Hope your weekend has been amazing and nice and all the good things! Re-reading fsfoeo as I wait for chapter 22 (which is coming soon, right? Right?😭😭) and I'm trying to determine when Hollander became Shane and Rozanov became Ilya, and I think there is a moment for each, but maybe I'm just reading too much into it. Can you confirm or deny if this was on purpose lol pls and thank you♥️
ahhhh yes i absolutely put thought into this and i love that u noticed it !!! they both go through the journey of exclusively referring to each other by last names in their internal monologue, then slipping in a single first name, switching between the two for a bit, and then settling into first names. i wanted this to happen before they ever say it aloud because i don't think you accidentally call someone by their first name aloud unless you've really come to view that as the default way of referring to them in your head and you just let your guard down for a second, right? i knew i wanted their first time saying the names aloud to be in this intimate climax of the story after ilya's dad's death, so i made sure to work up to it for a while
the way i looked at it was that for each of them, the switch to a first name inside their head would happen in a moment that represented uncharted intimacy to them
it happens for ilya first, and happens during sex. ilya's someone who has a lot of sex and has never found it very intimate before. he and shane have even been hooking up for a while without him noticing the change it's putting inside him. in chapter 12, he's beginning to have a tough time emotionally -- his dad's illness is beginning to show, alexei has been calling him a lot and therefore ilya can't escape the reminders of his oppressive childhood. the lack of care he has around him feels very stark, and the more he thinks about family/childhood, the more he's aware of that own contrast in a sort of pre-irinas-death vs post-irinas-death way. he has anonymous sex with women in this chapter and finds it oddly unsatisfying. after finding out definitively about his father's illness, he actively avoids shane and hooks up with someone else, and ends up sleeping alone, and is really isolated and sad. then he sleeps with shane again. this is contrastingly extremely intimate and ilya's getting an emotional connection from it that he can't name or admit to.
i wrote in the most recent chapter that ilya often uses sex to figure out things about himself -- that as a teenager he used it to figure out his sexuality, charisma, relationship to his body, friendship with svetlana, etc. here he does the same. he can't explain why sleeping with other people is not comforting him anymore and sleeping with shane is, but it happens subconsciously, and he slips into using shane's first name in his inner monologue during that moment of intimacy, because his body can tell what his brain hasn't caught up with yet -- that sex with shane is comforting, rather than just sexual, and he hasn't really experienced emotional comfort since his mother died
for shane, it's completely different. his first name moment comes when ilya visits the hollanders at their family cottage. the way i justified this was because: shane has a very divided relationship between sex and his personal life. he compartmentalises. he really convinces himself that sex with men (ilya) is something he biologically wants, but has nothing to do with his emotional life (he's lying sooo hard to himself)
the first time shane thinks of ilya by his first name is in this line, as ilya meets his parents at the cottage: For a moment, as they all stand there, Shane notices that he and Ilya are kind of mirroring his parents’ position – stood shoulder-to-shoulder, two sets of two.
he makes the switch to first names in the first moment that he compares himself and ilya to his parents. to shane, who grew up with this incredibly strong example of partnership in his parents, everything he can imagine about intimacy comes from them. it's emotional, loving, domestic, soft, sweet. they support each other. he would never have thought of himself and ilya in those terms, but in this moment, while they all stand under the same roof, something inside shane's mind can't imagine being as cold and distant with your partner as he is with ilya up until now. his parents would never call each other by last names. in a way, by allowing himself to become a little more emotionally open here, shane's mirroring his parents, taking cues from them as he so often does in his life, a luxury that ilya has never had
his parents even talk about referring to ilya by his first name, before he arrives. they're not including shane in that instruction, but he's there and notices it; it's the first time he's had this encouragement to think of ilya outside of a hockey and lockerroom context, really. the ilya who's staying at the cottage with them is notably different to team-ilya, in his parents' minds, and therefore they won't call him by his last name while he's here. for shane this kickstarts the idea of things being different at the cottage, and enables a lot of the new, brave intimacy he and ilya experience during the visit.
i would say that for shane the moment of increased intimacy all comes from feeling safe, with his parents at his family home away from their lives in hockey, and therefore free to think of their relationship in a more intimate context. while for ilya it comes from feeling out of control, and being desperate for comfort in a moment where shane is the only person he can seem to take it from, even if he doesn't yet understand why
i'm sorry i wrote an essay about my own fic lmao but i hope this is interesting to someone bc i deffo put thought into it while writing !!!!!!
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