Random Kirby

Both Shane and Ilya spend the following day sprawled out on the floor of the master bedroom, pale and sweaty and feeling miserable. "If the team asks, was not spicy", Ilya croaks from his position next to the shower and lifts his pinky. Shane weakly interliks his pinky with Ilya's and nodds. None of them have the energy for a handshake. It takes a while before Shane speaks again.

"Ilya?"

"Mhm"

"We're not eating chicken for the next month, deal?"

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

1. Junior throws his spear. While it flies through the air, you can see Dry Bowser making a beeline toward Mario and getting scarily close.

2. After the spear lands the camera focuses in Mario who is distracted by the weapon, but Dry Bowser is strangely absent.

3. The camera zooms out again as Junior goes in for the attack, and–

Oh my GOD.

Shane's morning smoothies also contain blueberries, and every one of them is picked by him or his family. He's got a section of a chest freezer just for all the blueberries. There's a blueberry field about a half hour drive from the cottage that they've been going to every summer longer than Shane can remember.

Blueberry picking is serious business for the Hollanders. They show up with their cross-body picking buckets strapped on. David is happy to pick steadily, stopping at a laden bush and concentrating on it. He also is in charge of timing the sprints. Shane and Yuna are... competitive about blueberry picking. Some of the time they're content to pick and chat or just pick calmly in silence, doing the occasional but obligatory quality control check of eating a berry or two. When they air between them starts going stale or sometimes just when there's a change in the wind, one of them, sometimes both will look over at David and ask him to time 10 minutes, as it usually is. Even now, he just times on his old analog watch that's older than Shane, waiting for the second hand to hit the 12 before he calls, "Start." It's exactly what you think it would be, with each trying to maximize their picking efficiency, each maintaining that their approach is the best. They're not competing with each other, not really, not when the blueberries will be divided the way they always are regardless, but they're not not going head to head either. They are absolutely trash talking each other across rows of high bush blueberries until David, who has been casually checking his watch over his own picking, watches the last 30 or so seconds slide toward the 12 and calls "Time's up." Shane and Yuna compare and chirp over their collection, but the findings are never conclusive. But, over the course of a few intentionally spaced picks, they collect the 20 kg of blueberries for Shane's freezer for the year, plus another 5 or so kg for David and Yuna's freezer and the rotation of blueberry dishes they make each year at the cottage.

There’s other instances of people randomly punching slaves that they didn’t even know because they got in their way or something. This was just normal behavior.

And slaves didn’t rebel en masse because if even one slave committed an act of violent rebellion it was common practice to kill every slave and former slave in the household.

People only took notice for posterity when these mass executions got into the hundreds of people. One of the few recorded for the history books is of over 400 people being killed because one guy stabbed his enslaver.

Chattel slavery is an incredibly cruel and dehumanizing system.

So is every other kind of slavery.

This doesn’t diminish the awfulness of what people were forced to endure under chattel slavery.

I just think it’s useful to remember that cruelty is complicated and diverse and just because a cruel system is different doesn’t make it right by any means.

Roman slavery operated differently from slavery in the antebellum American south which operated differently from slavery in the Ottoman Empire which operated differently from modern prisoner chain gangs.

She loved having a task, she excelled at having a task. 

Her current task, while with a bit more moving parts than others, was her most interesting task since Shane was 4 and Get Him into the MHL slotted into her mind. This task was a curly haired Russian, that she spent the better part of the decade indignantly annoyed at, sitting in her living room looking through a baby photo album with her husband while her red-faced son pointedly watched an uninteresting rerun game on the television. 

She leaned against the doorframe, allowing herself a moment to enjoy something she was starting to worry she would never have - Shane with a partner. Over the years, her vision of her son’s future shifted from him and hockey-loving, kind wife to him with a husband. But never could she have thought Rozanov would be that husband. Not that they were husbands - apparently they were only boyfriends as of a few days ago. 

Still, she always joked to her friends that Shane was married to hockey. His hockey rival and second best player in the league was probably as close as he could legally get to marrying hockey. 

She must have let out a small laugh that Shane misinterpreted as being directed at David showing Ilya photos of his fifth halloween - the first one where he was old enough to choose his own outfit. And, exactly two months after he started playing hockey. 

“Mom!” He whined. ‘Fully grown adult’ her ass. 

“Yes, honey?”

“A hockey player, Hollander?” Ilya teased, delight shining through his features. 

“Not just any player,” he grumbled. 

“You’ll never guess what he was next year.”

“Not the same one!” Shane protested. Ilya must not have realized that he stumbled into a decades long argument that no, Shane, dressing up as different hockey players is not a different costume. 

Eventually the conversation transitioned into dinner. After it was decided there wasn’t much at the house, and they couldn’t go out with Ilya with them, something that sent a little pang of hurt through Yuna’s chest, they all got on their various food delivery apps to look for a suitable place. 

Then eventually settled on a sushi-fusion restaurant that Ilya found and his phone was passed around for everyone to place their orders. 

When Ilya got his phone back, Shane leaned over and asked, “how much is mine and my parents?”

