For Sale: Fire Extinguisher, Never Used

Like the Sochi outing au delights me. There’s so much fun in its internet. You get Peter Landry living his goddamn dream as a professional hockey player on a team with Thee Shane Hollander and the two other landry brothers sobbing tears of pride and joy every single game and they are Viral Goddamn Sensations. Their fucking sister is Rose Landry and she has inexplicably decided that she shares a soul with Shane Hollander, who agrees with her about the soul sharing bit. There’s a lesbian on the first line of a top NHL team and she lifts the Stanley cup two years in a row and she’ll lift it AGAIN later because gay people stay winning in this world. The NHL got looney tunes’d into being the most progressive major professional sports league on the goddamn planet and it was through the power of gay love and also fucking Obama.

I feel so bad for Shane and Ilya in this au because their relationship is very much happening at gunpoint but beyond that there is so much genuine joy in their relationship. Like. From an outside perspective looking in, Shane and Ilya are finally a gay love story that didn’t end in tragedy. They loved each other to the point of destruction, but they weren’t destroyed. They were saved and they get to live and love and be together. People love them so much.

I tend to focus on the negative aspects of fame. The parasociality and the discourse and the lack of privacy. But I do think there is a certain beauty in what Shane and Ilya’s relationship means to people in this world.

To so many people, Shane and Ilya’s relationship is proof that queer love does not have to end in tragedy. It can beat the goddamn odds.

The reason why the world becomes so attached to Shane and Ilya in the Sochi outing au is because they are a sincerely beautiful love story. They are two people who never should have fallen in love. They stood to lose everything. But they loved each other anyway, and they tried to save each other anyway, and just this fucking once, love actually won. World fucking powers couldn’t keep them apart.

There is a world of queer people out there who were so fucking scared of their own identities and relationships because they stood to lose their family and friends and jobs and communities because of who they were and who they loved. And Shane and Ilya became this promise that sometimes you beat the odds. Sometimes the entire world comes together to save you. Sometimes you come out the other side okay.

Shane and Ilya give people so much fucking hope in this universe. People think of them and think how impossibly hopeless it all must have seemed to them. When they fell in love, they were 18 years old. They were the two most talked about prospects in the most homophobic sport around. They were on rival teams that absolutely hated each other. The NHL itself was pushing their rivalry. Their professional success was suddenly tied to hating each other and millions of people were invested in it. And Ilya was fucking Putin’s favorite hockey player.

They could never be seen outside together. They thought they’d never be able to get married. They’d never be able to go on dates. They’d never be able to tell their friends or families that they’d fallen in love. They had to pretend to hate each other. They couldn’t even save each other’s contacts under their real names. They were sneaking around hiding in hotel rooms and apartments together because that was the only way they could be together. Their love represented a serious threat to their physical safety but they loved each other too much to let the other go.

Like. If we’re talking about hopeless scenarios, the public thought Hollanov fell in love under the most hopeless circumstances imaginable. When people imagine them, they imagine a star-crossed love for the goddamn ages. They imagine two scared teenagers who fell in love with the wrong person and then spent years stealing whatever moments they could because they had no other options.

And then the worst case scenario happens. They are outed in Russia. They have no hope of making it out of this. Ilya is going to be killed or imprisoned and Shane has no choice but to stand by and watch it happen.

But he doesn’t.

He runs to save him.

He has no hope of saving him.

But he runs anyway.

And it ends with them in front of that car with the entire world watching, with each desperately trying to sacrifice themselves to save the other. They seemed so desperate and afraid and sincere in that moment. Shane was refusing to go to safety if it meant leaving Ilya and Ilya was begging him to please please please leave him behind and in that moment it seemed so, so certain that this story would have a tragic ending.

But it didn’t.

They made it out alive.

They made it out together.

Their love saved them.

People think of Shane and Ilya and think to themselves “if they survived that, then I can survive this.” They are so starving for glimpses of them happy and in love together because it makes them feel like maybe one day that will be them. People are so attached to Shane and Ilya because the idea of what they survived gives people hope that one day, it will be okay for them too. Even when it seems like all hope is lost, sometimes you still get the happy ending. The relationship is so goddamn electric to people.

