Let's forget reality

Naturally, Shane makes sure their home will never never run short on this specific candy. One day he buys incomprehensible amounts of M&M's bags to just pick the blue one's and fill one regular bag with them, and quietly drops it in Ilya's lap when they have a movie night and Ilya moans and complains that he wants a real movie snack not plain popcorn without seasoning, Shane, that is not a snack that's a torture for taste buds. Ilya quickly shuts up and gets  all wobbly-lipped when he realised Shane handpicked all the blue M&M's for him and squishes Shane in a fit of cuteness aggression.

Shane is also the kind of husband who grumbles that all M&M's taste absolutely the same - like refined sugar and bad decisions that is - and no, Ilya you can't determine the food colouring with your tongue and why do you have to choose to eat the ones with the most unnatural colour anyways? Ilya just says that Shame of all people should know that Ilya's tongue is that talented, and Shane, even after all these years, blushes. And then calls Ilya an asshole.

What Ilya doesn't say is that you can simply buy prepacked single colour M&Ms. What Shane doesn't say is, that he's aware of that, too, not that he would let that knowledge stop him from personally pampering his husband.

An Elder Centaur: Hey Luca man you can't drink while we're in America you aren't 21 yet.

Luca: Ah no it's ok, I have actually stopped drinking much recently.

An Elder Centaur: ...What do you mean stopped? When did you even start? We drafted you at 18?

Luca: I mean I started at like, 15, so yeah, thought I'd slow down now that I am a professional player. I'll just have a beer.

An Elder Centaur: Beer is still alcohol?

Luca: Eh, is it really though?

I like to think that Shane was given the nickname by David. When he was a toddler Shane was obsessed with any and every type of bug. He’d make David and Yuna take him in the garden all the time to dig for worms or look at the flowers to see if there were any bees. But his absolute favourite were ladybugs leading David to coin the nickname Shanebug.

Obviously once hockey took over his life Shane kind of forgot about his bug obsession. But once he gets settled living in Ottawa with Ilya he starts to pick it back up.

When Shane and Ilya went round to his parents for dinner he offhandedly mentioned that he was planning on adding some plants to the garden so more insects and bugs would visit. And David goes suddenly silent and starts to get teary.

David: Oh Shanebug is back

Ilya: Shanebug, what is a Shanebug?

This leads to Yuna getting out all Shane’s toddler pictures showcasing him holding a ladybug in his hands, him covered in mud pointing at a worm with the biggest grin on his face and him cross eyed as a butterfly lands on his nose. Ilya’s favourite though is a photo of Shane dressed up as a ladybug for his third birthday, antennas and all, that he gushes over.

The problem, Ilya realizes, is the tuxedo. It’s all sharp lines and tight angles that hug Shane’s body just right. And Shane’s been working hard in the pre-season. He’s packed on weight and muscle, and he’s rested and happy, glowing actually, at the praise he’s receiving for his speech at tonight's Irina Foundation Gala. And Ilya, well, Ilya is in trouble. He’s been in trouble for hours, since the moment Shane walked into their bathroom to ask for Ilya’s help with his cufflinks, and Ilya nearly swallowed his tongue. 

"Shane," Ilya tugged him close, wrapping his arms around Shane’s waist.

Shane flushed. "It's alright?"

"Sweetheart, yes," Ilya said, eyes wide.

Shane ducked his head and laughed. Ilya had to kiss him then, even if it mussed their suits and left Shane’s mouth wet and shiny. He had to kiss him because what Ilya really wanted was to drag Shane back to bed, peel back each perfectly pressed layer of his tuxedo, to get his mouth on the bare skin he revealed until Shane was a crying, aching mess.

Yeah, Ilya is so totally fucked.

He googled some tips on training away his gag reflex and every night he would devote around 15 minutes to brushing the back of his tongue, right where he could feel the gag reflex kick in. He tried to be patient with it. Not press to hard. Gradually desensitise himself to the sensation until he noticed himself, over the weeks, moving further and further back. He'd also press the flat part of his toothbrush directly against his uvula for a few minutes every night. The website hadn't really mentioned that bit but he figured it couldn't hurt and would maybe give him a more well-rounded desensitisation.

threw this one out to the discord server, thank you quinn for finding it!

