Namida-chan's castle of dreams

I love Jacob Tierney!!

he and ilya are hanging out in the yard and some bees are buzzing around because some watermelon juice spilled on the ground earlier and shane suggests they go inside or rinse the juice off the patio and ilya teases him about being scared of little bees and shane SO nonchalantly just, "no, but i am allergic and you don't know where my epipen is"

and ilya

reblogging with my own tags because i'm also CACKLING imagining the implications of this not being specific to ilya, either. they're having a barbeque at hayden and jackie's house and hayden is good-naturedly encouraging shane to try a piece of coffee cake or something and ilya just goes, "no, bad for you"

and hayden IMMEDIATELY is on the defensive because what? you get to tell him what to eat now? where do you get o-

"no, bad for him because it has walnuts in it, pike. you want him to die? this is what you want?"

"what are you talking about?"

shane: "i'm allergic"

"??? since WHEN??"

"since always??"

"you've eaten over at my house HOW many times?? and never brought this up? the fuck, dude?"

"jackie knows"

the idea of ilya on instagram accidentally pressing like while DEEP in allergy mommy blogging territory and natalie from That Allergy Mama DMing him to be like "hi, my husband wants me to tell you he says hi and that he's a big fan and also that call against you against san francisco was bullshit." "hello, husband of natalie. also do you have any suggestions for substituting peanuts in this recipe?"

he gets filmed for a what i eat in a day/day in the life type video and is so used to thinking about substitutes at this point that he doesn't even think about it when he mentions them in passing. they keep an allergy friendly household so the stuff he mentions is compliant, but it's paired with comments like, "and then i add some wowbutter, which is soybeans and not peanuts. we also sometimes have sunflower seed butter, but the texture for this is better with the wowbutter. i have also tried this, what is it called-shane: the gross paste with beans" *shane, offscreen from the living room*: "chickpea butter?" "yes, this." "it's nasty" "yes, not good. their jar says it is, but it is not. anyway-"

A. the idea of ilya being lowkey stressed about shane surprising him and potentially being exposed to allergens is so fucking funny. ilya who ends up also keeping an allergy-friendly household PURELY because it's just less stressful that way. meanwhile the motherfucker WITH the allergies is SO fucking casual about it that it wouldn't even occur to him to ask ilya to do that.

B. when they're pushing the friendship cover, ilya gets nudge nudge jokes about trying to copy what hollander's doing, and he's not going to share information shane didn't greenlight to get out, so he just plays along. and now there's like. at least three other players lowkey accidentally following an allergy diet because they don't know it's an allergy diet. why do hollander and now rozanov not eat tree nuts? unclear, but they're also the best two players in the entire industry so it's worth a shot to copy them.

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

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Jacob with some spot-on Ilya character analysis (and general thoughts on sex-as-self)

Patron Saints of One Way Trips

A wag somewhere picks one up and discovers the hockey is really accurate and well written from a technical perspective (plus it’s super hot) and convinces her boyfriend or husband or whatever to read it and then somehow it becomes popular among hockey players as a thing that’s kind of a gag but people are also seriously reading it.

Ilya is extremely confused that CLIFF is trying to convince him to read a book but figures he’ll give it a try. Fifty pages in, reading the book on the plane, he suddenly realizes he recognizes the sex scene.

He never says anything to Shane, but starts casually leaving Shane’s books lying around for Shane to notice during their hook-ups.

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

"General Gran is dead?" Roy asks incredulously.

Maes doesn't repeat himself, just takes another long swallow of Roy's whiskey.

He's been opposing them from the beginning and was a bastard on top of it, so it's not exactly like it's a huge loss, but, "Who killed him?"

It's not like people end up in that many pieces on accident.

"No witnesses," Maes says.

He blanches. "How many casualties?"

"None."

"The man's house was practically leveled!" he snaps. "You're seriously telling me that happened with no one noticing and no one else killed?"

Maes doesn't answer him again. He just keeps drinking.

a continuation of 1 2

There's cameras and lights all around him and he's flying high on the victory of another game won when an interviewer for some pop magazine asks, "Any update regarding the Lily situation?"

Shane feels himself flush and light up at the same time and tries to tap it back down, tries to make it something that can reduced to just coming off the ice and another job well done. He should say no comment, he should brush this aside, he should be redirect. Instead he says, "I got kissed."

