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Some time ago, Steven Spielberg joined forces with Morgan Freeman and an army of special effects specialists and scientists, and they all decided to ruin Ilya Rozanov's evening.
It started unassumingly. Shane mentioned he wanted to watch something when they got home, and Ilya was too busy smiling at how they really were talking about going home together in the locker room to notice the title. He hummed in agreement, and Shane beamed at him, putting on his gear for Centaurs' practice. It was a day like many others for them now, even if it seemed like an impossible dream a few years ago. He watched Shane skate and warm up and already forgot there was a movie to be watched in the evening. Fine by him! Any background noise for lazy sex was welcome.
Ilya was in an excellent mood and great shape today, he felt light on the skates, quick, precise, younger by a few years, and definitely healthier by a few packs of cigarettes that he indulged in not so long ago. He joked with the team, patted Luca's shoulder with a smile, and soon enough, Shane was putting on his sneakers after a quick shower, looking up at him.
"Anya needs a walk."
Ilya nodded, checking his phone.
"I will take her."
"Short one today, alright? It's a detailed documentary, I want to watch it to the end."
Wait, documentary?
Ilya frowned, glancing at Shane with no real fear behind his eyes, not yet.
"Documentary?" He repeated as the other guys slowly flowed out of the locker room. Shane nodded.
"Yeah. You said you wanted to see it with me?"
"Oh. Yes." Ilya put his phone in his pocket and shook his head. "You said you wanted to watch something, but I didn't remember what. I will watch."
Surely, it can't be that long. Or boring. Maybe it was a sports doc. It was always nice to watch those with Shane.
They got back to Shane's outrageously ordinary Jeep, and Ilya sat comfortably in the passenger seat, playing Candy Crush on his phone as they drove. Shane tapped his fingers against the wheel.
"I'm glad it came out all in one day. The mini series, I mean. I wouldn't want to wait too long to see it all."
Ilya raised his head slowly.
"The mini series?" He asked. "The documentary is a mini-series?"
"Oh, only four episodes. It's got amazing reviews, Morgan Freeman narrates it, did I tell you that already?"
Ilya glances between the road and his sweetly smiling husband.
"Is it a nature documentary? Like…National Geographic?"
His worst fear came alive as Shane nodded.
Dear God.
He was going to be subjected to watching some long, slow, utterly unentertaining shots of animals drinking water or building nests, or something even more absurd to waste a perfectly good evening on. And his husband was almost giddy about it, about how he tricked Ilya into this, this was a vicious plan.
Shane looked happy to have a specific thing to watch in the evening; he wasn't a big movie guy usually, he only ever watched movies on the plane. It was quite adorable how he rushed to the kitchen to heat up their dinner so they could watch while eating. He even prepared blankets for them, arranged the pillows on the couch, pulled the curtains over the windows so the TV image was bright and vibrant enough. Ilya went on a small walk with Anya, ruffled her hair, and decided to try to pry his way out of this after all when he came back.
Ilya wasn't as thrilled as Shane was. He was tired after practice, and he had been promised sex if he managed to score three clean goals in a row, testing Wyatt's reflexes. Sex, not a Morgan Freeman-narrated documentary that Shane heard about from Harris and just couldn't wait to see in the evening. Ilya dragged his feet to the living room, his face lifted to the ceiling in a dramatic plea, after he let Anya roam free.
"Hollander, I don't want to watch your boring nature documentary."
Shane sat down on the couch, shaking his head with an excited smile on his face.
"This one is really fascinating, I promise. It's about dinosaurs."
"Whoa! Really?" Ilya gasped, as if that changed everything. "Is Scott Hunter in there?"
Shane huffed, patting the spot by his side, the remote already in his hand.
"Come on, you said you'll watch it with me."
"I will fall into a coma."
"Ilya." Shane said, in that tone Ilya knew not to provoke too often. Shane's eyes pierced through him, the single word ringing in the air like a warning shot.
Ilya sighed, sitting down at last.
"I don't understand why you want to watch this."
"What if our kids want to know what a dinosaur was one day?"
"Then you tell them what every dad says."
"What, I should name the only two I can remember and say they lived a long time ago?"
