt himself on the verge of tears, that's when he started writing fanfiction. for fun. to feel like a useful part of the community.
it wasn't the hat fic that inspired him. no, for sure not. maybe reading it just pushed him over the edge, he was surprised that something could still shake him to the core like that. him. a very generally freaky grown man.
so he decided to write something more respectful, but still with a pinch of ilya spice in it. under the username 'rozisnotonfire', with the intention of writing a fanfic about himself next, if it turned out to be fun.
he used writing it as practice for his english, which he learned a lot of while watching dan and phil. still, he planned to pretend to be a teenage girl whose first language wasn't english, just like every other writer.
the only thing he didn't think about was the fact that they were british and that they used completely different slang, and sometimes even different normal words, so if he picked them up, he'd stand out in a group of americans and canadians.
the first time he said 'literally,' just like dan does, he got a few strange looks in the locker room, but they didn't ask questions.
it got unavoidably weird when he started saying 'frickin zazzed,' because nobody else ever heard that. he tried to use the excuse of watching british tv shows to learn the language, but nobody believed that was ever used in one, and they also teased him for choosing british shows over the american ones. he just shrugged, saying that american tv is for people with low iq.
it was a good thing that everyone already thought ilya was strange, so most questionable things even went unnoticed.
one thing that he picked up from watching dan and phil was baking? surprisingly? he, yet again, said he'd do a much better job than them, and you know what? he absolutely did. he was so good at it that he started bringing homemade cookies to the locker room before the games.
boston raiders then knew he fucking lost it. montreal jane fucked him up, but nobody dared to mention her to their captain, afraid that he'd explode and start a losing streak for the team, since he was the one holding them all together.
there was one time when he even watched a live stream on younow and got noticed. he suggested a christmas baking video, but they had to be vague with the answer, not wanting to spoil anything. it sadly did not happen.
once he realized he'd be playing on the same line as shane during their all-star game, he intensified the phan watching marathons, hoping something would get him to calm the fuck down. he rewatched the shit out of all eight pinofs and blooper videos, every sims video, wrote more fanfiction, still not about himself, because he couldn't imagine himself with anyone but shane for anything other than sex. even that became hard for him. seeing women instead of shane.
january 2017
after the talk in florida, the one about shane's stylist, thank god, and not about an engagement, ilya's chest felt less tight. he was incredibly grateful to whatever universe thing influenced them to talk again before the game, knowing that playing together would be easier after a lighter conversation than whatever happened after the tuna melts.
he tried so hard to erase shane's name from his thoughts, to only think about hollander, his rival, the one he occasionally fucked, sure.
but he stayed shane. he was almost always shane.
as he was playing with the kids, right next to shane, he let himself believe it could just sometimes be that simple. they could just be friendly, splash each other, ask the boyfriend for money to give to kids...
okay, not boyfriend, that was still too much. even after seven years, too much.
watching phan videos got a little more difficult. he started self-inserting, and that wasn't even the worst thing. he was inserting himself and shane in those situations. especially when he saw their lion vs dinosaur water race video, it reminded him of how goofy they could've been, right there in the pool. if they were publicly something more than rivals.
he lied about looking up the word compatible, it was already too familiar to him from the comment sections on youtube, along with so many other terms to describe two people fitting well together. but he had to bring it up to shane, just to let him know he'd been thinking about it, hoping shane would mention that the two of them were more compatible, but it didn't happen.
what happened was even a bigger emotional rollercoaster for them. the coming out. the family situation. tears. for the first time in years. in front of shane.
did he become softer by watching british youtubers? or was that how he was supposed to be the whole time, letting the guard down, finally?
his life was just a big game of 'all or nothing,' but this wasn't a 'dan vs phil.'
the way he played it didn't determine the side of the board the poorly cut sticker would be stuck on; his future fully depended on his choices.
for once he wished he could play it safe, quit while there wasn't too much to lose, not risk everything for a silly romance. but he was way past the point of no return.
he was terrified of being hopeful. nothing in his life came to him because of hope, only hard work. and being a gorgeous man.
dan and phil games updates became regular. once they posted a video of them playing happy wheels, ilya obviously had to try for himself. a nice, cute, violent game. fun.
ilya wished he could play those games with shane. he knew they'd both be so competitive and make up stupid, probably sexual, rewards for the winner. god, all this comparing was even more emotional torture for him. but he couldn't stop. it actually did, also, bring him a lot of joy. so stupid...
he made a phan account on twitter. of course he did. his profile picture was the dan's infamous 2014 square head one; he had to partially stay a bully.
