i think it would be fun writing alive eccentric boymum irina who feels threatened by shane esp bc ilya kept something from her (shock!) for so many years... oooh... like she has this attitude of "i know my son sleeps around but it's because none of these women are good enough for him to commit to, i know, he tells me everything, i am always going to be the main woman in his life" and then it turns out not only has ilya been keeping this massive secret from her for years but he's suddenly VERY committed and to a man? and you know boy mums have weird ideas about gender so it really throws her off like oh my god. i didnt plan for this. i have all this internalised misogyny and now i cant direct it at my son's partner as planned.
and also she's threatened by the hollanders in general bc they are more functional than the rozanovs and she feels judged by them and worried that ilya loves them more than her... and maybe yuna and david DO judge her a bit especially before they know about her history (in this au she left grigori) and struggles but also i cant see them making that obvious
i think ilya and shane are so happy to organise a dinner where irina and the hollanders meet and it's a bit weirdly tense and ilya kinda has his eyes opened to some things about his mother that he thought were normal. and shane doesn't tell ilya this but next time he's alone with his parents he's like "okay just say it" and maybe yuna says something like "you know we love ilya but well meeting his mother well it makes some things about him make sense" and shane's like "how could you say that" but inside he's like "well they have a point" not that he'd ever admit that to anyone
also i like to imagine svetlana meeting shane and when they're alone for a minute being like "ilya is my family and i love irina but she did spend years convinced i was coming between her and her son. even when ilya and i weren't fucking. and we were 13. good luck."
i love some realistic family drama it must be said
i’ve read a few posts about how ilya avoids certain clothes when he notices shane doesn’t like them, but i also love the idea of shane doing the same aka being mindful of textures for ilya, because i can absolutely see him doing that! (which would bring us back to one of my favorite acts of tenderness aka hollanov being protective of each other even when there’s objectively no need.)
i don’t think it’s far-fetched for very undiagnosed shane to think his experiences are sort of universal, meaning of course everyone dislikes bad textures, they’re probably just not talking about the atrociousness of it all because they don’t want to look like they’re complaining too much (just like him!), so when they start hooking up at shane’s house (and later at the cottage), shane tells ilya he doesn’t have to worry about the bed sheets because they have a very high thread count, also all his towels are new and extra soft so he doesn’t have to worry about those either. and later when ilya asks if he can borrow a T-shirt shane’s like, “it’s in great shape because i’ve found the best fabric softener, and i’ve already removed all the labels so it’s good to go”, and ilya’s like okay he’s either gone Full Canadian with the politeness all of a sudden for some reason or he’s just bragging about being knowledgeable about… laundry detergents? but then, it just keeps happening, and so later when they’re at the cottage shane goes, “i got chicken instead of turkey because it’s obviously better and doesn’t have that persistent dry texture (you know, the one that makes you wanna Die), so you don’t have to worry about it, and i have a very good food processor so if we wanna make pea soup later it’ll be all smooth with no chunky bits” and ilya’s like okay he’s probably bragging again although i don’t know about what exactly. being the best at blender? and it’s not long (about ten more “you don’t have to worry about it” explanations) before ilya realizes shane has been trying to protect him from the Bad Textures of the World all along, and if ilya wasn’t already in love with him he would be now just because of that.
and maybe that’s how ilya finds out about shane’s autism (he’d always known but that was just shane being shane to him), or maybe he doesn’t come to that conclusion just yet, but what he knows is that from now on he’ll make sure no pea skin treacherously hides in future soups to harm the love of his life ever again.
Ilya's therapist asks him what methods he uses to get out of his head during depressive episodes and he says Well actually getting fingered by my huge gorgeous hockey husband helps.
His therapist locks in and is like. Oh! Wow! So when is the last time you bounced on it?
And Ilya is like Well, never actually. We've never tried it.
And his poor long suffering therapist has to, in the course of her big serious grown up adult job, look this famous athlete dead in the eyes and say Well I'm prescribing you to bounce on it crazy styles. Medicinally.
And Ilya is like Cool thanks doc will do! Now let's never speak of this again
i love WAG Ilya because i am a person of taste HOWEVER i know the only true (to me) way you get Ilya off the ice while Shane is playing is if he is on IR. Hollanov retire together cause if they dont they keep pulling each other back so they will have both ‘retired’ four times before taking the true final goodbye to the MHL together.
myWAGilya is both player and WAG he is going to wine night and to practice in the morning. he wears his WAG jackets instead of a suit jacket. he is never surprised by any personal life update of a centaur he is an on the ground reporter.