"No." Ilya settled onto the couch, wrapping one arm around Shane's shoulders, because if he was made to watch a mini-series about dinosaurs instead of having sex, he might as well appropriate the right to cuddles. "You say they're uninteresting, crash halfway every season, and play for the New York Admirals."
Shane hit him with the remote, laughing quietly.
"The Admirals are not a bad team!"
"I wouldn't know. I'm on the best hockey team in the world."
"You're not."
"How so? My husband is on the same team."
"Oh." Shane raised his eyebrows and tilted his head. "So suddenly, I'm the best hockey player?"
Ilya shrugged, sinking into the many pillows Shane had arranged for them.
"You're the best assisting captain."
"Fuck you!"
Shane giggled, leaning against him and starting the documentary, his dinner bowl on his lap. Ilya focused on eating, glancing at the screen. A pachycephalosaurus was the main event currently. The name entered Ilya's brain as quickly as it left it, with barely any evidence that he even heard it right. They had thick skulls and looked quite dumb, for all Ilya could measure. And they fought over females like rams, smashing their heads together.
"He has a lot of girls." Ilya hummed, chewing. Shane rolled his eyes at him. "What? That's…six? Six girls?"
"I don't think you get to judge him in that matter."
"I never had six girls at the same time."
Shane tilted his head.
"Really? Not even in Boston?"
"Yeah." Ilya shrugged, smirking. "Five tops."
He earned himself an elbow in his ribs, gentle and sweet, and the gesture made him laugh. He's been with Shane for years, they were married, openly together, and still, he loved making him jealous like this.
The documentary was well-made, that was for certain. The animals looked real and scary, and the audio design was purring through their speakers. The cinematography was satisfying, with shots of nature, woods, deserts, and mountains, all lit in a captivating way.
"We're going back to the start now?" Ilya groaned as the timer was set back millions and millions of years, to, apparently, the first ancestor of all dinosaurs. "That's not cool, I was interested in the big guy killing that skull guy."
Shane, who had already finished eating and was now propped up against the cushions, under Ilya's arm, wrote in his notepad with focused eyes.
"The tyrannosaurus that killed the pachycephalosaurus."
Ilya looked over Shane's shoulder at the still mostly blank page, titled accordingly, "The Dinosaurs", names written alongside a short description of the specific species' looks and behaviours.
"You are seriously taking notes? Will there be quiz after?"
"I want to be prepared."
"For what, raising an encyclopedia?" Ilya ruffled his hair with a smile. "Internet exists."
"My dad knew everything about anything I ever asked him. Without Internet." Shane underlined the thick skull: up to 10 centimeters. "And our child will not Google stuff on their own until they're grown."
Ilya exhaled, rubbing Shane's shoulder under his hoodie. He could bark all he wanted, but he knew who ran this house like the navy.
Suddenly, the documentary was about reptiles, and the tiniest dinosaur ever, that barely survived on the beach. Millions of years of evolution, climate changes, and the Earth spinning around the sun played out on the screen, and the cute, green, plant-eating reptiles that somehow reminded Ilya of a dachshund went extinct. They were too short to reach their food, which grew high up now, not on the ground.
Ilya hummed with a frown, watching the slow, malnourished creature lie down among others of its kind.
"They just…die now?" He asked, his fingers lost in Shane's hair. Shane nodded.
"Evolution."
"There's not any food for them on the ground? Why don't they grow bigger legs?"
"Well, they do, it just takes a long time. I think." Shane grimaced at the bigger, carnivorous reptile sneaking up on the hopeless dachshund. "Ugh. He's ugly."
He was ugly. Big, long, looked like a crocodile and a lizard combined, but a fat one, and he had unkind eyes. And he was about to eat the poor, starved dachshund reptile.
Before Ilya could process losing an entire species of gentle, if slightly stupid, low-floor vegetarians, the time jumped ahead again. Dinosaurs were more important now. One was about to fight the ugly lizard for food when another natural disaster struck.
"Is this the asteroid now?" Ilya asked, as he did whenever the climate decided to change, or a volcano erupted, or the oceans suddenly rose.
"No. Not yet."
He gasped quietly as the ocean floors cracked half an hour later.
"Is it the asteroid?"
"No." Shane sighed again. Morgan Freeman was calmly explaining everything that was going on, yet his husband needed to double-check with Shane, as if it wasn't Shane's first time watching this show. "It's the methane."
