ok i'm still thinking about the branding thing. au where your soulmate leaves a brand on you in some way when you touch them - maybe their ring leaves a mark when you shake hands, or you both come away with marks from brushing arms on the subway - and they burn hot, just for a moment, just enough to make you notice. and shane and ilya both think they're fine because nothing happened when they met. they shook hands, and slammed each other into the boards, and kissed and touched and fucked and nothing. and it's perfect. until it isn't. until they both want more and want to stop wanting more but can't bring themselves to break it off despite the fact that they're both sure that any day now the other one will meet their soulmate. and it'll all be over. and then the tuna meltdown happens and then rose happens and ilya feels sick. constantly, every day, desperately wishing he'd been able to leave a mark on shane, that shane had left his mark on him. wishing even more desperately that he didn't want that. he's so sure that she's left her mark on shane that he almost doesn't go to tampa. almost comes up with some bullshit excuse. but he goes and shane walks into that bar looking so beautiful, his eyes and his smile and his freckles. and he's preparing to have his fears confirmed, but then shane says they weren't compatible. and he thinks he knows what it means and there's hope stirring in his belly, and when he finds shane on the beach and he asks for ilya's room number the hope crawls up his throat. but their thumbs brush and still nothing. no heat, no marks. and then up in that room, shane tells him he's gay, and ilya tells shane about his father, and shane kisses him and rocks him and just holds him. and when they finally fuck again it's slower and more reverent than ever before, and he flips shane on his belly and grinds into him slow and deep, leans down to whisper russian in his ear, because shane seems to like that, and his necklace lands on shane's shoulder. and it doesn't quite light up, not exactly. but ilya can see it. see when it goes hot and hear when shane cries out and comes, clenching around ilya and pulling him over the edge with him, and then ilya looks at the mark, traces it, kisses it, and shane whispers was that -?, and ilya doesn't really know what to say. yes doesn't seem like enough. nothing he could say does. he just lays his head on shane and nods. and feels tears prickling his eyes again. and shane pushes him off and goes to the bathroom to look and ilya's stomach drops again. he's sure shane is going to come back and tell ilya they can't. that he doesn't want him. that it must just be one sided. but instead he comes back and lays down and wraps himself around ilya, burying his face in his chest, and then ilya feels it - white hot, for just a moment. and shane sits up and they both look down and see a perfect imprint of shane's freckles right over ilya's heart.
Please can you imagine being Ilya Rozanov. Your personal life is shit and you work so so so hard to create and maintain this lothario kind of an asshole persona and the idea that someone so talented and hot and fucking powerful would, like, fucking submit to you is insane. It is the hottest thing you have ever experienced.
You can’t believe you managed to get Canada’s golden boy in your room let alone on his fucking knees but you have to maintain your image and you don’t want to freak him out but you kind of have no idea what you’re doing here you just can’t do anything to fuck this up he can’t know you’re pretty new to this he can’t know you’re a mess he can’t know anything real because holy shit. Holy shit he is—wow. Wow.
a selection of photos taken by other people from their first year of marriage:
towards the end of their wedding reception, sun setting, looking rumpled and tired, Ilya kissing Shane's palm while Shane is very seriously talking to Scott Hunter
the two of them with a fan, taken at the dog park, Ilya holding Anya and Shane with one arm around his husband's shoulder and the other trying to prevent Anya from licking the fan's face
Shane Hollander sitting on the Centaurs bench with blood on his face, mouth wide open, Ilya Rozanov gripping his chin and glaring at the gap where Shane's bottom canine used to be
Ilya Rozanov with his fist in the air after a goal, a smear of red in the corner of his mouth
sitting next to each other at team tape review, heads bent together, Ilya's hand on Shane's thigh, Shane's hands sketching out a play in the air
Ilya Rozanov leaning against his car in the airport arrivals line, a coffee in one hand and a forest-green smoothie in the other
Shane Hollander giving his husband the middle finger after losing the shot accuracy competition at ASG by half a second
piggyback racing across the yard with a Pike twin each clinging to their necks
Ilya Rozanov, outraged, with a face full of snow, as his husband doubles over with laughter
wearing identical blank expressions the seventeenth time a journalist asks about their "off-ice chemistry"
Shane Hollander throwing his head back and cackling in a booth at a random dive bar in a random city, Ilya Rozanov grinning into his drink
asleep on the team bus after game 5 of the conference finals, Ilya curled into Shane's shoulder
Heated rivalry AU where yuna is a mob boss and Shane knows and is set to inherit the business but still plays hockey exactly like in canon
Ilya and Shane is at a barbecue at Boods someone does something mildly offensive to Ilya and he’s like: watch out I have connections.
