#aphie.txt

[aphantasias]

sexually inexperienced shane assuming he & ilya's incredibly romantic sex is probably totally normal and he's just particularly bad at handling hookups while an extremely sexually fluent ilya privately and repeatedly spirals over how Not Casual their sex is and how little control he has over it. poetry

[aphantasias]

shane and ilya may not change their names legally after they marry but i know ilya makes all their dinner and vacation reservations under hollander. i know he's ilya hollander in his heart of hearts. to him they are The Hollander Household. they send christmas cards with 'love, the hollanders'. it's real to me

[aphantasias]

the ilya in my mind has an ownership kink that could rival the heat of the fucking sun and it fully goes both ways because like yeah he wants shane to wear a collar with ROZANOV in real diamond lettering everywhere he goes but he also wants Shane Hollander's Husband permanently branded on his own forehead. when ilya is balls deep he's the one crying "yours, yours, yours i'm yours" and sometimes he begs for shane to bite hard enough to leave a mark that will last him days and he flashes his wedding ring every chance he gets and he fucking lives for the moments when he successfully triggers shane's jealousy in public, because he once found out what happens when shane feels the need to let someone know ilya is spoken for, and he still jerks off to it from time to time. before they got married he used to secretly trace "mr. ilya hollander" on the steam of his shower door and just stare at it until he came so hard he cried

[aphantasias]

yeah actually shane and ilya touching feet just ruined my whole day. i cannot stomach the intimacy of being under glaring lights and cameras and reporters who don't speak your language and seeking the tiniest bit of comfort in touching shoes with a boy who has no reason at all to help you but is, and instead of moving away, that boy presses his entire foot to yours.

then nearly a decade later under the shocked and incredulous eyes of your parents, their idea of you exploding in real time as you sit with them at the table beside your supposed enemy to confess your love for him, you silently seek comfort under the table the same way he did all those years ago........and his foot finds yours first.

[aphantasias]

okay wait realistically when do you guys think ilya realized shane was Different neurologically?

i know the first thought is like. when shane was folding his pants before sex but i honestly think ilya just thought it was dorky and cute and didn't think too deeply into it

to me, when i consider how ilya interprets all of their interactions up until florida, the stylist reveal at the bar is when ilya fully realizes that shane is really just wired completely differently than most people and that's why none of their interactions have ever made sense to him.

this is also a personal headcanon of mine and i don't think this is in the text or meant to be BUT HEAR ME OUT

he sits through their entire conversation with such obvious anxiety, tapping and twitching and staring and thinking shane can see it and is just torturing him with the build-up to his engagement announcement because ilya deserves it. and then shane goes. can i tell you a secret? :) and ilya's like FUCK no PLEASE don't but his mouth says okay because he is a masochist and he needs to know where they stand and if he's about to fight for his right to be shane's mistress, and shane just goes 'i..... hired a stylist :3'

and ilya just.

come with me on this face journey for a moment

this FOR ME is the moment ilya realizes that he's been misunderstanding shane completely. i don't think he goes 'oh shit... autistic' but i do think he fully understands that shane is just Like That and genuinely can't read the room for shit and has no idea ilya is crawling out of his skin to know if they can be something again

anyone else would have acknowledged the hints he was dropping. the physical cues. the updowns. but not shane. which means none of his past attempts to silently communicate got through, either. which means. a lot.

and then ilya gets so much bolder, flirtier, he asks what he wants to know directly, he touches shane more, he's more playful. it was never about shane not wanting him the way ilya wanted him. he realizes shane just doesn't know how bad ilya wants him, because ilya hasn't been communicating in a way shane can understand. and that heals a lot of hurt in an instant

[aphantasias]

hollanov is so beautiful to me because i see everything they see in each other & i completely understand why both of them are crazy about the other so no matter what's happening i'm winning and it's unbelievable. i'm ilya falling in love with shane's sincerity and his mannerisms and his pure talent and his eagerness to please and his repression and his big brown eyes and his heart on his sleeve and i'm shane falling in love with ilya's boldness and his smirk and his secretly enormous heart and his filthy mouth and his sad european eyes and the way he's both tender and mean when he fucks and i've never had a better time

[aphantasias]

"you think i am asshole" "i know you're an asshole" [tilts his head like that hurt] "i would not leave you like that" "no?" [dead fucking serious] "no"

it is actually devastating to me that ilya is being so sincere here and shane filters their interactions through the characters of rozanov and hollander The Rivals for SO LONG that it literally sets them back years.

this got. long so the rest is under the cut

between this and the vegas rooftop, it feels like ilya tries to connect with shane on a personal level several times from the beginning and just keeps getting curbed by shane's assumptions of who he is, so by the time the award show swings around he's like okay fine you clearly want Rozanov and have no interest in ilya so. i can be rozanov if i get to keep seeing you. cue bathroom scene where he's extra douchey and dominant, because he thinks this is what shane wants. so when shane comes to see him later, he tucks ilya away and rozanov fucks shane instead. it's why it feels so different from their other hookups. where did sweet loving ilya go? he buried that motherfucker. no one wants to see him. they want rozanov. his father, the fans, everyone, want rozanov. shane wants rozanov.

and he thinks he can keep it up to have a piece of shane at least, his little oasis in his horrifically vast desert, but he's. just a boy. and he's in love before he knows it, but he never forgets that shane only wants rozanov, so in boston at his place when he tries to connect again with shane personally without going too far out of character, trying to talk casually about girls and his experience with them because shane knows rozanov has a reputation, hoping that will interest shane into talking more or excite him or something, but shane is just weirded out and thinks ilya is nohomoing him, and then the phone rings and his family is ruining everything again, exposing ilya in front of shane when he's trying so fucking hard to be rozanov right now, and then he goes and fucks it by calling him shane instead of hollander when he cums, and then shane runs, reaffirming to ilya that shane doesn't want him, he wants rozanov.

so in florida when ilya says "you don't like me" he really means, you don't like me, you like rozanov. you want HIM, not ilya. ilya is a pathetic and broken thing. rozanov is confident and strong and a fantastic fuck. ilya is... nothing. you don't like ME.

so when shane sees him cry, sees his weakness, sees ilya despite how hard he's trying to keep rozanov in place, and holds him, ilya has to now reconcile with the fact that the main thing stopping him from falling into shane entirely and blowing up his fucking life to be with him, the assumption that shane wouldn't like the real him, may actually be entirely untrue

[aphantasias]

"i heard some dick was being mean to ya" was, for me, definitive proof of eddie's feelings. it was so ridiculously affectionate, so familiar, so husband-like in its sheepish accountability and silent plea for forgiveness. yeah sorry about that douchebag from yesterday. i know he hurt you. i do that sometimes. may i offer you our son & our pepa in these trying times? <3 while i work through my instinct to cut people to the bone whenever i feel like an exposed nerve? <3 please forgive me i can't sleep