[pluvialcity]

Ilya is so used to being the one doing the manhandling that when Shane picks him up for the first time he's just like

[pluvialcity]

tumblr users are rather like the critically endangered devil's hole pupfish. There are about 77 of us, we're sort of useless but very interesting to study, and people spend a lot of time arguing about whether or not it's a waste of money to maintain our habitat

[sabotage-on-mercury]

what if Ilya has to go through the mortifying ordeal of realising that his husband is actually funnier than him. like of course he knows his Shane is funny, don't let the flat voice and dry humour fool you. but he was completely unprepared for seeing Shane being actually that funny in the lockerroom. in a familiar environment where he is completely confident and relaxed, surrounded by people who genuinely like him and who he likes just as much, together with the love of his life at his side, finally completely himself. no no no no that is not sweet! not at all! it's not good! it's actually a dire situation! how is Ilya supposed to get anything done when he can't stop cackling at Shane's jokes that have no right to be that funny? how is he supposed to skate when his lungs collapsed because he laughed so hard at Shane's silly bit where he does all these different voices?? what about his authority as very very serious hockey captain when his entire team his hanging on Shane's lips, smiling and giggling, when Shane tells that story of how they got stuck in a snowbank, with that deadpan tone and mischievous sparkle in his eyes? and no!!! Ilya is NOT lovingly staring at Shane, his heart is NOT overflowing with love and warmth seeing Shane so happy, goddamnit.

[aroqueerfandoms]

[pluvialcity]

shane and ilya do, in the most technical sense, have separate phones after they move in together, but they have absolutely zero boundaries about them. You cannot send a private text to just one of them; all messages are sent to the codependent shaneandilya phone ecosystem where nothing is secret and you get a text back from whoever picks up the phone first. When one of them wants to try a new sex thing, they just leave a tab about it open in their phone browser and hornily lie in wait

(the only exceptions to this are silly phone games, where each of them defends their high scores with the kind of violent and ruthless competitiveness that only a world-class athlete can manage. They have had multi-day arguments about whether it counts as cheating to look up words for Words with Friends)

[pinenora317]

Heated Rivalry ll S01EP06

[pluvialcity]

I think Shane and Ilya are very cuddly people, but Anya is not a very cuddly dog (she enjoys about 5 minutes of cuddling and then she's back to the window seat to watch the neighbors)

this means she sometimes ends up in scenarios like this against her will:

[pluvialcity]

shane waking ilya up at the cottage with his "wait, I have another idea" monologue about starting a charity makes me think that shane is one of those people who just Does That periodically

like he'll be gnawing on an idea for a couple days, and he'll go to sleep thinking about it, and then one day he'll wake up at 3am and it's finally done percolating and he has to Tell Someone About It Right Now and every time ilya is just like

[pluvialcity]

I put some bb shane thoughts related to this in the tags, but whoops I wasn't done 😅 first, the tags:

#bb shane was also one of those toddlers who would rhythmically and athletically rattle his entire crib really loudly at 2am#until yuna or david came in bleary-eyed and trying *so hard* to be calm and not panic about the noise#and not think about how many hours they had until work started the next morning#and shane would just stare at them with his chubby little cheeks & his big eyes and say “I love you” and then lay down and go back to sleep

more bb shane (these are loosely based on my brother, who was extremely cute but was also the most terrifyingly athletic toddler the daycare workers had ever seen):

he walked before he could talk. He also climbed before he could talk. Therefore, if he wanted a snack, the most efficient way for him to get it was by scaling the nearest countertop, shelf, or refrigerator to retrieve it himself. he was helping daddy with dinner! so useful. so efficient.

he loved telling people he loved them! it made them so happy! there was never a bad time to say that you loved someone, like at 2am or in a quiet meeting or when papa was taking a nap and shane had to climb on top of him with his pointy little knees and elbows to make sure he knew

hand-eye coordination off the charts. if he did not like a food he was throwing it back at you with devastating precision. Both David and Yuna still have incredible reflexes to this day

gross motor skills also off the charts. Yuna taught him how to play catch with a squishy toy and he immediately transferred that skill to anything that was handed to him with glee. He was very disappointed when you weren't fast enough to catch it. He wanted to play a game with you! because he loves you and wants you to have fun!

he loved to go fast! "papa catch me" was another A+ game, which he liked to play in places rich in obstacles, like department stores and fairgrounds

