9. How hard you try

My favourite fanfic The Chips Are Set to Fall by @exactphoify is heading towards its final act so I HAD to make some fanart (if you haven't read it yet you simply must!!)

Oh I'm suuuuure. Shane with his broken clavicle and Ilya with his bruised ribs were absolutely just having the weirdest phone sex that you can possibly imagine. Shane is propped up on seven different pillows because it jostles his collarbone too much if he doesn't stabilize himself on Mount Fluffmore before he starts jerking it--with his NON DOMINANT HAND to be clear. Half of Ilya's hisses are from arousal and half are from pain. They are equally hot. At one point Shane's shoulder slips and he grunts, "Oh fuck," and Ilya's arm (Hand and dick out of frame because Shane once again asked to see his face. But he can hear everything he needs. Fwip fwip fwip) speeds up and he goes, "Oh God. Are you coming? Did you come?" and Shane is like, "No I moved my shoulder wrong fuck" and he's readjusting the pillows (it's a process) and Ilya is still, now just watching, remarkably patient, and Shane says, "You can, uh, keep going," and Ilya says, "No, I can wait," and then Shane settles and Ilya tilts his head and asks Shane to lift up his shirt and show him his tits because he misses them and Shane still has some bruising and honestly it's kind of gnarly but Ilya turns his camera and shows Shane the bloom of bruises up the side of his body and Shane hisses and says, "Fuck that's hot," and Ilya says, "Show me yours," and so Shane's good arm is occupied with holding up his shirt for a little while as Ilya jerks off to his bruise and his armpit hair and then Ilya says, "Touch yourself touch yourself let me see you come," and then Shane does and the pillows slip again while he's coming and the sound of his groan tips Ilya into the kind of full-body-crunch orgasm that jostles every single one of his bruised ribs and they're both saying owww and coming and saying oh fuck ow and coming.

And Shane, who's still catching his breath, says, "Wow, so this is what we could have had if we'd been hooking up during playoffs all these years," because that's the one thing they've always avoided through mutual unspoken agreement. He says this meaning it to be sarcastic but, in the dark of his bedroom with the sound of the lake out the window and Ilya's breath over the speaker, it comes out far too earnest.

And Ilya's, "Mm, yes," is sweet and low and Shane presses a hand to his bruises and imagines it's Ilya's and he can see Ilya's hand moving up and down the bruising on his side and wonders if he's imagining those touches to be from Shane.

[ survey.gendercensus.com ]

The 13th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2026.

It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

PS: You can see some regularly-updated statistics about incoming data here, with lots of demography and graphs to peruse!

Anyway Harris finds Ilya in the gym doing pull-ups or something and Shane is in the background on a treadmill. Harris goes to Ilya "So your most popular question is, Can Ilya Rozanov fight?"

Ilya drops down to the floor and crosses his arms (slightly swollen and sweaty from the pull ups) and mostly fake scowls at the camera, "I see this question all the time because people are very tempted by my very hot husband." He wags a finger at the camera, "But he is mine you cannot take him. I can fight very well." He smirks at the camera now.

Then Shane pops up behind him, having stopped his run, "I can also fight." And Harris is like, "oh no one asked you that Shane."

And Shane shrugs, "No I know, but if they're asking Ilya because they're going to fight him to like, steal me or whatever, they should know I would also fight to stay."

And he also smirks at the camera and Ilya looks at him with such a gooey lovestruck look that it immediately becomes a meme.