"I have to ask you something, and I need you to promise not to freak out."
Shane watches out of the corner of his eye as Rose goes still, turns halfway towards him, carefully recaps the bottle of water she'd been drinking out of and places it back in the (climate-controlled; these towncars she hires when she's in Montreal are insane) cupholder between them. When she finally speaks, she is clearly clinging to the edge of her own self control with two weak fingertips.
"Okay," she says, "even you must know how ominous that sounds--"
"Even me," Shane scoffs, and then Rose gives him a look and he sighs gustily. "It's nothing bad. I just. I need to clarify something."
"Okay," Rose says, no less skeptically. "Here's where I remind you that neither of us ever really finished high school and we're generally clueless about the same things."
She's correct, of course. Shane's high school diploma is from Ontario Virtual Academy which essentially gave him a pass/fail score on his exams and thrust him out into the world only technically a high school graduate. Rose's degree is from a performing arts school somewhere in central Michigan that offered Vocal Training for Audiobook Narration as an elective. They are mutually shit at things like algebra, the history of their respective countries or carrying on conversations with people who are not involved in their respective highly specialized fields (Or, perhaps more accurately, people who have any remote level of chill about their passions in general--because Shane thinks he would find it relatively easy to match the energy of someone who was fanatically enthusiastic about, say, quilting versus someone who says things like, "Between you and me, hockey isn't my thing, but the networking opportunity just couldn't be passed up--") and that mutual cluelessness is, in fact, the basis for their friendship.
Unlike Rose, Shane is surrounded daily by people he genuinely is not sure know how to read. The concussions alone would bring it into question. Despite his lack of formal education, he rarely feels self-conscious about it when compared to the vast majority of his colleagues. But he has never in his life felt less judged for not knowing who the fuck Charli D'Amelio is than when he is sitting next to Rose in a booth at a restaurant neither of them wants to be in, listening to someone rattle on about Charli D'Amelio. Whoever he is.
"I know," Shane sighs, "But there is, y'know, one thing."
Rose's mouth quirks, her eyes narrow, and she announces, "Oh, this is a sex thing," at a volume that Shane would spiral about if the driver of the towncar wasn't signed under one of the strictest NDAs known to man. Shane has been reliably informed that he could talk about his intent to murder the Prime Minister in the backseat of this car and the driver would be utterly powerless to speak of it.
Shane blows out a puff of air between swelled cheeks. "I mean. Yeah."
"Okay," Rose says, still noticably wary. "I mean, I'm always down to hear about your debaucheries--"
"Debauchery is a strong word--"
"And the correct one," Rose stresses, eyebrow raised, and Shane has to make peace once again with the weekend she spent at the cottage last summer, during which Ilya was off posing half-naked against a Ducati somewhere and Rose decided to keep Shane company by getting him "White Girl Wasted" and pestering him to once again elaborate on the whole Peg and Hole situation--a conversation they've had repeatedly over the years but which apparently does not lose its luster in Rose's eyes. Shane went through a week or so where it was difficult to meet his own eyes in the mirror knowing that he'd explained in somewhat excruciating detail how hot it is when his husband spits on him while they have sex. But Shane also knows the name of a Hollywood actor whose dick is apparently too big to fit in a 'cock sock' so they had to sew two of them together and dunk him in cold water before he put it on.
"So obviously I had to see what the hype was about," Rose had said.
"Obviously," Shane had agreed, wine glass waving wildly. "Yes, yeah, you've gotta--honestly, sometimes it looks big and you're like--whoa, that's crazy--"
"Crazy! Like, hello Mister Anaconda, how did you get here from--"
"And sometimes even afterwards you're like whoa how did that fit--"
"Fucking--where do anacondas live--one second, HEY GOOGLE--"
Shane had to politely ask his parents to turn off the period drama they'd been watching last time he visited.
"It's just a question," Shane says, waving away any further prevarication on Rose's part. "I'm gonna explain something and then you--you've gotta promise to just be cool and tell me if you think it's weird--"
"Babe," Rose says, hand on his elbow. "I love weird shit. You know this about me."
Shane knows. He rented out the MĂŒtter Museum for a private tour for her birthday last year. He knows.
