Whoops

Highlights include:

For your first two years (when you were small) you lived in a foster home with people who raised you into a very polite young man. Two is like you plus me, that's what two is.

Some people adopted you before me and they called you Timmy (which is a stupid name) and they returned your ass almost immediately because you were so annoying at that age.

Like think about how annoying you are right now at seven years old, but way worse.

I'm better than them though, I don't call you Timmy and I wore earplugs to bed for three years because you love to scream at bedtime. Earplugs are like when I roll over and go back to sleep even when you are yelling so so so loud.

I got you at a time in my life when I was really sick (being sick is like when I'm up late because I'm throwing up and you are a very handsome good boy who sits with me) and they had to put me asleep for a procedure. A procedure is like what happened to you when they put you asleep and took your balls away.

"The America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries."

Éowyn, disguised as Dernhelm, among the Riders of Rohan ⚔️

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.”