in case you're thirsty

"It followed me home", Ilya Rozanov [Connor Storrie] and a "friend", based on this post of Erling Haaland returning home

I saw someone @brokenberries post this with an art request, so I saved the screenshot, and now I cannot for the life of me find it again. If/when I do, I'll link it in. Whoever you are, please feel free to request stuff like this more often because it is GENIUS!

Photoshopped image (images sourced from instagram, and google), watercolour texture from stock image databases, overlines by computer program and me (I was not going to try to do the raccoon by hand, I'd still be there in six hours). This is not AI.

July 2026

I think the thing is Ilya presented this persona for so long, this hyper-confident, hyper-sexual winner. A guy who doesn't get lonely, doesn't feel insecure, and doesn't need comfort and care. And Shane bought into that! We see it in HR where Ilya's fishing for compliments because Shane never compliments him (he thinks his attraction to Ilya goes unstated, and Ilya knows how hot he is, right?)

Shane is genuinely shocked by how lonely and sad Ilya is because he has never imagined Ilya that way. I think it's important to remember they've known each other for over a decade. A decade of Shane watching Ilya front for the cameras, a decade of them circling each other trying not to slip up and reveal too much. Vulnerability is a foreign language in this relationship.

To me the relationship sin in TLG is that they both start to have deeply misaligned views of the other. Shane's imagining Ilya as having a blast in Ottawa with his cool new team, hosting parties and going to gay bars with Troy fucking Barrett, the asshole who's been giving him shit on the ice for years. He's imagining that Ilya doesn't give a fuck about hockey anymore, the thing that always tied the two of them together. Meanwhile Ilya is imagining Shane as only caring about hockey, to the point that he'd cut Ilya loose if it was convenient for him. He's imagining Shane as this almost Machiavellian figure who's arranged his neat and perfect life and Ilya is just this piece that doesn't fit. He's imagining he's about twenty times more in love with Shane than Shane is with him.

Ilya always had been a light sleeper, so no matter how lightly they stepped he was awake moments after the first shocked gasp.

Ilya knows it’s over for him. There’s no mistaking that there’s a man asleep on his chest in a clearly non-platonic cuddle. Usually Ilya would be punching the intruder, threatening violence to try and ensure they kept their mouth shut but he has quickly realised something far more important. With the way they are sleeping, Ilya on his underneath on his back and Shane on his stomach on top with his face pressed into the gap between Ilya’s neck and the couch, they can’t see his face.

He quickly pulls Shane’s hood up over his head to hide hair and rests a hand over it to gently discourage Shane from moving it should he start to wake up.

So Ilya just stares down his team and goes “you can be upset, but are going to be fucking quiet about it because if you wake my guest I’m sending all my blackmail on you to your wives, and then start fucking them to help them get over the divorce.”

So the whole “You’re fucking gay!” “No, I’m a fucking bi who is fucking a gay” conversation happens at a furious whisper, with Shane blissfully sleeping on Ilya’s chest as life implodes around him.

Shane may be a deep sleeper - and the argument in whispers - but even he starts to stir at the noise.

Ilya can’t have him moving his face into visibility now, so he just scruffs the back of his neck harshly and pressed him deeper into his shoulder.

Shane lets out a pleased (and not at all quiet) moan, and - worried that he is going to start talking - Ilya realises he needs to shut him up.

So he glares at the Bears to be quiet, while suddenly putting on the softest voice they have ever heard him use as he goes, “shhh quiet time now mоя любовь. Back to sleep.” And then shoves his fingers into Shane’s mouth.

similarly, i love that ilya never teases or laughs at shane when he misses obvious conversational cues (re: ilya asking shane four times in florida if he is still seeing rose). he obviously finds it endearing mostly but even when he starts to get frustrated and just asks outright he never makes shane feel lesser or aware of his misstep. he’s endlessly patient with it