Today in another episode of Ilya Could Not Survive Any Situation Where His and Shane’s Roles Were Reversed
Shane asks Ilya to look in his notes app for something he saved in there, maybe while he’s cooking or just doing something that takes two hands. Most are pretty normal; Pike kid birthdays, addresses, work out ideas, gift ideas. But then he pauses at one labeled In Case.
Surely it’s nothing interesting, Shane likes to be prepared for things, but Ilya can’t stop himself from clicking. He reads the first few words, realizes what it is, and can’t breathe.
Shane comes over to check what’s wrong and goes “Oh yeah, well, after what happened with you and the plane I got thinking, and I doubt if anything happened that I’d be able to think of something in the moment, so I wanted to have something ready to send in an emergency if I needed it.” For Shane it’s no big deal, the same as putting together a will or making Ilya his life insurance beneficiary. He just wants to be sure if anything happens, he’s got something ready for Ilya.
But Ilya is spiraling because he is actively looking at his husbands last words, or at least what he plans them to be. It’s like a prophecy in a Greek tragedy, knowledge of the future that can’t be changed. If he ever checks his phone and sees a message with these words, it means Shane is either dead or in danger of imminently dying.
For a long time after this, if Ilya gets a text from Shane and the little message preview has words similar to what Shane had in the note, he will have a panic attack on the spot. If Shane even starts a sentence in a way that sounds like it, Ilya will begin hyperventilating. Shane promises to rewrite it and not tell him what it says and that helps a little, but it’s still years before Ilya isn’t haunted by the knowledge of what Shane’s goodbye message would be to him.
