5+1 Hollanov domesticity scenes in extreme detail (getting ready for bed, eating breakfast)
i love this prompt! fyi this is the first one i saw and also my plan for the prompts is to just type directly into the tumblr response box so i don't stress too much about it, juuuust so you know what level of quality to expect here hehe. also 5+1 was a little too much for my straight-to-tumblr brain so i did 3+1 instead :)
1. bedtime (2017-2018 season)
"Baby," Ilya says, because his Shane is so pretty that he is shocked by what he sees. "No moisturizer?"
"What the hell," Shane mutters, rinsing the bristles of his cute little electric toothbrush. Everything is beautiful and adorable to Ilya tonight, because tonight is inside the five-day island of Shane in Ilya's house in Boston, respite in the ocean of weeks and weeks of loneliness. Next year it will be better; next year Ilya will be in Ottawa.
Anyway. Shane has washed his face and is now brushing his teeth. "Your skin, moy kruassan. No lotion?"
"Your..." Shane turns around to him. Ilya grins. "Is that just croissant in a Russian accent?"
"Flaky, flaky," Ilya laughs, kissing his dry skin. Unbelievable, not to use moisturizer when they spend hours a day on an ice rink.
"Fuck off," Shane says, but he lets Ilya crowd around him, lets Ilya kiss his cheek just to feel the toothbrush in there, lets Ilya squeeze his waist and nuzzle into him, the luckiest man alive.
2. bbq bros (summer 2017)
Ilya stands in front of the barbecue. Probably he has seen one before... maybe. Marly had one, but Ilya spent every summer in Russia before this one. He missed all the cookouts.
"Do you know how to turn the grill on, Ilya?"
"Yes, of course I know," Ilya grumbles. He looks at the labels. If it was Russian he would already know what to do. It would be blazing, he would have a thousand hot dogs ready, Hollander would drown in them. A thousand burgers also, no recipe needed.
Shane's flip flops slap the deck behind him. "You have no idea how to deal with this, do you?"
"We do not have this in city," Ilya scoffs, stepping back. "We have oven, like civilized people."
"A grill is pretty fuckin' advanced technology, asshole," Shane says, and then he squats down to look at the propane tank and Ilya gets so hard he feels dizzy.
Shane stands up, turns the switch on—it was the one on the right, Ilya thought it was!—and lights a match—like a survivalist, Ilya thinks, remembering Shane building a fire for him last night—and then puts the match into the grill to ignite the flames.
Shane turns around. He looks at Ilya, smiles, and then looks down. "Are you... I'm..." and then, as if it isn't obvious, he asks, "What about this is turning you on?"
The fantasy of you with your sleeves rolled up, flipping meat, pumping gas, hefting up a propane tank on your shoulders with all your muscles bulging... Ilya feels like a WAG. If he ever went to a summer cookout he imagines that this must be what all the WAGs think about, looking out the kitchen window at all the men crowded around the barbecue. They must be ogling the men comparing dick sizes with their fucking metal spatulas and grill brushes.
Perhaps Ilya is giving straight people too much credit. Maybe women are not so turned on they get nosebleeds from American man gender roles. But Ilya... Ilya is an enlightened man, and Shane's cock is tenting his pants a little bit, and he looks so comfortable and muscular. "Doesn't matter," Ilya says, because he's not sure how to express this emotional journey to Shane. "Turn the grill off. Let me suck your dick."
"I just fucking turned it on," Shane complains, but he turns it off anyway. This is how Ilya knows Shane is a rest-of-his-life kind of thing.
3. breakfast (2019-2020 season)
They have never had breakfast outside the house before. Shane had set his jaw against a panic attack an hour ago, Ilya standing by the door, ready to surrender.
But it had been so comfortable earlier—Shane in his sheets, the sun on him. The smell of his armpit, salt and stale. Ilya's mouth on his jaw, his shoulder, his collarbone. Late March, when the season begins to open up, when winter retreats just a little bit, just enough, just an hour or a day at a time, until the weeks become May and June and summer.
This is looking too far ahead, though. It is March, still cold, still windy. No food in the house in Ottawa because Ilya had been too sad to even order groceries online—but this he didn't tell Shane. He was just forgetful, he said. I did not forget the lube, he said, and Shane had laughed, so it was all right last night.
This morning, there are not even eggs in the house, and Ilya will not let Shane—warm, comfortable, sleepy Shane—drink a protein smoothie for breakfast. Not in Ilya's house. So it was off to the cafe a 10-minute walk away from Ilya's house for breakfast. Ilya had been there before. They had a bowl outside for dogs to drink water, and some days Ilya would sit there for hours, no coffee left but enough eyesight and energy to watch dogs drink from the bowl.
So now, after the minor almost-panic, and the putting on of toques and gloves, they are at the cafe.
"I'll have a... do you have the high-fiber bread option for the breakfast sandwiches?"
Of course they do. This Ilya looked into the moment he thought of bringing Shane here, many many months ago.
Ilya sits down with his donut. He likes sweets for breakfast. Ilya drinks enough horrible smoothies just to up his caloric intake that sometimes he just wants something nice to eat.
"You're quiet," Shane says, and Ilya shakes himself.
"Yes," he says, and then smiles at Shane. "Just thinking of you. Only good, I promise."
Shane smiles back. There in the crook of his mouth is hope. The summer is coming soon. In June they will have the hockey camp. They will live in the same city. The loneliness will not eat him alive.
"I miss you when I'm not here," Shane says, and Ilya blinks. He turns his head to watch a pigeon. "You miss me?"