"The what?"
"The gas."
"Oh. So, not asteroid."
"No, not for another hundred million years or so."
"Uh." Ilya rubbed his eye. "That's a long time."
He tried sounding whiny again, but it didn't truly work. He was getting invested in this. Anya jumped on the couch, and Shane allowed her to stay, so she was curled up like a little bagel against Ilya's thigh, napping and waking up every time Ilya flinched at the small jump scares of predators catching the prey.
An allosaurus was on the screen now, and Shane noted the name quickly, mouthing after Morgan Freeman. A male individual tried to steal food from a female one, and she rocked his absolute shit, pushing him to the ground with her leg and screaming in his face to leave her alone. The documentary stated the guy was lucky he wasn't killed in that interaction. Ilya giggled stupidly.
"Look, it's you." He pointed at the frustrated, strong female. "When you're bossy. And I'm the poor guy on the ground."
"I wish. You never give up that easily."
"Ah, you wouldn't want to be my husband if I gave up easily."
Shane just smiled at him, leaning in to give him a kiss and returning to his precious notes. Allosaurus: predators, about eight meters long. The Jurassic period.
The male allosaurus didn't give up fully, it seems, as he followed the female while she tried to kill a stegosaurus, a big herbivore with pretty red plates on its back and a tail with sharp spikes.
The female predator chased this singular stegosaurus away from his herd, where he'd be safer, and now he was roaring and swinging his tail to intimidate her. Shane raised his eyebrows with a soft, amused smile as Ilya shifted in his seat, breathing nervously, reaching for Shane's hand on the blanket, and interlacing their fingers.
"Come on, kill her." He murmured, clearly very unhappy about the friendly-looking red-plate guy being in danger. He chose his favorites quickly and wasn't about to just look as they were killed. Shane was sure that if Ilya could, he'd jump through the screen to help the big creature.
"A moment ago, you claimed that the female was me."
"I take that back. She's mean."
"She has to eat."
"Okay, but not him!" Ilya pointed at the troubled stegosaurus, who was more and more afraid, and the allosaurus bitch had the nerve to bite one of his pretty plates. "Fuck off!"
Shane squeezed his hand harder. He had a comforting speech prepared for Ilya for when the prey would eventually be killed and eaten: about how it just had to happen, that's nature, weak die, and, by the way, this is pretty much all computer-made and all the dinosaurs are already fucking dead.
To his own surprise, he didn't have to deliver said speech, as the stegosaurus swung his tail again and killed the predator with one of his long, sharp spikes, stabbing the side of the battle-tested female.
Ilya exhaled with relief, actually smiling like he had watched his team win a game. He frowned again when the male allosaurus, who followed the female, which Ilya claimed was himself in that scenario, started eating the defeated predator. Cannibal.
"That's not fair." Ilya huffed. "That useless prick didn't even do anything. He didn't even kill her."
"I think the cannibalism of this act is a bit more…unfair here." Shane circled the term in his notepad. Wait until they're a bit older for this fun fact.
He giggled, melting against Ilya's side as Ilya cheered at the mention of North America, "that's where we live!", and smiled to himself as he knew, once again, he succeeded in involving Ilya Rozanov in yet another so-called boring activity that Ilya completely lost himself in.
It will be good for the kid, he claimed, if Shane knew the facts and Ilya could tell stories. Knowing their luck, their future hypothetical child will choose to obsess over something entirely different than dinosaurs, but, well, there are documentaries on everything, and Shane wanted to be ready if a question popped up. He also announced his opinion on each creature's appearance by either a quiet, soft hm, which mostly meant it was either nice or at least interesting, or a much more defined ugh, which meant the fucker was ugly as sin.
The dilophosaurus was bringing out his best baritone, wailing for the female in front of him, who was kind enough to walk through the swamps as he called. He lifted his head and strained his neck, singing. Ilya poked Shane's foot under the blanket.
"Why don't you sing to me like this?"
Shane, who currently used Ilya's chest as a support for his notepad, wrote a few facts under his freshly started notes on dilophosauruses.
"I'm a terrible singer."
"But it would be romantic."
Shane pointed at the screen. The lady dilophosaurus was not impressed with her suitor. She quite literally turned and left as he was still singing. The Jurassic version of being left on read after sending a dick pic happened right in front of their eyes.
