PLEASE tlg reverse au where shane wants to come out and ilya doesn’t.
because of course shane doesn’t want to come out of course not he’s the golden boy of hockey and he is doing so good, getting such a good grade in being a Man. except is he? shane hollander king of paranoia and shame cannot really perform; he can only lie. every time a reporter asks a question he can’t answer he can only lie, and every lie causes the timer counting down to when he gets caught to tick faster, and his whole life he has been dangling by this tiny thread that he has to work harder and harder to hold onto before he falls and he is splayed open for everyone to see. but isn’t that better? shane knows pain, he can take it. people can dig through his splayed-open body and pick at it and it’ll be fine because anything’s better than trying to hold on to this crumbling thread that he *knows* will break at some point anyway. because being a good man has never been something that he just is; it’s a standard he can chase but can’t catch.
and he loves ilya. he LOVES ilya so fucking much and he’s already made up his mind that it can’t be bad to love someone so beautiful and perfect and Everything. and maybe he’s sick of listening to everyone tell him he’s a hockey robot and trying to fulfill that image; maybe he wants to be soft and love and show everyone that he is tender and vulnerable and that even then, they can’t hurt him, not when he loves ilya. and after he and ilya become official it slowly dawns on him that he’s broken THE rule now. this thing he tried so hard to resist, he just couldn’t. and that, actually, he’s glad he broke this rule. so he might as well break all of them.
but ilya doesn’t lie; he *performs*. he can’t get caught, because if someone tells him he’s putting up an act, fucking duh!!!! you came in to watch a play and you’re upset the actors didn’t actually fuck and kill and love each other? ilya performs, and if they don’t like the performance, fuck them; that’s not who he really is anyway. and that’s so liberating because his father never believed his performance, always saw through him and managed to hit where it hurt anyway, to violate the things he wanted to tuck away and keep safe. so it’s so lovely, to act and act and have people like his performance without digging deeper, without finding the soft spots. and it’s so lovely, to finally find people that he actually trusts with these soft spots — sveta and shane and the centaurs, these people who will hold his beating heart in their hands and give it a gentle kiss. so why would he come out? why would he give these absolute asshole strangers access to the most precious thing he has? this thing that only people good enough to treat it gently have touched?
and yes, russia was a horrible traumatizing place for ilya but it was also home. it’s where his niece and his mama’s grave are and coming out would mean not being able to show shane where he used to skate with sveta or the tiny restaurant he went to all the time because their borscht tasted almost just like his mama’s. ilya takes shane to moscow once because he wants to see his niece and shane doesn’t want him to go alone and suddenly everything is different, suddenly he can see his hometown through shane’s eyes, can show him every way this city is a part of him and of course shane treats it tenderly because he treats every part of ilya tenderly. and suddenly he’s excited to go back in the future because it’s not about his dad or his brother anymore, it’s just What Else Can I Share With Shane, and he’s writing things down for ideas of where to go and what to do next time. do you want to see old pictures of me? do you want to go to our old cabin? do you want to find my old skates so we can hang them next to yours? do you want to love the parts of me that were only beaten and bruised before?
and then hayden fucking pike posts a stupid fucking fanmail video of all things and it’s like losing his mother all over again. this place that just became beautiful is gone. forever.