the interactions with phandom were mostly childish, well, yeah, it was mostly children then, but he seemed to enjoy poking little kids on the internet a bit. he never went too hard, he knew his limits, what was meant for hockey, and what was appropriate to tell a chronically online 14-year old girl who was still building her identity and intelligence.
his fanfiction got some attention, he tried multiple formats, including the text message one, which he enjoyed writing the most. but the sexually explicit ones attracted the most people, for sure. every fandom he observed was like that. even his fans, which he was proud of. but they couldn't describe him well enough, most of them were too soft or just not detailed enough for his liking. so he left some comments.
roz is not that vanilla, girly, don't be shy, spice it up ;)))
oh my god, guys... rozanov is *not* a fucking bottom! how do you fuck that up???
rozanov does not use classic pet names, he's more creative in bed, i'm sure
nobody would know that it was him, could just be an obsessive fan who thought they knew better, happens all the time.
once he even looked up the hollander/rozanov tag, seeing nowhere near enough options to go through. the first one was from 2009. huh, nice, he was still their first shipper back in 2008, even though he had no clue what shipping was. he read all of the fics. he had to. and the last one he got to depicted him as the bottom, again. as if.
seeing that one, just the tags and the summary, he couldn't stop laughing in his hotel room, glad that he didn't have to share it with anyone else from the team, like shane sometimes shared with pike.
the pike/hollander tag shocked him even more, seeing some mpreg shane fics there, too. they had to be made, the guy had millions of kids, it would almost make sense if he started impregnating his teammates after his wife got tired.
then he got the brilliant idea to write enraging, but funny, fanfiction about other players he didn't like, writing them as bad lovers and bad hockey players, just how he saw them.
some people were confused by the negativity, but most fans liked it, it was hockey humor.
march 2017
dad died. he was back to russia, unfortunately. he was ready to say goodbye to the whole country; there was nothing left for him there, just pain.
shane cared. he called right away when he found out something was wrong. he guessed right about his dad. it was so comforting, but also confusing to not even need communication to understand each other at times.
he obeyed his every word, again. maybe out of pity this time, but ilya couldn't care about it as long as he had what he wanted.
seeing shane's face again brought so much warmth to him inside. he almost felt that everything could be alright. but he was still hesitant.
the thoughts, confessions, everything just kept piling up in his mind, and the only way he could let go of some of it was to write it down.
letting go of some of his thoughts disguised in silly fanfiction about other people did make it slightly easier, throwing his words at the world, waiting for a reaction. from a random online fan before shane. he felt guilty for that, but he desperately needed a trial run.
it didn't go as expected. no comments, many hits, but barely any kudos. it felt like he did it for nothing. that wasn't true. some of the weight did come off his shoulders just by writing it down and knowing it was out there.
then. it happened. one comment. guest, not somebody with an ao3 account.
this one hits close to home. author, you did an incredible job writing those monologues, i felt every word in my heart, keep up the good work :)
p.s. if you're writing at least a part of this from personal experience, don't be a coward like me and fight for your love <3
his heart stopped at the notification. a response was stuck in his head, unable to type it out and properly thank this person for leaving a comment. it was so silly, getting so excited about one comment on a phanfic he wrote. well, it was a personal piece, he basically wrote them into his situation, changing parts of it and details, wanting to still distance himself from it.
it felt rewarding, somehow more than a goal, more than a win. knowing that something he wrote from personal experience resonated with another person, another phannie, who probably lived across the planet.
instead of a proper reply, ilya just left this:
i'm @literallyiced on twt, add me there if you ever need to rant about anything to someone who might understand :)
maybe it was too much, but he wanted to be a support system for this person, even though he was barely supporting himself.
the phandom was sometimes nice, the community was mostly queer, so he didn't feel rejected by it based on his sexuality, like in hockey. well, he still didn't know, but had reasonable assumptions that it wouldn't be so nice.
the horse dating game made him think about writing an 'ilya rozanov x reader' fic, or maybe two, one for girls, one for boys, but he didn't want to be that generous to his fans. his fanbase was pretty toxic at that point, they might get it after a good fandom cleanse.
during his father's funeral, he said what he already practiced for by writing it in a fanfic. to shane. in russian. he had to be a coward, still, and hide behind the language barrier, which was only a two-way mirror now. english wasn't hard. he already articulated his thoughts and feelings in english once, why couldn't he do it again when it actually mattered?
but shane still listened, not understanding a word, except for maybe 'svetlana'. he stayed there while ilya was struggling, now in a more serious situation than before. he said it out loud. to him, and it didn't matter that shane couldn't understand, it was said, it was thought about, it was heard. and his feelings were now more real and tangible than ever. that was terrifying.