"See? She left. It was that bad."
"Poor guy." Ilya kissed his teeth. "He embarrassed himself. Maybe she is lesbian."
Shane looked up at him slowly, as if not entirely sure Ilya was serious.
"A lesbian dilophosaurus?"
"Yes. There is hardly any other explanation. He was singing his balls off."
"Being a lesbian is not the only reason why a woman might reject a man, you know?"
"It's not? It usually was for me."
Shane lay his head back down on Ilya's chest with a heavy exhale.
"Yes, I know, since you're so irresistible."
"You would know." Ilya stroked his hair, a clear smile in his voice. "You would be a gay dilophosaurus. A super gay dilophosaurus."
"Thanks, baby."
"Like, a…a top of the food chain gay dilophosaurus."
"Ilya, I get it."
"This guy should sing for you, not for the lady that doesn't want him."
"He's clearly straight."
And a dinosaur. And dead.
A dead, computer-made dinosaur.
And a bad seducer at that. Shane wasn't convinced that singing was any good. He's heard better.
When the huge sauropods woke up from their nap, stretching their long necks up to the sky to try to reach the top of the trees, Morgan Freeman was kind enough to let them know they had very small heads and brains just as small as an apple. Shane heard Ilya's laughter coming straight from his belly, where he kept his head now, Ilya's fingers tangled in Shane's hair.
"Ah, look, it's your teammates from Montreal."
Shane smiled to himself at the comment.
"Don't be mean."
"I will. They sucked, had no brain. Stupid."
Ilya's ongoing hatred towards Shane's asshole teammates was going to outlive them all. Shane pointed at the small, quick, squirrel-like dinosaur that ran between the giants to collect tree cones and stuck them up his cheeks.
"And that's Luca."
"It is him!" Ilya laughed again. "Look at him go, fast little bird."
"Dinosaur."
"Fast little dinosaur. Ah, so cute. He has feathers."
The little fella was extremely cute. And extremely fast, like Luca, zigzaging between the slow, dumb, enormous, long-necked creatures that really did remind Shane of the Voyaguers. Brains smaller than apples. Except for Hayden and maybe J.J. Every species had its good individuals.
Shane had to sit up again to note as there was now a chase happening in the sky. Ilya has lost count of the names, the specifics, the whys and hows, he knew there was a big, flying…thing, and a thousand smaller ones, blue and aggressive, were following him, trying to bite the shit out of the guy, for some reason. He chuckled, grinning.
"What little shits."
Shane lifted his head to see the screen and noted again.
"They're trying to get food."
"They're bullying him."
"For food."
"Like, lunch money?"
Shane squinted his eyes, questioning his life choices for a split second.
"What…? What fucking…okay, don't answer that."
Ilya just smiled wider, pushing his hand under Shane's clothes on his back to rub it softly. They've been sitting here for hours, Anya was napping on her back now, her belly up and ready for scratches. When a small, two-year-old stegosaurus appeared on the screen, Ilya clicked his tongue with sympathy, endeared by the clueless animal.
"Baby."
"Hm?" Shane asked, glancing at him. "What?"
Ilya held back a smile, still rubbing Shane's back.
"The stegosaurus."
"Yeah, what about it?"
"Is a baby."
"Oh." Shane blushed, going back to his now seven-page-long notes. "I thought you were talking to me."
Their future child might spread some misinformation at his daycare when he claims his dads are named Ilya Rozanov and sweetheart, baby, moy pomidor Hollander. Ilya wasn't going to try to fix that one bit.
He cooed quietly at the red ankylosaurus that dived into a pond to find some food, and couldn't get a leaf off his head afterwards. He reminded him of the dachshund-looking reptile from the start of the series, just long, short, and dumb. The adventurous diver went off on an adventure to find a good spot to sing his lungs out, and he surely was passionate about it.
Ilya looked at Shane's profile, fixing the reading glasses Shane had to put on as the room became quite dark over the runtime of the show.
"You purr like that."
Shane's ears turned pink at the accusation.
"I do not."
"You do. I like it." Ilya leaned in to kiss that pink, warm ear, and Shane tried to turn his head away with a flustered eye roll. The ankylosaurus sang until a female of his species appeared, clearly interested in the noise. "See, the lady dinosaur likes it too. She came to tell him she wants his babies."
