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Let the record show that Shane Hollander never asked for a bachelor party.
When Ilya told him that Svetlana was going to come early for the wedding so she would be there for the bachelor party, Shane was happy for his fiancé. Shane knew that Ilya hadnt had the se support system as he had for the past few years and was glad that, since their coming out, Ilya had started to talk to his friends more. That mattered. Shane wanted that for him.
So when Ilya asked him what Hayden was planning, Shane told him the truth, that he told Hayden not to plan anything. Ilya seemed distraught at first, trying to at least get Shane to come to the party Svetlana was throwing, but instead Shane told him that he would stay at the cottage for a bit and that Ilya should have fun in Ottawa with his friends. He was happy staying home and attempting to read Ilya’s heavily annotated copy of the untranslated Crime and Punishment.
What Shane hadn't been happy about, however, was when he found out the Ilya had apparently tried to plan a surprise bachelor party for him.
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Shane had just reached the cottage when he got the call from Hayden. He grinned as he answered the call. He hadn't seen Hayden since he and Ilya had gone to Montreal to pack up his apartment. Shane wasn’t able to get a word in before Hayden greeted, "Hey bud, you reach the cottage yet?"
"Just got in," Shane said, already starting to unpack his duffle. "Is it insane to say I'm kind of excited to be alone?"
Shane heard Hayden’s uncomfortable laugh as the other man replied sheepishly with a, "Well, about that…"
"Hayden." Shane's question wasn’t really a question, but he knew Hayden would spill regardless.
"Look, it’s Rozanov's fault, ok? He told Rose you refused a bachelor party and, well, surprise! You’re having a bachelor party. It was planned a while ago, and Rose specifically told us not to tell you, but I realized this morning that you would freak if we showed up at your safe space without warning." Shane paused his unpacking as he registered the meaning of Hayden’s rambling. "I’m so, so sorry. We'll be there around 6, and it won’t be too bad, hopefully. We all planned an activity, so I know mine and Jackie’s are gonna be fine, but the others I couldn’t tell you and..."
"Hayden." Shane finally interrupted, his head having fallen into his hands. "Fuck."
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When the knock came at his door, he huffed as he put down the book, not bothering to mark his page since he had only managed to get three pages in after an hour anyway. He opened the door and felt the pit in his stomach again as he looked at the matching grins on Rose and Jackie’s faces. The pit seemed to expand as he looked up to see Hayden holding a large basket, looking up with a horrified expression at the very large, weirdly realistic dick balloons held in J.J.'s grip.
Shane tried to balance his voice as much as possible when he asked, "What the hell are those?" pointing at the offending balloons.
Rose only laughed as she hugged him quickly and shoved him to the side to get past the door, happily claiming, "It was Ilya’s idea!"
J.J. hugged him next, still holding the offending balloons, claiming, "Happy Bachelor Party, Capitaine!"
Jackie and Hayden lingered at the door, both holding pitiful, somewhat sorry expressions. Shane gave them a small smile, watching as they both shrugged in relief.
"Ilya told you to storm our cottage with dick balloons?" Shane asked in contempt.
"No, those are part of the plan for tonight. Ilya told us that we should override your no bachelor party rule." J.J. happily confirmed.
"I, for one, think he’s right," Jackie said, finally taking the balloons and moving them from his eyesight. "You have to have a bachelor party, Shane, and now we're all already here so you can’t kick us out, and we have a whole plan for tonight, so you really can’t kick us out."
Shane didn’t know how to react. On one hand, maybe it would be fun to hang out with his best friends for the night, but at the same time, “plan” didn’t seem like he was going to have a good night. He decided that the best thing he could do to not completely freak out would be to walk past his friends, sit down, and begin to freak out.
He could hear his friends discussing if they should just leave when he felt a hand on his back. Shane’s eyes opened and looked at Hayden pleadingly. "Buddy, look, we love you, ok? You're gonna be married in two days, and we just thought it would be fun to give you a good night."
At Hayden’s sincere tone, Shane nodded, looking at Rose, who he assumed had been Ilya’s co-conspirator, asking, "What’s the plan then?"
An hour later had the five of them sitting on the edge of the bathtub in the large ensuite bathroom with their feet dipped in the warm bubbly water, with Jackie and Rose taking pictures of J.J., Hayden, and Shane smiling at the camera wearing nothing but their boxers and bright pink face masks. He had to admit, if this was what his friends had planned, he might be able to survive the night.
Well, he had thought that before Hayden grabbed his phone before he could respond to Ilya’s "I'm sorry, have fun 😁" text. "Hayd, what the fuck?" Shane said, trying to reach for his phone, causing water to splash out of the tub.
