Don't love you yet but probably will

and the truth is that the team was playing against someone ilya and/or shane ESPECIALLY hates, which means shane was dropping the most vicious, lethal reads known to man and making ilya crack tf up to the point that they were attracting attention and the coach was just afraid of someone reading lips and getting them all in trouble

and signficantly, the three person buffer between them just keeps shane from SAYING his comments

But I feel like this is the point of connection that gets Shane to actually accept Troy as a guy he can vibe with. They make the mistake of putting Troy as one of the guys in between Shane and Ilya only for Shane to keep muttering things and Troy to pick right up where Ilya left off on dragging people. Troy may have been a homophobic menace for a while but not he’s a homosexual menace and Shane can very much so get down with that. Ilya has almost as much fun listening to them banter as joining in.

That was not a media trained response. That man said that with his whole chest. He meant every word of that. It came from a place of truth so deep you can use it to make free long distance calls to hell.

In that moment I vowed to watch every piece of media this man is involved in. This morning, I saw a video about how the director of Obsession was offered millions of dollars to turn Bear into the hero, and it only reaffirmed my belief that Connor fucking GETS IT.

"Bro? BRO?" says Ilya, his hands on his hips. "My name is Baby, or 'Love-Of-My-Life', or 'Beloved Husband', or 'Rozanov' if I'm in trouble. Just like you are now, Hollander."

And that's all the warning Shane has before he's tackled to the couch, and Ilya's kissing him relentlessly all over his face and neck, more to tickle him than anything. In between all the kisses, Ilya is like, "What do you say, Hollander? Do I have to keep helping you remember my name?"

And Shane's laughing so hard he's crying like "No, no, I'm sorry, baby! I'm sorry! I'll never call you bro again." And finally Ilya stops and presses one last kiss to his lips, this one softer and sweeter.

"Okay, good. Now let's get some dinner, bro."

And Shane rolls his eyes, but he leans up to get another kiss from Ilya.

Until one night, weeks later, when Ilya has Shane stretched across the bed. He's been teasing Shane for a while, his mouth licking and sucking, and there's a vibrating toy in Shane's ass that Ilya has the remote to. Shane gasps, trying to tell Ilya how close he is when--

Everything fucking stops. The toy goes still. Ilya's sitting back on his heels and licking at his lips like he just finished dessert.

"What the actual fuck?" Shane asks, but Ilya only smirks. "Oh, fuck you, Ilya."