They don’t go until the 2014-2015 season, but that’s not because of security—the NHL does not hold the all stars game in the years that it has players participating in the Olympics. The all stars game happens as part of the mid-season break. The Olympics replaces that mid-season break. So during the 2013-2014 season, there just isn’t an all stars for Shane and Ilya to attend. They went to the Olympics and had the absolute fucking worst time of their lives.

But they absolutely attend the 2014-2015 All Stars Game. Hollanov + the Ally Squad are the main event.

Ice hockey is one of the relatively less popular candidates of the North American sports. They’re in the top five but like. As number five. For reference, the NFL pulled ~$13 billon in 2014 with teams that operate only in the USA. That same year, the NHL pulled ~$3.7 billion from markets across the USA and Canada. There are specific regions where ice hockey is extremely popular, but overall, the NHL enjoys a relatively smaller audience than the other major North American sports.

But Hollanov + the Ally Squad has the potential to take the NHL global.

For one, the Olympics puts them in front of a massive audience just by merit of it being the goddamn Olympics. In 2014, the real Olympics had an audience of 2.1 billion viewers worldwide. In comparison, the 2014 Stanley cup finals averaged at just shy of 5 million viewers. The NHL simply cannot attract anywhere close to the size of the audience the Olympics sees.

In the Sochi outing au, the audience watching the Olympics is much higher than it was in real life. Because absolutely everyone who is not already watching the Olympics is tuning the fuck in to see what the fuck is up with those two gay hockey players trapped in Russia. In the Sochi outing AU, the Olympics probably cracked over 4 billion viewers.

People who have been following me here for a while know that I am obsessed with Baby Jessica scale events. Baby Jessica scale events are usually rescue operations that for whatever reason capture global attention. It happened when baby Jessica got stuck in a well, it happened when the Titan submersible disappeared, and it happened with the Tham Lung caving rescue. For whatever reason, there are some rescue efforts that the entire world stops and pays attention to. Everyone stops, everyone holds their breath, and for a few days, the entire world hopes that someone will be saved.

The sochi outing au has the potential to be larger than any Baby Jessica scale event we’ve ever seen. Because Sochi presents this perfect storm of factors that would bring this event to an unprecedented level of global notoriety. The audience is already watching. 2 billion eyes are already turned their way before anyone is in danger. And then, suddenly, Shane and Ilya get outed. They play out the opening act of their love story in front of 2 billion eyes. All of those people are going to go and tell their friends, family, coworkers, the random people they meet in bars and on the street. The audience would grow exponentially. And for a few days, the entire world would be thinking about and talking about and getting emotionally attached to Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. 

We like to check back in on our Baby Jessicas. If something happens to them, the world likes to know about it. The real life baby Jessica ended up in the news again recently, years after she had done anything of global importance, because she was arrested. Even though it had been years since her rescue, there was still public interest in what was going on with her life.

Shane and Ilya are famous athletes. The world can follow their lives much easier. If the world wants to see what’s going on with them, they can just watch one of their games.

The NHL is absolutely riding this wave of attention. This is billions of dollars. This is world leaders suddenly caring about the results of their playoffs. The Obamas are suddenly attending the Stanley Cup finals. Lobbyists would kill for that kind of opportunity to rub elbows with world leaders, and suddenly, it’s an opportunity open to anyone who owns an NHL team. This is so much money that not even nuclear waste levels of homophobia can stop the NHL from shipping Hollanov. They just don’t have the option to force Shane and Ilya out. They have an entire world of people who want to see Hollanov + the Ally Squad ride off into the sunset like it’s the end of the goddamn movie. People want to be able to check back in on Shane and Ilya over the years and see them happy and in love and fulfilled and successful. Which means the NHL is looking at an unprecedented global audience every single time one of their teams makes it into the playoffs. The NHL is suddenly brokering broadcasting deals to stream their games into countries that have never once before given a shit about any of their teams. All because the world wants to keep checking back in on Hollanov.