[pluvialcity]

shane waking ilya up at the cottage with his "wait, I have another idea" monologue about starting a charity makes me think that shane is one of those people who just Does That periodically

like he'll be gnawing on an idea for a couple days, and he'll go to sleep thinking about it, and then one day he'll wake up at 3am and it's finally done percolating and he has to Tell Someone About It Right Now and every time ilya is just like

[pelmenilya]

#myilya has always been chronically online and easily enamored by a good internet challenge, especially in the early 2010s. He personally participated in many with the Raiders, including but not limited to:

Planking. Everywhere

Making a music video to “Like A Boss” by The Lonely Island in the Raider’s training facility

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, multiple times, always shirtless. Some of his notable nominations include a Raider’s assistant coach, Gritty, Shane Hollander, and then-sitting Vice President Joe Biden

The cinnamon challenge (fucked up his breathing for days but refused to acknowledge any discomfort bc Russians Do Not Do This)

Ghost pepper challenge (he ended up crying, made Connors delete the video, and threatened all present to secrecy)

Chubby Bunny challenge (Marly won and posted the video himself)

Gallon of milk challenge (Marly threw up and it was decided the video was too gross to post)

Ghost pepper challenge, again (went the same as the first attempt)

Harlem Shake in the Raiders locker room, obviously

Mannequin challenge during a Raiders practice, also obviously

Meanwhile the only internet trend #myshane has ever willingly participated in was the Ice Bucket Challenge when Ilya nominated him bc it was for charity and Yuna said it would be good for his image

[pluvialcity]

He and his teammates would also have been all in on extreme phone pinching challenges, I fear

(for the uninitiated, this was a thing in like 2015 where people with more money than sense would imperil their phones for clout)

[fractally]

Around 35 Rose starts Goop and she constantly pitches her products to Shane and asks him to promote stuff occasionally because he has a very different demo than she does. Shane would literally do anything on God's green earth for Rose (She is the reason he is where he is. She's a goddess) so he does

Ilya likes Rose now but he's tired of the crap in his house. There's peptides in the kitchen and four different retinols in the bathroom cabinet that Shane has never touched. A Louis Vuitton fruit bowl appears in their living room one day. An Hermes vase. Shane we can't even put these jade eggs up your butt

Shane hears this but keeps taking stuff from Rose in secret and puts it in the second home office that Ilya never goes in (mostly a space for filing cabinets and random crap). Ilya pops in there one day years later looking for some tax document. He's rooting around, opens the closet and is confronted with 4 unopened crates of vagina candles

[dirtypuzzlewrites]

i actually have so much to say about shane and food, and how in general, shane is a perfect example of why the functioning model primarily used is psychology is so inadequate when applied to autistic people. i think shane has a pretty gnarly relationship to food, but i don’t think it meets any ED criteria without some exaggeration. mostly bc shane is fully functioning and not losing any weight and he’s a pro athlete.

“so when i do it, it’s an ED but when a pro athlete does it, it’s good and fine and normal—” yes exactly, that’s the whole thing, right? what we consider abnormal or inherently patholoical behavior/experiences are constructed. stars are real, but constelltions aren’t, right. we could interrogate why the mild depersonalization of your own body and wonky relationship to personhood/food is basically required to become a pro athlete, and what it says about our society that this is consider de facto okay, but like. that is not what most shane ED fics are digging into.

shane’s whole Thing is that he Functions. he functions at all costs. he will cognitively amputate anything that threatens his ability to function. this is not gonna get a psych doc in your business, you feel? i think shane would have a hell of a time finding a therapist, and CBT would be an hour of useless frustration.

this is why “distress is disorder” is the model many disability activists are pushing bc functioning misses so many ppl who are suffering but who function. (and obv many ppl will eventually slide into dysfuction after long enough.)

anyway i’m exploring all this in a fic rn so. ig if anyone’s interested in that, keep an eye out!

[pluvialcity]

(this whole thought about Ilya and language is heavily inspired by @theghostofashton's excellent recent posts/asks on the topic; didn't want to derail any of those, but wanted to give credit!)

We see canonically that Ilya's English is very fluent/advanced throughout the show/books, and something that I'd really love to see explored in fic is how intensely frustrating it is to know that you know at least one comprehensible and correct way to say something, but you're not 100% sure if the thing you're saying sounds fluid and natural.

In some ways, imo, this feels worse than the earlier learning stages where you're just trying to get your point across, because when you're at that beginner/intermediate level you feel successful if you manage to convey the gist of what you want to say. Once you're past that, success is nebulous; most people aren't going to correct you if you say something awkward, because you're not wrong, but there's this omnipresent, unrelenting feeling that there's probably a better way to express the thing you want to say.

