AMOTM

Rose's Hair - ⛔️

unbelievable tension, a wall of sound, monolithic, so I'm gonna stay still.

And it just made me wonder, when is the last time that anyone casually touched Shane with affection?

Like, sure, he gets the occasional hug from his parents. He has teammates who he fist bumps with, but this man has taken his homosexuality and locked it up so tightly in a steel box that he hides away in the core of his being—there is noooo fucking way he is casually slinging an arm around a teammates shoulder or anything remotely like that.

Ilya on the other hand...

He's got Svetlana and potentially other casual partners—but he also seems like someone who is constantly touching people around him. Maybe its because he has bisexual plausible deniability/doesn't seem to really be paranoid that people will find out that he is queer. Either way, this guy is just touching people in his life in a way that would be incomprehensible to Shane "Fortress of Solitude" Hollander.

And so it makes perfect sense that in the moment of being cuddled, Shane went for Ilya's dick. Because what the fuck is this?! What is Shane supposed to do with this moment?? It feels good, really good, but how is he supposed to understand it?? If its not sex then it is outside of his framework for "when touch happens."

I think this also this explains part of the appeal of Rose to Shane. I think he knows that what he is doing to her is wrong, but...

Here's someone who not only helps him hide his secret from the world, but a person he gets to touch regularly. Who drags him out dancing. Who holds his hand in the street. I think that moment the night they met, when she puts her hand on his leg as they play poker—Shane was done for.