being an adult is a weird combination of wanting to sleep all the time but also reacting to it being your bedtime a little like a toddler who doesn’t want to take a nap
On of the less intuitive things about love, I've found, of any kind, is the importance of needing things.
I didn't realize it until recently, but I've always seen love as something requiring sacrifice, selflessness, patience, and generosity- to ask for nothing is to be the best person I can be, small and quiet and never in the way, always happy and helpful, self-sufficient and present when desired.
It's only as an adult, now, that I'm beginning to see the selfishness of wanting nothing.
I cut my friend's hair in my kitchen the other day. They wanted a trim and I had the skills, so I offered, and was genuinely excited when they stopped hesitating over "bothering me" and took me up on it. It was a peaceful afternoon, and we had tea and chatted for an hour or more.
My brother and I shared popcorn at the movies a while ago. When I came time to pay, I pulled my card out like a wild western sheriff and slapped it on the machine before he could fight me for it first. The satisfaction was delightful.
Someone called me crying on the phone the other day. Kept apologizing for disturbing me at work, talking about how they were bothering me on my lunch break. I was telling the truth when I told them that really, I was flattered and honored and relieved, knowing that if they were hurting I would know, that I didn't have to worry in silence. It felt good to hear them slowly come down, and to know that they knew it would be better soon, and to hear them laugh wetly on the other end. We're getting together for a visit next week.
It's hard to need things, if you've trained yourself not to. It's hard to want things, when you don't know how to want anymore. Trusting people is difficult, and so is relying on them, but I don't know where I'd be without the people who rely on me.
I've heard a lot of people say, "Nobody will love you unless you love yourself". I've had a lot of thoughts about it. It's not right, but it's not wrong, either, I think.
"Nobody will love you unless you love yourself"... I've always taken that to mean, "You will not be lovable until you develop a positive view of yourself as a person".
Now, I think it's sort of inside-out.
"Nobody will love you unless you love yourself"... because nobody can show their love to you in a way that you can accept until you treat yourself kindly, and learn what you need, and what you want, and how to ask for it, and then give that vulnerability away.
Love, for me, is someone I ask for a ride to the airport. Whether they end up doing this or not is irrelevant.
It's not needy, or selfish, or taking up energy. It's giving the gift of being wanted, and needed, and thought of. It's giving someone the security of being part of someone's life.
diabetic Shane gets yet another service dog who can smell when he’s about to have a low or a spike. her name is Winnie she’s a very good girl and her vest has a little pocket on it that holds gummy bears.
Winnie is an Alaskan Malamute. Shane got her when he was 16. He picked Winnie because she can run with him outdoors when he’s training. Malamutes are sled dogs, so she loves running. Winnie also loves sliding around on ice rinks and chasing pucks that Shane throws for her. She would become the hockey version of Air Bud if she could. She has gone viral more than once as Shane Hollander’s Hockey Playing Dog.
the tuna meltdown is averted because cuddle time on the couch is happening until winnie (who is visiting this house for the first time along with shane and was SUPPOSED to be occupying herself with her chew toy) discovers that ilya's ice dispenser is NOT winnie proofed >:D
shane is literally kissing his way down ilya's belly only to suddenly hear the clatter of a FUCKTON of ice cubes hitting the floor and just "WINNIE! NO! BAD GIRL!"
and now the potential tension is broken by having to help clean up the ice cubes now scattered all over the kitchen while winnie is cronching as fast as she can before they're confiscated
winnie "ice fiend" hollander, i would die for you, but you would never let me
From the way Rozanov seems content and unbothered and the way Winnie has made herself perfectly at home, Shane gathers he’s the only one today feels strange for.
“You have a dog?” Shane asks, more than a little surprised, when Rozanov rises from grabbing a dog bowl out of a lower cabinet and fills it with water before putting it on the floor, stealing an ear scritch from Winnie before he straightens again.
“No?” Rozanov asks, seeming a little thrown by the question.
“That’s a dog bowl,” Shane says, glancing to it again.
Rozanov suddenly busies himself with a dishcloth on what appears to be a perfectly clean section of counter.
“Was on clearance at the store last time I was there. I thought it would come in useful, maybe.”
The answer doesn’t make sense, but Shane doesn’t know how to call him on it. Did he…buy a water bowl just for Shane’s dog?
“I brought her collapsible one,” Shane offers, even though it’s a moot point now. He’d been planning on using it for the baggie of kibble he’d forgotten to take out of her vest to feed her dinner and then just rinse it out to be for water again. Not having to do that is convenient, certainly, but he also doesn’t know why it’s happening in the first place, another new element today stacking on top of the ones already making him feel on edge.
