What if J.J. had been at the club during that infamous club scene? What if he had seen Shane staring at Ilya and the random woman? What if he sees Ilya staring right at Shane in that moment misinterprets it as a sort of intimidation tactic?
He told Shane once, if Rozanov fucks with him, he’ll fuck him right back. J.J. is a ride or die. So when he sees Ilya messing with Shane, his instinct is to get up in his face and try to fight him. Who is he to be getting in Shane’s head? Shane is the best player in the league. He has a hot movie star girlfriend. Does Ilya think he’s better than him? The nerve. The audacity. And Ilya is already miserable as hell. He’s been thinking about Shane and Rose and the media portrayal of their relationship, how they can be free and go out in a way he and Shane never could. So why not get into a fight?
J.J. manages to get a few punches in before Shane and Cliff step in, pulling the two guys fighting away from each other. It causes a bit of a scene and it’ll probably end up in some tabloid, but J.J.’s goal was to defend Shane and he did that. Shane is upset, though, because of the scene caused, and also because of what was happening just before the fight. So, he snaps at J.J and storms off. J.J. doesn’t seem him for the rest of the night.
After that night, J.J. holds a bit of a grudge against Ilya. He was already not gonna like him a whole lot because of the whole rivalry situation with Shane, but after he was messing with Shane’s head in the club? He doesn’t like him.
But then Shane and Ilya start their foundation and say they’re friends, and ask him to coach for them. And it’s a good cause and he wants to support Shane, so he does. He even brings the Stanley Cup to camp when it’s his turn to have it so the kids can have a special experience. And he really does enjoy his time there. Maybe it’s during one of the camps, after Shane had come out to their team as gay, that he starts to suspect that Shane has an unrequited crush on Ilya.
J.J. doesn’t really get it, really. He’s still not sure why they’re friends. Sure, they have a foundation with a great cause, but, how could Shane not hold a grudge against Ilya? Did he forget about the night at the club? Sure, it’s been a while, years even, but sometimes J.J. will look at Ilya and remember that night and feel disdain. But he should be better than that, so he tries to be. He doesn’t want to ruin their camp.
What he can do, however, is try to help Shane get over his obviously unrequited crush and find him a nice guy to date. After all, he wants his best friend to be happy. The only problem is, well, Shane. Every time J.J. suggests a nice guy, Shane turns him down. He always has some excuse. But J.J. isn’t going to get discouraged. He wants Shane to be happy! He needs to get out there. He is, objectively, a good looking guy, he’s successful, he’s rich… it shouldn’t be that hard to find someone to date. But it is. Maybe Shane just has really high standards.
Then, Shane and Ilya’s relationship gets outed. Not only that, but J.J. finds out that Hayden knew. For years. And Shane never told him. Even when J.J. brought up what he thought was an unrequited crush on Ilya to him. Did Shane not trust him? It’s a punch to the gut.
It really, really sucks. And in that moment, he says somethings and he hurts Shane. He regrets it later, and he apologizes. Over time, he and Shane build their friendship back up. There are times when J.J. will feel the sting of having not known a little bit, but it’s mostly fine.
It’s at that point that J.J. connects the dots about that night at the club. Ilya wasn’t trying to intimidate Shane or anything like that. He was trying to make Shane jealous. Or maybe he was even trying to hurt Shane the way he must’ve been hurt by Shane dating Rose. He feels a bit bad about beating him up when he was already down, but he was just trying to stand up for his friend. And anyway, he wasn’t completely wrong. Ilya was trying to mess with Shane, just in a different way than he thought.
For the most part, he’s happy Shane’s crush wasn’t unrequited. When he’s invited to the wedding, he readily accepts. Even if he’s still not sure how he feels about Ilya, he’s not gonna miss his best friend’s wedding. And Shane looks so happy to marry Ilya that J.J. starts to think that maybe he can’t be all that bad.
After the wedding, he spends more time with Ilya and Shane. Now that everyone knows, there’s no reason he can’t hang out with them. He usually hangs out with them when Hayden is, too. And it turns out that Ilya is actually a lot of fun. They bond over the fact that they both care a lot about Shane. Ilya says he’s more fun than Hayden is, but it’s not hard to be. They’ll playfully tease Shane too, which is really fun. At the cottage, they’ll swim in the lake and challenge each other to do random tricks and flips. At bonfires, they’ll work together to tell horror stories that freak Hayden out. Any grudge J.J. had against Ilya fades, and he gains a friendship that he truly enjoys.