"sometimes i think i'd have told them already..." i love shane but i think here he has this more idealized version of himself in his head that would somehow feel less burdened by his sexuality at this point in time were he not in love with this specific man, and i'll be so real i don't think he would have felt it necessary to tell his parents he was gay unless he had a pressing need to, like someone he was serious about and wanted to bring home, or he if thought he had a real chance of being outed. i think a not insignificant part of shane's ability to even admit that he's gay is due to ilya, the sole man he thinks about during that conversation with rose. in an alternate reality without the ilya of it all, his response to her questioning about his sexuality quite possibly could have been "i don't know," and rose would have nodded and told him she'd be a friend for him to talk to while he figures it out.
genuinely think it would have been a backburner thought for him though even if he did accept it, like yeah i'm gay but that's not important right now, whatever happiness i might find out of the closet with the support of my parents is irrelevant while my life is centered around hockey, i will worry about the rest of my life when my career is over
Shane Hollander post coming out mic'd up slinging the most cutting, vicious, objectively true comments about his opponents' play styles and hockey prowess, always delivered in his most serious deadpan captain voice that betrays zero personal attachment to the results of whatever scathing advice he's giving out. He never uses players' names either, just numbers. It drives the rest of the league fucking insane.
Some examples of Shane chirps that cause full-on brawls while he skates cleanly away to go chug designer electrolyte saline solution by the bench with his delighted husband:
"Hey Number 56 if you practiced your footwork more you could catch up to me and look me in the eye while calling me slurs"
"Hey 34 your team might have a shot at winning something next year without you so if you want to be a real team player then consider quitting"
"Hey bud, ice is pretty slippery and hurts to fall on so maybe consider learning how to skate before getting on the rink next time"
"Hey 23 I know you'll always be one behind me but you could try a little harder not to take that literally every time we play"
And Ilya's personal all-time favorite that has him giggling and kicking his feet for weeks:
"I'd love to disrupt my usual style and throw something at you that's not objectively true, but all the best chirps already are so I'm out of good options :/"
top five hugest most blow up fights shane and ilya have while married? pleaseeeeeeeeeee
this is such a beautiful question thank you so much for coming to me with this 🙏 I think most of their fights are like Ilya needling and Shane going, "Do you ever shut the fuck up?" and then they don't talk for 10 minutes to 2 hours and come back and give half-hearted apologies that are mostly more because they are embarrassed than because they're actually sorry, but here are my top five actual blow up fights not in any actual order:
Ilya is telling Shane about how he used to skip school on his mama's bad days where she wouldn't be able to get out of bed and make her tea and Shane makes a face and says, "You shouldn't have had to take care of her. You were just a kid."
When Shane finds out Ilya let him win at rummy one time (because he didn't want to play the stupid card game, Hollander) and it deteriorates into yelling about if he let him win here, where the fuck else did he let him win?
Reoccurring blow up fights about Ilya going on medication that usually something like "I don't want to rely on pills for the rest of my life, Shane." "Well its that or I fucking uninstall the locks on the bathroom, Ilya!". These get especially worse after Svetlana visits and lets slip the one time Ilya did swallow a bunch of pills and she had to break down the bathroom door and stick her fingers down his throat when they were 15.
They are already having a fight about something (Shane scheduling a sponsorship meeting on a day off, Ilya telling the Centaurs that he can't go out because Shane won't let him, if Shane is being too hard on Haas, etc.) and Ilya goes, "Why don't you just get on your knees, Hollander?" and Shane is immediately madder than he's ever been in his entire life.
Ilya accidentally sends a money transfer to Alexei (for his niece) from their joint account and when Shane asks about it and Ilya's like, "Oh, sorry that was supposed to be from my account." and Shane's like, "I just don't understand how you can send him money. He's just going to fucking snort it."
ilya asks would you love me if i was a worm & shane says yes & then stays up researching worm care & ilya wakes up to a 29 page powerpoint about exactly how shane would take care of him and what he would buy to ensure maximum comfort & ilya cries
ilya loves sucking cock. 🥰 shane’s cock in particular. loves how fat and heavy it is on his tongue. loves how good he is at it, loves how impressed shane always is, despite how many times they’ve done it. loves shane’s soft little noises he makes, loves digging his fingers into shane’s plush massive thighs. loves when shane loses control and accidentally squeezes ilya’s head in between them, his mouth his full of and everything around him is shane.
wyatt hayes is the overly supportive ally that everyone thinks must be bi or something because there’s no way someone is that supportive without the really supportive ally to member of the community pipeline but he really is just super supportive. his wife tries to talk to him like “it’s okay to be bisexual babe, like we’re married it won’t change anything” and he’s like “but i’m not. like i swear”
Shane and Bood are instant friends much to Ilya’s confusion. Zane comes in and starts talking to Shane like he’s been on the team for years. He tells Shane about the vacation he and Cassie went on and that he liked the photos Ilya had sent from their honeymoon. After their showers, Bood asks Shane what he thought of the AHL call ups at camp, particularly the defenseman from Edmonton who seems particularly promising. Shane doesn’t seem uncomfortable, so Ilya stays out of these structured conversations Zane is creating for them, and is pleased to hear Shane talk about him to Yuna over dinner that weekend.
