What I love about Ilya and Shane in Vegas is that it puts into such sharp focus all the glimmers of their dynamic they'd been teasing up till then. My evil take is that even the fact that Ilya ghosted Shane for six months leading up to it was, complicatedly, a little hot for them both.
Ilya had legitimate reasons to be emotionally distant during and after Sochi, and Shane had legitimate reasons to be hurt by it, but also, Shane being desperate for Ilya, being embarrassed by how desperate he is, asking "with who?" when Ilya said he was busy before heading on stage, makes Shane squirm, makes Shane irritated with Ilya's self-assured selfishness, and annoyingly, knowing Ilya has that kind of power over him, well, it kind of turns Shane on. And it turns on Ilya, too.
So the denial of Ilya's... everything... for six months is in some ways a step back from where they were before Sochi and in some ways, when he slings his arm over the paper towel dispenser, the perfect foreplay for how much further they can take this.
Because Ilya discovers how Shane reacts to being denied. And Shane discovers how Ilya reacts to denying him. Like the glimmer before this was in their first hookup, when Ilya teases that he’s leaving after Shane got him off, without getting Shane off in return.
But in Vegas, Ilya pushes the dynamic further with his "maybe ask nicely" - "please suck my dick please" - "no" while giving Shane a firm grip on the chin, pulling him in for the hottest kiss he's tasted in half a year.
Shane giving Ilya the power to make him wait, make him wonder if Shane will get what he wants, make Shane question what he even wants more of in the first place - to be given release or to be held in Ilya’s tension longer - is such a huge leap forward in their relationship that I think, no matter how poorly the aftercare went, they both felt closer in the long run because of it.
Afterward, Shane thumps his head softly to the elevator door when he types and then deletes we didn't even kiss, and it's at least partly from the emotional whiplash from how the night started to how it ended, without his wish for a sweet kiss goodbye.
And yes, Shane could have been better at expressing his wishes, and Ilya could have been better at being attuned to them - like he was when he finally broke his teasing in their first hookup, "let me show you how to do this good." And Ilya's emotional whiplash in Vegas was real too, miserably smoking that cigarette, no kiss to put a spell on a blissed out boy. It was the wrong kind of denial for them both. Neither of them wanted the night to end on such a sour note.
But here is where I defend the two of them moving on from that night without much friction afterwards. Shane deletes the text, goes back to his original See you next season, and then they're off to the races, texting and fucking and discovering each other again and again. Their closeness from the first part of the night far outweighs their distance at the end of it.
Yes it was sour. And to live on a steady diet of sour would become too toxic to withstand, but also, sometimes, a little sour can taste kind of good, too.
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