So the NHL is gritting its teeth and shipping fucking Hollanov. If they retaliate against Shane and Ilya, they are looking at investigation from the multiple world leaders who just turned the gears of nations to save those gay boys and also the unbridled ire of a planetful of people who think Shane and Ilya personally invented love. Fujoshis would fly from across the world to pipe bomb the NHL headquarters if the NHL retaliated against Hollanov. On the flip side, if they grit their teeth and make Hollanov + the Ally Squad the stars of every event, then they get billions and billions of dollars from an extremely invested global audience.

The NHL is coordinating with Hollanov + the Ally Squad’s security teams well in advance to make sure the All Stars game is safe enough for them to come. Because they are the ones the world wants to see. The global audience is not tuning in to see some random asshole from the fucking LA Queens who didn’t even compete in the Olympics.

They are tuning in so they can see Shane and Ilya holding hands during a press conference and telling the world how they’re happier and more in love than ever. They’re tuning in so they can see the glimpses of Shane and Ilya chatting with their best buddies J.J., Carter, and Scott, who captured the hearts and minds of the world with their earnest and visibly confused allyship. Like it or not, Shane and Ilya are the All Stars Game now. If they tried to gracefully bow out of the event due to security concerns, they’d find themselves on a group call with their GMs and the NHL commissioner’s office within the hour to find out How We Can Make You Feel Safer, Because We Really Want You Both At The Event :)

If Shane and Ilya are both at an event, that means that the expected audience goes from a few million if they’re lucky to potentially north of a billion. Their jerseys sell out every single time they get papped doing anything more racy than brushing fingertips. They are in a parasocial relationship with the entire planet.

They are the greatest love story of the modern age and people are absolutely obsessed with them for it. Shane and Ilya played out a desperate, passionate story of star-crossed love on the global stage, and the fucking All Stars game is the happily ever after at the end of the book.

In my opinion, navy blue sheets are the official sponsor of fuck boys across America. Every single frat boy goes to college and buys the exact same set of fuckass navy blue sheets. I don’t know why this is. They just do.

Ilya Rozanov canonically owns navy blue sheets and this fact DELIGHTS me

We see his house in one episode and Shane Hollander rides that dick in a bed decked in the coat of arms for fuck boys across America. King did you go sheet shopping with the proud members of fucking sigma alpha chi.

I love it so much. I love that Ilya picked the most fuck boy coded sheets imaginable. I hope his sheets are forever fuckass navy blue.

So the fabulous, incomparable @un-liebling sometimes makes memes for the silly little tales we chat about on here and they proposed via memes that in the Sochi outing au universe Carter Vaughn gets to star in the hockey version of space jam, and then I joked that Shane had been dodging Warner Brothers’ attempts to get him to star in that thing for years (as he is the Michael Jordan of hockey) and so they eventually asked Carter Vaughn who turned out to be the goddamn star and hero the world needed.

And then I joked that everyone figured Shane always said no because he’s too serious and dedicated to hockey to ever act but then the muppets ask him to be the human actor in a muppet movie and Shane immediately said it would be the honor of his goddamn life because it’s the fucking muppets (Shane may or may not have been secretly and extremely emotionally attached to the muppets as a child), inadvertently launching a Warner Brothers/Disney Cold War because Shane Hollander jilted the Looney Tunes but dropped everything the second the muppets blinked his direction.

Which resulted in more memes that I frankly just misread when I first saw them and I thought they were proposing that Shane Hollander starred in The Muppets (2011), originally starring Jason Segel and Amy Adams, and I was like “that would be so goddamn funny because that movie was released pre-Sochi so could you IMAGINE if you turn on your tv one day and have to be like ‘why is Putin trying to kill the guy from the muppets (2011)’ and only then do you find out that starring in the muppets (2011) was just kind of a side quest for him as his true passions are (1) being the greatest hockey player to ever live and (2) sucking off Putin’s favorite hockey player and Putin found out about that second thing and he’s super pissed now so he’s trying to kill the guy from the muppets (2011)”

As it turns out they were NOT proposing that, i had just misread the posts on my first pass, but it still spiraled into a different series of posts where we riffed about a world in which the Sochi outing au still happens but Shane Hollander starred in the goddamn muppet movie pre Sochi (he was trying to get emotional actualization out of it and instead he got this dumb fucking Oscar). Rose Landry was of course his leading lady and they ended up still dating but this was circa 2010 when the muppets (2011) was being filmed and so it was when Ilya was still begging Shane to let him fuck him so now there are a bunch of embarrassing sexts of Ilya begging Shane to let him fuck him pls don’t abandon him for that backwater Michigan bitch and Shane having to reply “please do not sext me when I’m with the muppets.”

