Hello Darlings

For Ilya’s birthday they of course do all the normal celebratory things like fancy dinner and a party and gifts and going to the bar with friends, but all that is scheduled on the few days before. On Ilya’s actual birthday he of course wants to spend it having marathon sex with Shane.

Shane of course agrees and once the clock strikes midnight they’re going at it, with Shane being extra good and letting Ilya do whatever he wants. It’s hours upon hours of blow jobs and riding and cockwarming and plowing and edging and somnophilia and grinding and being milked dry to the point of tears, and it’s relentless to the point of Shane being tired and wrung out and is deep in sub space.

Ilya knows this, but they talked about it before and Shane was more than enthusiastic to do this so he doesn’t think much of it as he’s grinding down into Shane who’s only been able to whine for the past hour. Ilya’s going slow, feeling the ache in his muscles after about half a day of nonstop fucking, but the feeling is just so addictive, and Shane is so cock drunk Ilya can’t help but be painfully hard just from looking at him. He pushes deeper, pressing against Shane’s prostate with a rhythmically paced thrust, pulling back in tantalizing inches before sinking back in with a deep exhale. He’s whispering praises every time Shane moans or goes a little cross eyed, an onslaught of “good boy” “taking me so well” “so needy and desperate” “my fuck drunk little slut” “mine” all on loop and then some, feeling a rush at every twitch it elicits.

It’s when Ilya leans forward to growl the words closer to his ear that he notices how Shane’s eyes track something. It’s slow, barely focused, and stuttering with every press of Ilya’s cock deep into Shane’s hole, but he’s undeniably locked onto something that isn’t Ilya’s face. For a second Ilya smirks, thinking Shane is staring at his tits, but as he glances down another possibility presents itself.

Drabble Prompts

Tiff I’ve literally been waiting all week for this 😵‍💫 let’s get into it! 😁

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Musa knew fear. Quite well, actually. It coursed through her veins the day her mother died, flooded her as Sam lay in the infirmary, and engulfed her when she considered the depths and limitations of her own power. Musa and fear were close friends. But Riven? He was fearless. At least, that was what she thought, before she saw his eyes flash in a panic.

“Fuck, fuck,” she muttered, kneeling down to where his body was, halfway hidden behind bushes.

“How did you find me?” he gasped, staring up at her.

“You called me.”

She’d felt it the moment he was injured, the depths of his mind screaming out her name. She screamed then too, calling for him as she ran through the forest. She had no idea how he did it, or how deep their bond ran, but she couldn’t consider that currently. Not when his blood squelched beneath her knees, painting the grasses he laid on a horrifying crimson. She ripped her shirt, tying it around his stomach as tightly as she could.

“Musa,” Riven coughed, “if I don’t make it…”

“Shut the fuck up, Riv,” Musa said, hiding her terror behind pure anger. How dare he. How dare he even consider leaving her here.

“You’re going to make it, because if you die, I’ll kill you.”

“You’re cute when you’re angry.”

It was half a breath and it obviously pained him to say it, even if he was trying to pretend that it didn’t. Musa huffed, hauling him to his feet. She couldn’t heal him here.

“Just hold on, okay?” she told him, quieter, hating the way her voice quivered. “I need you to hold on for me.”

Riven grunted what Musa could only assume was his agreement. She set off, halfway carrying him until they reached Alfea’s gates.

“He needs a healer, now!” she yelled as she stormed through the doors. Two Specialists darted forward to carry him. She followed quickly, staying by his side as they set him down. Riven lurched forward off the bed they’d placed him on, convulsing. Musa’s hand shot out, tightly grasping his.

“What are you doing?” a Specialist snapped at her.

She returned their words in an enraged hiss.

“Taking his pain so when someone who can actually fucking help him gets here, he doesn’t take their head off with his flailing body. That alright with you?”

Her glare was ferocious enough to quiet any further disagreements. Musa knelt down next to his bed, focusing as she squeezed Riven’s hand. She bit down on her lip until she tasted blood when she took his pain, doing all she could to keep from crying out in front of everyone.

A healer burst into the infirmary, questioning what happened. Musa told them, and they began their work immediately with a brusque, “Everyone out!”

Quick as lightning, Musa darted forward once more, her hand brushing his hair away as her lips pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“I’ll be just outside, I promise,” she whispered to him.

Ilya is from a long line of Russian wolves. His whole extended family is wolves but he's always been a little too wild for them. Maybe his mom was a human. Ilya lives being a wolf he is friends with every wolf hockey player (or he hates them. Or both!) and he has a whole group of non hockey wolf friends in Boston who run along the river and chase pigeons and terrorize the fanciest neighborhoods. He's not actually out of control but he exists as that more beastial animalistic werewolf archetype. But with joy!!!

Shane is a random freak with one great grandparent who was a wolf and no other lycanthropy anywhere in the family. And he is filled with shame and stress about it. He thinks of it as one more shameful thing about himself he has to manage. He rarely shifts and avoids all other wolves with maximum social awkwardness. He spends the full moon locked in his basement bathroom sleeping in his wolf form in his cold bathtub because it's where he feels safest.