"Okay," Shane sighs. Big breath. "So last night when your friend was telling that story about her ex--"
"Kendall Skye is not my friend," Rose says, immediately and vehemently. "Just because we played sisters for a couple of years--"
"Okay, fine--fine! She's not your friend and she's trying too hard and she...wears too much perfume?" Shane waits for Rose to preen and nod, approving of his carefully-learned lines. "Anyway. She was telling that story about her ex. And about how he--"
"Thought wiping his ass made him gay?" Rose says, nose wrinking. "Yeah, babe, that's crazy work. Like, if it's between skid marks or or the rainbow flag, I think there's a clear winner--"
"Yeah, no, that was the worst thing I've ever fucking heard, and I'm a hockey player."
"And you're a hockey player," Rose agrees sagely.
"But no, not that. It was--" Shane sighs again, bangs his head against the headrest a few times. "She said that thing about how sometimes when he stayed at her place, she'd wake up and he'd be--"
"Ohh, that." Rose purses her lips, tilts her head the side. "Yeah."
"And like, obviously if she didn't--like that, or whatever, that's bad. But--" Shane clears his throat. "What if, uh--is it weird or--like, problematic? To, like--like it? Sometimes, if, y'know--"
"Shane Hollander." Rose sounds giddy now. "Please say it with your mouth."
"Oh my God." Shane curves a hand over his mouth, tries to hide how red his neck and cheeks have gone--it is, of course, far too little and far too late. "I don't know! Sometimes when I'm really tired I can't--y'know--"
"Get it up," Rose says, hand out like she's offering the words on a platter, and Shane groans.
"Yeah! Sometimes! It's just a thing sometimes, I don't know. And I'll tell him I'm gonna take a nap and then sometimes when I wake up he's there and he's..." Shane makes a single, evocative movement at the level of his own hips. "Um, helping himself?"
"Oh my god," Rose cackles.
"And it's so--" Shane squeezes his eyes closed. "It's so fucking hot, Rose, oh my God. I fucking love it when he does that. Is that--is it--"
"Oh my God, babe." Rose bats at his hands for a minute, and he bats back, and they spend a minute gently tusseling in the back of the towncar--gently, because Shane knows his strength and also that he will pull his punches and Rose won't. When she finally has his hands in hers, Rose squeezes tightly in a way that says Listen To Me but also says These Fingernails Are Acrylic Do Not Break One. "There is such a world of difference between those two things. You are totally allowed to like it when your husband jerks off at you while you're sleeping."
"That's such an insane way to put it," Shane breathes incredulously.
"Would you like to volunteer a better one?" Rose doesn't exactly wait for a response. "Babes, there are definitely skeevy guys in the world who do stuff like that because it makes people uncomfortable. But I don't really think that's what's happening here."
"I think maybe I like it," Shane whispers. "When he's kind of skeevy?"
"Whore," Rose whispers back. "Good for you."
A knock on the window breaks their concentration. Rose jumps and rolls it down, though they can already see Ilya hunched down, eyebrow raised.
"Hello," he says at length. "Were you going to sit in driveway all night? The car has been parked for, like, ten minutes."
Indeed, they've arrived at Rose's rental house without either of them noticing. Shane really needs to look into whatever kind of car this is. Insanely smooth ride, honestly.
Unfortunately, Rose has apparently lost the ability to look Ilya in the face and not dissolve into hysterics. Which she does. Loudly.
"Come visit while I'm in Montreal, says Rose Landry," Ilya mutters as he turns and starts heading back towards the house. "Will be totally cool and not weird at all. Won't get your husband drunk at all, says Rose Landry."
"I never promised that!" Rose yells as she gets out of the car.
"Okay, well." Shane unbuckles his seatbelt and pops open the door. "Uh, sorry about all of that, Tony."
"I didn't hear anything," says Tony, which Shane thinks is maybe the only thing he's allowed to say, but Rose pays him a frankly insane amount of money to drive her around for a handful of hours every day so. There are worse things.
Maybe later he'll tell Ilya that Rose's driver knows yet more details of their sex life and Ilya will flip him over and say something like, "You just can't stop telling people what a slut you are," and then he'll cum on Shane's back and rub it in a bit.
And that'll be. Really nice.
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