Ilya swallows. "Of course," he chokes out, and when he knows he will not cry, he looks back at Shane. He makes himself smirk, nasty. "No hole in Ottawa is as tight as you."
Shane flinches, but no one is around them. He settles, then blushes, smiling a little. Ilya watches that flush spill from his cheeks down his neck: his saving grace. If things were different, Ilya would hold his hand. He might kiss his knuckles. Everyone does this at cafes in the morning, young people on dates, old married people who have made an outing of the morning. Sitting next to each other, looking out at the world together, holding hands.
Ilya smiles back. Shane is here. It's not so bad, if Shane is here. It can still be breakfast, can still be a date. In ten years, Ilya might be able to hold his hand.
+1 laundry (2027)
"What are you doing in here?" Ilya asks, but of course he knows.
Shane is doing the laundry.
"I'm... you know what I'm doing, you fucker," Shane laughs. He doesn't turn around. "You're not gonna distract me this time."
"I distract you every time," Ilya murmurs, walking in to hold Shane and look over his shoulder. "Ah, very nice fold. Expert move."
"Shut up," Shane says, folding the next shirt. He is so terrible at it that all of Ilya's T-shirts somehow end up wrinkled, even though Shane folds them right out of the dryer. Ilya loves a wrinkled shirt because it means he hasn't had to do his laundry alone.
"You are like Marie Kondo," Ilya says, "folding expert."
"Who the fuck is Marie Ko— c'mon, Ilya—"
Ilya thumbs over Shane's hipbone, hand fully in his pants, skin on skin. "I distract you?" Ilya asks, mouthing behind Shane's ear. "Expert laundry man, you don't need your whole focus, yes?"
"Fuck off," Shane says, but his cock is getting harder, waiting for Ilya's touch. Valiantly, Shane tries to fold another shirt. Somehow, it ends up in a ball.
"I used to dream of this," Ilya says.
"What, fondling me while I try to fold your T-shirts?"
"Doing laundry together," Ilya admits, teeth against Shane's earlobe. "That our clothes might get mixed up. That I might wear your underwear by accident, because it was in my closet. Because my things were your things."
Shane sighs. "I hate when you do this," he says, but when he turns around, his smile is brighter than the sun and all good things in life. "I'm trying to fold the fucking laundry and you're saying the most romantic shit I've ever heard in my life to me."
"Yes, I am wonderful husband, I know," Ilya says, already kneeling.
"Yeah, baby," Shane says, which is the most romantic thing Ilya has ever heard in his life. Then Shane helpfully steps out of his sweatpants so all Ilya has to do is push him back onto the bed to suck his cock, clearing the clean laundry out of the way first because he is, indeed, a wonderful husband.
shane (a little tipsy) being cornered by a few fans at a bar one night and they ask him what’s the best thing about coming out, expecting him to say something motivating like self-expression and liberation and shane just goes
“i don’t know, probably that i can have ilya’s photos on my phone now :).”
and the whole of non bigot hockey twt just fucking crash out and montreal metros and crowell gets burned at the stake
@yearnalisms requested to bring this beautiful text post by @honeyybrii to gif form! all inspo credit to op of the text post! 💜 this tag is especially a good sum up of the set:
#it's genuinely so funny everytime ilya tries to teeheehaha around an insecurity #shane is like actually 🤓👆🏻
i tried making a contrapuntal poem for hollanov, which can be read 3 ways: shane’s side alone, ilya’s side alone, or both sides together. inspired by the long game.
After Ilya stays in the cottage that first summer, something shifts in a way that scares Shane. He's used to getting completely wired around Ilya: each hookup night meant falling asleep no earlier than 3am, either because they were all over each other until the late hour, or because Shane was pacing around his hotel room, unpacking what just happened.
But now, he gets so tired whenever Ilya is around. His eyelids start to droop and, even though he's spent days or weeks looking forward to reuniting with his boyfriend, all he wants to do is fall asleep in Ilya's arms.
He decides to go to the doctor for some labs, checking for conditions that would make him fatigued. Words like leukemia and lupus came up on his Google searches, so he braces for the worst.
"Everything is perfect, Shane," his doctor tells him over the phone a week later. "But, you know, if you're worried about it, you could talk to a psychiatrist."
He makes an appointment for the next day with the first psychiatrist he finds. He explains the issue again: extreme sleepiness, maybe even narcolepsy, if Web MD is right. After more prompting, he specifies that this happens specifically around his partner.
The psychiatrist smiles at him. "Do you know much about nervous system regulation?" she asks gently. When he shakes his head, she explains further. "There are some people or settings that cause our nervous systems to feel calmer, and, especially for people who spend a lot of their lives in a state of fight or flight, those soothing feelings can make us tired and sleepy. Maybe your body finally feels safe and able to rest."
He doesn't tell Ilya about this until months later, and he's met with a loud squeal and a thousand kisses on his cheeks, jaw, forehead, and collarbones. "I love being your safe place," Ilya says.
i have an extremely beautiful scene in my mind of shane at home on their couch with ilya's head on one thigh and anya's head on the other and providing simultaneous head scritches and having to try SO hard not to laugh when pausing gets him non-verbal complaints from BOTH of them
he pauses once just because it's funny and gets ilya's hand tapping his knee at the same time it gets him anya swatting the air with her paw in the direction of his hand, and there are TEARS in his eyes resisting the urge to laugh as he resumes because he doesn't want to break the softness of this moment even though it's also objectively hilarious to be part of
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