And we’re so dedicated to making sure Shane Hollander is always winning on this blog that we gave him a muppet-specific acting career that he achieved unreasonable success with and so he kept winning these dumb fucking acting awards for his acting career which is, again, muppet-specific. Shane does not want any of his acting awards. He is only proud of his hockey awards. His muppet-specific acting career is purely for emotional actualization reasons. Stop giving him these dumb fucking awards he doesn’t know how to act.

This eventually results in him becoming tied with Rose Landry for being the youngest EGOT to ever live (he’s tied with Rose Landry because we are (1) so dedicated to Shandry platonic soulmatism here that we gave them the same birthday and (2) Rose and Shane teamed up to make sure they won their final award for the same project so that they’d achieve EGOT status simultaneously). We are also so dedicated to making sure Rose Landry is always winning on this blog that we gave her an Olympic gold medal in skeet shooting, and so she and Shane are the worlds first EGOOTs (Emmys Grammys Oscars Olympics Tonys). And the muppets are very proud of them for all of this, as Shane and Rose are friends with the muppets after they starred in the muppets (2011) together.

But I cannot emphasize enough that did not actually happen in the Sochi outing au. The Sochi outing au is like a big Olympic sized swimming pool that we are all splashing around in and the au of the Sochi outing au where Shane Hollander starred in the goddamn muppet movie pre Sochi is just like, a little jacuzzi we sometimes vibe in. We all love the muppets here and are somewhat traumatized by them because I went straight from the muppets into the Stepford wife curse au which is an incredibly different energy from the muppets.

In sum: the muppets have no real involvement in the Sochi outing au but we have a different, sillier little sandbox to play in where the events of the Sochi outing au still happened except for the purposes of that world Shane Hollander starred in The Muppets (2011) before he landed himself in international peril as the guy who sucked off Putin’s favorite hockey player

Then for the Stepford wife curse au:

I went straight from riffing about the muppets into the stepford wife curse au which is uh. Incredibly dark. And I got a lot of asks from people who went to sleep to the muppets and woke up to “wouldn’t it be fucked up if the ending of the long game happened because Shane was cursed to be a perfect passive receptacle for everyone else’s desires and be So Happy That His Entire Life Fell Apart :) It’s Happily Ever After :) and the entire time Shane is trapped in his own body suffering while everyone tells him how they like him better like this” that amounted to “where did the muppets go can we please go back to the muppets” (I can’t remember how many I answered tho) and it eventually turned into a minor au of the stepford wife curse au (which. I can’t remember if this au was only ever discussed in the comments of a post or if it got its own post) wherein the muppets are incredibly powerful avatars of magic and Also Shane’s Friends (because he starred in The Muppets (2011)) who free him from his agonizing cursed existence with a gentle embrace from Kermit.

But that’s also not in the actual, main stepford wife curse au. The stepford wife curse au is incredibly fucked up and there shall be no muppet-related relief.

It could manage making its host sick far easier than it could mimic depression. If you want a poor sick wifey that’s wasting away to score sympathy, then it will happily induce vomiting. It will guzzle cleaning solution and tell everyone what a martyr their husband is for taking such good care of them :) He Is Their Rock :) :) :)

The curse can handle inducing a physical response. It doesn’t perceive its hosts pain or discomfort the way a human would. It knows everything going on in its host’s mind, feels all the stimuli that its host’s body receives, but those sensations just aren’t good or bad to it. A good example of this is how it just stops when its spouse isn’t using it. It’s physically painful to hold the same position for hours. And the curse is aware of the pain, but that pain has no deterrent effect on it. It doesn’t perceive it as bad or something to be avoided. It just is. Its host experiences the suffering that comes with pain but the curse just doesn’t care. So if your ideal spouse is someone who throws themselves down the stairs, it’ll do it with a smile. It’s Just So Happy You’re Happy :) :) :)

