ray ⭐️

"Look how tiny she was!", Hayden texts, followed by another handful of pictures of teeny tiny Amber. And Shane loves his nices and nephew, has always cherished that he gets to be Uncle Shane to them and watch them grow up.

"Cute!", Shane texts back before he scrolls through the pictures one by one. It has been ages and at the same time five minutes since Amber, now gap-toothed and, last Shane saw her, wearing a mud soaked bumblebee dress as she was kneeling in the garden orchestrating a tea party for the frogs in the Pike's pond, was barely old enough to hold up her own head.

A new message from Hayden comes through, though this time it's a video. It's taken from outside Amber's nursery, the hallway dark. The soft light from her various nightlights offers just enough to show the outline of Shane, holding Amber in his arms and swaying slowly from side to side as he's singing softly in French.

"Teething gate!!", Hayden writes. "Saved my ass back then, only thing that got us through that evening. Still a legend for busting out the singing, bud."

And yeah, Shane remembers. He'd come over to help Hayden with the kids, giving Jackie a break now that her husband was back from his roadie, allowing her to get a full nights sleep again. He remembers the bone deep exhaustion when nothing they tried helped with soothing Amber. He remembers Hayden, close to tears, heading downstairs to get one of the teething rings they kept in the freezer in the hope that maybe this time it would help soothe her pain. And Shane had stood there, holding a softly hiccuping Amber in his arms, heart breaking for her and wanting nothing more than to take the pain away.

And suddenly he'd remembered his dad holding him in his arms when he couldn't sleep, mind too loud and running a mile a minute even as a kid, carrying him through their house and singing softly to him.

Shane didn't realize until now that Hayden had recorded him singing.

He's brought back to the present by Ilya nudging his thigh with his foot. "What are you watching?", Ilya asks, his own phone lowered to his chest.

Shane can already feel his cheeks heat up. It's not as if he makes a habit of singing and he's pretty sure he has never sung near Ilya, let alone told him about it.

"Nothing", Shane says quickly. He knows it's to no avail when Ilya raises his eyebrows at him.

"You have been starring at your phone for minutes. Looks very interesting for video about nothing", Ilya says.

And so Shane ends up showing the video to Ilya. He has heard him anyway and there's this curious glint in his eyes that Shane knows well enough by now. He's not going to let it go so might as well go full in.

Ilya's eyes light up when he realises that it's Shane who's singing, in French no less. He insists on watching the video five more times ans begs Shane to send it to him afterwards.

Of course, he also looks up the original song. "It's a good song, but you have much prettier voice than her", Ilya tells him after listening to the tong for the first time, leaning up to kiss his jaw. Shane pulls him close, hand automatically finding Ilya's curles as he makes himself comfortable on his shoulder. He kisses Ilya's forehead, listening as the song starts anew.

They listen to it in silce for a while before Ilya asks, "Why this song?"

And, well.

"My parents played it once when I was over at their house for dinner", Shane starts. Well aware that Ilya will want to know more than that, Shane tries not to focus on how fast his heart is beating as he continues. "It's, uhm, a love song. It's an old song, the singer sings about how she misses her husband when he is out at sea, watching the storms that pass by. She always waits at the shore, watching as the boats come back in, looking for the boat where the sunshine illuminates her husband's blonde curls, bringing him and the sunshine back to her."

Shane resolutely stares at the point just above the TV as he mumbles the last part, cheeks aflame.

Ilya sits up from he was resting against Shane, softly taking his chin in his hands to turn Shane so he's facing Ilya.

Ilya waggles with his eyebrows. "I did not realize you were so in love with handsome blonde sailor, Hollander", he teases, laughing as Shane shoves him away with an eye-roll and a "Fuck off, asshole!"

They both know there's no heat behind either statement, not when Shane immediately pulls Ilya close to him again and Ilya lays his head back on his shoulder, pressing a soft kiss to Shane's throat as he does so.

Shane knows Ilya has long put one and one together, has figured out why Shane might have been drawn to a song about waiting for your loved one to return to you. Has figured out why Shane would sing a song about a man with blond curly hair. Knows they both remember when waiting meant months and sweing each other for a handful of hours, a couple of days if they were lucky. Feels it in the way Ilya presses against him, the way he himself holds Ilya close with no intent of letting him go soon.

Again, it's Ilya who breaks the silence. "Shane?", he asks, quiet and without a note of teasing in his voice. "Would you sing it to me? My song?"

And Shane has never been able to withold Ilya anything he asks for. Neither of them mention the fact that Ilya called it his song. After all, the song had been Ilya's long before Ilya had become Shane's.

red velvet summer comebacks