Rozanov just shrugs, moving to wash his hands and starting to open the container of tuna salad.
“No need,” he says. “Already done.”
Shane doesn’t know how to verbalize that Rozanov going out of his way to get a water bowl for his dog and putting it down for her just makes this entire day feel more like a trap. Rozanov’s always been good with Winnie—Shane knows by now that he’s a dog person—and Winnie adores him because she has terrible taste in men and a weakness for a specific brand of liver treats only made in the US that Rozanov is her regular dealer for whenever they see each other, but it feels beyond the scope of what a hookup would do, making sure his dog is taken care of while he’s visiting. It feels…boyfriend-y, just like Rozanov throwing his clothes at him earlier did. Still, he’s not sure that there’s a way to say, “You’re acting like we’re a couple and it’s freaking me the fuck out” without sounding like a crazy person.
He takes another sip of his ginger ale instead.
*
“Win, no!” Shane hisses, rising to grab Winnie when she starts to follow after Rozanov as he walks away to answer his phone, abandoning her chew toy and the blanket Shane had put down for her when they got here as a makeshift bed to tell her where to stay.
She sees him coming, though, and speeds up, jogging after Rozanov before she can be stopped. Any further, and he’d look like he was following Rozanov, too, and he pauses at the edge of the living room, torn between the manners of allowing Rozanov the privacy he clearly wanted and retrieving his punk ass dog who is not respecting the unspoken request.
Still, he knows firsthand that Winnie at least keeps any secrets entrusted to her.
He sits back down.
*
“Ilya.”
Shane has one moment of peace after the word leaves his mouth.
And then the situation fully registers to him.
Rozanov is smiling in a way that makes his stomach feel warm and cold at the same time, twisting into a knot of pleasure and confusion. He looks so soft and happy, like Shane has given him a gift in saying his name back to him. It makes Shane want to kiss him again, to wrap him in a blanket and run his fingers through his curls, to ride him until they both cum again and snuggle up with him on the sofa and do nothing beyond that. He wants the fulfillment of the pretend this day has increasingly turned into.
And then he wonders what the opposite swing from something this temptingly good is going to be, how Rozanov is going to slide the casual back in, ripping right through the delicate cobwebs of the goodness of today.
In an instant, the softness of it is too much, the entire day constricting around him like the mousetrap it’s felt like from the beginning.
“I-”
He starts to pull back, avoiding Rozanov’s mouth even as it chases his own. He looks away, overwhelmed by the liquid joy in Rozanov’s eyes, knowing it’s something he shouldn’t be seeing, something Rozanov isn’t going to like him having seen later, when this day is over and he’s had time to think about it. He has to go, he knows in an instant. He has to go right now. He has to leave and-
“Shane?” Rozanov asks, holding onto his hips. “What-”
They both jump as the noise of something like gravel hitting cement echoes through into the room, the movement making them bang their heads together. Shane leans forward for just a moment, hand pressed to the spot, until the surprise-pain of it fades just enough to return to knowing exactly what his dog has just done.
“Winnie!” He yells, climbing off of Rozanov clumsily for very different reason than his attempt literally one second ago. “Bad girl! Leave it!”
By the time he gets to the kitchen, though, it’s too late.
He exhales in annoyed frustration and leans against the wall, watching his disservice animal gleefully chase her stolen hoard of ice cubes around the kitchen, pausing to crunch one with clear pleasure before returning to sliding the others around with her nose and paws.
He watches her slap shot two under the fridge in quick succession and wonders if he could just complete his previous urge to flee.
Without Winnie.
*
“-so fucking sorry, seriously,” he says to Rozanov, both of them on their knees and trying to locate all of the rogue ice cubes, their work watched by a resentful Winnie who has been banished to the doorway and told to stay, her head propped on her paws in a canine performance of pouting.
“If you had told me, Winka, I could have just given you some,” Rozanov says to her, sounding amused. “You are a guest.”
“Jesus,” Shane complains, smiling a little despite himself. “Don’t encourage her.”
“So what if the lady likes ice cubes?” Rozanov teases. “We all have our vices.”
“Yeah, well,” Shane says dryly, rising onto his knees to toss his latest recovery into the sink and smiling again when Rozanov playfully cheers when he makes it, “none of my vices mean ending up with a wet sock later.”
“Hmm,” Rozanov says, leaning forward to grab an ice cube from under the edge of the cabinet in a move that makes his muscles flex in a way Shane probably shouldn’t find as attractive as he does when he’s cleaning up his dog’s mess with a guy he absolutely almost just bailed on, “probably not the worst thing your socks have faced based on how horny you are all th-”
Shane’s next ice cube also hits its target.