Now, if you tried to talk to the curse about how the sudden and unexplained illness or accident that robbed them of their career aspirations and passions is affecting them emotionally and psychologically, it wouldn’t be able to handle that conversation. I think I described the curse in another post as having the capacity of a baby doll that mimics crying so you can pretend to soothe it. It has no interiority. It can make itself physically sick, but it can’t accurately mimic how a human being psychologically copes with long-term illness.

Which is why it struggles so goddamn hard to mimic depression when Ilya starts probing it trying to figure out what’s wrong with Shane. The best it can do is feign looking sad. But it can’t manage complex conversations about why Shane’s sad.

I think the baby doll analogy really works the best. A doll can be programmed to cry at random. It can be programmed to stop crying when its owner pats its back over a sensor. It mimics a physical expression of sorrow.

A real person crying has motive and reasoning behind their tears. Something is upsetting them or something is wrong and whatever that wrong thing is can be discussed and processed and helped. The curse cannot fucking mimic that. It has no interior life. It cannot pretend to have its own motives or desires or individuality because that just isn’t what it is. There is absolutely nothing behind its tears. It cried because that’s what the doll was programmed to do in that moment.

It would also have an easier time of it if Ilya wanted Shane to have depression. Like. If he had some kind of weird depression-specific Munchausen Syndrome and he wanted a super depressed husband who just laid in bed and sighed pitifully and needed comfort from his Big Strong Husband, it could manage laying in bed and sighing pitifully and saying Thank God I Have You :) You Take Care Of Me :) :). But Ilya doesn’t actually want Shane to be depressed. He thinks Shane is depressed. He wants Shane to be happy.

The curse spends so long trying to convince Ilya that It’s Fine :) Ilya Makes Him So Happy :) :) in part because Ilya’s concern is a sign that it is failing. It has a singular purpose driving its existence, and that is to be the Exact Version Of Shane Hollander That Ilya Rozanov Wants It To Be :) :) :) It Is The Perfect Shane :) It’s The Shane That Ilya Never Has To Truly Worry About, Because This Shane Has No Problems Or Desires Of His Own :) It’s The Shane That Always Wants Whatever Ilya Wants :) The Shane Ilya Never Needs To Fight With :) The Shane Who Will Never Say No Or Disagree Or Be Anything Other Than What Ilya Wants Him To Be :)

If Ilya is genuinely, sincerely worried about Shane, then it is fucking failing at its one reason for existence. Like. If Ilya was coming in with nuclear levels of mommy issues and wanted Shane to be exactly like his mom down to the clinical depression, then it would happily feign depression because then It’s Being What Ilya Wants :)

But that’s not what’s happening. Ilya is nervously sitting Shane down with a pre-written speech because he’s terrified that Shane’s clinically depressed and he thinks Shane’s completely given up trying to come to him for support because Shane tried that around when they got married and Ilya invariably responded with a response that amounted to “that problem exists only in your head but I can fuck the self esteem back into you if it will make you feel better” and then Shane just sort of… disappeared in front of Ilya’s eyes. He doesn’t want anything anymore and doesn’t seem to do anything anymore unless Ilya asks him to do it and he’s just so empty now. Shane’s one of the most passionate and stubborn and dynamic people Ilya’s ever met and he’s just… gone. And all Ilya can think is that Shane was going through something terrible and Ilya checked out and didn’t pay attention at all and when Shane outright reached out to him for support he told him his problems were just him being irrational but here’s a blowjob about it and then Shane was reaching out for support less and less until he just stopped and gave up on everything in his life that he used to care about. And now Ilya’s terrified that maybe his husband came to him to be saved and then Ilya simply didn’t and now he’s just. Given up. Shane acts like he’s just going through the motions of being alive and Ilya knows that that fails eventually. You wake up one morning and you can’t go through the motions anymore. He knows he’s fucking months late but he’s here and he loves Shane and he wants Shane to be happy again and he’s so, so sorry it took him so long to listen to what Shane was trying to tell him before. Please let Ilya get him help. He just wants Shane to get better.

