i think i've posted this before, but ilya truly does deserve an award for his patience after getting woken up at fuck o'clock at the cottage for a five year plan strategy session when he was in the middle of a rem cycle.
like the way he asked "what is nur-ate-iv?" makes me think man TRULY was not catching all of the words getting tossed at him so fast the second his eyes were even a LITTLE open. like he wasn't asking "what story did you come up with?" he's asking "what word are you even saying to me right now?" man got like 0.2 seconds to be like "oh i'm awake now?" before he was getting PELTED with english because shane had a forty step plan that couldn't wait like. three more hours.
i would have hit him with a pillow and said let's circle back, so kudos to ilya.
this also does mean that shane rarely wakes up in a bed with the same number of people it had when he fell asleep
either ilya is completely mia because he went to lay down with whatever kiddo came to get him and then fell asleep in their bed without meaning to, or shane wakes up to little feet pushing into his kidney or a little fist tucked under his arm or a kiddo sprawled sideways over him AND ilya in a way that canNOT be comfortable
shane always handles getting everyone put together and fed breakfast, but the first step of every morning routine is just a headcount to find out where everyone ended up overnight
They’re going through Yuna and David’s movie collection when Ilya comes across a VHS with ‘Shane - Bell Center 1994’ written on the sleeve and insists they watch it.
Shane isn’t super into the idea. “My parents don’t have a VHS player.”
“Is literally right beside your knee, Hollander.”
“Well, it’s boring! Why do you want to see a dumb recording of me as a kid anyway?”
“Because it’s adorable?” Ilya says incredulously. “And you are adorable?”
“Oh, I forgot we had that!” Yuna exclaims, coming to sit on the couch with her glass of wine. “God, I miss those days. Shane was the cutest timbit.”
Timbit, Ilya mouths to himself, his fingers curling around the tape. This is Shane as a timbit? In all his tiny little hockey gear at the Bell Center? Ilya needs to see it. “Shane.”
Shane looks at him and sighs.
They put the tape in.
Ilya almost dies as the grainy screen resolves itself into an MC and a tiny Shane, dressed in his hockey gear. His helmet is crooked on his head, his stick tap tap tapping against it as he stares at the interviewer, determined. His cheeks are big and round and pink from the cold of the ice, and though Ilya cannot make out his freckles, he knows from pictures that they’re there. The MC crouches down and a packed Bell Center is visible behind them.
“And here we have number 24, Shane Hollander!” The MC says in heavily accented English. “Let’s give him a round of applause. Shane, how are you feeling tonight, are you excited to be here?”
“Um. Yes.”
“And how old are you, Shane?”
Little Shane closes his eyes for a moment, taking a big, deep breath before reciting: “My name is Shane Hollander and I’m a hockey player. I am three years old and I go to Glebe Co-operative Nursery School in Ottawa and my mommy and daddy are Yuna and David. And I’m three.”
The MC laughs a little. “That’s a great introduction, Shane, thank you. Do you have anyone here with you tonight, cheering you on in the audience?”
Shane’s eyes open, but he doesn’t break out into a toothy grin. No, instead, Shane—serious, no-nonsense Shane—nods and leans in to the microphone like he’s giving a post-game interview. “Yes, my mommy and my daddy.”
“And are they big Metros fans?”
“Yes.”
“What about you?”
“Yes, too. They’re gonna go all the way this year. They have all the pieces for a winning team.”
“That’s what we love to hear, Shane, we agree and we love the confidence. Can we expect to see you on the ice someday? Do you want to be a hockey player when you grow up?”
“Yes, I’m a hockey player.”
“Do you want to play for Montreal?”
“Yes.”
“Can we get some encouragement for the team from you, Shane? Maybe a Go Metros Go?”
This, Shane takes extremely seriously. Ilya watches him nod with all the solemnity of a general going to war, and then releases his own tiny, passionate battle cry: “Go Metros Go!”
“Shane Hollander, everyone, let’s give him another round of applause!”
Ilya watches Shane stick out his little hand and the MC laugh a little as he shakes it, before tiny Shane toddles back to his parents on his skates. The mic picks up, Mommy can I skate again nowww? before the tape stops.
Ilya is going to fucking die. He already feels as if his heart is too big for his body, his fingers pressing into his knees to keep from grabbing Shane and doing—something to him. Kissing him or hugging him or fucking. Eating him. Consuming him. Crawling inside of him.
Shane is curled up beside the couch with his hands covering his face in embarrassment and Ilya is sitting less than a meter from him, dying of retroactive cuteness.
“You were so pissed when we told you that your turn to skate was done,” Yuna murmurs fondly. “Full meltdown.”
“Yeah, I remember,” Shane mutters, shaking his head in his hands. “JP made fun of me.”
Yuna scoffs. “JP was copying his parents, because they were pissed that you were better than him. And that we were out of towners but got the interview.” She raises a brow. “And now look: you’re a professional hockey player and JP is probably working at some office back in Trois Rivières and hates his life.”
“Mom, seriously?”
“What?” Yuna asks, getting up and heading towards the kitchen. “His parents were assholes. They made an asshole. I won’t apologize for that.”
Ilya takes the opportunity to crawl closer, slinging an arm around Shane’s back. He presses one kiss, then two, then three to Shane’s cheek. “Shane,” he breathes.