It ends up going viral, with the most common comments being some variation of if he doesn't love me like this then i don't want it and Lily you lucky bitch.

a continuation of 1

Ilya slept fitfully and curled around the spot Shane had been, trying to lie to himself about chasing his scent on the sheets. He feels like shit and he's in a shit mood and his teammates laughing like a bunch of hyenas really isn't helping matters.

"What so funny?" he snaps, poking at rubbery eggs that look worse than usual. They're never staying at this hotel again.

"Hollander got wasted last night," Marleau snickers, "and rejected, apparently. Maybe he is mortal like the rest of us."

"What?" His stomach drops. It's a good thing he didn't eat anything, because it would be crawling up his throat otherwise. "What are you saying?"

Someone's phone gets passed down to him. It's a screen recording of a live and Shane's there, wearing jeans that absolutely do not fit him and maybe make Ilya's mouth water a little. He can't remember ever seeing him tipsy, but here he is very obviously drunk, face flushed and eyes glassy.

There's a slur to his words as he talks, a light downturn to his lips that Ilya wants to lick. He's talking about him. He's talking about a girl, but it's him, it's definitely him. He almost reaches up to his hair and just barely stops himself.

Shane likes his curls.

"The comments are crazy," Marleau says. "It's full of girls offering to let Hollander kiss them whenever he wants."

He won't be reading those. In public, anyway. "I see," he says, mouth dry. He grabs a bagel from the table and stands. "You' are all giving me a headache. I will finish packing now."

There's a chorus of jeers behind him that he ignores. He texts Shane and then waits, pacing back and forth, trying to think. Shane's words keep replaying in his mind.

There's a hesitant knock at his door.

He yanks it open and Shane steps inside, swallowing. His eyes are bloodshot and his hair's limp, pale in a way that could be from the hangover or something else. "I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have gone out last ni-"

Ilya kisses him.

Shane is still for half a second and then he's melting into him. Ilya shoves him against the door and cradles his face in his hand, kissing him again and again, shallow and quick, then deeper.

God, he's missed this. He'd missed it last night too. He thought he was being smart, that he was protecting himself, that Shane being pissed at him wasn't as important as making sure that Shane didn't break his heart.

He hadn't realized it wasn't just his heart on the line here.

Shane likes him.

"Sorry," he mumbles, kissing the corner of his lips like he'd wanted to when he saw the video. "Sorry I did not kiss you."

"It's okay," Shane says, breathless and overwhelmed and leaning his face into Ilya's hand. It makes his chest clench. Ilya thinks how easy it would be for him to have just as much of Shane as all those girls in his comments, how Shane is gorgeous and perfect and he could have anyone he wanted, man or woman. Clumsy and earnest and so beautiful. Who would say no to that?

Not Ilya. He's made it a habit not to want what's not meant for him to protect against when he inevitably loses it. It's smart, rational, the only sensible decision he's ever managed to make.

"I mean," Shane swallows, searching his face. "It's just fucking, right? We don't owe each other anything."

He's not that great at sensible decisions anyway. "Would you like to?"

He feels it when Shane stops breathing. "What?"

"Would you like for us to owe each other something?" he asks.

Shane bites his bottom lip, his eyes bright. He swallows before saying, "Yes."

Ilya kisses him again, Shane pulling him closer and sliding a hand through his hair.

He does a reasonable search for any weapons or anything suspicious but lets him keep his phone. Luo Binghe may be smart, but the only things open on Shen Yuan’s phone are web novels and maybe music or video apps. So, clearly a scholarly device and not something he could use to escape.

Shen Yuan does as Shen Yuans do around Luo Binghes and promptly discarded any possible reasonable reaction.

He turns off any tracking on his phone and starts live streaming on his Peerless Cucumber account.

The PIDW community starts a hunt, following them across the country. Many of them think it’s a game, some sort of organized event. A few think it’s real and join the hunt any way.

Airplane, after a bit of back and forth over the extent to which Peerless Cucumber would troll him, absolutely 100% believes it’s real (he knows his character), takes the little cash he has, and begins making his way to the nearest border with the intent of leaving the country and changing his name.

be a lurker. just read things and think about them without feeling the need to weigh in or call out or disseminate everything you encounter. it's so nice and so freeing and it's a good way to learn things.