And they all get their happy end / In the end

The story starts with something like:

'The story of how Shane and Ilya fell in love, as they finally share it with the world is beautiful. [Summarize their story as we know it.]

It's a beautiful story.

It's just not theirs.'

Then the fic is everything that happened in canon, but the motives or details behind things are different and reveal how Shane and Ilya are so much more toxic than anyone knows.

Like, maybe instead of Ilya always being bi and hiding to stay safe, he actually never seriously considers himself truly attracted to men until he's years into his thing with Shane. He has super internalized homophobia and is massively repressed, but also so secure in his self-delusion that he's comfortable weaponizing his attractiveness and shamelessness to use sex to take a guy down a peg - a guy like his coach, by sleeping with the guy's son, or a guy like his goody two shoes rival. Maybe Ilya tells himself he's turned on by the power he's taking from them and the fact that they don't even realize what he's doing rather than their actual bodies. And maybe that's even sort of true.

Maybe Ilya isn't just hurting and oblivious or misunderstood over the years, maybe he's just legitimately mean sometimes. Petty. Lashing out at Shane for the crime of becoming someone Ilya actually wants - punishing him for becoming THE someone with everything Ilya wants - while Ilya hates himself for wanting not only a man but a man he actually really would be happy to obliterate if Shane hadn't grown on him.

And instead of Shane having been gay awakened by Ilya and then only ever really being with him, deep in the closet, maybe he's never actually felt bad about who he's attracted to. He thinks too highly of himself to feel shame about anything, much less something he can't control. He isn't actually hard to read, naive and shy; he legitimately doesn't care 9 times out of ten and considers himself too above others to care. He's manipulative and calculating and he's calculated that a straight, awkward goodboy persona would serve him best.

Maybe Shane hooks up plenty - with men he can be sure wouldn't DARE cross him, least of all by outting him. Not with hiw carefully and precisely he orchestrates his every relationship. It's only when Shane realizes that Ilya had been mostly sleeping with him for some sort of powerplay reasons, then got hooked, that Shane starts to see Ilya differently. The THRILL of knowing Ilya had tried to get one over on HIM and it had backfired in Ilya's face is just too entertaining.

Also, the more Shane learns about Ilya's own toxic behaviors the more enticing the thought of being more with Ilya, and permanently, becomes. Here is someone Shane doesn't have to hide from because he's equally fucked up. Here's someone who actually catches him in a lie and spots his manipulations and just gets really horny about it.

Just. I think it could be super interesting if their story LOOKED absolutely like the romance we know it to be, if Shane and Ilya LOOKED like we know and love. And DO love each other just as madly as in canon - maybe WORSE. Except, there's secretly nothing wholesome about either of them or their relationship.