#my mind

[lostverdania-moving]

problematic XP gap relationship

[unlikecharlie]

No because with everything we know about Ilya after the fact (as we get to know him in the series in future episodes, as we get to know him and his internal monologue in both Heated Rivalry and The Long Game), his snappy line at Shane at the Olympics gains a whole new meaning.

"No, I did not answer your boring text," is what he says. Right? It's an insult, obviously. It's meant to hurt, to be dismissive. Because he's on edge - about losing to Latvia, about his family situation, about being in Russia in general and about everything that comes with that as the Captain of the Russian Olympic Hockey Team. Shane is hurt by it. He's meant to be, so that he will leave Ilya alone and not offer him safety and comfort in this place that's all ice cold hostility and fear, so that he will not tempt Ilya to fall to his knees and find solace in Shane's Canada fleece-clad arms, so that Shane won't give them away with his big brown eyes full of kindness and yearning.

"No, I did not answer your boring text," he says and anyone who hears it won't think twice about it. If someone were to be listening. Which they probably are, this is Russia. And Ilya is a person of interest.

But the thing is... Ilya loves boring. We know this. He knows this. Shane doesn't, not yet, but he will. Ilya fell in love with boring - with Shane folding his clothes and answering sexts literally and as unsexily as possible, with Shane's sexy, boring glasses and boring, blue sheets. With Shane whose boring dad reads the New Yorker.

Ilya loves boring. He craves it. He chases it. Exciting and wild lose their appeal the deeper he sinks into boring. Into Shane's boring.

So yeah, he did not answer Shane's boring text and everyone else hears a dismissal and an insult but what Ilya is saying is, "I did not answer your thoughtful text. Your kind text. Your sweet text." He never answers it, partly because of safety reasons, partly because it becomes moot. But the entire time he's in Russia, that text keeps him going. It wards off the chills of his countrymen's glares and his father's disappointment.

Shane's text was boring, yes. But Ilya loves boring so much he married it.

[theeroticlover]

This ?

[academic-vampire]

This is actually disgustingly accurate. My mind feels exactly like how this looks.

[sugarsweetblogs]

[beccawise7]

Men go years without a compliment.

They can go months without a hug.

Long periods of time without anyone checking in... and nobody notices.

Men deserve to be told they matter. They deserve to be hugged, loved & adored too.

~beccawise7💜🖤

[v4nlesbian]

I'm not a big fan of shaunahat, but this is seriously your reason to not ship them? 😭 I can't imagine what this person thinks about jackieshauna then...