Work Text:
i. andrew & adam
Andrew and Adam are the best boyfriends in the entire world, but Andrew wins some bonus points as he puts a cup of hot tea on Steven’s desk and wraps his arms around him from behind, his head on Steven’s shoulder.
“You should go to bed,” Andrew says softly. “Sleep is more important than editing, you know.”
It’s a conversation they trade off at least once a week. “I know,” Steven replies, even as he sips his tea and turns back to the computer. He’s editing part of a Weird Wonderful World, and Andrew hums as he looks at the paused frame of Ryan smiling at Shane as he tries some sort of bizarro cocktail.
“I can’t imagine them sleeping together,” Andrew says.
Steven nearly chokes on his tea. “What?!” he asks.
Andrew motions to Shane and Ryan on the screen. “Shane and Ryan,” he says. “I mean, I know objectively they sleep together, but I just can’t imagine it, y’know?”
Steven decidedly does not know. He wonders if maybe he fell asleep at his desk after all, because there’s no way he’s having a conversation with Andrew about the sex lives of two of his best friends and how they may or may not be intertwined. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh come on.” Andrew rolls his eyes, a smile on his face. He pushes himself to standing and then turns to perch himself on Steven’s desk. “They’re so obviously dating.”
This is news to Steven. “They are?” he asks.
Andrew laughs. “Your gaydar is so broken, sometimes I cannot believe you’re gay.”
Steven’s technically bisexual, but he’s too stunned to speak. Adam appears in the doorway, looking all but asleep and very cozy in a big sweater and a pair of sweatpants, his hair messy from sleep. “What are you two doing?” he asks, his voice groggy. “You’re supposed to sleep at night.”
“Aren’t Shane and Ryan dating?” Andrew asks Adam.
Adam huffs out a laugh from his nose. “Obviously,” he says.
“Obviously?” Steven parrots.
“Yeah,” Adam answers. “They’re always sitting close together, whispering their little secrets. They’ve got inside jokes, they carpool, they share clothes, hang out at each other’s places all the time.”
All of these things are true, but Steven’s never considered these facts together. “Well people do that,” he offers lamely.
“Like who, us?” Andrew asks rhetorically. It’s a very good point; they do all that stuff, but the three of them are the furthest thing from platonic friends.
“Crisis averted?” Adam asks. Steven doesn’t reply, but he lets Andrew gently coax him to standing as Adam turns off the monitor. Andrew wraps an arm around Steven’s waist and Adam throws one of his shoulders as the three of them slowly make their way to the bedroom.
Shane and Ryan, Steven thinks as Adam turns the light off. Who would have thought?
ii. katie
Katie’s working her way slowly through Watcher’s email account when Steven stops by her desk. He casts anxious glances over either of his shoulders, and then leans in to whisper to her. “I need to talk to you.”
That gets Katie’s attention. She pulls herself away from the emails and tilts her head to appraise Steven. “What did you do?” She always thought if someone were going to get the company in trouble, it’d be Shane or Ryan, not Steven.
“What? Nothing!” Steven casts another anxious glance at Shane and Ryan, hunched over a computer and smiling to each other, and maybe Katie’s initial suspicions were correct. “Can you just come into a conference room, please?”
Katie follows Steven to a conference room and sits at the head of a table as he closes the door. “So I had a conversation with Adam and Andrew last night,” he starts.
Katie sighs. “Steven, I told you, I just don’t think we have the budget this year for another cooking show. Maybe we can reevaluate, but it would have to be really bare bones, and I don’t think it’s fair to you to stifle your creativity like that.”
Steven shakes his head. “No, it’s not about that,” he says. He lowers his voice even though they’re alone in the conference room and asks, “did you know Shane and Ryan are dating?”
Katie snorts. “Uh, yeah?” she replies.
Steven, for his part, looks genuinely shocked. “Really?!” he asks.
“Yeah,” Katie repeats. She motions with her head outside, where Shane and Ryan are now giggling at each other, pressed together shoulder to shoulder, their eyes bright and conspiring. “Look at them. It’s so obvious.”
Steven sits. “Have they said anything to you?” he asks.
“They didn’t need to,” Katie answers. “It’s 2023. I don’t need to know the in-depth details of their relationship if they don’t want to tell me.” She leans back in her chair. “Besides, Shane has always been kind of a private guy in relationships. He and Sara were really lowkey, you know?”