Ilya scoffed, a little insulted. Though he shouldn’t be, Yuna considered, Shane had always had a very rigid sense of fairness and would get upset if he thought something was unfair. A lot of people found it annoying. Yuna found it incredibly sweet. 

“I am worth 12 million dollars, Hollander, I think I can afford DoorDash.” 

“12 million?” Yuna’s eyebrows shot up. Because, what. That couldn't be his total net worth, could it?

“Yes, I am very rich.” 

“No, that’s…” she trailed off. “What are you spending so much money on?”

“Jesus mom, you can’t just ask that.”

“What? It’s a perfectly reasonable question. Between his MHL salary and sponsorships, that’s low.”

“That is low?” Ilya looked at Shane. “How much money do you have in bank?”

Shane groaned. “You’re as bad as her. And most of my assets are tied up in investments and stocks.” 

Ilya had a blank look. “Okay.” 

“Ilya, do you have a financial advisor?” Yuna asked. “Or a wealth manager?”

“I think so?” 

Yuna clicks her tongue. Task. 

“Shane’s net worth is public information - he’s worth about 120 million. He has about an eighth of that in liquid assets - money in the bank.” 

“You really have that much money?” 

“He’s the highest paid player in the league,” Yuna said with no small amount of pride. She did negotiate a ground breaking 8 year 50 million dollar contract after his rookie season. “He also has nine premium sponsors, not to mention his investment portfolio. You should be nearly at that too - you two have had very similar careers.” 

“Hmm,” Ilya shrugged and turned to her son. “Is okay, you can be my - what is the word, sugar daddy?”

“Never say that again.” 

“Anyway,” Yuna continued. “I can send you some recommendations for an advisor. I mean, it's your money of course, but it can go fast. Especially with how early hockey players generally retire. Or if you get injured, god forbid.”

“No, it’s,” Ilya shifted in his seat, eyes cutting to Shane. “That is good. You can send advisor details. Thank you.” 

“Of course,” Yuna dismissed. Ilya thanked them much too often. But it didn’t feel performative. It felt genuine. 

~*~*~*~

Eventually, Yuna got an opportunity to sit down with Ilya and his new financial advisor. He had asked her, somewhat shyly, if she would attend their meeting. Now that he and Shane were out, he had decided to take her up on the new advisor. But, as he told her, he was still not so good at English business terms. 

She had felt so warm that he asked her. 

She felt a little less warm that he asked her not to tell Shane what they were doing. As far as Shane knew, they were getting lunch. 

She understood when she started looking over the documents the new advisor laid out for them. 

Anger, hot and uncomfortable rose up in her chest. But she pushed it down because that was not what Ilya needed. Ilya, who was sitting with his arms crossed, not looking at either of them. A faint blush on his cheeks. 

Because his very limited investment assets were barely four years old. For the first five years of his career, he had sent nearly everything back home. There were payments to his father, his brother, his step-mother. Trusts for his niece and his step-mother’s children. There was a house bought in an uncle’s name. There was a private school for his niece. There were random wire transactions to his brother for odd amounts - 20k, 15k, 56k. There were even salaries paid to private chefs and house cleaners. There was a weird split of money between Russian and American banks.

What wasn’t sent back was spent on severely depreciating assets like sports cars. Rounds of alcohol at bars and clubs. Thousands of dollars spent on random Amazon purchases, designer clothes, etc. His Boston house with a criminally high interest rate. He hadn’t even bought it outright, even though he had plenty of money to do so. He had maxed out credit cards with debt he would wipe out today and not even feel it. 

His liquid assets, which were basically his only assets, weren’t even in a high yield account. At least, not as high yielding as it could be. 

He was almost living paycheck-to-paycheck in a very rich way. More like contract to contract. He would exhaust his 8 million dollar/2 year contract and then sign another one. His contracts, too. They were much lower and shorter than Yuna would ever allow her son to have with his stats and experience. 

His financial history read very much like an 18 year old boy who had been thrown into a foreign city, with a language he wasn’t totally familiar with, and no one with his best financial interests at heart. Only a family that wanted to exploit him and a new team he desperately wanted to impress. 

But Yuna pushed all that away, shook it off, and considered the plan. “This is a great starting place.”

Both Ilya and the advisor’s eyes shot to hers but she refused to back down, leveling the advisor with a hard look. 

“It is?” Ilya asked. 

“Of course,” Yuna gathered up a few documents. “You have 17 million dollars in liquid assets. You have a great contract with the Cens for three more years. That’s a much better starting point than the vast majority of people.”

“Not as good as Shane,” Ilya pointed out.

add to it that ilya loves resting his head in peoples laps, getting his hair played with.. and has an oral fixation

so what i am saying is that ilya loves, loves, LOVES! cockwarming shane - sometimes they just chill on the couch, watching a renovation show or a movie ilya isn’t particularly interested in so while he rests his head in shane’s lap he simply turns around, tugs shane’s sweats down and puts shane’s cock in his mouth

they stay like that for a long time, ilya gets all floaty and sleepy bc shane’s hand is stroking through his hair, lightly scratching at his scalp and his cock is in his mouth