Come Find Me

by velminort

So here’s my thoughts. None of these words are in the Bible.

In this specific situation in my brain, Shane can’t actually get pregnant. But both he and Ilya definitely have a breeding kink and Ilya is lowkey quite sad that he’s never going to see Shane nearly bursting with their child. When anyone saw them, they would know how fertile Shane was. And how Ilya did a such good job breeding him. But alas. Not possible. And they’ve come to terms with that but they still have a lotttt of fun playing around with the idea in bed because they both get off on it.

It all starts very innocently at first. Shane’s gotten into bird watching lately and there’s a little nest with some eggs in it that he’s been keeping his eye on. Shane makes some passing comment about how he doesn’t understand how all of those eggs can fit in one tiny bird. That she’s got to be uncomfortable and feel so full. And a little lightbulb goes off in Ilya’s sick and twisted (affectionate) head when he hears Shane’s tone of voice at the word full. Ilya knows Shane loves being full of his cock. He begs for it. Talks all the time about how full he feels when Ilya is buried deep inside him. And Shane loves his plug. So why couldn’t they explore this more. Shane can’t be full of Ilya’s babies like they wish. But maybe something else? Blah blah blah plot and discussion and details I don’t know before eventually they have a long string of anal beads that are very large. They get them all inside Shane and he’s very squirmy and turned on with his hands tied. Ilya keeps talking to him about how full he must feel. Makes a comment about how maybe he’ll just keep those in Shane forever so he can stay this full and happy. Of course Shane whines and says no and tells Ilya to take them out now. Ilya shrugs and says like. You don’t need me. If you don’t want the beads inside you- you can get them out. Shane is so confused at first. His hands are tied. But then he realizes what Ilya is saying. If Ilya pushed them in, Shane can push them out. Somehow this turns into Ilya explaining that since Shane can’t have babies, maybe he could lay eggs instead? He seemed jealous of the birds he’d been watching. So now he could have fun too. This leads into a very intense scene of Ilya helping Shane “lay the eggs” while everyone is turned on and Shane is so full and stretched out and Ilya doesn’t even know why he so turned on but eventually Shane is empty again and they’ve both cum and Ilya is now also wishing he could lay eggs in him somehow too.

And thus, Shane and Ilya begin exploring oviposition. What other egg-shaped things will they make him lay next?

(Okay this was fun be nice bye)

I think Grigori was the one to give Ilya his mother's cross. Granted, this happened after Grigori got drunk at her funeral and backhanded Ilya across the face when he wouldn't stop crying (the only time he ever hit Ilya in public and the only time he ever struck him across the face), but I do think Ilya woke up the next day after a fitful night's sleep and found the cross sitting in a golden heap on his bedside table.

I also think the day Ilya gets into his first serious hockey fight in juniors and knocks his first tooth out, Grigori picks him up from the rink. Ilya knows he hates being called out from work early, so he's bracing himself for a serious lashing, except Grigori just kinda looks at him with that piercing stare and then says "Show me your mouth," so Ilya does, revealing the bloody crater still oozing blood and Grigori,,, doesn't laugh, but sort of huffs an amused breath, maybe. Cuffs Ilya on the back of the head, but softly. Says "Next time, you duck, huh?" And Ilya feels that weird stomach churning feeling of pride and relief and the adrenaline rush of almost getting clipped by a passing car but it just misses you.

You can be terrified of setting your parent off, they can fuck you up but good. But you still crave their approval. And occasionally you get it. Which makes it all the harder to just hate them unreservedly without feeling complicated about it. Because you get those crumbs of genuine affection and love mixed in with the abuse.

We don’t see very much of Grigori Rozanov, but I’m sure he had moments (offscreen) of not being an asshole. He probably even genuinely believed he loved his wife and kids. That he was only “hard on them” for their own good.

Hell, he somehow managed to convince a much younger, funny and beautiful woman like Irina to marry him. So Grigori must have had charm when he wanted. We didn’t see it with his limited screen time, but it probably existed.