Steven mutters something that sounds like, “at least I knew about Sara.”
Katie stands then. She really does need to get back to answering emails; she doubts that’s what Shane and Ryan are smiling about. “Are you okay?” she asks.
Steven looks a little off, but Katie can’t tell if that’s because he, apparently, just found out his best friends are dating, or if it’s a case of the Monday mornings. “I guess so,” he says.
Katie sighs. She leans against the door, folds her arms over her chest. “Just talk to them if it’s bothering you so much.” Steven doesn’t answer, so she asks, “okay, Steve?”
“Yeah, maybe.” Steven looks up at her and offers her a half smile. “Thanks, Katie.”
Katie salutes and then pushes her way out the door, back to the quiet hubbub of their little office, and towards the steadily accruing mountain of emails in their inbox.
iii. mark
Mark’s checking footage in the back of a van, back from a Weird Wonderful World shoot. It’s late at night, and while he’s exhausted, he can’t imagine how Shane and Ryan, who just spent an entire day being on , must feel.
Sure enough, he turns to show Shane something and finds Shane fast asleep in the row behind him, his head lolling on Ryan’s shoulder, bobbing with the movement of the van. Ryan must sense Mark’s eyes on them, because he turns from where he was watching Shane with a twinkle of his eyes to face Mark. “He’s asleep,” Ryan says, a soft red flooding his cheeks.
Mark gives him a half smile. “I can tell,” he says lightly. “Check this out.”
It’s a picture Mark took during some off time on their shoot. It’s the California skyline painted in gorgeous blues, pinks, and gold, the setting sun, with Shane and Ryan in the foreground, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder (or as shoulder-to-shoulder as they can get) as they discussed something between them. “Beautiful sunset, huh?” Mark asks.
Ryan looks at the photo, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips, and Mark can tell he’s not focused on the sunset. “It’s gorgeous,” he agrees. He hesitates for a moment and then, “can you send that to me?”
“Definitely, man.” Mark opens Airdrop and sends it to Ryan’s phone. Ryan smiles at the notification, and he lets his gaze linger on the photo before he presses accept.
“Thanks, man,” Ryan says. Mark nods in acknowledgement, and goes to turn around. Before he does, though, he takes one last sneaky glimpse of Ryan, who settles back in his place next to Shane, with Shane subconsciously reclaiming his shoulder. Ryan gives Shane a private little smile as Mark turns around and pulls his camera back out to check what they got.
They’re totally not slick about secretly dating.
iv. simone
It’s a rare morning that Simone is in the office before 9AM, but she’s made a New Years resolution to turn over a new leaf. It’s all thanks to a self-help book she read in the awkward lull between Christmas and New Years. Fight the Monday morning blues by facing Monday mornings head on, or something like that. New Years resolutions never really work out, in her experience, but it’s early January and she’s feeling positive.
The venti Java Chip Frappuccino she bought as a reward for waking up early this morning has nothing to do with how good she’s feeling, nope.
Steven walks into the office looking frazzled, which seems to be his MO these days. Simone and Katie are the only two in the office, but for some reason Steven skips right over Katie and makes a beeline for Simone.
“Simone,” he says as he reaches her desk. “I have a Gen Z question for you.”
“Oh god, I don’t have the energy for this conversation again,” Katie says from across the room. She stands and grabs her keys. “I’m going to Starbucks. Want anything, Simone?”
Simone holds up her frappuccino in answer. “You’re a smarter woman than I am,” Katie answers, and she casts a look at Steven before she’s out the door.
“What was that about?” Simone asks.
“How do you ask two of your friends if they’re dating in a way that isn’t problematic?” Steven asks instead.
Simone laughs softly. “Who, Shane and Ryan?” Steven nods. “They so are. It’s obvious.”
Steven lets out a soft breath and perches himself on the side of her desk. “That’s what everyone’s been saying.” He casts his gaze towards his shoes and then back up at her. “Do you think it’s weird that they haven’t told me?”
Simone shrugs. “It’s the future. You don’t necessarily have to come out and tell people you’re dating someone.” She takes a sip of her frappuccino. Ah, sweet burst of sugary dopamine. Whoever invented frappuccinos deserves a high five.