Rozanov’s look says he’s not nearly so impressed.
*
Rozanov takes pity on Winnie and releases her from her stay so she can show off her trick of balancing a treat on her nose before tossing it up and catching it after being told “Okay.”
For the sheer joy of watching Rozanov’s joy—and repeating each “okay” in his mouth silently, enjoying the feeling of it—Shane is almost regretful when he has to call it.
Even if his dog didn’t deserve even one treat after her little stunt.
“Should we talk about before?” Rozanov asks, standing and brushing his hands off on his sweatpants.
Shane suddenly becomes fascinated looking through Rozanov’s spice rack.
“What about before?”
“When you jerked us both off and then looked like you saw a ghost?” Rozanov asks dryly, and Shane feels a strange mix of emotions in his chest at the way he knows exactly what expression matches that tone.
“I mean, we don’t usually do…this,” Shane hedges, avoiding eye contact.
“‘This?’” Rozanov repeats, and from his peripheral vision, he sees him prop his hip against the counter, arms crossed loosely across his chest.
“Spend the night and…wear each other’s clothes and shit.” He doesn’t bring up them also not using each other’s first names. For some reason, that feels like the greatest boundary broken today, like they’ve removed a necessary layer of formality.
A layer Shane doesn’t know how to operate without.
“You do not like this?” Rozanov asks, and his tone is just off enough that Shane looks up.
Somehow the little show of uncertainty makes him feel a little better, steadier that maybe Rozanov is feeling this out as he goes, that the path feels new for him, too.
“I,” he hesitates, trying to decide if he likes it or not. “I didn’t say that. It’s just…new.”
“Then maybe we try something new,” Rozanov says with a half-shrug. “Is okay?”
“Why?” Shane asks, because that’s really the central thing he needs to know here: why Rozanov is suddenly changing the game without telling him the new rules.
“Because maybe,” Rozanov says, and when he crowds him back against the counter, Shane doesn’t stop him, “it could be nice.”
“So is this what we do now?” Shane asks, because he just needs to know. “We stay over at each other’s houses?”
“Mm,” Rozanov agrees, leaning in to kiss him. “If you want.”
“And we-”
His follow-up question is interrupted by the clatter of more ice cubes, his fucking criminal of a dog using his painfully awkward “what are we” conversation as a distraction to sneak back to the dispenser without being noticed.
“Winnie!”
*
Because Ilya Rozanov is apparently very weak-willed when it comes to the discipline of dogs who should know better, Winnie is allowed out onto the patio with an entire container of ice cubes tossed onto the concrete for her benefit.
Watching her nearly trip herself with glee, Shane gets the feeling that Rozanov has just begun a very bad habit he’s going to get sucked into.
It wouldn’t be the first time, he thinks in resigned fondness.
He watches Rozanov watch Winnie, looking almost boyish when he smiles. It’s lighter than Shane is used to seeing him usually. It feels like a gift, almost, getting this glimpse of a part of him that he knows by now other people don’t.
He considers for the first time that maybe today was the same thing: the offer of something of Rozanov’s that other people don’t get.
The thought is…oddly pleasing.
“It’s all fun and games until she starts deciding the rink looks like a big ice cube,” he says, and Rozanov glances at him without turning.
“She will improve things. Maybe then Montreal will not be so boring to watch.”
“You’re such a fucking asshole,” Shane says, but he’s smiling when he does. The joking along with the acknowledgement that things are different and it’s not just in his head is helping to settle his nerves some. It occurs to him that Rozanov often has that effect on him, has since the start, really.
Maybe he should just…let him make this feel calmer.
“Do you usually-” A crash from the patio makes them both turn to look, and Shane winces, Winnie’s enthusiasm having made one of Rozanov’s patio chairs collateral damage in her ice cube insanity. “Told you not to let her play with them,” he observes.
Rozanov snorts and then tilts his head slightly like he’s weighing something mentally. After a moment, he crosses over to Shane, standing beside him and wrapping his arms around his chest, chin on his shoulder, so they can watch Winnie’s property damage together. Shane is tense reflexively but then testingly leans back, finding Rozanov solid and steady behind him.
Finding Ilya solid and steady behind him.
“Okay?” He asks softly.
Shane reaches up and squeezes his wrist gently.
“Okay.”
They keep standing like that while they watch Winnie continue to rearrange Ilya’s patio furniture.
