Chapter Text
Shane was elbow deep in a defrosting chicken when his phone started going off on the counter, three buzzes in a row, then a fourth.
He wiped his hand on a dish towel and checked it. SAPs. The group chat had been quiet for two days, which in retrospect should have been a warning sign.
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SAPs
- Cassieok so hear me out
- Cassiebefore anyone says no just HEAR ME OUT
- Selenathis is never good
- Cassiethe vow renewal. five years. Shane and Ilya. big romantic gesture energy
- Cassiewhat if we did the polaroid thing
- Lisawhat polaroid thing
- Cassieok so my cousin did this for her husband. boudoir shoot, professional, tasteful, and then at the renewal her bridesmaids each hand the groom one photo. like a bouquet toss but sexier
- Caitlinwait
- Caitlinwho is the bridesmaid group here
- Cassieus obviously. we hand Ilya a photo each. Harris helps run it because he has that photographer friend
- HarrisI would like it on the record that I did not suggest this
- HarrisI am simply aware of a person who does this professionally
- Selenaand who exactly is posing for these photos
Shane read that last message three times, the way you read something you are hoping will resolve into a joke if you stare at it long enough.
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SAPs
- CassieSHANE obviously
- CassieShane you are going to look incredible I am so serious
- Shane
- No.
- Cassiethat was fast
- Shane
- I saw the question and I had an answer. No.
He put the phone face down next to the cutting board and went back to the chicken. It buzzed against the counter for a solid two minutes, a small angry insect he was choosing to ignore.
By the time he’d washed his hands again there were eleven new messages.
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SAPs
- Cassieokay but WHY no
- LisaShane you have a nice body this isn’t a controversial statement
- Caitlingenuinely nobody is going to see these but Ilya and whichever of us hands them over
- Selenaand the photographer
- Caitlinand the photographer who does this professionally and has definitely seen worse
- HarrisDana is extremely discreet. she’s done three players from the Kraken and nobody has ever heard a word
- Shane
- I don’t care how discreet she is.
- Shane
- I’m not doing a photoshoot.
- Caitlinyou do ad campaigns for a living. this is going to be so easy for you
- Shane
- An ad campaign is not the same thing, Caitlin.
- Cassiethink about ILYA’S FACE though
Shane set the phone down again. He thought, unhelpfully, about Ilya’s face. About the specific way Ilya went quiet when he was trying not to react to something, jaw working, eyes doing all the talking his mouth wasn’t allowed to. He picked the phone back up.
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SAPs
- Shane
- I’m not discussing this further.
- Cassiethats not a no thats a “I’m not discussing this further”
- Cassiethose are different
- Shane
- They’re the same thing, Cassie.
- Cassietheyre not though
He put the phone in his pocket that time, which did nothing, because it kept buzzing against his thigh through two chicken breasts and a pot of rice, a slow steady drip of notifications he refused to look at on principle.
Ilya got home a little after six and found him standing at the stove with the particular stiffness he got when he was hiding something and hadn’t decided how to hide it better.
“You’re being strange,” Ilya said, dropping his bag by the door.
“I’m not being strange.”
“You’ve got a guilty stance.”
“I’m cooking chicken.”
“Guilty chicken.” He came and stood next to him at the counter anyway, close enough that their shoulders touched, and waited with the patience of a man who had learned that Shane would eventually cave under silence faster than under pressure.
This time Shane didn’t cave. He turned the burner down and said something deliberately boring about the rice needing another few minutes, and let the silence sit there instead, aware the whole time of his phone lying facedown on the counter like it might start talking on its own if he looked at it wrong.
Ilya clocked it. He clocked most things. But he didn’t push, not tonight, just filed it away the way he filed away all of Shane’s small silences, trusting that this one would resolve itself eventually, same as the others, into something worth the wait.
The chat did not let up.