“You know who you could talk to, if it’s really bothering you?” Simone posists. Steven makes a soft inquisitive noise. “Sara. She knows everything.”
v. sara
Despite the fact that Shane and Sara broke up (amicably) two years ago, their lives going in directions too separate to intertwine, she thinks she’s the person who knows Shane best. Well, herself and Ryan, though she has a head start.
It’s a rare occasion she ever sees Shane and Ryan apart, these days, but today she has him on her couch, his head in her lap as they pass a blunt between them, a window cracked open so they don’t smoke out Obi, chilling casually on the arm of the couch.
Shane’s blinking slowly, so Sara knows he’s pretty far gone, but she feels just as high, the feeling wrapping around her like a warm blanket pressing her further into the couch and, as she lets her head lull against the back of it, she’s unsure how she’ll ever get up again.
“You know,” she says, and she laughs because weed always makes her just a little giddy. Shane looks up at her and he smiles even though he hasn’t heard the punchline yet, his eyes sparkly behind the glassy exterior. “Steven didn’t know you and Ryan are dating.”
Shane furrows his brow. He takes the blunt from her and takes a long drag of it, blowing smoke up towards her which she shoos away with a hand that feels like it’s full of slow-moving molten rock. “We aren’t.”
“Yes you are,” Sara says, despite the fact that Shane would probably know better than her. He was always a little clueless when it came to relationship stuff, though, and the weed is clouding her judgment a bit. “It’s so obvious.”
“Huh.” Shane casts a contemplative look at the ceiling. “How many other people think we’re dating?”
“Everyone in your office, apparently,” Sara answers. “And Andrew and Adam. I think Steven was the only person who didn’t know, honestly.”
“Very interesting,” Shane offers.
+ i. shane & ryan
“So I have something very interesting to tell you,” Shane says when he gets into Ryan’s car on Monday morning for their work carpool. It’s been three days since Sara opened his eyes up to the fact that everyone at work thinks he and Ryan are in a secret relationship, and he hasn’t stopped thinking about it since.
“Oh?” Ryan asks as he pulls out of the parking lot of Shane’s building and onto the busy LA road. As expected, cars are piled onto the freeway like sardines, but Shane doesn’t mind. Something about long car rides with Ryan makes the traffic bearable.
Huh. He kind of sees where everyone was coming from.
He hasn’t exactly thought through how to reveal this to Ryan, but he definitely thinks the wrong way is to blurt out, “everyone in the office thinks we’re secretly dating,” which is what he does. “And Sara and Andrew and Adam,” he tacks on at the end.
Ryans fingers tighten and then loosen on the wheel in rhythmic fashion. “Why is that?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” Shane answers. “Weird, right?”
“Weird,” Ryan confirms, but something in his voice isn’t quite right.
“Well anyway,” Shane says, and then he launches into a soliloquy about an idea that came to him in the shower, which somehow lasts them the entire ride to work.
Ryan pulls into the parking lot and, after pulling haphazardly into a spot (parking isn’t really Ryan’s strong suit), Ryan cuts off Shane’s monologue with, “would it really be so bad?”
“My idea?” Shane asks. “I’d sure hope not.”
“Not your idea,” Ryan says. He turns to face Shane, then, the first time they’ve made eye contact the entire ride to work. “If we were dating. Would it be so bad?”
“Oh.” It’s something Shane’s been thinking about a lot, the idea of coming down on the yes side of ‘ should Ryan and I date? ’ but he wasn’t sure how to go about it. Now that Ryan’s right in front of him, though, all his planning flies out the window. That tends to happen around Ryan.
“No I don’t think so,” Shane says. “That it would be so bad, I mean.”
Ryan seems to consider this, and then he’s nodding and smiling, a private little smile Shane’s seen only a few times before. “Cool,” he says.
“Cool,” Shane echoes. He hesitantly reaches for Ryan’s hand and intertwines their fingers. “We should probably tell all of our co-workers we aren’t having a secret gay love affair, though,” he adds.
Ryan laughs. “Probably,” he answers, but he smiles at Shane, his eyes sparkling, and neither one of them makes an effort to move.
They can stay here, for a while. No one gets into the office before 9AM, anyway.
END