anyway shane has an office at the irina foundation HQ in ottawa bc he can never get any work done at home and its important to him that hes Somewhat Involved even if he doesnt get to spend much time there. ilya comes by to pick him up so they can go to dinner post-outing and gets five seconds into a joke about sexy mr hollander and his big fancy desk before he notices thereâs a framed picture of him just. sitting there. on the big fancy desk. shane framed a picture of him and keeps it on his desk, in public. itâs not even that good of a picture, itâs just ilya sitting on the couch in sweats and smiling at the camera. probably one of the many pictures that shane has sent to his parents over the years, proof of life after an injury or something equally inane.
but itâs there, in a nice frame. and ilya stops mid-joke and points at it and says âthis is me?â as if it could be anyone else. shaneâs shrugging his jacket on and doesnât even know what heâs talking about, not really, until he looks over to where ilya is pointing. and he looks between ilya and the desk a few times, confused, because⊠yes? obviously?
âyou have a picture of me on your desk?â ilya asks, and heâs trying so hard to play it off like itâs nothing, something to tease him about, but. but.
shane shrugs. âwell, yeah. i like that picture of you.â
âis a bad picture, hollander.â
âfuck you. itâs my desk. i can put what i want on it.â
and maybe ilya would say something like oh iâll put you on the desk in a minute if he wasnât suddenly feeling very raw. a few years ago he wouldâve said it anyway, but heâs so stuck on the fact that shane has a picture of him on his desk. after a decade of deleting pictures and messages, being so careful not to be photographed anywhere near each other, not even being able to have pictures in their own homesâ now shane has a soft, domestic, printed fucking photograph of him framed on his desk in his office. in the headquarters for the charity they share. named after his mother. named for his mother, a name that shane chose, for everything she went through.
âbaby, oh my god,â shane is panicking, dashing over the few steps to ilya and wiping the tears from his cheeks with the sleeves of his jacket, âilya, if you donât like the picture i can change it.â
âno, no,â ilya tries to wave him off, feeling silly, feeling vulnerable, but shane doesnât let him go. eyes so wide, so earnest and worried. âno, i like it. i like you. i like you a lot. fuck.â
and shane laughs, but it isnât mocking or mean or anything ilya would expect from anyone else who might catch him crying. it never is, not with his shane. he just smooths his thumb over ilyaâs cheekbone and presses closer to him and says, âi like you too. itâs a good job weâre married, âcause otherwise itâd be, like, embarrassing how much i like you.â
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