“is there anything so undoing as a daughter”

heated rivalry gif meme

and now, after everything, this exchange of information suddenly weighs more, feels charged, feels dangerous in a different way. and it's shane asking this time. what room are you in? which really means: will you let me in? will you give yourself to me? enormous, electric moment. look at how it shows on their faces

“slow down slow down SLOW DOWN JESUS”

“don’t you ever talk about my mother again i’m so fuckin’ serious dog keep that shit OUT of your mouth”

*laughing so hard he snorts*

“hey have you guys seen my mouthguard. oh haha it’s in my mouth my bad”

*quietly singing fergalicious to himself on the bench while staring at the jumbotron*

“hey roz! roz! dude, look, look at this trick - bro you are NOT even looking. okay, no, it’s cool, you want me dead, it’s fine”

“huh? fight? nah dude, i don’t - fuck man come on i have a date tomorrow don’t fuckin’ -“ *loud scuffling noises*

*laughing so hard he snorts*

*falls on his ass* “whoops”

*falls on his ass again* “whoops fuck”

“how do you think they get the little prizes inside the kinder eggs. carmichael. hey carmichael. CARMICHAEL. HOW DO YOU THINK -“

June 2015

Shane returns to Montreal in a fugue state, his head a jumbled mess.

He turns off his phone as soon as he gets to the apartment (messages unchecked) and hops in the shower, determined to wash Vegas off of his skin. As he scrubs he practices his breathing techniques, trying and failing to center himself.

Ilya's words won't leave his mind, playing on an endless, echoing loop. It almost feels like a cruel trick Shane's brain is playing on itself, like it couldn't possibly be real.

Ilya couldn't really want him. Certainly not enough to sound as devastated as he did when Shane asked him to leave. That couldn't possibly be how it happened.

Except it is, and now Shane has to decide what to do about it.

If he hasn't already fucked everything up.

He sits down on the living room couch once he's done showering, clean sweats on, and thinks Okay. What's the play here?

Ilya likes him and wants to be with him. It sounds impossible but Shane has to believe it, because it's what Ilya told him straight out. Maybe he'll change his mind - maybe he already has - but for now Shane has to operate like it's true.

Ilya thinks Brian is bad for him. He thinks he makes Shane unhappy and Shane, reflecting on it for more than five seconds in the privacy of his own mind, can admit that he kind of has a point.

Things haven't been good with Brian for... a while. Shane tries to remember the last time he felt uncomplicatedly happy to see or hear from his boyfriend, and finds that he can't. Vegas wasn't anything unique but rather an escalation, the latest iteration of Brian ignoring Shane telling him what he wants and deciding he knows better.

He's always done that, hasn't he?

He also couldn't even be fucking bothered to congratulate Shane on winning MVP. A moment that he ruined with his shitty, attention-seeking behavior.

Shane pauses that train of thought, allowing the anger rising in his chest to ebb and flow away.

Maybe, he thinks charitably, this was all because Brian was feeling threatened. Clearly he had reason to be, even if Shane hadn't realized up until now. It's not just that Ilya likes Shane and wants to be with him, but Shane....

Shane wants...

He wants.

It's choking him, this want. Expanding in his chest, cracking his rib cage open, overwhelming and overflowing. It's as if simply acknowledging it has made it grow tenfold in size. How could this feeling exist inside him without him knowing?

Absurdly, Shane finds he's on the verge of tears. He blinks them away, embarrassed despite the lack of an audience.

He suddenly wishes he was still in Vegas, that he could run and find Ilya. Could tell him that he feels the same way, that he wants more, and then -

Well. Shane should probably break up with his boyfriend before he gets to the next part.

The thought sends a nauseating thrill down his spine.

He can't really be thinking about leaving Brian for another man, can he? Throwing away everything they've had in the past eight years, everything Shane has known since he was sixteen. He isn't even sure who he is without Brian.

But it's Ilya.

Shane picks up his phone. Swipes away the unread messages, heart hammering as he thumbs open his thread with Brian.

I present to you: the floating ao3 comment box!

From what I've seen, a big problem for many people is that once you reach the comments at the bottom of a fic, your memory of it miraculously disappears. Anything you wanted to say is stuck ten paragraphs ago, and you barely remember what you thought while reading. This fixes that!

I'll give a little explanation on the features and how it works, but if you want to skip all that, here's the link.

Edit: Yes, this also works on mobile!

The extension is visible as a small blue box in the upper left corner.

(Side note: The green colouring is not from the extension, that's me.)

If you click on it, you open a comment box window at the bottom of your screen but not at the bottom of the fic. I opened my own fic for demonstrative purposes.

The website also gives explanations on how exactly it functions, but I'll summarize regardless.

insert selection -> if you highlight a sentence in the fic it will be added in italics to the comment box

add to comment box -> once you're done writing your comment, you click this button and the entire thing will automatically copied to the ao3 comment box

delete -> self explanatory

on mulitchapter fics, you will be given the option to either add the comment to just the current chapter or the entire fic

The best part? You can simply close the window the same way you opened it and your progress will automatically be saved. So you can open it, comment on a paragraph, and then close it and keep reading without having the box in your face.