They meet and Shane finds Ilya irresistible obviously but also kind of embarrassing because being a wolf is embarrassing and the way Ilya is so obvious and uncontrolled about it is really painful for him. And Ilya is fascinated by Shane and the bizarre tortured way he treats being a werewolf. It's this thing that brings Ilya so much joy and community and Shane has somehow turned it into another way to wall himself in when it's the single thing that should be least constrained about him.

And then Ilya is in Montreal for a full moon and he really shyly (the Ilya version where shy means pretending it's not a big deal and doesn't even matter he doesn't care whatever) asks Shane if he wants to spend the full moon together and Shane is like "I don't know you're pretty big we might not both fit in the bathtub but if you're okay being on the floor instead it should be okay?" And Ilya is horrified because he had assumed Shane had a spot and at least something resembling a pack. Even if he mostly treats being a werewolf as a special personalized type of misery, Ilya thought the full moon would be different because it's the full moon! And Ilya doesn't really want to spend it in Shane's basement bathroom, but it's too close to the full moon to figure out where the wolves of Montreal run so he spends it in the bathroom with Shane looking like he needs a thunder shirt and some trazodone. Shane is so miserable that Ilya ends up mostly laying on top of him and it's very sweet and intimate and gross and Ilya gets really emotional about all the hair they leave in Shane's tub when he changes back to human form the next day even though Shane won't look at or speak to him.

Shane's canonically kind of a selfish guy! Not in a terrible way, he just doesn't really care about stuff outside of his direct sphere. He only gets into philanthropy when there's a direct benefit to him (laundering his relationship). He loves his friends but he's not super caring of them or all that invested in their lives (forgetting Hayden's baby's name is peak). Some of that is he's too wrapped up in his own shit and his secrets but I think a lot of it is just his personality. Shane's not selfish to the degree of it being a personality flaw (see: Shane giving up a day with Ilya to babysit Hayden's kids. I wouldn't have) but he's more selfish than selfless.

We don't hear about him sending signed pucks to sick kids or doing charity with the Voyageurs or that sort of thing. Maybe he's doing it in the background idk. Most likely he's got some assistant in charge of it. But that's not something he spends a lot of mental energy on.

He's not rude or cruel to people, but internally he's a bit judgemental. He sells himself pretty ruthlessly. He’s wealthier than anyone on this website can even comprehend. He’s a landlord.

To get to three cups in a decade Shane’s also got to be very locked in as captain. Like Theriault is this fandom villain (fair) but it just doesn’t make sense to have Shane constantly clashing with him and the Voyageurs and still winning over and over. We see Shane let homophobic comments slide in the locker room and I have to assume that’s his general approach to dealing with things in Montreal. Winning comes first.

Hudson imbued Shane with a lot of gentleness, and the series centring the romance means we see a lot less of Shane when he isn't Ilyamaxxing but book!Shane is incredibly cutthroat. He's impatient, he might not ~showboat~ as much as Ilya does (and he judges him for it constantly) but he's just as much of an attention whore. He isn't just admired because he's Shane Motherfucking Hollander; he's genuinely a bro, he's inaccessible because of his routine and his diet (which gives him major 'you can't sit with us' vibes that he does precious little to counteract, both because he's too wrapped up in his Everything to notice, and he wouldn't care enough if he did).

He's the ice queen, not Ilya. As far as the league, and even his team, is concerned, all routes to Shane Hollander are through excellence, proximity, or work. Ilya and Scott Hunter get the time of day because they're good. Hayden is his friend and Assistant Captain. JJ is a teammate and is sort of the glue of the Voyagers. Rookies get Captain Hollander because he's responsible for them. That's all.

I really like you pointing out how distant and inaccessible Shane is. He lives alone immediately, which is very unusual in hockey, being housed by older players during your rookie contract is almost seen as a guardianship or part of your training. The older players teach the younger guys how to sleep properly and cook good meals and such. Shane doesn't need any of that, he's already locked in. And he's very aware of the distance his talent and routines and diets creates between him and his teammates:

"all routes to Shane Hollander are through excellence, proximity, or work"

Yeah, exactly. Shane is so transactional---he thinks about his diet and routines as input / output. He doesn't eat red meat so that he skates better. He doesn't drink so that his muscle control is tighter. He's obviously an endorsement whore---and in the book it's HIM doing this, not his mom. He wants to be THE Shane Hollander, hockey phenom, and he sees this as a thing he can buy with his effort, his restriction, his repression, and his body. He didn't trip his way into being the greatest of all time, he planned it, piece by piece, and worked his ass off:

And yeah as to the friendships with Hayden and JJ, man. I don't know. I really feel like Ilya is the only person on the planet who gets Shane's platonic intimacy until very late into TLG, when Shane has a sweet moment with JJ. But like even his TLG convos with Hayden are very stilted. Shane makes a super rare vulnerability bid by admitting how he's thought about how tough it would be for him and Ilya to have kids and it flies right over Hayden's head.

