🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔 for shits n giggles
👄👄👄👄👄👄👄👄👄👄👄 for suffering (at least hollanov's)
🧣🧣🧣🧣🧣🧣🧣🧣 for family feels
“Holy shit,” Shane mumbles. “Holy shit. oh my god.”
He's got the bed sheet pulled up over himself. He's no closer to being able to evacuate this room than he was a second ago. This is really not good.
“Uh,” Marlow frowns. “Rozzy, that's Shane Hollander in your bed.”
Wow. Marlow is an incredible detective.
“What?” Ilya asks dryly. He turns around and looks at Shane. “Hollander, was it you the whole time?”
“This is not a fucking joke,” Shane hisses.
Ilya turns back to his old friend. “Marlow, we are all going to leave this room, and we would really appreciate it if you pretended you never saw anything. We don't need anybody finding out this way.”
Marlow's eyes bug out. “Find out what? What's going on here? Where are the women you were with?”
Even Shane seems to momentarily pause panicking to react to that.
“Is he kidding?” Shane asks. “Or is that a serious fucking question?”
Ilya was thinking the same thing. But the last thing he needs to do right now is offend the person who knows their secret.
“Cliff,” Ilya says, making it serious by using his first name. “There are no women. Just Shane.”
Marlow scratches his head. “But you were having sex in here. I heard someone moan.”
Shane looks like he wants to throw himself out the hotel window.
When Ilya's brother turned him into a vampire. Yes.
“He hasn't told you what's going on?” Chouinard asks. He has a lot of questions tonight.
“No,” Ilya says. “Probably just a stomach bug that came on quickly.”
Though even as he says it, he knows that it's not true. It would take a lot to make Shane take more than a single game off work for a stomach bug. it would take something like E. coli, and Ilya thinks that Shane would tell him if you had E. coli.
“I don't know,” Chouinard says, shrugging and pocketing his phone. “He's been playing pretty badly these past few games. Maybe it’s something a bit more serious.”
Yes, Ilya has a feeling that that's true. Shane has been playing very poorly since their last meeting in Ottawa. Now he's not playing at all. Ilya is aware this is worse than a passing bug. What he's concerned about is the fact that Shane didn't give him any sort of indication he was sick.
Obviously, Ilya doesn't sleep for the rest of the flight.
He's too worried for sleep, even if his stupid vampire circadian rhythms would allow him. He's worried about Shane, and whatever the fuck is going on with him. He hasn't been himself during all their calls. Ilya thought it was just because they missed each other. He knows he misses Shane a lot; a painful amount. He thought the difference in Shane was just that. It couldn't be the biting, because Shane hasn't been bitten in well over a week. So what else would it be? What if there's something really wrong with him?
Ilya takes a deep breath. He looks relieved.
“And,” Shane continues, “I kind of already feel like we have the best kid. I'm sure I would love another one, if I had them, but it's really hard to imagine loving anyone more or even as much as her. and it's definitely hard to imagine liking any kid as much.”
It's the truth. To Shane, she's the perfect child. Not that she's literally perfect everyday, or that she doesn't have all the same flaws and make the same mistakes as other people. But he wouldn’t change anything about her or wish for a different child. He really lucked out, in his opinion.
“So you don't want another kid?” Ilya asks. He says it casually, but he's wiping tears from his eyes.
“No,” Shane says. “I really don't think my brain could handle a baby. Or even a child that's just louder than Nina.”
Ilya laughs. “My leg cannot handle all the bending and lifting again, either. And getting up in the middle of the night a million times.”
“Then why did you suggest it?” Shane laughs too.
“I just want you to have everything you want!”
Shane reaches across the space between them, wrist landing on the arm of Ilya's Muskoka chair. He grabs his hand.
vaporwave
prguitarman
titsay
yousharknotpass
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
