(⌒-⌒; )

(also, she was never judgey - if my meal was a single potato chip she would simply say good job eating a potato chip today <3 )

Shane Hollander is asleep on the couch. SHANE HOLLANDER. Canada’s golden boy. Mr. media-trained, never-out-of-line, does-not-get-wasted-at-all-star-weekends Shane Hollander.

he is wearing Ilya’s shirt. but not just any shirt. no, that shirt. The leopard one.

he is, for reasons Cliff cannot begin to unpack, cuddling Svetlana Vetrov?????

Cliff did not even know Svetlana was in the middle of fuck-nowhere Ohio!!!

Cue: Ilya’s friends + rival (???) forming the world’s most dysfunctional search party trying to figure out where the hell their captain/ex-captain/best friend/rival went

And for SOME REASON Hollander is the most invested person in finding Ilya?? All of this would be less suspicious if he wasn’t:

still wearing Ilya’s shirt

refusing to explain why

acting like he personally misplaced a husband

and Cliff, hungover and barely clinging to reality, is so close to cracking the real case here:

Shane Hollander’s biggest secret!!!!

obviously

But get this: The same premise every time, but in wildly different times and places. Victorian England, the gentlemen went fuckshit with some nice sherry, wrote some questionable letters, worked together to compose an absolutely idiotic thinkpiece essay and sent it to the local newsprint (the publishing of it must be stopped) and for some reason there's an ostrich.

A troupe of travelling performers in the late Kofun period wake up in the stables of an inn, and the main plot point is the little beast sleeping on someone's chest. None of them have ever seen a cat before, but one knows enough to tell that those are imperial pets, and whoever's fucking cat that is will both be capable and willing to kill whoever stole it. So they'd better fucking return it.

fall in love again and again...

i find it hot

they’re comparable generationally talented first line center professional hockey players

positioning shane as smaller/shorter/daintier than his white dom top boyfriend perpetuates racial, gender, and sexual stereotypes

i personally find it REALLY hot

when he chooses to, shane can physically overpower ilya (hockey, shoving ilya into walls i.e. vegas rooftop and stairwell scenes) but when he wants to submit in bed, he allows himself to be pushed, carried, held down, etc. because they both like it and want it

feminist scholar jane ward: "queer circuits of desire do not rely on the erotic encounter of opposites"

they can wear each other's clothes in a cozy boyfriend hoodie "give. i miss your boring laundry smell" "why the fuck are all your clothes dry clean hand wash only" long distance yearning way or post-game sweat damp base layer horny way or "gross now i have cum on my sweats i'm stealing yours" "okei yay ♥" fondly annoyed way

The whole team settles in with rapt attention, ready to roast the shit out of Roz over it via group chat, only to see. Well. It's a series of interview clips over the years. It's made up exclusively of three things. One, clips of Hollander "stealing" linguistically challenging questions that the whole team knows Rozanov hates. Two, clips of Rozanov derailing questions that are about Hollander's "representation of his community," which gossip on the street says makes Hollander uncomfortable. Three, Hollander and Rozanov commenting individually on the rivalry, with vicious comments such as. "He's of course a great player, but he'll find us difficult to beat." Such fire in Rozanov's comments are especially damning, given his whole chirp-king-schtick. The video editor, with all the obsession and perception of a true fangirl, makes sure to circle every instance where you can see the shadow of Hollander and Rozanov pressing their feet together - and in one instance holding hands - beneath the interview table. (You wouldn't see it unless you're looking for it - or unless someone circles it in red for you.)

The video finishes, and the team sits in a kind of shocked silence as the next video auto-plays. This one is a compilation of Rozanov chirping Hollander on the ice. Here, the editor has helpfully drawn an arrow to Hollander's face whenever he blushes. The editor has also inserted text overlays with comments like. "Look at how fiercely Rozanov insults his rival." And then puts smaller arrows pointing to Roz's body language, with helpful texts like "excited wiggle indicating absolute fury," and "besotted grin indicating deep hatred." The sarcasm is distressingly accurate in its point.

(Listen, the whole team knows what Roz looks like when he's chirping someone. This - this is not it. This is not it at all. This is him when he's being silly with people he really likes. What is going on.)

The video finishes, and this time someone has the presence of mind to stop the auto-play before another mind-breaking thing comes up.

Someone else, trying to lighten the silence with a joke, and maybe dismiss it all as a fever dream, says, "Montreal Jane? More like Montreal Shane, am I right?"

And. Well.

Once it's out there, there's no coming back from it.