Ilya means that’s he’s big scary Russian with Russian connections not even Ilya knows how true that statement is because both Shane and Yuna would burn the world to the ground for Ilya if he asked.
Shane just snorts shaking his head.: he does not have any Russian mafia connections.
The team looks at him slightly worried when young pipes up: heheee Shane why did you specify Russian and also I find it worrying that you didn’t add a ‘don’t worry’ at the end.
Shane just smiles innocently: well Ilyas always said I’m a bad liar so. And then he shrugs.
(Everyone except for Ilya thinks he’s joking for sure but Ilya isn’t so sure because he KNOWS Shane)
@gofish05 Enormous brain thank you, I did need to make this its own post however because I do have thoughts about this, namely:
There is no universe in which Yuna Hollander has not, unfortunately, seen her son-in-law's dick.
Hollanov's sex life is extremely active. This is canonical. Even when they are Going Through It in TLG, they are having sex the entire time. I believe at one point Shane puts it in such a way to imply that they aren't talking except to argue but they ARE fucking. I have said before that I believe they would continue fucking even if they divorced. Knowing this, I believe that several things are true:
1. Yuna becomes slowly aware of just how horny her only child is. This is a fire that everyone must jump into, eventually, with their parents/adult children. After the frying pan of child rearing and childhood comes the flames of knowing each other as adults. For every moment sitting in the kitchen hearing the saddest words ever spoken come out like a confession from the mouth of your grown child (Yuna has many of these moments with both Shane and Ilya) there also comes a moment where you realize that your child is a sexual being. It's spiritual payback for when your child sat down one day after having The Talk and realized that you had to fuck to make them.
2. This is how Yuna, God BLESS her soul, finally figures out that despite loving him more than life itself, she HAS failed Shane in a number of ways, chief among them being that she has never given him enough privacy. And yes it IS seeing the fully erect penis of her son-in-law that does it for her. She has a moment soon after the Cottage when she has barged into Shane's house and she's just popping in! Just seeing how things are going! And at no point did she even think to make sure that it's not one of the few precious days that Ilya could make it up from Boston. She comes around the corner of the entryway and there in the kitchen in full daylight is her son bent over the kitchen table and yes, Ilya has put himself in front of him but Ilya is ALSO naked and--it's there. It's out. And Yuna immediately walks back out the door and crouches on the front porch and tries not to die of embarrassment. And when Shane opens the door to her, bright cherry red almost ten minutes later and not making eye contact, she at first wants to be mad. Because that's her son, and it's broad daylight, and the windows are open, and it seems disrespectful to Shane as a person to just DO THAT to him--
And then she realizes that A. She has no right to think like this because it is Shane's house and Shane's boyfriend and she has no real say over the way those two things combine and B. Shane is an adult. Shane, unfortunately (...fortunately? Yuna has always wanted her child to find love and be cherished) probably wanted EXACTLY what was happening.
These are things that Yuna needed to realize and she will recognize this. But it's suuuuper uncomfy when it happens. And it continues to be uncomfy for awhile! She apologizes to them and things are awkward with them (Moreso with Ilya than Shane, to be honest--the man really does look like he wants to be launched into space) but she's learned her lesson, at least somewhat. There are growing pains yet to come with this whole new dynamic, adding Ilya to the family and everything that comes with it. It's a trial by fire but flowers grow in its wake.
3. Yuna sits up in bed for several hours in the dark and then, very suddenly, turns on the light and leans over David and shakes him awake.
"David."
"Was' happ'nin?"
"David. I really am a little worried. I'm sorry, I just can't stop thinking--David, the--the size? And how often are they--is it healthy? Could it--"
"Yuna. Please go to sleep, hon."