You also experience this really intense longing for eloquence, and a deep frustration with the knowledge that even as you continue to improve in this language, you're probably never going to hit a point where you feel like you're really fully expressing yourself the way you want to in the newer language.

And then! Guess what! You also get worse at your home language(s)! Those skills atrophy a little bit if you don't use them, so you get home and people make fun of your accent in your home language, and you forget words that used to feel as natural as breathing, so now you're in this fucking atrocious middle ground where any language you speak feels like putting on a shirt that's a size too small.

Meanwhile, whenever you speak the newer language everyone is like, "you're so good at [newer language]! I understand you perfectly! You have nothing to be self-conscious about!" and you know that they're being nice but your tongue feels too big for your mouth and everyone pauses for a second too long when you make a joke because they're not sure if it was on purpose and sometimes you just want to fucking scream about it, actually

Anyway, this has been several paragraphs of me projecting on Ilya Rozanov, hope it's helpful for someone who's writing him

[aslongasitsblack]

yes shane not realising people are flirting with him but also shane not realising that HE is flirting with men he finds attractive shane who naturally flutters his big brown sparkly eyes more often whenever hes talking to a big strong handsome man shane who automatically tilts his head slightly down so his gaze is directed upwards shane whose voice turns soft and buttery while he’s delivering smooth jabs and quick compliments shane whose mouth quips into a glint of teeth and scratches the back of his neck so his bicep strains against the cuff of his t shirt shane who says ‘yeah you’d like that?’ without thinking and hums round and airy ‘mhmm’ in acknowledgement shane insisting ‘i was NOT flirting with him.’ when ilya brings it up later and ilya shrugs and says ‘you cannot help it…you’re super gay…i don’t mind, im the only one that makes you nervous’ and grins wickedly while shane blushes and makes a sound in the back of his throat as ilya descends upon him

[notevengonnaanswerthat]

[theghostofashton]

people have so little imagination in this fandom when it comes to shane beyond sex (and inventing ways for him to be a gay republican lmfao). he can't be into movies. he's only allowed to read hockey books. he has no other hobbies. he plays hockey and he and ilya fuck and that's it. he doesn't do social media. he runs, maybe, but it's only conditioning for hockey, nothing more. he was a bad student and hated school, all he wanted do was play hockey. nothing about a favorite subject or topic he loved learning about. it's so..... why can't he be a film buff? why can't he be really into indie films and film festivals? he likes to read canonically, why can't we expand his taste beyond books about hockey? where's the imagination? why aren't people inventing new hobbies for him? ilya calling him boring means something totally different than him..... having nothing to him except liking hockey and sex.

[tiramisutrexs]

Ilya is very popular with the Boston emergency services cause he frequently gets stuck in trees saving cats. The EMS refers to him by name whenever they have to fish him out. Eventurally one of them who climbs montains for fun just teaches him how to get up and down safely and the equipment he needs.

[mybloodstream-caffeine]

David and Yuna Hollander are one of the only married couples Ilya's ever known who are truly, unquestionably in love with each other. Ilya finds them fascinating.

Sometimes he catches himself watching them like they're a particularly intriguing nature documentary that someone left playing on the TV: the easy way they move around each other, unthinking. How they operate as a unit, always. Their uncanny ability to sense what the other is thinking, their shared unspoken language that they communicate to each other with just a look.

More than that, he watches the way they touch each other - yuna's hand briefly running over David's shoulders as she walks past where he's sitting in his armchair; David absently tucking a strand of hair that's escaped from Yuna's coiffed bun behind her ear at an award's ceremony; Yuna's pinkie curled around the belt loop of David's jeans as they walk back to the car after making a pit stop on the way to the cottage to buy groceries; David's big calloused palm covering Yuna's where it rests on the white table cloth of the fancy restaurant Shane took them all out to; Yuna fastidiously tucking the label of David's jersey that was sticking out at the nape of his neck; hands on waists, the small of backs, on knees and thighs. Searching hands, always seeking contact. Not possessive or even particularly conscious, just,,, content. Touches whose only purpose is to touch.

It puts a strange lump in his throat, seeing the way they are with each other sometimes, but the feeling is mostly tempered by joy now - once upon a time, Ilya never could have imagined loving someone like that, so obviously, so instinctively. But now he can. What bliss.

[pluvialcity]

can't believe that in order to read this fic I'm thinking about I have to write it, this is heartbreaking news