one of the things i find most compelling about ilya and shane is. well. imbalance. it's so rich it's so goddamn full of minerals it's insane. yes there's the closer to the surface stuff. the shane has, ilya has not. friends, teammates, family. yes yes, all important, all good stuff, but it's more it's---
okay so ilya can read shane like a book, which is no surprise. this boy, with his upbringing? would be able to spot an emotion from a mile away. this boy has a masters degree in microexpressions and he would have graduated at the age of like, eight. the tempo of the tapping fingers on the bench, the weight of footfalls on the floorboards, the "is their bed made today?", "is he wearing his rings today?", the "she didn't hug me as tight and he shut the door just a bit too loudly and fuck i don't want to come home from hockey practice," because reading the room is surviving it.
that boy's every breath was inextricably tied to the unpredictable beast of one, nay, two, angry men and a desperately sad woman. there was no room left for him to expand.
enter ilya freshly, what, 17? hockey prodigy, safe from family-induced suffocation by 4000 odd miles. he's a pro. he clocks shane in about as long as it takes for him to light his fourth cigarette. he sees the freckles and that gay panic and he thinks, im going to have some fun.
and he clocks him again and again. he sees shane so well, he sees the perfectionism, he sees the pressure he sees the anxiety and the discomfort and the head-down-ass-up-yearning to get cracked and is blind only to the fact that shane could possibly see something worth more than hotel room fucks in him.
but over time? over years and years? the weight of seeing is heavy. particularly when it's not, well, reciprocated? at least not to the same extent. shane's particular brand of issues lend themselves to a kind of self-centredness that just does not give way to picking up on those microexpressions like ilya does. ilya has to reach that point of vulnerability (which is so utterly torturous for an avoidant) where he has to actually say the shit out loud, before Shane really notices and kicks himself into gear. that shit is heavyyyyy.
we are 11 years down the line by the end of TLG right? reid does touch on this a little bit in that book ya, but I guess, i want more. what does the next 11 years look like? this dynamic cannot continue and end well. so, what? someone put it under a microscope and lemme seeee
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