Thinking there needs to be even more utter confusion in-fic about Shane and Ilya starting the Irina Foundation together as friends. Especially from their respective friends, and not because they think it’s a PR stunt.
They hear the press conference, Ilya talking about his mother’s death, and there are sirens going off in everybody’s heads about how in the world Ilya was ever vulnerable enough to tell Shane about his mom when most people he’s known for nearly a decade probably didn’t even know Irina was dead. Cliff is screaming crying throwing up because he had no idea, Svetlana is staring in shock at her screen because at least she had an inkling about Shane but not to this extent, and the rest of his Bears/Centaurs teammates are going “did you know???” in all the chats without him in them. Bood is ready to call Hollander up and beg for advice on how to get this crazy Russian man to open up to their team.
And on Shane’s side of things, his people have zero concept of how Shane makes friends because Hayden and Jackie claimed him from pretty much the moment they respectively met him, Rose best friend-zoned him, and J.J. is basically the final girl extrovert to end all extroverts. But Shane didn’t start off hating any of them like they think he hated Rozanov, and he’s also never had a vulnerable conversation with any of them that didn’t need to be clawed out (gently) from inside him.
Going off of all their prior knowledge of these two, their friends absolutely would conclude that Hollanov are somehow insanely close, platonic soulmates if you will. I think knowing Irina’s story should do a lot of heavy-lifting with their friends when it comes to their closeness, because what could make being friends more believable than telling someone that story? This also means there is potential for their friends calling them soulmates (platonic, to them though), and Shane fumbling over his words in horror and confusion because how did they know, while Ilya’s just like “yes” about it.