"It’s no fiancé time. I have it on good authority that the Centaurs took Ilya’s phone too, so he wouldn't respond to you either way," came Hayden’s reply as Shane sighed dejectedly.
They had refused to tell him the whole itinerary, J.J. and Rose pulling him aside before he could ask and beginning to make cocktails while Hayden and Jackie disappeared, presumably to make their current situation happen.
When he felt movement at his side, he glanced at Hayden, who had started to pull out a clipboards from the bag behind him. As the clipboards were passed around, he looked down at the piece of paper on his own clipboard and huffed a laugh.
At Hayden’s own bachelor party, he had asked Shane to lead at least one activity. Shane, of course, had decided that the best bachelor party game had to be a "Who Knows the Groom the Best" worksheet. He silently questioned the laughter bubbling up around him while looking down at the exact page he had given Hayden’s friends.
Suddenly, Hayden gasped and made a show of grabbing the clipboard from him, claiming that he gave the wrong one, and replaced it with another clipboard, this time with a quiz on Kama Sutra positions clipped to it. "Hayd, seriously," Shane groaned, feeling his cheeks start to warm as Rose winked at him and began to match the names of the positions to the pictures.
Shane looked at his own page and noted that the crude drawings were all of men and smiled halfheartedly. He carefully studied the pictures and realized that he didn't know the name of a single one. As his friends stopped writing, he could feel their gazes on him. Shane shrugged and laughed. "We just do them. I don't know what they’re called."
That prompted the discarding of all but one clipboard, with all of his friends, besides Hayden, who was clearly fine knowing nothing about his best friend’s sex life, asking which of the shown positions he and Ilya had tried. Shane's face had already started to flush from the alcohol, and he was sure that this game had made him as red as his future husband’s favorite nickname for him. In this situation, he really wasn't sure whether the truth (all of them) or the lie (none of them) would be better.
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At 8 p.m., J.J. began to drain the tub, laughing at Shane's displeasure. "You didn't really think this was all we would do tonight, did you, Capitaine?" He laughed almost maniacally. "We all chose one thing to do tonight. Jackie and Hayden decided to do a spa night together, and now... now it’s my turn."
Shane took a quick shower and changed as his mind raced while questioning what J.J. and Rose’s plans could possibly be. He walked out of the bedroom cautiously, as if a policeman would jump out at him and begin to take a strip. He calmed as he saw his friends sitting on his couch with newly refilled drinks and no strippers in sight.
Shane grabbed the cocktail on the coffee table as Rose waved at it and took a long sip before turning to J.J. and asking, "I'm scared to ask, but what exactly is your plan?"
J.J. seemed to ignore his actual question and replied, "We ordered pizza while you were in the shower. Don't worry, it's from the place you like with the stupid cauliflower crust."
Shane smiled at that. At least whatever torture J.J. came up with would be after he got some pizza in him. J.J. rose dramatically and disappeared into the kitchen, only to reappear seconds later holding a tray of shots. "Drink up, bitches. It's not a bachelor party till the soon-to-be husband is on the floor."
Shane didn't deny the first shot or the second, but when Jackie held up a third, he thought about his blurring vision and decided that he should probably slow down a bit. Shane didn't drink much, so a cocktail and a half and two shots in, he already started to feel a bit more than just tipsy.
The doorbell rang, and Shane went to open the door, but J.J. pushed him back on the couch, saying he'd get it. Shane could hear J.J. open the door, say something to the delivery person, and walk back inside, stopping by the kitchen first. He walked back in with a grin, holding those god-awful penis balloons, saying, "I told Chris it's your bachelor party and he wanted to come in and say congratulations."
Shane looked at J.J. incredulously. Their group was comprised of three professional hockey players and a famous actress. Why the hell would he let a stranger into his home? His gaze slowly slid to the slightly shorter man, Chris presumably, next to him. Shane loved Ilya, but he wasn't blind and could confidently admit that the man in front of him was gorgeous. Not as gorgeous as the love of his life, but still pretty damn attractive. Now, it was hard to pull off the bright red pizza place uniform shirt with the matching ball cap, but this man was doing it. But hot or not, why was the guy standing in his and his soon-to-be husband’s cottage?
The man walked up to Shane, and he wasn't sure if he had miscalculated how many drinks he had had because it seemed a lot like the pizza delivery man was walking up to him sultrily. The man stopped right in front of a slightly bewildered Shane and crouched down slightly in order to whisper in Shane's ear, "Are you ready for your congratulations?"