By the next week, Shane is chatting with Zane as much as Ilya during practice, coming up with drills for the team to run through and nagging him about the way his left skate turns out when he’s shooting. Ilya is genuinely pleased even through his surprise when Shane mentions that they are going to babysit for Bood the next Tuesday so he can take Cassie out for a date night. Apparently they had worked it out at lunch. Wyatt had offered, but Lisa was working a double and would appreciate him home and paying attention to her that night, so Shane had suggested that he and Ilya do it.
Wyatt had worked his way into this dynamic at some point, gravitating over to Zane and Shane in the locker room for casual conversation and logistical discussions. Shane didn’t really know anything about superheroes, but Wyatt was totally cool with that and happy to explain, so Shane didn’t mind the detailed explanations about heroes and powers and comic books.
Ilya floats around, comfortably social as Captain once more without a secret life beyond hockey. He had hovered around Shane slightly the first week, but more often than not finds himself with Troy and Luca, only glancing at Shane for an occasional visual check in. Shane doesn’t like Troy yet and he hasn’t figured out how to talk to Luca without feeling like he’s gonna be asked for an autograph, so he waits for Ilya to break off and check on him throughout the day. When they get in the car to go home, Ilya gives Shane the full run down of everything that happened that day as Shane fills in any gaps he can.
They eat dinner on the couch with their legs tangled together. They suck each other off in the kitchen washing dishes. They shower together with Ilya’s lavender scented body wash. Shane reads in bed with Ilya’s head in his lap. They turn off the lamp and set an alarm. They fall asleep, one arm thrown across the other man’s hip. They’re in the same bed. In the same city. On the same team. And Shane is friends with Zane Boodram like they’ve played together for years.
i’m obsessed with the idea of the centaurs mixing around their lines for Fun against low-ranked teams. they’ve got the two best players in the league, plus bold, luca, and troy who are really all first line players
when the centaurs play low-ranked teams they don't really have a rivalry with, they're totally gonna fuck around. shane and ilya on wing, bood in the center, and shane and ilya are competing against each other to score the goal. they’re all collaborating to get wyatt the most goalie goals in league history through a mix of dubiously legal curling tactics and fucking with the fourth line. fuck it, empty next because wyatt is on the other side of the ice. (crucially, the only reason he’s there is because shane and ilya peer pressured him into it. he does NOT want to be out of the crease) shane is living his best life doing two minute shifts but staying on the ice to tell the younger players what to do. they’re trying to score goals exclusively with backhand shots (ilya and shane are top of the league in them respectively and shane IS trying to change that). shane and ilya are slamming each other into the boards with a player from the other team in between them. fuck it, hold ilya out of the first few rounds, then throw him in the fourth line. scare the shit out of the other team and make the 4th line step it up. pride night pride line. ilya is telling everyone how he’s going to suck shane’s dick and shane is pretending to be embarrassed but secretly loves it. there is ABSOLUTELY a secret hollanov challenge that determines what type of sex they’re having. sometimes it’s arbitrary.
this does backfire on them once or twice, and they accidentally lose to buffalo because they were so locked in on the goalie goal (achieved) but uh. buffalo definitely snuck some pucks in when wyatt was playing offence. (weibe yells at them and actually punishes them for that one, yeah it was funny but what the fuck were you doing, we’ve lost four games this season and one of them was to buffalo???)
disclaimer idk ball (puck?) that much but like. the centaurs are an absolutely STACKED team, they’re practically running an all-stars team against teams barely scraping by. shane and ilya both need competition like they need air to breathe, and they’re gonna make it on their own if they have to
and how before shane it was probably actually ilya who was the 'boring' one
i will be yapping, be prepared
ilya constantly gets characterized as messy, lacking discipline, hating routine and so on and so forth which is - a huge misconception about him considering the way he grew up would have been so incredibly rigid and scheduled and even the choice to pursue hockey was probably met with backlash and the immediate standard of "if you are going to waste our time and money in practice you'd better be the best" from his police officer father and brother
and he gets this reputation because of how much he teases shane and also because when we see him in boston it's such a stark contrast from how he is both with his family, and with shane.
