where she queered me out

before anyone says anything: i hate this man. i think he's awful. the fact that shane is best friends with him is a personal insult to me. if a montreal public bus ran him over i would look the other way #withthepeople ✊

the problem imo is that rachel doesn't write him ironically. she genuinely has hayden telling ilya he doesn't deserve to live as a rebuttal to "what are you four, you can't eat mushrooms?" and seems to think this is harmless banter. like look at hayden. funny guy 🫵

BUT.

if you stop looking at him through the lens the books want you to and start looking at him through shane's, he makes a disturbing amount of sense

because hayden is safe. hayden is aggressively, boringly safe. hayden talks about his wag queen wife. hayden talks about his pink-frilly daughters. hayden got married at like 19. hayden is the human embodiment of heterosexual respectability. shane doesn't even have to do anything. just standing next to him makes him look straighter by association

and then after shane comes out? after he loses his team, his reputation, the media, basically his entire support system? of course he clings to the one guy who is at least vaguely kind to him

hayden isn't good. he's familiar. hayden isn't healthy. he's safe. hayden is the friend you keep because every alternative feels riskier

like hayden is stockholm syndrome. hayden is the prison you keep returning to because at least the bars keep the wolves out..

and i genuinely think that makes sense for where shane is emotionally

what i need, however, is the version of this story where shane has been married to ilya for five years and suddenly realizes there are people in the world who are kind without making him earn it. people who don't casually belittle him. people who don't make every interaction feel like surviving

bc i don't actually buy the idea that hayden was uniquely positioned to understand, esp considering hayden's family/personality! hayden "guessed," sure, but it was a joke, a stumble into the right answer. meanwhile jj spends years genuinely trying to understand what's going on with shane.

after the plane crash, jj clocks that something is wrong almost immediately. he sees a guy who's miserable, fixated on ilya rozanov, and carrying around feelings he doesn't know what to do with. he's sympathetic. he's concerned! he starts trying to set shane up with other men because he's working with the information he has and trying to help.

then there's the charity. jj is right there helping run the thing, using his cup day for it, watching shane and ilya spend increasingly ridiculous amounts of time together. from jj's perspective the problem is pretty obvious even if he doesn't have every detail. if anything, he's paying closer attention than hayden is.

which is why i always kind of wince when shane brings up "well hayden guessed." bc a) so did jj by that logic, and b) bc i don't think he realizes jj doesn't care abt the solving a mystery bit of it/failing to solve it. jj is upset because he thought they were best friends.

and honestly, i think he had reason to think he'd be someone shane could trust. jj has spent his entire career navigating a sport where standing out can make you a target as a black man in a predominately white sport. he's learned how to read rooms, smooth things over, and survive by understanding people. not in the same way shane does, obviously, but enough that i can see why it hurts to realize your friend spent years carrying something alone and never once considered coming to you.

and no, shane didn't owe him that trust. nobody owes anybody a coming out. but i do think jj is justified in being hurt by what that realization says about their friendship.

and then even after all of it, jj keeps showing up. he goes to shane's house. he rebuilds the friendship. he shows up to the wedding. he stays.

i'm trying not to let it show that i don't want to let this go is there somewhere you can meet me?