Shane began to murmur a, "What?" but before he could, Chris stepped back and took his hat off, placing it backward on Shane’s head and blowing him a kiss, prompting cackles to come from Jackie and Rose and a groan to come from Hayden.
J.J. placed the balloons on either side of Chris, forming an insane background, and slid back onto the couch next to Shane. Shane turned to cast a bewildered glare at his friend, who just shrugged and pointed to Chris in reply.
Shane looked over just as Chris began to unbutton the top two buttons on his shirt. He slid his hands up the polo before pulling it over his head, revealing abs that weren't nearly as beautiful as Ilya’s. He unzipped his pants and turned around, bending slightly as he pulled the tight khakis over his ass and completely off, revealing his dark blue lace panties.
Shane watched speechless, not able to form any coherent thoughts while being subjected to a striptease he never asked for. The man grabbed one of the remaining shot glasses from the coffee table and walked up to Shane. Before he reached out to Shane, however, he asked calmly, "Can I touch you?"
Shane's mouth gaped as he looked up at the man and said, "I have a fiancé?" His head snapped over to J.J., who laughed before showing texts between him and Ilya from earlier in the day in which J.J. asked if Ilya would be ok with Shane getting a striptease and a lap dance, and Ilya responded only with a "Send video."
Shane looked back at the man still hovering over him, grabbed the shot from his hand, downed it, and said, "Fine, fuck it."
The whooping from the girls and J.J. drowned out Chris's response, so Shane watched, confused, as he walked away. Chris came back quickly, though, and this time he didn't hover. He purposefully straddled Shane and forced him to tilt his head back with a hand gripping the hair on the back of his head. Shane struggled to comply, not liking the fact that anyone but Ilya had their hands on his hair. He relaxed, however, when Chris held up another shot and held it to Shane's mouth, slowly pouring it in.
The next thirty minutes of Shane's life were a blur of lap dances, with Chris starting with him, then moving onto a strangely enthusiastic J.J. Chris continued down the line, giving a lap dance to Jackie and Rose before being stopped by a bright pink, sputtering Hayden.
Once J.J. walked Chris out, he brought out the pizzas he had left in the oven and told Shane that Ilya would love the video when he got his phone back.
"YOU SENT HIM A VIDEO?" Shane groaned, placing his head in his lap as he realized that not only had he just gotten a lap dance from a stranger, his future husband would soon see it. He grabbed a pizza box and decided that this would be the only embarrassing thing he would do tonight.
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The doorbell rang again after an hour when the pizza had been demolished and more shots had been consumed. Shane didn't think the cottage doorbell had ever been rung so many times in a day before. He tensed, wondering what could possibly be next, when Rose put a hand on his arm and said, "This one you don't have to do if you don't want to." He relaxed a bit as he looked at her sincere expression as she rose to answer the door.
Another man walked in, this one burly and covered in tattoos, carrying a large kit of some sort. "This is Tony. He’s done half of my tattoos, and I asked if he'd be willing to come tonight," Rose explained. "Again, Shane, you don't have to if you don't want to. I have a just in case activity planned if you don't want to."
Shane knew he was more than tipsy and probably shouldn't make any body-altering decisions at the moment, especially since he had never even wanted a tattoo in the first place. But... he had never been good at listening to proper reason when drunk. "I wouldn't even know what to get," he tried to reason with Rose.
"Well, I kinda had an idea if you're into it," came the sheepish reply.
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Tony wiped one more time and told Shane he was done. Shane rose off the couch, thanking Tony, and headed to the kitchen where he had sent the rest of his party.
Shane could barely hear Rose thanking Tony again and walking him out over the questions his friends had. When Rose told him her idea, his first reaction had been to say no. It was an insane idea. He loved Ilya, but did he really want to basically be branded by the guy? But then he had started to think about what Ilya's reaction to it would be and caved fast.
In lieu of a response, Shane pulled his shirt up slightly. J.J. immediately started cackling, his hands dropping to his knees as his whole body curled from laughter. Hayden’s eyebrows shot up to his forehead before a small grimace appeared on his face. Jackie laughed and said, "Oh, he's gonna loooove this."
He walked over to the nearest room with a full-length mirror and stared at the thick black font that made up the number 81, which now shone proudly on his hip. He started to blush as the thoughts of Ilya’s lips kissing his own number appeared. He could do this now, which was insane to think. He could publicly, proudly claim his place as Ilya’s.
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The rest of the night fled in a blur of laughter, shoving, and a lot more drinks. So yes, Shane had never wanted a bachelor party. But he had to admit that this was the best bachelor party he never asked for.