with his family he is rigid, put together, not a curl out of place, not so much as a slumped shoulder, his posture never relaxes in russia unless he's away from his family with svetlana - the bathroom scene where he rests against the sink, relaxing a touch. and later on the phone with shane when he fully crouches down and hunches over the body language is so- it shows so much, even in sochi when he can't even look at shane because he knows if he does he'll loosen, he'll melt and he can't afford to have one molecule out of place if he's going to survive
he's constantly on guard in russia and more than that, ilya probably WAS the Boring one in his family. his father is high up in policing but seems to have zero issue with the way Alexei lives his life because he followed in his footsteps to be an officer. but alexei is the one with addictions so strong they legitimately suck up all his income so he has to rely on ilya to feed his family and pay his bills. when they were young, ilya was the one who would check on their mama and make sure she was okay. bitching at alexei for the coke and gambling and gettng brushed off at best, called a slur at worst, worrying about their father and getting told he's ridiculous. ilya is astute and constantly on high alert and he's always sure of his perceptions because they've been denied his entire life and ignored but he's still been right (his mama's depression, his father's dementia symptoms alexei denied)
then when their father gets sick, ilya can't be there and he HAS to rely on alexei to make sure their dad gets his meds on time, paying him and hoping he's keeping up with the doctor's orders instead of blowing the extra money up his nose. when he came back for the season after that summer of taking care of his dad, he probably left pre packed blister packs for alexei and calendars filled with doctor's appointments and meal times with the appropriate meds. he probably sends alexei a monthly calendar digitally with new appointment and dosage information and "make sure he doesn't accidentally take a whole bottle alexei put the pills in the cupboard - nyet the one where mama kept her sewing supplies he never touched it."
with his family, he is the caretaker, the overlooked one at that, the youngest with the most responsibility and the least credit and he fills that role without complaint. and he was probably mocked for it, the fun police, straight laced compared to his brother but lazy compared to his father.
then in boston he has a different, more aggressive role to play. he likes this one a lot more, it's easy, he likes chirping, he likes the way partying and sex quiets his mind, he likes fast cars and freedom.
but he's still captain, he keeps his team in line and makes the chemistry his personal responsibility if he doesn't work the team doesn't work he just seems nonchalant because that's his Role. boston drafted the aggressive playboy from russia and then gave him captaincy, it's a responsibility and rigidness that ilya's used to and it's a hell of a lot more comfortable than the one he's used to and we see that with his silliness with svetlana, his casual affection with his team but none of it equats to an irresponsible character who needs a sex ban to pick up their socks (seriously his apartment was fucking flawless long before he moved in with shane he just doesn't have as many pillows)
and then with shane - the responsibility all seems like it's gone because he just melts with him. he doesn't have a role to play, which makes him panic because how is he supposed to act without rules. and he falls into something he's never had before, which is being in the place where he can let someone else be responsible, he gets to be guided instead of doing the guiding. while still feeling in control particularly via their sex life, but also outside of that, shane gives him choices, not demands.
with shane there's so much rest in everything about him, he teases shane about his strict schedule and tries to coax him to stay in bed a little bit longer but it's not because they have a difference in discipline. he teases shane for being boring to highlight their difference in partying habits and how shane is, So straight laced compared to him and because he Loves that. he gets to be loose, and loved, and safe.
it's because shane's discipline comes from a safe place (for the most part) it wasn't forced on him and he thoroughly enjoys most of it. so ilya gets to be led, and he gets to melt, and his decisions get to be choosing a dinner option. with shane he gets to revel in the fact that he doesn't actually Have to be anything, he doesn't have a role he gets to just exist and tease him for being boring but it's so different from the way ilya himself was probably ridiculed with similar language because ilya loves it
it's also probably part of why his depression gets so bad in tlg because along with change and some isolation, he doesn't have shane all the time, and he also doesn't have his past coping mechanisms and roles that kept him busy and in survival mode, so how much he's melted also makes space for him to become adrift when shane isn't around to ease the weight of his own mind
he just gets to exist but he doesn't Know How to without demands and responsibilities
he loves that shane's schedules come from a place of care, that shane's schedules mean he can rest, he doesn't have to worry about anything but the two of them and anya and hockey
and it's so fucking freeing to be a different kind of boring. to live with someone who doesn't do drugs, to do puzzles with david, to have people asking how they can support him instead of asking for more always
freeing to have people who think his presence is more than enough to keep him around
loves that when he does have a bad day shane will take it upon himself to cancel every responsibility they both have and just sit with him until he comes back to himself