All of which means it is not being what Ilya wants.

It doesn’t cop to depression immediately in part because Ilya doesn’t want Shane to be depressed. This is a problem Ilya’s trying to fix and it is not something that is supposed to have problems. Like. It also knows it cannot fool a therapist—or anyone, really—if it has to seriously talk about Shane’s emotions beyond the most shallow I’m So Happy Now :) I Found My Happily Ever After :) :) :), so it’s refusing to cop to depression on those grounds, but it’s also losing its fucking mind because it has one reason to exist and it is just failing to accomplish it if Ilya thinks something is wrong with Shane. It isn’t supposed to be the version of Shane that has something wrong with it. It is supposed to be the version of Shane that is Perfect :) If Ilya is trying to fix him because he thinks something’s profoundly wrong, it is not fucking perfect.

Ilya has a bunch of little things about how Shane’s been acting that have been stacking up to make him so worried. Shane doesn’t drink ginger ale anymore unless Ilya hands him a can. Because shit like “drinking ginger ale” is something that Shane only used to do because he wanted to. The curse doesn’t want anything. It doesn’t have desires any more than a baby doll has desires. It will never think to drink the goddamn ginger ale on its own initiative because it is missing the part of itself that has initiative. It has no desires. It doesn’t want anything. It never even occurs to it that a real person sometimes craves a can of ginger ale. Desire is too foreign a concept to it.

Ilya sees that behavior and thinks about how depression can make you so empty that you just don’t want anything anymore. You stop doing the things that used to make you happy, like drinking the occasional ginger ale. He can tell something’s wrong because Shane is so fucking empty that he doesn’t seem to want to do anything for himself anymore. Please please please just talk to him.

The curse processes that as Ilya Wants The Number Of Ginger Ale Cans To Go Down Sometimes :) It Can Do That :) and it just starts fucking. Pouring a single ginger ale can down the fucking drain every single time Ilya leaves it home alone. Then it goes and stares at the wall until Ilya’s car pulls in or it waits until it knows Ilya’s supposed to get back and then it goes to prep Shane for sex because it’s Perfect :) And The Perfect Husband Is Always Ready And Available For Use :) :) :)

But Ilya’s version of the Perfect Shane is not medically depressed. Every time Ilya confronts Shane about his “depression,” it is a sign that the curse is not satisfying Ilya the way it’s supposed to. It’s losing its goddamn mind.

The only reason why it’s able to eventually cop to depression because 1) Ilya starts to suspect that Shane’s actually cursed, and its need to hide its own existence kicks in and 2) it tries to rationalize it as Ilya Keeps Saying That He Just Wants Shane To Get Help So He Can Start On The Road To Getting Better So Maybe He Just Wants A Shane On That Road :) Like. At that point it’s spent over a month trying to convince Ilya that There’s No Need To Worry :) If It Was Depressed It Got Over It :) It’s The Perfect Shane Again :) :) :) and Ilya was just not fucking biting, because the curse’s imitation of humanity was inherently imperfect. There was always something else for Ilya to pick up on that kept tipping him off to the fact that Shane was acting empty still. So after some agonizing back and forth, it decides that maybe it just needs to become the Perfect Shane slower. Ilya keeps telling it that the path to recovery is slow and hard but he’ll support Shane the entire way so maybe Ilya wants a Shane that’s on a Slow Road To Recovery. Maybe if it just pretends like it’s struggling but getting better then Ilya will eventually accept that it’s Better :) Perfect Actually :) :)

But this brings the curse right up to the line of what it’s capable of. It’s not supposed to be something that needs to be supported on the slow road to recovery—you aren’t supposed to genuinely worry about it ever. Someone with Munchausen Syndrome isn’t genuinely worried about their spouse—they want them sick. In that case, the curse is just being what they want. It’s not presenting its spouse with problems by being sick because that’s not a problem to the spouse—they want it to be sick.