“Mm?”
“You were cutest fucking tiny hockey player in the entire world.”
Ilya feels Shane’s blush against his mouth. He kisses it again. “Fuck off,” Shane mutters, cuddling into him. He turns to press a soft, barely there kind of kiss to the corner of Ilya’s lips, burying his pink, hot face into his neck. “I was too serious. They called me a robot and did that stupid dance at me.”
“Well, they’re idiots. Hockey is serious, so you are serious, and they were probably ugly.”
“Ilya,” Shane laughs. Ilya feels his huffed breath in the juncture of his own neck and grins, thumb moving up to caress the small hairs at his nape.
They’re still too far away.
Ilya shifts, immediately attacking Shane’s face with kisses the minute he becomes visible. Shane laughs, shrieks, says stop even as he pulls Ilya closer, until they’ve toppled over onto the carpet.
Shane pulls back to look him in the eye, chewing his lip. “I think my parents still have some camcorder home videos of me.”
Also thinking about how Shane and Ilya probably have their own kind of sign language because they can never remember the word for things in each other's language. Ilya will be looking for the the can opener, because Anya's barking after they were five minutes later than usual getting back from practice and now her food is late, so there's just a lot of noise and he can't think in English. So he's like "My Shane, the electric one is broken. Where is the open thing. You know the open thing like—" and he makes a fist with one hand and circles it with the fingers of his other hand, flopping it up like the lid opening after he's done a rotation. And Shane's immediately like "Oh, in the drawer with the weird utensils."
Or another time Shane's really trying to remember the word for chicken but he just can't. And it's Russian day, the day of the week where Shane commits to speaking Russian the whole day, so he really doesn't want to cheat and go back to English. Eventually he folds his arms towards himself and starts wagging them like wings. And Ilya's like "Ah! Kuritsa!"
They use so many of these to frequently that it just gets easier to call the other's name and do the gesture rather than try to find the word.
au where shane has a burner twitter account that he uses to keep up with hockey stuff, not just players and stats but what the commentary is from fans and talking heads, and one day he sees a take from a podcast bro that pisses him off so bad he HAS to tweet about it. so he replies to the podcast with the most devastating one liner you've ever heard and suddenly thousands of people are following him and asking for more takes etc and he becomes a pretty popular account in the hockey world (and beyond bc the tweets are just too good) and crucially!!! he is always hyping up ilya. like if a ref makes a shitty call he's coming to ilya's defense immediately. and of course at some point ilya follows him too. and the whole time he's becoming more popular on twitter nobody knows it's him, his mom brings up 'that rozanov superfan on twitter' at dinner, hayden brings it up in the locker room, etc, and shane is just like. laughing nervously. yeah i've heard of them i guess. meanwhile he didn't even realize he was hyping ilya up so much he was just giving good hockey commentary. and then ilya brings up his superfan while they're at the cottage. i'm on the cover of the fucking game. i have important hockey superfan on twitter, you are jealous. and shane would have to decide whether he's going keep lying or face the humiliation of telling ilya the truth
i understand that it's unreasonable to expect a band on world tour to play in every country in the world but i do think they should only be allowed to call it a world tour if they play in every continent. we need to make it embarrassing to say world tour and then not even step foot in africa
first time raw at the cottage, Ilya fuckdrunk and a little frayed at the edges with Shane's fingers still twisted tight in his hair slides down the bed, I can't, Ilya, I just... and Ilya shushes him between wet kisses to his thighs as he spreads Shane's legs again, I'm not done with you yet. and buries himself between Shane's thighs as Shane flushes hot, brain blanking out because he thought Ilya was going to suck the cum off his dick, not eat him out, and his thighs clamp around Ilya's ears as he moans weakly and pulls harder on Ilya's hair, Ilya with his head in the clouds is barely doing more than lapping his cum out of Shane's hole because he can't get enough of Shane, he's doing this forever even after the overstimulation fades for Shane, even after Ilya has eaten every trace of cum out of Shane, his eyes slide up Shane's thoroughly sated body to find him already looking back, an expression that would've been terrifying to them both if they hadn't already said it out loud, and Shane's hands are gentle in his hair now, practically petting him as his brain tells him over and over this is real, this is real, he loves you Ilya
let shane get mad!!!!! and not just mad for his boyfriend - let him get mad for himself!!! it’s not fair what HE has gone through it’s not fair how HE has been treated. Let Shane yell and fight and cause problems on purpose because he has a right to be upset!!!! FOR HIMSELF!!
shane was out and about with rose one day at one of her jewellery appointments that sort of merges with shane’s schedule and he offers to come along with her because otherwise they couldn’t see each other at all.
anyway so rose is an ambassador for that brand and they’re getting her to try on jewellery while shane browses like a regular customer, before a brooch catches his eyes. it’s one of those gorgeous brooches that has a massive sapphire in the middle and diamonds all over and okay, the sapphire really looks like ilya’s eyes. so now shane ends up with a brooch, and rose gushes over how he spoils his husband sooo much
he gives it to ilya and when ilya asks what occasion he just shrugs and says “it reminds me of you” and when ilya opens the box he nearly fainted. because my guy knows the quality of jewellery of that brand and how expensive they are