"You're way too invested in the mating storylines."
"He's a good man." Ilya claimed wholeheartedly. "He likes swimming and eats green food, and purrs nicely. I like his spikes."
Shane licked his lips with a tiny smirk.
"Of course you do."
They both started clapping when the lady accepted the male's courtship, which meant the dinosaurs began quite literally fucking on their home TV. Ilya cheered loudly.
"She liked his singing!" He gasped quietly when Anya stirred awake, huffing and puffing at him for waking her up again. "Oh, sorry moya devushka, daddy's friend got a girl."
"I liked his singing much more than the dilophosaurus's one." Shane admitted seriously. "I think he has better vocal skills. Must be why she chose him."
"It's the spikes, Shane, he has wonderful spikes. He showed them to her."
"Maybe. He does have nice little spikes."
He wrote down the description of the dinosaur, mouthing the terms and trivia. Spikes. Pretty spikes that make him handsome to other dinosaurs of his kind. Kind of like daddy Ilya has curls, and daddy Shane likes that he has curls.
During the entirety of the Hatag Island sequence, it was now Shane who had to lean against Ilya's side and grab his shirt in his hand, tense all over. Ilya wrapped his arms around him while they watched with bated breath as the magyarosaurus couldn't see his family through the tall grass and the huge, flying hatzegopteryx hunted him in the fog.
"He's too tiny." Shane hummed. "He won't get away. I hate that flying asshole."
"Me too. He's way too big. Is not even fair."
They both watched in silence with wide eyes until the dinosaur managed to get away to the cave where his family hid. The relief lasted only a moment, as one of the creatures went to check if they were safe way too quickly, and Shane grimaced.
"No, don't go!"
"He'll be fine." Ilya said, regretting it immediately after, when the dinosaur got eaten by the flying asshole. "Oh, come on!"
Anya decided she's had enough of them and hopped off the couch to find a better napping spot. Her parents were being ridiculous.
They watched the rest, cuddling under the blanket, with occasional breaks for Shane to note the most important things, or point at two sauropods bumping their heads into each other and saying hey, look, that's us. It was them, thank you very much, Ilya bumped his head into Shane's with a quiet laugh as they both hissed in pain.
He also laughed as the shark simply swam into the spinosaurus's mouth in the ocean, getting eaten straight away.
"What an idiot."
Shane tangled their legs, trying to get more on top of his husband as the documentary played, minute by minute conquering more space on the couch.
"You'd fall for that."
"Maybe I already did." Ilya squeezed Shane's hip gently. "You just stood there, looking pretty, and you caught me."
"Oh, I caught you? I wasn't aware."
"You are prettier than that…thing, though."
"Spinosaurus. They just said his name!"
The flying asshole from Hateg wasn't the only flying asshole in the series. An even bigger hoe with an even uglier beak decided to visit a nursery of little hadrosauruses, herbivores who waited for their mother to come back. He was screamed at by the other mothers, but didn't care much about being chased away.
"Great, another flying bitch." Ilya sighed, his eyes widening as the flying bitch in question simply picked up and swallowed a whole wailing hadrosaurus youngling. Shane shivered by his side, angry and disgusted.
"Oh, no, he ate the baby!"
"What a cunt."
"Poor baby." Shane wrinkled his nose and inhaled sharply as the screams alarmed the mother. "Oh, the mom! She's coming back."
"Beat his ass." Ilya almost spat through his teeth. The mother ran straight into the predator, knocking him to the ground. "Yes, come on!"
"Snap his fucking neck, he ate your kid!"
"Jump on him!"
Now, Anya decided living room as a whole space was not suitable for her nap. She needed to migrate to the bedroom upstairs to get some peace.
At least the flying bitch that ate the baby died. Ilya and Shane high-fived over it.
Nearing the end of the documentary, a T-Rex killed an ankylosaurus in the rain. At first, Ilya was furious. He liked ankylosauruses after all, a fact he's known for a whole hour by now, and he was ready to defend his favorites. They had nice spikes and were very friendly shaped, and now one of them was dead and dragged through the woods like a McDonald's meal bought to-go.