"David--"
"He's an adult, Yuna. I'm sure they're careful. Please stop thinking about it. For all our sakes."
i think it would heal shane to have some of the centaurs flirt with him. i think it would do him some good for them to slap his ass. i think it'd be nice if someone jumped on his back and he gave them a piggyback ride. i think he would secretly enjoy having the rookies use him as their pillow while waiting at the airport
i just think it'd be good for him to get to experience the parts of locker room culture that are playful and affectionate when he never got them because montreal operated under the logic of you like guys which means you MUST like me and that's a personal threat to my masculinity
I really really like the idea of butch Ilya being so mean about Jane's attempts at femininity. You look stupid in makeup, that dress looks ridiculous on you, no one believes the wholesome good girl act you put on everyone can tell you're a strapslut horny dyke. Just, everyone else in Jane's life saying you're so sweet and respectable and such a good role model for young girls, meanwhile Ilya's like you look dumb in that dress you fucking dyke. And it is such a relief for Jane because someone is finally seeing her and acknowledging her fear that she's failing at all of this and giving her permission to give up on it
blue sunset on Mars is a real phenomenon caused by the way Martian dust scatters sunlight.
Unlike Earth, where sunsets are red and orange due to the scattering of shorter blue wavelengths by our atmosphere, Mars has an extremely fine dust that scatters blue light more efficiently near the Sun.
So during sunset on Mars, the sky turns reddish-brown while the area around the Sun glows a soft blue. It’s the opposite of what we experience on Earth.
since becoming a barista i have noticed a few very distinct typologies among my customers. such as:
the woke left: young and fashionable. visible tattoos. often enjoys matcha, lavender flavoring, oat milk, and cold foam. pretty decent customers.
sweet old man: drinks very sweet iced lattes, pays in cash, puts all of his change in the tip jar. sometimes orders hot coffee and i get scared that his shaky old man hands will spill it and he'll get burned but that has not yet happened and god willing never shall.
evil old man: only wants drip coffee and declares it ridiculous that any other form of coffee exists. some variants only want americanos and these variants are even scarier. watch out.
sweet old woman: might need her daughter's help to order but is very bubbly and open to trying new things. compliments baristas freely and frequently.
evil old woman: does not want coffee and only wants sweet tea or soda. will not tip even if she spends three hours in the shop repeatedly asking baristas to fetch things for her.
errand husband: either stiltedly recites an order to you or shows you the order in their texts/notes app. needs to step out of line and make a phone call if you ask any follow-up questions.
grindset girlie: always wearing scrubs, an apron, and/or a name tag. orders the exact same thing every day and knows the exact change she'll need to pay for it. her regular order is both extremely caffeinated and extremely sweet.
#mamabear: is actively wrangling two to four children while ordering. order changes repeatedly because the children cannot decide if they want a muffin or a cookie or apple juice or chocolate milk etc. for some reason these women are always wearing an article of clothing or carrying some personalized item that says "mama" on it.
schoolchildren: band of two to eight adolescents hanging out after school. extremely indecisive but generally quite polite and tip well.
amnesiac in love: grown adult who needs their partner to tell them what they like. gets asked a question about their own preferences and turns to their partner to answer for them. generally acts like a shy child looking to their guardian for behavioral cues if you try to interact with them and only wants to talk to mommy i mean their wife.
this of course is not an exhaustive list but those are just some of the most consistent Types i get. ok bye xoxo
proud victim of the tumblr accent. it's fading out of public consciousness as the tik tok accent takes precedence; a linguistic evolution that makes the tumblr accent 85% funnier to unsuspecting civilians. it's like releasing a disease on a non-inoculated population. coughing baby versus hydrogen bomb.
once my therapist said I used very uncommon and creative phrases and adjectives and i just did not have the heart to tell that Old Lady From A Foreign Small Town that I was translating tumblr speech into our language. so I was like yeah... must be from the books I read...
like girl we have an army of scholars over at tumblr.com crafting our language it's not just little old me I swear
I once called a colleague's Borzoi a beautiful Gentle Alien, assuming the term had long since become commonplace outside of Tumblr, and discovered when he burst into delighted laughter at the term that it Had Not. I had to explain to him that I'm not a comedy genius, just repeating a niche meme.