*
“You are mean and cruel and abusive,” Ilya observes while they’re making dinner, a third attempt at illicit ice cube acquisition from Winnie meaning Shane went out to the garage to use the flap of an old box to make an ice dispenser shield that matches the one on his own fridge back in Montreal.
Winnie, watching him balefully, appears to be conveying the same judgment she did when he put his up.
“You want to wake up to an empty ice dispenser and a flooded kitchen?” He asks lightly, taping the cardboard into place.
Ilya finishes chopping up tomatoes without comment.
*
After a last round of fucking for the night followed by a shared shower (...and a shower blowjob), Shane lets Winnie out one last time and then gets her settled on the blanket he brought up from the living room, folding it and setting it down in a corner of the room. She circles and circles and then settles, well-used to sleeping wherever he does.
Climbing back into bed next to Ilya, he wishes he could say he was equally at ease.
He feels hyperaware of the stretch of sheets between them, unsure if he’s supposed to venture closer or if Ilya is used to sleeping apart. Shane tries to remember the last time he shared a bed with someone and comes up blank, trying to remember from television shows how people usually sleep and then wondering if that’s just for the sake of the shot or if-
“So far away,” Ilya observes. Shane looks over to him. “Come here.”
“You come here,” Shane says automatically, but he obeys, turning onto his side and shifting closer, letting Ilya guide him back down, counting on him knowing how people usually share beds while sleeping.
He’s the one who’s had plenty of experience after all.
“Comfortable?” Ilya asks after they’ve settled, Shane’s head on his shoulder, Ilya’s arm around his back.
Shane takes stock and then slowly brings his leg up to rest it over Ilya’s hips.
“Comfortable?” He parrots back, looking up as best he can.
Ilya’s answer comes in the form of a kiss to his head.
Shane finds himself relaxing faster than he expected, soothed by warm skin against his and the faint thrum of Ilya’s heartbeat. He dares wiggle a bit, settling more, and he feels the vibration of Ilya humming a laugh.
“Better?” He asks when Shane is still again, sounding amused.
Shane yawns.
“Better.”
He falls asleep to gentle fingertips stroking over his back.
This is diabolical. Loud enough to notice, but virtually unidentifiable from a truck in motion. You pop the hood to see what's up and find nothing. You start it up and it doesn't make the noise. You go for a drive and it's fucking back. Psychological torture
I hope Connors got climbed like a fucking tree that night in the club God look at his cute fucking face. I think as a little treat for him I'm going to institute a headcanon wherein Connors pulls just INCONCIEVABLE amounts of pussy just by being so fucking earnest and having that funky little mustache. He walks into the locker room and Ilya is like "Connie! Did you take that girl home last night?" And Connors is like, "Oh dude you know I did." And Ilya daps him up and calls him a king and someone is like "Okay I understand Rozanov, he's like objectively hot and he's rich, but Connors I just don't get," and Ilya turns to that guy and says, "Of course you fucking wouldn't, when was the last time you ate pussy," and the other guys just all groan because here we go again...
There's a separate groupchat that someone accidentally added Cliff to and in that group chat someone is like "Hey does anyone else think it's super weird that Cap and Connors talk about eating pussy like all the time. Like they've gotta be capping. Or compensating for something. Like, nobody actually likes eating pussy like that."
"Hate to break it to you," Cliff tells them the next time they're all hanging out at Ilya's place, "But the boys put their heads together and now they think you're both gay for liking pussy too much."
Ilya rolls off the couch laughing. Connors says, "Fellas, if it's gay to eat pussy they're gonna have to put a new color on the rainbow just for me" and then won't stop saying it for the next week.
Ilya laughs every time, mostly because at least half the times he's mentioned going down on someone in the last two years he's actually been talking about Shane Hollander's ass.
yuna loves taking shane grocery shopping while david and ilya do puzzles. it’s their activity, their favourite thing to do together. ever since he was little, shane and yuna would go on little adventures that is running errands, and he can vent to her about his day and school and hockey, and when shane’s all grown up yuna starts gossiping with him about her work or their annoying distant relative too. it’s their mother son bonding time, and now that ilya’s in the picture, shane and yuna gets to talk about their partners on these trips.
“your dad really likes this brand of pasta lately, he says it brings out the sauce.”
“ilya loves cookies and cream, i’ll get some to put in the freezer for when he comes over.”
“now, does ilya like cans or glass bottles of coke more?” “bottles, he thinks cans are ugly.”
