Truly Reheated

Ilya is so lost for Shane immediately it makes my heart HURT like does he know his sweet future husband is autistic? No. But does he know his sweet adorable angry kitten situationship definitely ran to the bathroom after the stunt on stage to have a little angry kitten meltdown? YES and you can see it on his face when he walks into that bathroom like oh kaaaay time to let my beloved let out his feelings in private and remind him everything is fine I'm here ugh he's already besotted

Yes! I 100% would have taken that kiss to mean there would be lots of kissing and would be extra sad if no kissing (and that's after the fact that I already really like kissing)

I know bisexual terminator was trying to come out during tuna melt gate but all Mr. Autism heard was "gay as fuck to never be seen with a girl btw" "you're failing to perform heterosexuality they're going to kill you"

LITERALLY this I'm on this episode and Shane was not panicking until he realized there were Standards™ for him to meet and Ilya was setting them. Doesn't matter Ilya wasn't actually doing that, Shane heard him loud and clear!

Ilya is the type of depressed person who opens the fridge and realizes there’s no milk and is like “Fine, I’ll just kill myself then” and Shane overhears and wears a really exasperated look and says “I told you not to joke about that” and Ilya responds “Wow okay I thought it was healthy to share my feelings but I guess I will just bottle them up then” and Shane gives him a look like he’s got five seconds to run.

This is probably too anti-psychiatric for the HR fandom, but I honestly believe Ilya would be the last person to ever suspect Shane is autistic. Most the time, non-autistic people with a commonplace understanding of autism only suspect a person is autistic when they perceive that person’s behavior to be so abnormal and/or disruptive that in their mind it could only be explained by a condition. But Ilya is always either unbothered or endeared by Shane’s autistic traits. Sometimes he doesn’t even notice them. It just doesn’t make any sense to assume that he would ever look at Shane doing something that he either has no problem with or finds adorable, and then think, “This has to be a symptom of something.” Honestly if Shane ever did get diagnosed, I don’t think Ilya would believe it. And sorry but I also kind of think this is exactly how Shane would want Ilya to be.

Not to get too autistic on main, but the autistics that seem not too abnormal or disruptive like Shane are having deep meltdowns that are disruptive and bothersome behind closed doors. While we saw Shane have a meltdown when David appeared and Ilya was excellent at giving him calming support and didn't seem bothered by Shane at all, that's not exactly the point. He can be endeared by Shane and also recognize that Shane does get into levels of distress that are atypical and if nothing else, distressing to Shane. Shane isn't having a fun time being freaked out about his triggers and eventually, those triggered reactions would begin to concern Ilya not because he thinks Shane is weird or bothersome, but because he wants Shane to not be detrimentally affected by all these stress events. This is why I'm big into the notion that Ilya doesn't know Shane is "autistic" - but he's thinking constantly about how to support Shane through his meltdowns and wanting him to get help when he asks for it. And the fact that in the Long Game (spoilers) Ilya seeks out therapy almost completely on his own (just with the fact that Shane was like, briefly, get help maybe?) suggests to me that Ilya would absolutely use his resources in the same way for Shane.

Shane hollander is truly one of the characters of all time. He played one sport when he was like 4 years old and decided to make it his entire livelihood for the rest of his life. He met one guy when he was 18 and decided that was it. Thats all he needed. Hes made like 4 decisions in his life and if anything jeopardizes those decisions he is trying to change the trajectory of the universe with his mind. He is constantly playing 10D chess with every possible situation and life scenario (read: plotting and planning 10 years in the dark after ilya offhandedly mentions marrying someone else for a green card) and im not sure if he's winning or losing. No one is doing it like him

So lovely to have such committed autism representation on TV these days