Welp.

After Irina dies Ilya is maybe sent away. He looks too much like his mother, hes a sad pre-teen boy which manifests as anger. He's getting into fights and embarrassing his father and maybe the last step is getting caught at 14 with Sasha. So he gets sent away, maybe there was an invitation from an international hockey program right as he's caught and so he gets sent there. Maybe his dad says something to the coach, not outing Ilya but it convinces him that Ilya's going to be trouble.

Like, the Ilya we know uses his charm and charisma as a mask very effectively. But this is a sad, scared, and angry 14 year old boy who has been outed and banished to a foreign country.

So he starts the whole thing on his back foot, his coach giving him a lecture in front of the team that Ilya can barely understand about how he needs to get his shit together, he speaks English poorly, and he's so talented on the ice that the other boys are jealous.

Then Shane Hollander, quiet, mildly popular, acknowledged best player on the team and generally a well liked, if intense, kid sits next to Ilya as they're lacing up his skates. He compliments Ilya on his hockey, says it precisely and carefully but not condescendingly so Ilya understands.

Somehow this weird intense canadian keeps sitting next to Ilya, keeps pairing up with him on the ice, somehow becomes Ilya's best friend. The other boys leave him alone, well no but he only gets the same amount of hazing as Shane and the rest of the 14 year olds.

Discovered last year I couldn’t look at my 2015 MacBook Air without it triggering nausea and migraines, and figured the screen died. Have been getting by on my phone, but concluded I really need a laptop again.

Saved up, realised I could afford a brand new MacBook Neo, and got one.

-And I couldn’t spend more than five minutes looking at the screen without massive eye strain, nausea, vertigo, and if I pushed it, I-need-to-lie-down-in-a-dark-room-for-hours migraines.

Looking up MacBook and Eyestrain explained what is going on. The liquid retina displays that Apple currently has uses Pulse Width Modulation or PWM. In order to give the screens a deeper depth of colour and contrast, PWM flickers between several hundred to thousand times a second.

And there is currently no way to turn it off. There are settings and apps to reduce it, but there is no way to stop the screen from flickering. Checked Apple forums, called Apple Support, and the time I could look at the screen kept shrinking. Got the laptop Tuesday, returned it Friday, today is Sunday and I’m still dealing with a vertigo migraine.

For MacBooks, it seems to vary on the computer model and the software it uses. In retrospect, the issue with my MacBook Air started after a major software update.

And it’s not just an Apple thing. Current Windows and Android screens do the same thing. There’s even a Reddit for people who are sensitive to PWM flickers to help find computers and screens that won’t trigger eyestrain and headaches.

So, yeah. This week has been a learning experience. But for those who are prone to headaches and migraines, this may be something to be aware of, cause I was not.

it makes me want a 5+1 story with 5 times shane went to a centaurs event as a "friend" of ilya's and the +1 as either him attending as ilya's partner or as a centaur himself.

the first time would be at the end of summer, right after the end of the ottawa summer camp. wyatt asks shane how long he's going to be in town for before he heads back to montreal, and he says it'll be a few more days, and hayes says bood is hosting a pre-season bbq and shane should totally swing by. he's hesitant, but the fact that it's wyatt who invites him and confirms with bood that it's cool vs him clearly tagging along with ilya that makes him risk it.

the boxing day party would probably fall as time 3 or 4? i haven't decided what the others are yet.

but through these 5 parties, shane slowly gets to know the cens and their partners, sees how different the culture is from montreal, gets to know these people ilya talks about for himself, and slowly lets his guard down.

for their part, the centaurs get to know shane as a person better and not just The Shane Hollander™️and they also can't help but notice that their captain, who's always so busy on their days off, is conveniently always available if hollander is also around.

by time 5, most people have figured out that something is going on between them. everyone has pet theories about if it's serious or exclusive or new, but they're trying to tip-toe around it and not let shane or ilya know that they suspect something. it doesn't help that ilya brings anya, and she seems very familiar with shane.

He is also aware that he is a large man, a hockey player, and any type of violent-looking motion is going to be judged and he'll be called short-tempered or violent.

The violence of hockey helps. Sometimes, he likes getting slammed against the boards or pinned there while fighting for the puck. But that doesn't help him off ice. He has a punching bag, but its not the same. Wrestling with Ilya or Ilya laying on top of him also helps, but it's not perfect.

A couple years into their marriage, he tells this to Ilya. He works hard on sharing these things, that he'd usually worried about being judged for, to his husband. Ilya's already so vulnerable with him that he tries to return the favor as well as he can.

A week after he tells this to Ilya, he walks into their home gym to find Ilya attaching velcro strips to the walls in the corner Shane usually does yoga in, where there is no weights, equipment, or mirrors . There's a stack of huge gymnastic mats next to him, velcro on their edges. There are also boxing gloves on top of the stack.

"If anyone sees," Ilya says without turning around. "They will think this is for boxing. I recently took this up, you see."

Shane swallowed. "What is it actually for?"

Ilya grabbed a large mat, taller than him even, and pressed it against the wall, pulling to test that it's firmly stuck on there.

Ilya then takes a couple steps back and throws himself into the wall.

Shane takes a startled step back. "What are you doing?"

"Didn't hurt at all," Ilya grinned, now sitting on one of the mats on the floor. He bonked the back of his head back against the mat. "Completely safe."

Shane cheeks flushed. "I don't need this."

"Okay," Ilya bonked his head harder. "Its for me, then. Maybe I let you use it sometimes."

"Ilya...," Shane walked over and climbed in Ilya's lap, face in the crook of his neck.

"Shane," Ilya said back, wrapping his hands around him. "You know there is nothing you could do that I would think is weird?"

"This is weird."

"Well," Ilya hummed. "I have had my tongue in your asshole, so this is-"

"Shuddup!" Shane slaps him on the shoulder.

The set up goes unused until a couple weeks later, when Shane is feeling like there are ants under his skin. He tells Ilya he's going to work out in the gym, but based on the blush on his cheeks, Ilya understands what he's saying. Ilya tells him he'll go for a run, recognizing Shane wants privacy to test this out.

When he gets back, all he asks Shane is, "anything hurt?"

By this I mean that a lot of people, when speaking in their second language, will relax how careful they are being to say everything right when they are in a very safe environment around people they trust. I do this around my friends with things like leaving verbs un-conjugated if it’s not necessary for comprehension, reverting to my native sentence structure, and using much more basic sentences and vocabulary than I would in a more formal setting.

This does not speak to an inability to properly speak the language, simply that in a relaxed environment, it can be really nice to just be able to talk to someone without putting too much thought into making sure your words are accurate.

This, coupled with that fact that they are hockey players, makes me think it could be really funny for Shane to start to notice Ilya’s English worsening slightly around him, leading him to start panicking that Ilya got a concussion or has some other head injury.

they perform as well as expensive HEPA air cleaners, and are comparatively VERY inexpensive. all you need is a box fan, 4 air filters, a piece of cardboard, and some duct tape!!!!