"you think i am asshole"
"i know you're an asshole"
[tilts his head like that hurt] "i would not leave you like that"
"no?"
[dead fucking serious] "no"
it is actually devastating to me that ilya is being so sincere here and shane filters their interactions through the characters of rozanov and hollander The Rivals for SO LONG that it literally sets them back years.
this got. long so the rest is under the cut
between this and the vegas rooftop, it feels like ilya tries to connect with shane on a personal level several times from the beginning and just keeps getting curbed by shane's assumptions of who he is, so by the time the award show swings around he's like okay fine you clearly want Rozanov and have no interest in ilya so. i can be rozanov if i get to keep seeing you. cue bathroom scene where he's extra douchey and dominant, because he thinks this is what shane wants. so when shane comes to see him later, he tucks ilya away and rozanov fucks shane instead. it's why it feels so different from their other hookups. where did sweet loving ilya go? he buried that motherfucker. no one wants to see him. they want rozanov. his father, the fans, everyone, want rozanov. shane wants rozanov.
and he thinks he can keep it up to have a piece of shane at least, his little oasis in his horrifically vast desert, but he's. just a boy. and he's in love before he knows it, but he never forgets that shane only wants rozanov, so in boston at his place when he tries to connect again with shane personally without going too far out of character, trying to talk casually about girls and his experience with them because shane knows rozanov has a reputation, hoping that will interest shane into talking more or excite him or something, but shane is just weirded out and thinks ilya is nohomoing him, and then the phone rings and his family is ruining everything again, exposing ilya in front of shane when he's trying so fucking hard to be rozanov right now, and then he goes and fucks it by calling him shane instead of hollander when he cums, and then shane runs, reaffirming to ilya that shane doesn't want him, he wants rozanov.
so in florida when ilya says "you don't like me" he really means, you don't like me, you like rozanov. you want HIM, not ilya. ilya is a pathetic and broken thing. rozanov is confident and strong and a fantastic fuck. ilya is... nothing. you don't like ME.
so when shane sees him cry, sees his weakness, sees ilya despite how hard he's trying to keep rozanov in place, and holds him, ilya has to now reconcile with the fact that the main thing stopping him from falling into shane entirely and blowing up his fucking life to be with him, the assumption that shane wouldn't like the real him, may actually be entirely untrue