The amount of safety features incorporated into modern cars is unreal. I've seen crashes where the car flipped over and the occupant only had minor injuries. My dad was t-boned by someone speeding off the highway and walked away with a broken arm. The car was completely smashed except for the passenger compartment, which was curtained on all sides with airbags. That one manufacturer has decided they are exempt from implementing all these advancements disgusting and terrifying
When I was going through driver's ed I was taught that the steering column would stab through your chest if you crashed head on and that was just the way it was. We do not want to go back, not even a little
The point of car safety features is that the car is supposed to die in an accident so you don't have to. Your car should be a pile of smoking rubble after an accident, and you should be fine.
I totaled my first car. Like, the car itself just stopped where the windshield met the dashboard. Ahead of that point, there was no more car. It was gone.
Me? I had some really spectacular bruises and a lil friction burn on my nose from where Mr. Airbag and Ms. Glasses had a disagreement. That's it. That's it.
I was driving a little tiny coupe and went more or less head-on with a pickup truck. The entire engine and hood of my car was twisted rubble that was not connected to the rest of the car afterward. I sat down on the verge, about twenty or thirty feet from the accident, while I waited for the cops and EMTs to work their way through the traffic backup to get to us, and found that I was sitting beside one of the headlights of my car. The whole entire headlight, bulb and reflector and cover and frame and all.
All I had were bruises and that little friction burn. That's it.
Crumple zones save lives. So do seatbelts and airbags; half the bruising was the exact shape of my seatbelt in livid crimson and black on my torso. It was and remains the most insanely intense bruising I have ever experienced in my life. BUT IT WAS JUST BRUISING!! Unpleasant, sure, but eminently survivable and didn't even require much treatment beyond not wearing a bra for a few days. But all the force that created that spectacular bruising was force that wasn't flinging me through the windshield or impaling me on the steering column. My car crumpled and crushed and dissolved but it held me safe and secure and protected.
Crumple zones save lives. You do not want your car to look undamaged after the accident, because that means it made like a Newton's Cradle and passed every bit of the impact straight through to your soft and highly crushable body.
This is not my usual content, but as a result of my job, I see the aftermath of many extremely fatal car crashes. And I will add, just to emphasize: your car is the product of thousands of engineers and decades of research aimed towards the goal of protecting your body in its seat inside the car. However: this relies, significantly, on your body staying in its seat. Your seatbelt is crucially important in keeping you alive. With your seatbelt, you are locked into the safest place in your vehicle. Without your seatbelt, you are a soft projectile in a rapidly collapsing metal structure. Wear your seatbelt.
it really is crazy that women's clothes don't fit anybody. fat women can't find clothes, skinny women can't find clothes, tall women can't find clothes, short women can't find clothes, big chested women can't find clothes, small chested women can't find clothes. who the fuck are these being made for
i am convinced that ilya is into doing old people shit with shane, especially after they’re out.
there’s a tulip festival in ottawa that shane has never even heard of despite living there for a major part of his life, and ilya’s like “please let’s go to the tulip festival” and shane’s like ???????? why???? tulips?????? wtf?? but of course he goes and he Doesn’t Get It but ilya’s having fun, he’s full on turning his megawatt super smile on shane and taking a million photos of shane among the many colourful tulips and holding his hand and kissing his cheek and talking to random old ladies who tell them (well, mostly ilya because shane doesn't compute information about flowers) about tulips and stuff, and shane stands next to him and holds his hand while ilya animatedly talks and gestures with their hands linked and shane watches him, so enamoured, so besotted, because this isn’t about tulips, it’s just spending time together somewhere outside of hockey, where they're not shane hollander and ilya rozanov but just two guys among people, and shane is happy to continue standing next to his husband and nearly letting him smack Shane's own hand in his face from waving their joined hands around so much.
My smol contribution to shallergies is that mangoes can be REALLY hit or miss ESPECIALLY when they're out of season and ESPECIALLY in north america, so I can imagine Shane buying his Illicit Mango, cutting it up, and tasting it, only to discover it was a Bad Mango. He feels personally betrayed. His hands are already red and itchy from the juice. Motherfucker can he not have ONE SINGULAR GOOD THING. There are times when he has especially bad luck and ALL the mangoes he picked are bad and he is literally already having the allergic reaction so he cannot go out and buy more.
