Shane who, before him and Ilya get outed, keeps hearing people, fellow players, his own friends, talk shit about the man he loves and it pains him, so one night he googles "Ilya Rozanov nice person" and ends up in a subreddit where people share stories of celebrities that are surprisingly nice people and the page dedicated if Ilya is full of wholesome stories
hospital personnel from where he used or still visited the paediatric department with the team, parents of patients, even former patients themselves seeing how great, attentive, funny and light-hearted he was
puck bunnies or women he had one night stands with during the years playing for Boston saying he was a phenomenal lover and a consent king, or women that approached him whilst inebriated and whom he gently turned down, bought a bottle of water for and paid for their cabs to get back home safely
neighbours saying he was very polite, people he was nice or helpful to through the years, a mom with a screaming child whose first class seat on a flight to Moscow he gave up so she could have more room for her herself and the baby, a classmate he defended in school, a former teacher saying how smart and talented he was in spite of not having much time to study because he was training a lot, Russian-speakers saying his interviews in his mother tongue are a thing of beauty and incredibly well-spoken, waiters and shop assistants stressing how polite his interactions were
Shane devours these stories with tears in his eyes and a heart about to explode, the tab perpetually open in his phone, incognito mode.
And when someone talks shit about Ilya or when, after their outing, hate starts to be thrown at him even more viciously from the media, he goes back to the tab, just to see that there actually many that agree with him: Ilya, the love of his life, is the most wonderful person
