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
girl u gotta warn me before u point the bat signal directly in my eyes. (you pointed it at the sky i’m just already standing over it breathing heavily)
i think yes, not being anticipated in the way ilya has a 30-year endowed chair professorship in Clocking it Studies does hurt. to some extent hypervigilance is an implicit cry for someone else to be as careful with us as we are with the world
and also! shane is without an agenda or assumptions or intuition. he just asks, and he’d like to hear the answer, and he’s completely willing to go in the wrong direction and be physically turned towards the problem. and—it’s also okay if ilya isn’t ready to share. i would imagine that the implied patience of that, the “i’m here whether or not you rip yourself open for me,” is its own safety to be grateful for. two sides of a coin, maybe. i think for ilya much more than shane it’s not possible to get everything he needs from his romantic partner (part of why it irks me so bad that reid gave him no other intimate, consistent ties)—he needs, and presumably will, find other funny, damaged people with whom the ironic distance isn’t distance at all. also, like, how long does it take to completely shed the reflex to hide? i don’t think it ever goes away fully. a partner who’s bugged by that becomes its kind of stress
and when shane does make a jump or an inference it’s so plainly open: “hey, that’s not what this is, you and me. maybe it was at first, but not now and not for a long time.” what???? for someone who watched for danger, but who would also have caught and been hit just as brutally by vanishing glimpses of care and love, what a fucking relief that what you see is pretty much what you get (after some basic algebra about the closet and control issues and maybe some weird mom stuff. ilya’s got it), and that what you get is uncomplicated, whole, thorough devotion. secure attachment is no small gift
i dunno i think a lot about how one model for parity in relationships is based on equal rest. i do wonder whether on the whole ilya rests as much with shane as shane does with ilya. if he doesn’t i agree it’s for exactly the reasons you’ve enumerated
@creamsiclemelt greaaat points in the tags. ilya Accepts! i agree yes yes he does he is quite good at that. he accepts the very real seemingly insurmountable barriers of the context in which their relationship exists and it doesn't occur to him to think of a future otherwise. and it's also a morbidly conveniant way for ilya to distance himself. "this is why we can't" and not "we can't because im not worth it." and the tuna melt of it all! yes ilya saw enough to be, at the very least, somewhat confident that shane is interested in staying and eating together and being something in the daylight
i think yes, perhaps 'ilya is blind only to...' is not accurate. closer to what i mean is maybe..ilya sees it as a possible thing shane could want but it's not as robust a reading as other things he sees. he sees it but thinks he knows better, that shane doesnt realise what he's asking for. what he sees in others is what's true, even if they don't know it yet, but when it comes to how shane feels about him? there's all sorts of mental gymnastics going on there. the thing about adopting a childhood-trauma-induced view of the world is that it comes with the egocentrism of childhood, that is to say "what I think is true IS what's true." add that to ilya's undercurrent of negative self bias and we have ourselves a party. he notices shane's sweaty-palmed grip on the closet and says this isn't about me but im going to have fun anyway. I think if he notices shane wanting more than he finds a way to distance himself from it. this sheltered boring poster child for nuclear family values is catching feelings bc of course he is. he's sheltered! and boring! its not about me im just the thing he's pointed at right now. but ilya is also not one to deny himself pleasure. and shane is 6 feet plus, 200 pounds of pleasure with double ds to boot. so, let's do a tuna melt date bc i can't get enough and maybe if i move the margins just a bit i'll get taste of what i won't admit i want and that way ill be able to keep it together. shane will say yes because not because of me but because of him.
there is a version of them where, over time, this erodes. secure attachment is a gift as the great @yiiiiiiiikes25 said once and a hundred times. but at tuna melt time i think ilya is very, very far from there. or at least I hope he is bc that makes it a lot more fun for me in the sandbox