Then, he saw that the T-Rex brought the corpse to feed her five crying babies and pouted, letting out an endeared, soft hum.
"That's so nice of her." He looked at Shane, poking his cheek with his finger. "Would you do that for our kids?"
"What, kill an ankylosaurus and drag it through the woods?" Shane asked. "A moment ago, you were furious."
"I didn't know she was a mama!"
"That changes everything, then?"
"Of course. But would you?"
Shane took a deep breath, watching the tiny T-Rexes feast.
"Yes, if ankylosauruses were still around, and we had five carnivore children, I would at least try to kill it to feed them."
"Ah." Ilya beamed, happy with the answer. "Good. But you wouldn't have to. I would hunt."
"For our five carnivore babies?"
"Yes, and my carnivore husband."
"You're fucking weird, Ilya." He breathed out, and for some reason, it sounded a lot like I love you so much.
When the asteroid hit, at last, Ilya was surprised. He was so invested in the many varying storylines that he forgot there was a rock coming to Earth. And said rock first created an explosion, then an earthquake, and then covered the whole planet with ash and smoke, burning everything on its way.
Some of the dinosaurs fell into the cracks in the ground. Some fell from the sky. Some tried to flee the fires, but had nowhere to run.
As the pachycephalosaurus started to pant heavily, wheezing through the smoke, walking to try and find a safe place to hide, trees fell all around it, cracking and turning to coal. The T-Rex that ate this one's rival emerged from the wall of smoke, and for a second, everything looked like the thick-skulled animal was going to be eaten alive. The T-Rex just looked away, trying to breathe, swaying on his feet as they both wandered through the scorching hell that was once their home, disoriented and hurt. Two weeks later, as the documentary claimed, they watched the last Tyrannosaurus Rex suffocate from lack of air and the cold that followed the sudden climate change, and the sky that was covered in hazy dark clouds, shielding Earth from sunlight.
Shane and Ilya lay quietly until the end credits rolled. Shane took a shallow breath, his head tucked under Ilya's chin.
"That was…sad."
"Yeah." Ilya hummed with a low, tight voice. "They didn't even know what was happening."
"And the babies…" Shane sat up, rubbing his neck. He frowned as he saw Ilya's face. "Are you crying?"
"What? No." Ilya wiped his clearly red, wet eyes. "Russians don't cry at nature documentaries."
His voice cracked fully at the last word, and Shane shook his head at the faint, very unsuccessful attempt of covering this up that Ilya had made. He climbed onto his husband's lap, hugging him, and Ilya wrapped his arms around Shane's waist, actually crying about dinosaurs now.
"You know, they are gone for about… sixty-five million years now." He tried reminding Ilya, but the man just cried harder. "But yes, it's quite sad."
"The poor babies." Ilya sniffed, hiding his wet face in Shane's neck. "They were so cute. Where's Anya? I want to hug her. She's so small like them."
"Like the digitally created, long-dead dinosaur babies?"
"Yes." Ilya wiped his cheeks. "Can you bring Anya?"
Shane chuckled shortly, but got off the couch to find the dog as Ilya requested. After all, he was responsible for this. How could he not know Ilya wasn't aware that the beasts that disappeared in a mass extinction, caused by an asteroid, actually died in said extinction and not retired to go to Mars? He should have warned him. Bad planning on Shane's part.
He found Anya upstairs, picked her up, and delivered the sleepy majesty onto Ilya's lap, where she was immediately given scratches and praises as Ilya held her to his chest.
"Did you make enough notes?" Ilya asked. "For our future carnivore babies?"
"Human babies don't eat meat, you know?"
"Then I will hunt them whatever they want. At the Walmart store. Hunt milk for them."
"So courageous of you." Shane giggled, leaning in to kiss Ilya's pink cheek. "Did you like the documentary?"
Ilya hummed something that probably was meant to be a harsh no, boring, but sounded more like a quiet, gentle yeah.
"I think I know how to cheer you up about dinosaurs dying sixty-five million years ago." Shane hummed, kissing Ilya's cheek again. "If you want to stop crying."
The mere offer was enough for Ilya to light up immediately, wiping his face and pulling at Shane's hoodie to bring him closer. Anya jumped off the couch with an offended huff, once again, embarking on a journey to seek a better future, somewhere she could fucking sleep in peace.