Then, maybe one day hollonav get to the point where Ilya is resigned (aka understands it is Shane's choice to make) to The Mangoes, so it's the end of the season and it's Shane's Illegal Mango Time and Ilya (huffing and sighing and whining) presents Shane with a batch of precut, pre-tasted mangoes that Ilya visited like 3 separate stores to get. There are 3 in the tupperware versus the like 15 that Ilya bought to try, ranked for sweetness and juiciness etc etc. They are hands-down the best mangoes Shane has had in his entire life. This ranks amongst top 5 most romantic things Ilya has ever done for him. Ilya remains bewildered that he is getting kissed and thanked and blown because he is aiding and abetting Shane willingly poisoning himself every once in a while.
HI HELLO PLS HAVE FICLET BECAUSE I WAS INSPIRED BY WHAT IS INDEED THE MOST ROMANTIC GESTURE OF ALL TIME
Having his entire life implode around him has meant a variety of changes and plans and contingencies and conversations and contracts and discussions.
It has also meant reducing this year’s Mango Time to only one week to fit within all of his other obligations.
Naturally, because apparently it’s the theme of the entire fucking year, it also has to go badly. He had allotted himself three mangoes for the first day, but he’d ended up going through six in his increasing desperation to just find one fucking good one.
He hadn’t succeeded.
By the time Ilya–away for a photoshoot for a magazine and then a brand event and thus not here for Mango Time–calls, Shane’s mood has plummeted sharply in a way he knows shouldn’t be hitting him so hard.
And yet.
“Hello Mango Maniac,” Ilya says with fond resignation as soon as the call connects. “How badly-what’s wrong?” His levity drops in an instant. “Shane, what happened? What's wrong?”
Shane wonders if it's worse to answer and tell him the humiliating truth or just hang up. Knowing the latter would likely have Ilya on his doorstep within two hours, though, photoshoot and contractual obligations be damned, he answers, voice absurdly tight for such a stupid thing.
“My mangoes all sucked.”
Ilya blinks.
“I tried, like, six,” Shane says, feeling stupid and weak and ridiculous.
And itchy.
“And they were…not good?” Ilya says carefully, obviously a little thrown by what’s happening, which Shane can’t blame him for. He knows it’s beyond ridiculous, being upset because the mangoes were all stringy or bitter or astringent, but-
“It's not fair,” he says, scrubbing his arm over his eyes, hating himself and mangoes and allergies all together in a blend of hurt and humiliation at being so hurt over something so fucking stupid. “I already feel like shit, and it’s just going to get worse, and it was for nothing.”
As soon as he says it, he's aware it's not just something that applies to this year's shitty inaugural session of Mango Time.
But at this stage of things, being upset about the mangoes is easier than being upset about the Metros.
“I can't have fucking anything,” he says, scrubbing his arm over his eyes, knowing he sounds petulant and stupid but unable to help it, knocked down in this last little cosmic fuck you, offering him all of the price and none of the pleasure of his singular fucking vice. He eats clean. He trains hard. He follows the rules. He does everything right.
And he can’t even have the one fucking thing he lets himself indulge in knowing it’s not good for him.
It’s just not fucking fair.
“Everyone else gets to eat whatever the fuck they want all the fucking time, and I have to read every goddamn label and menu and ask every waitress and check every ingredient and be so goddamn careful all the goddamn time and never slip up because I could fucking die and-” He cuts himself off, looking away, like that’ll mean that Ilya doesn’t notice that he’s being a fucking basket case right now. “And I can’t even have a good mango,” he finishes miserably, voice small.
“I’m sorry you had bad mangoes, malysh,” Ilya says, and the sincere sympathy in his voice just makes him feel even worse.
Shane tucks himself down a little firmer on the couch under the throw blanket he’s under, primarily as a guard against him itching the way he wants to.
A price he’s paying for something he didn’t even fucking enjoy.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know it’s stupid to-”
“Is stupid to eat something you are allergic to, yes,” Ilya interrupts. “But is okay to be upset, Shane. You do not have to apologize for this.”
“Okay, Galina,” Shane scoffs, but Ilya doesn’t take offense.