It would’ve probably been much easier for Ilya to cut ties to his family before his dad’s death if Grigori had been a horrible father 100% of the time. The morsels of genuine care his dad tossed him over the years made it harder for Ilya to walk away. Even once he was seven time zones away and financially independent. In fact, subsidizing Grigori and the rest of his family.

I have very little contact with my father, who is now in his eighties. I finally got back in contact with him after a twenty year total estrangement because he was old and sick. But I’ll still be sad when he dies. He did horrible things to me, my mother and my siblings. There’s a part of me that’s still terrified of him, even though he now can’t walk without a walker.

But he’s still the guy who read Pride and Prejudice to me when I was eight, a chapter a night. Pausing and explaining the vocabulary and the cultural anachronisms. He’s still the guy who cried when I got hit by a car.

Also, even though Grigori was a godawful husband to Irina, after the dementia hits, he seems to remember her fondly. Grigori doesn’t seem angry that his dead wife couldn’t tie a bow tie properly. Or that his younger son didn’t fix his own bow tie after his mother tied it badly for him. A few minutes earlier, Grigori was viciously berating Ilya, but now he’s lost in find memories of a woman who’s been dead for a decade. That’s got to be SUCH a mind fuck for Ilya.

Grigori remembers Ilya and Irina, isn’t really sure who Alexei (his older son, who lives in the same city) and Polina (Ilya and Alexei’s stepmother, who lives in the same HOUSE) are. Which I can’t really blame either Alexei or Polina for resenting. Especially since they all seem to have decided to take care of Grigori at home rather than in the memory unit of a nursing home. And with mostly family rather than paid caregivers.

Alexei is a an asshole and an addict, but it’s still not fun looking after a parent who can’t remember you. And I highly doubt Grigori was any less abusive to Alexei than he was to Ilya before he got dementia. Maybe more so, since Ilya seems to have been both parents’ favourite child. Although I’m sure Grigori and Irina expressed that differently. Perhaps it’s not totally surprising that Alexei’s coping mechanism for his abusive dad and the mom who left him via suicide ended up being cocaine.

Yeah, as Grigori gets worse, he probably goes back to thinking of Ilya as his little Ilyusha, his wife’s pride and joy. That soft, kind, sweet little boy who was SO talented at hockey. And there are probably many other occasions when Grigori thinks Irina is still alive.

For Ilya, since the age of 12, he’s probably blamed his father for driving his mother to suicide. In 1.06, when he says to Shane, “I don’t want you to think she was weak. She was so funny and beautiful. But she was so sad, and my dad was so hard on her.”

Ilya blames Grigori for his mom’s death, because then he doesn’t have to blame Irina herself, or her brain chemistry. And now his dad has lost his marbles, he thinks Irina is still alive. Probably talks about her cooking, and the way she sang in the shower, and the stories she read their boys when they were little, and the jokes she made on her good days.

Grigori was the worst thing in both Irina and Ilya’s lives, but somehow memories of his beautiful Irina and his little Ilyusha are the best thing in Grigori’s life? From adult Ilya’s point of view, what the fucking fuck? How does this timeline even work?

As Grigori gets deeper into his second childhood, Ilya is forced to contend with the fact that Grigori seems to genuinely think he loves his dead wife. And genuinely seems to love the funny, beautiful younger son who’s so much like her. Or at least he loves the little boy Ilya was before his mom died, and he started playing the Hockey Asshole persona to protect himself.

And adult Ilya lives seven time zones away and is only in Moscow in the summers. But it’s his number Grigori calls when he gets confused. He’s not reaching to call Alexei or Polina, his actual caregivers. It’s Ilya who gets those calls, when his dad is confused and bewildered and no longer scary. Instead, Grigori is scared.

(i belive this was a prophetic vision directly beamed into my head thank you and goodnight)

they definitely did not have the same experience, of course, and especially the facts that troy got his perfect coming out while shane got punished + the racism shane probably was confronted with by troy are unique for shane. ryan on the other hand experienced mobbing and downright emotional abuse.

but they both share the fact experience of having to watch troy being absolved for all the shit he did and yes they see that troy changed for the better, that he wants to make a difference, he apologizes he wants to make amends, he takes responsibility (even tho there is still a lot of room for processing all the shit he did just saying) and that is all great.