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 there’s 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. it’s not even that good of a picture, it’s 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 it’s there, in a nice frame. and ilya stops mid-joke and points at it and says “this is me?” as if it could be anyone else. shane’s shrugging his jacket on and doesn’t even know what he’s 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?
“you have a picture of me on your desk?” ilya asks, and he’s trying so hard to play it off like it’s nothing, something to tease him about, but. but.
shane shrugs. “well, yeah. i like that picture of you.”
“is a bad picture, hollander.”
“fuck you. it’s my desk. i can put what i want on it.”
and maybe ilya would say something like oh i’ll put you on the desk in a minute if he wasn’t suddenly feeling very raw. a few years ago he would’ve said it anyway, but he’s 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 homes— 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.
“baby, oh my god,” shane is panicking, dashing over the few steps to ilya and wiping the tears from his cheeks with the sleeves of his jacket, “ilya, if you don’t like the picture i can change it.”
“no, no,” ilya tries to wave him off, feeling silly, feeling vulnerable, but shane doesn’t let him go. eyes so wide, so earnest and worried. “no, i like it. i like you. i like you a lot. fuck.”
and shane laughs, but it isn’t 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 ilya’s cheekbone and presses closer to him and says, “i like you too. it’s a good job we’re married, ‘cause otherwise it’d be, like, embarrassing how much i like you.”
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