BECAUSE OF YOU

don't get me wrong i love the fact that shane and ilya retcon their relationship to be love at first sight. like good for them!! but when i look at the source material im like .. you were charmed. you were jealous. he had everything you wanted (supportive family and his country behind him, able to be big and brash and move through life with ease) and you wanted to see if you could make him feel good (can you debauch the golden boy, can you be good for the man who's had everyone) but the love didn't come until you started to take apart the things that attracted you to this person in the first place. shane fell in love with the ilya who checked in on him and with the sweetness behind the barbs and with the ilya who couldn't stop kissing him in that stairwell. and ilya fell in love with the shane who thinks buffalo is stupid and can barely get his shoes off before he throws himself at ilya and can't tell his parents he's gay because he's suffocating behind his own image not because he thinks they don't love him but because he wants to honor everything they've done for him. and so it's really nice that ilya goes "i loved you from the first time i saw you" but i, omniscient reader, call bullshit. i think you love that boy now because no version of you could ever not love any version of him. but at the time i think you were mostly just curious and then the love grew despite all odds in the most hostile of circumstances because everything you learned about each other made you want more and more and more. and also probably that's even MORE beautiful. so.

i love shane so much :( it's peak shaney to ask questions that are kind of weird (i.e. 'sick like crazy??' and 'is it like... very upsetting??' and my favorite 'what will they do to you there???' re: ilya and russia LOL) but ultimately shane will use what he's learned from those questions to come up with a solution so simple and earnest like "well why don't you tell me everything that's on your mind, but in russian??? maybe it will help :)" like guh :'( ilya's so luckyy to have himmm shane just gets him and like pays so much attention to him and just LOVES HIM SOO MUCHHH :'( AND HE'S ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THE BEST WAY ILYA CAN TALK ABOUT HIMSELF BECAUSE HE KNOWS IT'S HARD FOR HIMM :'(

teamwork makes the dream work. and dreamwork. makes shrek