These guys are friends because Hayden's his winger and because Hayden doesn't have much of a hockey ego and doesn't get insecure around Shane. That's what's happening there.

People adding in nicknames for Hollander is always funny to me because it feels very deliberate that they don't exist in the book. I think the fans call him all sorts of things, but I don't think a single person in that locker room is calling Shane Hollander by a nickname.

You ask when this started and Mister Dickhead makes sure Shane is accurate about when they started this. How dare you stave off half a year of us, Shane?

You ask if they talked to Scott Hunter and Ra Ra Rasputin says that he, famous asshole extraordinaire went to talk to Patron Saint of Hockey Gays to offer him congratulations.

You ask if he has no loyalty to Boston and Mr Fucking Fuck San Francisco is like. Nyet

I have no one now; well, not no one. I have Svetlana. She loves me and I love her. But not like…Fuck me.

But not like I love you.

That’s the worst fucking part of all this is that all I want is you. It’s always you. I’m so in love with you and I don’t know what to do about it.

The Shane thing is interesting because I think there’s just so much discomfort in the character himself, in the world outside of being an athlete. I have him in very straight-cut suits, a little bit of tailoring, but nothing crazy, really simple lapels for all the tuxedos. Ilya’s tuxedos, we did double-breasted and peak lapel and different colors and played around with that a little bit more. I think it’s all just about trying to tap into the real character beats. Shane, I think, just doesn’t exist in the world that way.

[Shane's] general style for the whole show up to that point is tuxedos, athleticwear. His “hot” look is the white T-shirt [in episode four’s nightclub scene], where he just feels the best version of himself.

We really went all out with Ilya because it feels like he’s the one who’s willing to take the risks. The whole thing with the Jean Paul Gaultier shirt... I don’t know that anyone else could pull that shirt off in the world besides Ilya. It’s just so identifiable and also metaphorical to me. If I can put in little things that speak to me visually [like] the sense of him being this skinned predatory cat. In that moment, he has no power. He just sees his love across [the room], and there’s nothing he can do. So you see this version of himself literally on his shirt, which is just skinned, lost all his power.

The glasses were a real sticking point, and I tried probably about 10 to 15 pairs, especially for [Shane]. I had a case full of glasses that we went through because you just have to have them. I remember we tried them on set and had everybody be like, “Those ones.” These things are important because they’re in the imagination of the [book readers]. They’re visualizing it and wanting to get [a pair] that kind of felt classic, but also nerdy in a way, and maybe a little bit outside of that athletic persona of who Shane is.

It's a punishment, actually. Whoever gets the most penalties in the previous game has to room on either side of them.

Suddenly the Cens become the only team in the league with a zero foul record. (Outside of Ilya, who fears no god or sex noise bleedthrough.)

The one time someone tried to teach him a lesson by putting him and Shane next to Troy and Harris’ room, he took it as a challenge and the hotel manager nearly refused to book them in again the next season

ilya + shane's chest

think about it from shane’s pov without having any of the audience knowledge of whats going on with ilya. like imagine a guy has been hounding to get in your guts for years, just nonstop sexting and flirting and begging to be inside you. and you finally let him and its the most wonderful, earthshattering experience. proper fall-in-love, brain-chemistry-altering sex. and he even kisses you goodbye!!

and then he doesn’t speak to you again. no more texting, no more flirting. at the olympics he wont even look at you and he’s not just mad at you, he makes it clear he doesn’t want you or anything to do with you. it was all a game, clearly and he won! it was nothing to him make you fall in love with him on his dick. just a conquest. you dont even know what you did wrong.

the next time you see him at the nhl awards, he doesnt even apologize. he mocks you until you’re crying, baits you back in with sex because he knows how much you truly love it— knows how much of an effect he has on you, has always had. and you fall for it, again. except this time its not tender and sweet; its messy, and humiliating, and you expose so much of yourself and the depths of your neediness for him. just for it to end unceremoniously, while you pick your clothes from the other room and he wont look at you in the bed. he didn’t even kiss you this time. as if he was just killing time and you were convenient.

and then months later has the audacity to text you, “still mad about vegas?”

it has the most impressive cinematographic qualities, the lighting, the pacing, the storytelling, the character portrayals, the sensuality, the intimacy❤️‍🔥

but one thing stood out for me personally the most - Connor Storrie's work on russian language😳 I am used to either garbled nonsense, or heavy english accented placeholders instead of my language in foreign cinema, or complete disregard for the language rules in such a small things as surnames (ugh this show about grishas), that's why I was floored the first time when he's spoken russian in the show - like, almost no accent?!?!? (in the later episodes there are more slip ups with "t" and "yu" but I was already very impressed and willing to forgive anything)

ALSO Ilya's whole speech in Russian?!? are you kidding me?!?! it is a MASTERPIECE!!

so heartfelt, so heartbreaking, true to the tone OHMYGOD