“Hey,” Ilya protests, faux-offended. “She is very smart person, and I listen to very smart people.” He lifts his eyebrows. “Just like other people could listen to smart people like, oh, I don’t know, their fucking allergist-”
Shane makes a face, but he does feel a little better, just having Ilya in front of him, even if only on a screen.
If he can’t have good mangoes, at least he can have a good boyfriend.
*
By the end of their first year on the Centaurs together, his and Ilya’s sex life has gotten sparse enough that when Shane is playfully told to close his eyes and hold out his hand after collapsing on the couch after coming home from end of season PT for his bad shoulder, he's expecting to feel the weight of his husband’s cock or a new dildo in his palm. It wouldn't be unwelcome, honestly. He’s already been making a list of everything he’d like to catch up on that he’s thought about but not had the energy to explore in the bedroom.
Instead, though, what lands in his hand is…tupperware?
He opens his eyes before he's told to.
“What’s this?” He asks, tilting the container up and then frowning when he realizes what’s in it, even more confused. “You're enabling my mango habit with pre-sliced mangoes?” He asks, suspicious, frankly, at this gesture from the president of the Jesus Fuck Shane Stop Eating The Fucking Mangoes Club.
“I am enabling you with the best mangoes,” Ilya corrects, dropping down next to him and looking distinctly pleased with himself. “You still should just stop eating the fucking mangoes,” a look, “but if you are going to keep making bad choices, it should at least be worth it. So: the best mangoes.”
“The best mangoes, huh? Promise?” Shane asks, both touched and amused at the grandness of the declaration. “What, did you hire a mango witch?”
“Would have been easier,” Ilya says wryly. “Then I could have not eaten so fucking many. I don't know why you-”
“You were eating them?” Shane asks, thrown, as he pops the top on the container, mouth watering immediately at the sweet, juicy, floral scent that wafts up to him, feeling hunger so intense it feels almost like arousal.
“Yes,” Ilya says. “For the first day of the world's most stupid annual event-”
Shane kicks him.
“-here are the best mangoes Ottawa has to offer. I bought five from five stores, and these are the winners of all 25 in celebration of the first day of Shane's Stupid Mango Time Cel-”
“You bought 25 mangoes?” Shane asks, incredulous. “You-wait, you also ate 25 mangoes?”
“After peeling them–which was the worst part, why do you have to love such a stupid fruit, huh?–I ate a piece from every single one, and these are the best. The others-”
He doesn't get to finish the sentence.
Not when Shane carefully puts the bowl of mangoes down on the coffee table, straddles his husband, and pulls him into a kiss so filthy it couldn't be aired on television were someone filming them. When he pulls back, it’s only far enough to rest their foreheads together. If his eyes are a little wet, Ilya doesn’t mention it, instead thumbing affectionately at the apple of his cheek.
“You got me the best mangoes?” Shane asks, voice a little rough.
“I would still prefer if you would just have healthy bad habits like normal people, like maybe getting addicted to cocaine-”
Shane snorts.
“-but this is what you like, and I know you wait all year for it.” He brushes Shane's hair back, stroking over his cheek before resting his hand along his jaw. “And last year was bad. So this year I am making it good. So you can have a good Mango Time.”
“Ya tebya lyublyu” Shane says, kissing him again, once, twice, three times.
“I love you, too,” Ilya says affectionately, ruining a bit of the sweetness of the moment with an appreciative squeeze of Shane’s ass before he nudges him off. “Now eat your stupid choices so both of us suffering can be worth it. Commence Shane Hollander’s Very Stupid And Bad Mango Time.”
Shane graciously ignores the slander of his holiday and climbs off of his husband to sit on the couch again. He reclaims the bowl and picks out the smallest piece of mango he can find from the beautiful morsels on offer, moaning without meaning to when he chews. Jesus fuck. It is a fucking excellent mango.
Ilya's look of pleased amusement at his reaction fades slightly into hunger of his own when Shane slides off the couch to his knees and reaches for Ilya's belt buckle, swallowing his bite of perfect mango and licking his lips as he lowers his husband's fly.
After all, sweet always tastes better with a little salty to go with it.
(And if he pauses mid-blowjob for another bite of mango, well.) (Ilya already signed the marriage certificate and can’t follow through on his threats to leave him.)
(Sucker.)
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