“does dad still take fish oil?” “three a day, speaking of, we’re running low.”
yuna really really loves sharing things with her son like this, she feels they’re connected by their love for the family. shane loves these adventures because they are the tradition since he was five and was asked which toothbrush he liked better
what makes me laugh about the shane/ilya/svetlana love triangle is that from shane's end shane is like. :( gosh svetlana is so gorgeous and she's russian and she knows ilya's family and they have so much history and she makes ilya laugh..... how can i ever compare.
and then from svetlana's end it's like. if i end up as ilya rozanov's wag i will have actually hit rock bottom. anytime i close my eyes and imagine the worst version of myself, i see myself endgame hetero married to ilya rozanov. imagine being a rozanova. haha. holy shit. could never be me. if ten years down the line i am in a monogamous marriage with ilya rozanov it means i have completely given up on my life. everytime i try to picture us raising kids together i always see us in the house irina died in. no thanks. nooo thanks. I am good. i am good. he gives good dick though. but shane can have him.
like all shane wants is to give ilya a beautiful house and a beautiful life and just like. so loudly and easily be his. which he thinks svetlana gets to have. and all svetlana wants is to be a professional hockey player in the MLH and check ilya so hard into the boards he sees stars and then eats her out on center ice. which she thinks shane gets to have.
i love that shane's whole emotional experience of heated rivalry is just him being like why is he mean to me then nice to me then mean to me then nice to me then really nice to me then really mean to me then nice to me in a way that bewilders & disconcerts me so much it briefly turns me heterosexual. and then he's mean to me again. oh it's because he's scared. yay! i can work with scared. i intend to marry him
inspired: merfolk actually have very different concepts of gender to humans because they’re an entirely different species with their own unique culture
It’s a biological fact that fish do indeed change their sex to keep the male/female ratio balanced in their school population. So this fluidity actually makes more sense from a scientific standpoint than the silly idea that merfolk are born with a strictly assigned sex like humans.
Human: (invites merfolk friend to a boat party with their friends)
Merfolk: oh man, there are a lot of women here. Haha don’t worry guys, I got this :) *changes into a man to keep a balance because that’s culturally polite for merfolk*
at some point in your life you will be boiling fruit, water, sugar, and lemon juice in a pot to make a syrup or jam. the instructions will tell you to simmer for a certain amt of time. your timer will go off and you will look at the pot and go, "hm, this doesn't look thick enough. maybe i'll let it go for another 10 minutes." this is the devil speaking. it's only so liquid right now because it is at boiling point. it will thicken when it cools down. learn from the follies of my youth and do not let this happen to you
at some point in your life you will be making a sauce or a stew in which you need to add cornstarch to thicken it. and you will prepare a slurry of starch in cold water and think "this looks like way too little starch to thicken this amount of liquid." this is the devil speaking. cornstarch instantly polymerizes at 95°C and if you add too much it will turn into an impossibly thick goop.
at some point in your life you will be making some sort of cream based dessert that requires gelatin to thicken it. and you will soak some gelatin sheets in water and think "this is too few gelatin sheets for this amount of cream." this is the devil speaking. it will thicken in the fridge and if you add too much you will end up with milk jelly
at some point in your life you will be baking cookies. you will take the sheet out after twelve minutes as the recipe instructs and the cookies will still be glistening and soft. "these don't seem cooked enough," you will think to yourself, "i should place them back into the oven until their edges are nice and golden." this is the devil talking. this is how you get dry, overdone cookies. the cookies will continue to bake on the warm sheet for several more minutes and then harden up after sitting on a rack for a while. trust the process. trust the process.
at some point in your life you will be adding a small pasta to a soup and you will think "that is not enough small pasta." this is the devil talking. the pasta will absorb the stock and expand. this is how you end up with a soup that is a solid mass of soggy ditalini.
At some point in your life you will be adding garlic to a dish and you will think "that is not enough garlic." These are angels speaking. They are correct. Add more garlic.
shane dressing ilya before a black tie awards show preparing him for the public eye completely focused on buttoning ilya’s shirt for him and adjusting his collar and putting on his cufflinks and smoothing his tie so it lays flat across his broad chest just so… too absorbed in his work to notice ilya watching him with fondness but when he does eventually realise he’s being Studied he flushes pink alllll the way to his ears
Ilya’s fond gaze fills with tears as he remembers his father in Sochi, blaming Irina and anyone to hand—and the juxtaposition with Shane’s care in the act guts him. Shane wants Ilya’s clothes perfect to care for him, and to protect him from the judgment of those they will see tonight. And, Ilya knows, because seeing Ilya in a crooked tie would itch at Shane all night. He looks at Shane’s flushing face, his dark eyelashes, and *ya tebya lyublyu* hangs in the air with every breath.
prguitarman
pixelskylines
stormborns
izzy806
vaporwave
ellievsbear
