"incurious" still GOAT insult. You could be better but you're not. You could learn but you won't, and for no good reason, just a base dispositional apathy. Get fucked
ciara, for no reason whatsoever i want you to write a drabble on the aftermath of hollanov's first morning waking up together!
@thisfeebleheart asked: hi ciara! i just saw your post and i would absolutely love to read about the aftermath of the 'i like you' scene for your missing scene prompts 🥹
@youre-not-a-cat-youre-a-rat asked: Hey! Could you write the aftermath of the "Good morning...I like you," moment in the cottage ep as one of your fic prompts?
(just in case you haven't received this already, lol)
askjdfhs thank you very much for indulging me, friends!!! 💖 i fear i made my own knees weak writing this but hopefully that means i came out with something good lmao. if any of this seems familiar, i did play around with some of the things i wrote in this post before!
i hope you like it 🥰
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Ilya has hardly opened his eyes when he feels Shane’s face tilt against his chest and he’s mumbling a quiet, “Good morning.”
Swallowing around the dryness in his mouth, Ilya’s squints at him. So close it feels unreal. “Good morning,” he croaks, and then: “I like you.”
Shane had asked him to be honest yesterday. To try, for the next two weeks at least. And honestly? Ilya likes him. Likes talking to him and sitting with him and playing against him and kissing him and every other thing he’s barely allowed himself to desire for so fucking long.
Panic has barely begun tingling at the edges of his fingertips when Shane smiles up at him, unguarded in the early morning light, and says, “I like you too.”
He stares at Shane for a beat, wonders idly if this is some fantasy of a dream his brain has conjured up, but then his fingers graze through Shane’s hair and Shane is turning his face into Ilya’s chest again and Ilya is setting his cheek against the top of Shane’s head and it’s real.
Blisteringly, startling real.
He focuses on the ceiling as the realisation washes over him.
They’ve been falling in and out of each other’s beds for seven years – have been circling each other for longer – and this is the first time he’s been allowed to stay. He’s imagined it a lot, what it would be like to wake up together. He never thought it would feel this syrupy slow.
Shane is half-sprawled over him, one arm slung across Ilya’s waist, one leg hitched over Ilya’s hip, head pillowed on his chest, and if Ilya is quiet enough he can almost hear the way they’re breathing in tandem. And on another day, when the urgency would leave them both jittery, he’d be pushing himself into wakefulness. Doing his best to make sure he didn’t waste any time.
As if the possibility of falling back to sleep with Shane in his arms could ever be a waste of time.
He closes his eyes, happy to drift, happy to stay here for hours if he’s allowed. Shane’s breathing is steady and slow and Ilya thinks he must’ve fallen back to sleep too until he feels the curve of Shane’s mouth against his skin. And how far in deep must he be that he can recognise the shape of Shane’s smile just by touch? The width and breadth of it, the way his eyes must be crinkling at the corners even if they’re still closed.
“Are you asleep?” he whispers and the smile presses more firmly into his skin.
“No,” Shane admits, something almost giddy and coaxing behind the word.
It makes Ilya’s own mouth twitch, makes him turn his head the other way on the pillow and bring his free arm up to cover his face because he feels so fucking happy and delighted and in love he can hardly contain it.
Biting the inside of his cheek, he shifts down the mattress, twisting onto his side until Shane’s head isn’t resting on him anymore and they’re face to face. Sharing the same pillow, the tips of their noses just shy of touching. He raises a hand and settles his fingers against Shane’s cheek and jaw.
“Hi.”
Shane beams at him. “Hi.”
Almost simultaneously, they laugh – a disbelieving, incredulous sound that has them both inadvertently curling closer until their legs are tangled under the covers.
“Did you sleep okay?” Shane asks him when the sound peters off, one of his hands finding Ilya’s hair and sinking into his curls just like it had by the fire last night.
The sensation makes him want to melt into the mattress; he settles for burying his face deeper in the pillow and nodding. “Yes.” He lets his thumb and forefinger trail over Shane’s cheekbone and stares fixedly at his freckles when he admits, “I like sharing a bed with you.”
It feels almost embarrassing to say out loud, like it confirms he’s thought about it, but Shane looks so elated that no part of him wants to take it back.
“I hoped it would feel like this,” Shane murmurs, fingers twisting in Ilya’s hair like he can anticipate the way the words make Ilya freeze.
Feeling his throat bob, he tries not to get his hopes up. “What do you mean?”
“Staying the night…having time,” Shane explains. “I hoped it would feel like this.”
Ilya thinks he might have forgotten how to breathe, the words ‘I love you’ pressing insistently against his sternum. Instead, what he manages is a raspy, “Like what?”
Shane gives a little half-shrug, looking away from Ilya’s face for the first time, and his voice is quiet but Ilya hears it anyway. “Like we were right.”
Ilya feels his breath catch and Shane glances up at him, locking into his gaze once more.
“About it being more,” he continues lowly. “Or- for chasing this feeling for so long even when anyone else probably would’ve given up a long time ago.” He shrugs again, a downright devastating smile on his face. “We were right though.”
And, well. Ilya has to kiss him.
He uses the hand he still has on Shane’s face to guide his jaw and wraps his other arm firmly around Shane’s waist and captures his lips in a kiss he hopes Shane will feel all the way down to his toes. Shane melts against him, mouth pliant, as he winds himself around Ilya until their limbs are somehow overlapping even more than before.
