People are not ready to hear this take probably but I think a significant portion of Ilya's experiences with men have been with much older men even going back to his teenage in Russia days. And yes he was dominating them. Eighteen (or younger) year old Ilya Rozanov stepping on the dick and balls of an oligarch who made Ilya wear a blindfold while he brought him into his house but now that blindfold is wrapped around the oligarch's wrists as Ilya tells him he's useless and disgusting. And yeah Ilya means it. The daddy issues are issuing. Oligarch tries to give Ilya some hush money on his way out the door and Ilya drops a crispy (AMERICAN) bill on the floor and says he's nobody's fucking whore. He's thirty and married before he even starts to confront the fact that he was still being taken advantage of even when he was the one doing the ball-stepping. Massive meltdown in therapy and then he goes home and his husband comforts him by begging for his balls to be stepped on. Circle of life.
OhHh my godddd. 🫠🫠🫠🫠 Luckily I AM ready to hear and receive this!!!! It all comes back to Ilya and how risky sex was his one form of catharsis from his shitty home life, doesn't it? It all comes back to his passive suicidal ideation that made every experience that made him feel even remotely alive seem worth it. What does it matter if the risky sex he's having is with older American men in seedy bathrooms or in the velvet lined bedroom of some oligarch from the old country?
I'm picturing this all comes out after hollanov have a talk about their childhood crushes. Shane shares his revelation about crushing on his old coach in Juniors. And Ilya teases Shane and makes him blush and squirm and obviously they fuck about it, but then afterwards Ilya casually drops: "Did you fuck him?"
And Shane sits up from where he's been lying next to Ilya in bed to look at him in the face, to see if he's serious. He is.
"You're seriously asking me if I fucked my coach? In juniors?"
And Ilya, who lost his virginity at fourteen, does a biiig dramatic eye roll and is like "Ugh yes Shane i am asking. Or does that hurt your delicate North American sensibilities?" And he's getting a little mean with it now, to try and distract Shane from the way he's looking at him, with this pinched horrified face. "It would not be so crazy." Ilya ends up saying, a little too defensively.
And then Shane is really looking horrified as he says "Did you... Did you have sex with your coach?"
And Ilya laughs, trying to lighten the mood like: "Not my coach. But this old man, he'd come watch my games. He tried to pay me to step on his balls but I thought This is something I'd like to do to this creep for free, yes?"
Shane is not fucking laughing. He looks at Ilya all fucking,,, scandalised and just says, "Ilya, that's awful." So of course Ilya gets extremely fucking prickly about it, and they end up having a huge blow up fight, before Ilya eventually relents and tries to appeal to Galina, who looks at him with no judgement, no real discernible expression, and asks him in his own language if he really finds the memory funny. THEN we get the big cathartic breakdown.
And, as you said, hollanov reconcile via their most reliable means of communication: sex. Ilya gets to dominate his wonderful husband who he loves so so much, and the difference in agency in the two experiences is so stark, it's yet another means for Ilya to reconcile with what happened to him by overwriting it with the man he loves and who loves him. Omg this is making me emotional.
tangentwithtanner
izzy806
kianamaiart
gummygunk
baratheonpilled
romaincrisis
