ok let's expand on the shane failure thing. thinking about how ilya has a whole album in his phone. titled, organized, periodically revisited. ilya rozanov, two-time hart trophy winner
the chicken shane burned so badly that ilya held the pan up and said scott hunter will look at this and feel young before taking a photo. the bookshelf shane assembled backwards and didn't notice for three weeks—ilya noticed on day two and said nothing, just waited, and when shane finally clocked it ilya was in the other room and shane could hear him. the succession of unkillable succulents and cacti that shane somehow killed anyway. (there is a graveyard on the back porch. ilya calls it the memorial garden. he has named some of them. he tends to them with more visible affection than he gives most people.) the time shane got lost driving to an arena he had played in for six consecutive years.
there are others. the album is extensive. ilya adds to it with the sort of energy a who is building something important has. and the thing, the thing, is that he doesn't just find these tolerable. he doesn't endure them. he doesn't smile tightly and recalibrate expectations and love shane despite them, which is the mode shane spent most of his life existing in, the people who loved him holding his failures lightly and carefully like something that needed to be explained away
ilya lights up. every single time, the same way, like shane has done something wonderful by being, underneath the selkes and the captaincy and the thing the media does with his face and jaw, some guy. just some guy who kills plants and gets lost and burns chicken and loves him more than anything.
shane didn't know what to do with that for a long time. honestly he's not sure he did anything with it. he just. let it happen. let ilya take the photos and name the dead plants and do the thing with his face, the delighted thing, and tried not to think too hard about why it made his chest feel like a fist was opening in it. and then one day, just some tuesday, just another thing going wrong in the low-stakes way things go wrong in a life that is mostly very good, ilya takes out his phone, and shane doesn't feel the hum.
no buzz of humiliation in the back of his skull. no automatic how bad is this, how do i fix this, what does this say about me. nothing. just ilya laughing at his phone and shane watching him and feeling... fine. warm.
"send that to me," shane says. ilya looks up. "the chicken?" "yeah." a pause. "you want," ilya says slowly, like he's translating, "photo of chicken you burned. for yourself. to have." "yes." ilya looks at him for a long moment. something in his expression that shane has learned to recognize by now: ilya, knowing something is larger than it seems and is deliberating what to do with it
he sends the photo. shane makes it his lock screen. for a week, every time he picks up his phone, there it is, the pan. the carbonized, fossilized remains. and shane looks at the photo and smiles. not at the chicken, or not only at the chicken exactly, but mostly at the specific knowledge that somewhere on ilya's phone there is an album, organized, curated, periodically revisited, of every time shane hollander was just some guy. and ilya thought it was worth keeping.
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