It got worse, actually, once Cassie figured out that direct appeals weren’t working and switched tactics. Shane woke up two mornings later to a photo of a bouquet toss from someone’s wedding, captioned only “this but hotter,” followed immediately by Lisa weighing in with a full itemized case for why a professional shoot would actually be tasteful, not embarrassing, and Caitlin sending, unprompted, a photo of her own boudoir set from before she and Evan got married, which derailed the entire conversation for forty minutes into questions about lighting and whether Caitlin’s photographer did travel.
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SAPs
- Caitlinthis is literally just tasteful. it’s not a nudie mag. it’s ART
- Selenai’ve seen your photos caitlin. i wouldn’t call it a coffee table book either
- Caitlini never said coffee table
- Harrisfor the record Dana’s work is genuinely tasteful. I’ve seen her portfolio. it’s very editorial
- CassieSEE. editorial. Shane you’d look like a magazine
Shane felt Ilya lean in beside him on the couch, an old comfortable rudeness, reaching for the phone the way he always did, and turned the screen away before Ilya got more than a glance at it.
“What,” Ilya said.
“Nothing.”
“You were looking at your phone. Now you’re hiding it. Interesting.”
“It’s not for you.”
Ilya raised both eyebrows, the picture of a man who found this development delightful and had no intention of saying so out loud. “Okay.”
“Don’t ‘okay’ me like that.”
“Like what.”
“Like you already know something.”
“I know nothing,” Ilya said, entirely too pleased with himself, and let it go, but slowly, the specific slowness of a man banking something for later, and on his way to the kitchen he trailed his hand across the back of Shane’s neck like a small bet being placed.
He didn’t bring it up again for four days. Shane started to think he’d gotten away with it entirely, right up until the third night, when he came out of the bathroom to find Ilya sitting on the edge of the bed watching him with an expression that wasn’t quite worry. More like patience with an edge on it.
“What,” Shane said.
“Nothing.” A pause, and then, careful, the way he got when he’d rehearsed something before saying it. “Whatever it is. Don’t do it because you think I want you to. Do it because you want to. Or don’t do it at all.”
“I know that.”
“Okay.” Ilya held his gaze a second longer, checking the words had landed, and then reached over and pulled Shane down onto the bed by the wrist instead of saying anything else about it.
It wasn’t even in the group chat. It was Selena who finally got him, in the end, and she did it privately, in nine words with no follow-up.
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Selena (Nick)
- you’ve never once surprised him with anything. he’s always the one doing that for you
- this could be that
Shane sat with that one for a long time. He thought about the wedding, which Ilya had planned down to the last detail because Shane genuinely hadn’t cared what the backyard looked like as long as Ilya was standing at the end of it, waiting. He thought about the years before that, too, the whole quiet architecture of staying hidden, every logistical piece worked out three moves ahead, separate cars and staggered arrivals and cover stories rehearsed until they didn’t sound like cover stories anymore. He’d been good at that. He was good at planning, full stop, had been his whole life, and it was part of why he never managed to actually surprise Ilya with anything. He gave gifts. He remembered dates, thought things through, picked carefully. Ilya was always happy. But happy wasn’t the same as caught off guard, and somewhere in the planning Shane’s own face always gave the shape of the thing away a week early, some tell Ilya had learned to read before Shane even opened his mouth to tell him.
He typed out a message to the chat and deleted it twice before sending the third version.
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SAPs
- Shane
- Fine.
- Shane
- But tasteful. And I pick which ones get handed out. And if any of you show these to anyone else ever, I will end you.
- CassieSHANE HOLLANDER
- CaitlinI’M SCREAMING
- Lisaiconic
- HarrisI’ll text Dana. she does Thursdays
- Selenagood man
He did not tell Ilya that night. He wasn’t ready yet to explain himself, wasn’t sure he could get through it without giving the whole thing away in his face the second Ilya asked one more question, and there was something else underneath that too, quieter, that he didn’t examine too closely. That he wanted, for once, to be the one holding the surprise instead of standing at the other end of it.
Ilya, for his part, noticed nothing except that Shane had gone unusually quiet over dinner, and unusually careful about angling his phone screen away from the table, and filed both facts away with the patience of a man who had learned, over five years, that Shane’s silences eventually resolved themselves into something worth waiting for.