I need an AU where Shane and Ilya end up training together one summer, before Irina's dead, and Ilya comes over with a Russian group of players.
It would be normal for Ilya to stick with the Russian players, to keep speaking Russian and only train against the other players.
Except Ilya loves playing against Shane, and Shane's obviously been cast out to the fringes by the English and French speaking players. So Ilya pulls Shane to the Russian group.
Right to the centre of it, bc Ilya's got the same charming pull to him even as a child.
And when the other Russian players say that Shane's too weird to keep hanging out with them Ilya says "fine" and leaves with Shane.
And Yuna who's heard so often from her son's teachers that he's always been on the fringes, who's heard from Shane that he "doesn't really have any friends at school", who knows his hockey teammates still think he's weird but at least he's good and funny, gets to witness her son get chosen by someone who was pushed to choose. Even if Ilya's struggling to communicate with her and with Shane, he doesn't go back to his Russian friends.
He doesn't go the "easy" route.
I just think Ilya choosing Shane when all the other kids around them can sense the different-ness of Shane's autistic ways would be so good.
Especially when paired with them being penpals but the letters stop for a couple months and Yuna has to prepare herself to talk to Shane about how Ilya's left him too.
Shane who finds a hockey training thing in Russia for the summer, applies and is ofc accepted, and when he shows up with Yuna in tow ofc Ilya is there and he looks so so so sad.
And then Shane calls his name and Ilya looks at him with disbelief. And Shane asks if he's okay and Ilya, who's never actually lied to Shane before, tells him that Irina's dead.
Yuna watching her son hold his best friend together and telling Ilya that she's gonna look out for him now.
