between shane’s autism and ilya’s ESL, the centaurs learn very quickly that shane and ilya are a couple that does not like nor understand english idioms.
they’ll be out at the bar one day and ilya will tell his team in prep for their next game that “we’ll accept defeat when the pigs are dead.” naturally everyone is confused and so he repeats again, “you know, like when pigs die.” it eventually occurs to someone: “do you mean when pigs fly?!” and they start howling with laughter asking him what he thinks the expression “when pigs die” even means
enter shane, theee literal thinker of all time, who senses the team’s teasing getting to ilya and immediately launches into a ten minute rant about how that idiom is stupid because who the fuck decided pigs flying was the metric for impossible things anyway? an elephant or even an aquatic animal like a whale flying would be statistically much more impossible whereas pigs flying would really only moderately impact pork production which is probably for the best since bacon contributes to heart disease and actually while we’re at it pigs developing wings would probably be a genetic mutation ocurring slowly over time meaning it wouldn’t be so impossible if it were tracked and understood scientifically whereas a species as common as the pig suddenly dropping dead or going extinct would be a really unique phenomenon.
this then obviously devolves into a drunken conversation about which non-flying animal would be the coolest with wings and the team starts battling imaginary flying hippos against flying cheetahs and eventually everyone forgets ilya even said anything at all. nobody even remembers ilya made a mistake like he was worried they would. he looks at shane and blushes. they both continue to butcher common sayings but shane gets the best sex of his life out of it either way so there are no complaints.
