I love fics that explore David and Yuna Hollander finding out about Shane and Ilya, but what about David and Yuna after they find out? What about the entire time they had to keep the secret? I've read countless fics exploring the specific lonliness that encompass Shane and Ilya while their relationship is closeted, but I have yet to see a fic that explores the particular sadness that David and Yuna Hollander have to navigate during that time.
David and Yuna have family; maybe their parents have all passed, but surely they have siblings? cousins? aunts, uncles? nieces and nephews? They definitely have coworkers, business connections, couple friends, parent friends, childhood friends, neighbors, community members, acquaintences, etc. Did it slightly break David's heart every time a buddy was talking about their child's wedding, their family holidays, their family trip, and David had to bite back stories about Ilya? When he made small talk with his coworkers about their holidays, and David had to weave his own comments around the Ilya shaped piece of their family puzzle, his laughs quieter than usual, his smiles subdued, a peculiar sadness tinged at the edge of all his answers...
And Yuna, hockey's #1 fan, who acquires the other best hockey player in the world as a son, as part of their family, before Shane and Ilya are ever even engaged, and yet, she can't share that joy with anyone else in her life. The small talk she makes with marketing agents and other industry connections, lunches with her closest friends, phonecalls with family members, dinners with David's coworkers, barbecues with neighbors and friends- and yet now, in every conversation, when her favourite topic in the world comes up, she hesitates. She has to speak more carefully, restrain her enthusiasm when speaking of the newly minted Centaurs captain, carefully craft her opinions and plant seeds without being suspicious.
It's not only Ilya and Shane being in the closet, it's their relationship, and in protecting the secret of that relationship, David and Yuna carve out an entire section of their lives, their family, their hearts for Ilya, and have to shut it away in private. Every circumstance in which they now have to hesitate when speaking to someone in their life that they previously spoke freely around adds weight onto their heavy hearts, a slow painful sympathy for the secrecy that Shane and Ilya had been carrying for a decade. David and Yuna shared in that sadness, alone and in private, they comiserated over the peculiar lonliness that came with having to moderate conversations with everyone else in their lives.
I think about the love of parents going to great lengths to protect their child, even if that means lying to everyone else in their lives, even if that means creating distance from their other loved ones, feeling a chasm growing between themselves and others because of how fiercely they protect their family secrets. And the lonliness and guilt that came with it. Knowing the ends justified the means, but still carrying sadness in the meantime.
And!! then the joy David and Yuna experienced when they were finally able to introduce Ilya to everyone else their lives. If there's one thing the Hollanders' friends and family know about them, it's how much they care about their son. Imagine the insufferable levels of bragging, storytelling, and general cheeriness flooding every Hollander interaction once they're finally able to share Ilya with the rest of their world.
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