And the words are back again – the ‘I love you’ in his throat now – he kisses Shane harder instead so it doesn’t come out.
“We haven’t brushed our teeth,” Shane mutters against his mouth, though he makes no attempt to pull away.
“Don’t care,” Ilya mutters right back, licking into Shane’s mouth in that way that always makes Shane’s jaw slacken. And he wants to laugh again, in awe at the domesticity of it all.
He gets to kiss Shane Hollander before they’ve even gotten up to brush their teeth. He got to fall asleep with him last night and he’ll get to again tonight. They’ll have breakfast together. And lunch. And dinner. He’d be embarrassed at the thrum of desire that pulses through him at the thought if not for the fact that he can feel Shane is equally as affected.
His hand travels over the knobs of Shane’s spine, a downward spiral until his fingers catch on the waistband of his underwear and then Shane huffs a laugh into his mouth.
Ilya stills, dislodging their mouths and leaning back when Shane laughs again.
“Sorry,” Shane says, still grinning dazedly. “I was just thinking about what we could have for breakfast and I realised I don’t even know what you like for breakfast.”
Ilya stares at him incredulously. “You are thinking about breakfast right now?”
As if he wasn’t getting hard at the thought of sharing their meals fifteen seconds ago.
Shane shrugs, an unrepentant glint in his eyes. “It’s just weird,” he says, picking up the earlier thread of his thought. “I’ve known you for so long and I feel like I know so much about you. But I don’t know what you eat for breakfast.”
Ilya gets it. They’ve kept the strangest things from each other over the past almost decade. The mundane things you only learn when you’re allowed to linger. When you’re not running on a fleeting, rushed few hours every six weeks or so.
Ilya knows everything about how Shane likes to be touched and what he looks like when he’s afraid and how he favours his right side when he takes aim on the goal and the floor plan of his apartment but he didn’t know what kind of car he drove until yesterday.
“I have eggs for breakfast,” he says after a beat because they have time and Shane is nodding like this matters.
“What kind?”
“An omelette usually.”
Shane nods again, a little furrow between his eyebrows as if committing this information to memory is the most important thing in the world. “I can make you an omelette.”
Ilya feels his expression soften and he knows it must be written all over his face. How lovesick he is, how far past the point of no return he is. Because he should not feel a lump forming in his throat at the idea of Shane making him breakfast.
And yet.
He pulls Shane in again, more gently this time, just brushing their mouths together in acknowledgement. Or thanks. Or so he won’t say what he really wants to.
Shane kisses him back, leans in for another one when Ilya is about to pull away. “We don’t have to get up yet though,” he says quietly.
Ilya has no fucking idea what time it is or if he’s hungry but he knows he’s not ready to leave this bed yet. Grinning, he lets his hand wander the same path as before and dives in to swallow the sound of Shane’s bitten off chuckle, rolling them until he’s blanketing Shane’s body with his own.
“Such a good host,” he says, mouthing at the underside of Shane’s jaw.
Shane tips his head back to give him room and laughs airily, one hand disappearing into Ilya’s hair again. “Gotta make sure you become a repeat guest somehow.”
And it’s a joke but the thought of being allowed to come back, that Shane would want him here for longer than just these two weeks, sends a shiver through Ilya’s body that almost causes his arms to give out where he’s trying keep himself propped up. He buries his face in Shane’s neck for just a second and breathes deep, squeezing his eyes shut when Shane’s hand pets his hair like he gets it. Like he knows.
Letting out a shaky exhale, he drags his mouth over Shane’s pulse point and thinks:
I like you, I like you, I like you.
There might be an ‘I love you’ in there somewhere too.
My Shane does not keep the Rookie of the Year trophy in the trophy room. He keeps that shit on the mantle in the living room. Is it gauche? Maybe. But it allows him to rub his husband's face in it way more often than if it was locked away with the rest of their accolades.
i actually think that what's being missed in the 'why does everyone love heated rivalry' conversation is just that it's good
it's well made, well shot, well directed, the music is interesting, the costumes are both thoughtful and subtly period accurate, the sex scenes are intentional and, again, accurate to what hooking up when you're like 18 actually feels like...the actors are of course attractive but they look like real people. the characters are varied and well fleshed out, the acting is really, really strong
so many shows and films shoot and then slot in whatever music kind of fits or could be licenced in the budget after time, but you can tell that the scenes in hr were shot with that specific music in mind. and the same intentional approach runs through the whole thing
it feels...so nice to watch a show that cares about itself
Nobody knew in advance that this show would become a massive international phenomenon. It was a mid-budget Canadian show (which means low budget by US standards) adapted from a Harlequin romance novel. The deal with HBO for US distribution rights was only signed a few weeks before it began to air.
But everybody involved treated it as if it was serious art anyway. Not just some little Canadian streaming show that might well disappear after airing. Based on a book from a genre that is usually ridiculed by people who consider themselves serious film people. The cast, the crew, the writer/director, the music supervisor, everybody. They all did their best work for love of the game.
when someone is completely fucking wrong about your blorbo but you don't want to argue about what basically boils down to opinions about shit that doesn't matter so you just sit there like
actually im doing really well except for the fact that everything makes me sad and the things that dont make me sad make me angry. but other than that im fine
areudirty
titsay
dailybridgerton
turnnoffyourmind
romaincrisis
andulkaphoto
kianamaiart
