🙂‍↕️

- Two heirs to their respective dynasties

- Honor and wealth on the line

- If anyone knew they wanted to marry for love instead of political power and wealth, cringe. Also might be what the villain is avoiding (peace between the warring cities of Montreal and Boston, more money from fans buying into the rivalry)

- Forced to interact for the betterment of the kingdom/NHL/MHL. “Contractually obligated”

- The kingdom is The Problem (Cromwell as The Commissioner, Cromwell as the head of a power fraction that profits from war, the system, homophobia)

- Inner circles of trusted allies (Hayden, JJ, Cliff, Svetlana, Rose)

- the ‘mom side’ is also the lighter part of the shot, but empty of close people or only full of indistinct people (memories).

- there’s presumably a woman right behind Ilya’s left shoulder (angel on your shoulder?), but you can’t see her face + extremely white coloring like a ghost.

- Everytime Ilya looks at the ground floor/his “mom’s side”, he sees Shane’s family. He definitely looks mainly at Shane, but he also is looking at Shane’s family, their unit, their wholeness as an outsider.

Does his wish he was Shane in that moment or, even back then, wished to be a part of Shane’s world/family?

Shane, with his healthy diet and peak athlete body mentality and regular yoga, does plan to live a long time to enjoy hockey and loving the hell out of his husband.

And if Ilya develops dementia, Shane will continue to live and take care of this husband. Regardless if Ilya decides to ride it out or ask to be euthanized before he loses himself completely, Shane will still outlive him.

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.

But then they get invited to walk a red carpet for some event like a premier of Rose's or something and Ilya has suits made for them that are definitely flashier than anything they'd wear for a hockey event and Shane gets a pair of gaudy diamond studs.

"Just in case you decide to pierce the other side?" Ilya teases when he's testing the earring out in the mirror, gesturing to the one left in the box.

Shane shrugs. "It was almost as expensive to buy just the one," he replies, taking the stud out and snapping his little hoop back in. "You can wear it if you want."

Ilya thinks about that for .03 seconds and has to take a few deep breaths about the option of sharing a pair of something with his husband. Cue Ilya, shirtless in their master bath, attempting to reopen the piercing that Svetlana and Sasha had done for him as a teenager parent-trap style.

2. They are business associates, so at least in one of these events, they share candids from recent jobs or their updated portfolio. Ilya realizes he has some sexy candids from one of Shane’s photoshoots no one has and this helps mitigate (not enough) his seething jealousy.

And he keeps buy all these nice, expensive gifts for "Jane" and going home early on nights out to call her and he even quits smoking for her. The jokes about him being whipped are constant but someday, someone comments that Jane is pretty high maintenance.

Ilya considers this for a moment and then smiles, wide and delighted, and agrees. The phrase "high maintenance" brings to mind for him a Persian cat or some other ridiculously fancy little creature who lives to be spoiled and by god, does Ilya love spoiling Shane.