The curse is fracturing under its own internal logical processes when it finally cops to being “depressed.” It’s like: Ilya Doesn’t Want Shane To Be Depressed-> Ilya Wants Shane To Be Getting Better From Being Depressed-> Ilya Thinks Getting Better From Being Depressed Is A Slow Process-> Ilya Wants Shane To Be Slowly Getting Better From Being Depressed-> But Ilya Doesn’t Want Shane To Be Depressed At All-> If Its Slowly Getting Better Then It’s Depressed Which Means It’s Not What Ilya Wants Shane To Be-> But Ilya Wants Shane To Be Slowly Getting Better So Maybe It Is What Ilya Wants Shane To Be-> But If It’s Slowly Getting Better It Has To Spend Some Time As Something Ilya Doesn’t Want It To Be-> If It Spends Some Time As Something Ilya Doesn’t Want It To Be Its Not Perfect

It’s borderline caught in a processing loop. It can only be what it is but in that moment it cannot be what it is. It is barely able to get out an admission that Maybe Ilya’s Right :( It’s Been Hard For Shane Lately :( Maybe He’s Been… Sad :( But It’s Really Hard For Shane To Talk About It :( He Needs Time Before He’s Ready :( But He Wants To Get Better :) He’ll Come To Ilya As Soon As He’s Ready To Put What Hes Feeling Into Words :) He’s So Lucky To Have Ilya Supporting Him :) :) Ilya Takes Such Good Care Of Him :) :) :)

A vague admission that maybe he’s sad for reasons he’s not ready to talk about fucks the curse up so bad that Shane’s able to wrench back enough control that he’s able to briefly move his own hand. And if Ilya had pressed Shane in that moment, he probably would have realized Shane was cursed. The curse just wouldn’t be able to convincingly craft responses to him.

But Ilya thinks he’s seeing the first glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. Ilya thinks Shane’s finally starting to open up to him again. He doesn’t want to push Shane right after Shane tells him “I’m not ready to talk about it with you yet but maybe I will be soon.” Like. He thinks he got into this mess because he ignored what Shane was telling him and blew him off. He doesn’t want the first time Shane’s opened up to him in months to immediately turn into him not listening again.

So he doesn’t push. Worse, he tells Shane how happy he just made him. He can tell Shane’s struggling and he’s so sorry for how much Shane’s suffered in the last year but it’s the relief of his goddamn life to know that Shane’s opening up to the idea getting help. It’s the first hope Ilya’s gotten that he can fix what he broke when they got married. Shane was getting dragged through the goddamn mud when they got married and Ilya didn’t support him or defend him he fucking laughed at him for it why the fuck did he ever laugh at him for it he’s so fucking sorry and he just wants to know that he can still fix it but he’s got another chance now and he’s not going to waste it. Like. Ilya’s had this overwhelming fear that it’s too late to fix whatever broke in Shane after they were outed and this is the first sign he’s gotten in months that he still has time and that Shane can come back from this.

So he says he’s happy. Shane just made him so, so happy. Things are going to start getting better now, Ilya swears. He’ll do whatever it takes to make Shane happy again.

And the curse is like. Yay :) It Made Ilya Happy :) That Was The Right Answer :) And it manages to force Shane back down again.

The curse isn’t used to having to pretend to be sick or sad. Most of its spouses haven’t wanted that. They’ve wanted a No Maintenance Never Sad Never Needs Anything Wife. But if its spouse wants it to be sick, then it will make itself sick. It’ll swallow poison and throw itself down the stairs and tell everyone in the goddamn world that It’s So Lucky To Have Such A Devoted Spouse :) He Takes Such Good Care Of It :) :) :)

But this imitation is going to be inherently shallow. It is a baby doll that’s been programmed to cry. It can say it’s Sad and Struggling if that’s what its spouse wants. But you cannot put that thing in goddamn therapy, because if you ask it why it’s sad it has no goddamn clue. Wants and desires and opinions and any kind of sense of self are all too foreign to it for it to convincingly mimic.