Work Text:
-heads up
-theres a tiktok trend where u ask ur boyfriend if hed still love u if u were a worm
-u have been warned
-What do you expect me to do with this information?
-idk obv but ilya's prob gonna ask u so u should think of an answer before u make a dick of urself like everybodys asshole tiktok boyf
-Rose I don't need media training to talk to my own husband.
-uh huh.
-sure_jan.gif
-so what would u say if he asked
-I'd say he's obviously not going to turn into a worm and stop being dumb.
-god ur bad at this
-why does he put up with u
-Freckles, mostly.
-ok. shane. this is not about worms.
-It literally is.
-yes, literally its about worms. but figuratively its about being disabled and helpless and unsexy.
-u kno. those things that happen to basically everyone when they get old???
-I'm so confused.
-i can tell!!!
-Wait but what do I do??
-its a lighthearted way of asking a v serious question, which is: will you still love me when im not young n hot anymore
-so keep it light but make sure u convey that yes u will love him forever.
-unless u wont, i guess?
-Of course I will >:(
-ok well say that
-So if he asks, I just say yes?
-yes is acceptable
-if u wanna go above n beyond u can engage with the fiction a little bit
-tell him how ud take care of ur beloved pet worm husband
-That's weird???
-i mean yeah a little
-does that mean u dont wanna go above n beyond?
-I didn't say that.
-good. ur welcome.
"Lyubimyy?
"Yeah?"
"Would you still love me if I was a worm?"
Shane looked up from his laptop. He'd been totally zoned in, feeling super productive, catching up on emails for about ninety minutes. Ilya was standing in the door of their home office with his phone camera, blatantly recording. A textbook ragebait attempt that normally would've worked.
Not today.
Shane adjusted his glasses and rifled through the desk drawer for a very particular little box. It had come with some PR package he couldn't even remember, but it was clear, sturdy plastic, open on one narrow side, and exactly the right size.
He placed it gently on the corner of the desk. Ilya looked askance.
"If you were a worm," Shane explained, "I would put you in this box with some nice fresh dirt and carry you around in my shirt pocket. It fits, I measured."
Ilya's mouth fell open.
(Jackpot,) Shane had just enough time to think, and then Ilya was all over him. The desk chair spun wildly-- or maybe Shane was just dizzied by the rush of his husband's tongue down his throat, his huge bulk clamped onto him like a koala, crushing him back into the leather padding of the impressively sturdy desk chair.
And Shane was only a man, so his hands were up Ilya's shirt before he really noticed, feeling the rippling muscles of his husband's back.
Someday they wouldn't be there. Someday they'd be old. Someday they'd be dead.
But God, he was so alive right now.
Ilya broke away just enough to pull his own shirt off.
"Baby," Shane gasped, seizing his chance. "Would you still love me if I was a worm?"
"Lyubimyy, if you were a worm I would make little tiny worm skates with my own two hands."
Oh.
"I would make hockey sticks out of little wooden coffee stirrers," Ilya went on, "I would freeze cookie sheet full of water to make little rink. I recruit garden worms to play with you, start little worm league."
Shane launched them off the chair, pinning Ilya to the floor by his wrists, kissing down one side of his neck and back up the other, pushing up into his hair to suck hard on his earlobe.
"Shane, Shane, Shane," Ilya groaned as the English evaporated from his body. "Someday we'll both be dead and buried and the worms will eat our bodies and the worms made of me will be in love with the worms made of you and we'll play worm hockey in the dirt until the sun burns out."
"Five billion years?"
"Mhm."
"It's a start."
Rose got to her dressing room at the crack of dawn, fruitlessly summoning the fortitude to endure three hours of being painted blue. This was the last film in her contract, and there was only one more week of filming. After this she'd take a hiatus, go on a long, non-blue vacation. Maybe next summer she'd do some Shakespeare for cheap just to rehabilitate her self-respect. Anything would do, really, as long as her skin could be skin color. One more week. Twenty-one more hours in the paint chair. That's less than a whole day. Home stretch, baby.
Ugh.
She threw her bag under the dresser and spotted it: a little orange box with a lid tied on with a fat pink ribbon, situated invitingly in the middle of her vanity. With a pang of guilt, she reminded herself that as early as she got to set, there were always people there before her, and they weren't getting paid eight million dollars for it.
They didn't have to be blue, though.
But still.
Anyway.
She opened the box to reveal another box, clear plastic, containing "Cheri's Gourmet Gummy Worms," allegedly in rose-raspberry and cantaloupe-pistachio flavors. An envelope was attached to the inner lid. The note read:
You are a genius. Thank you for your friendship.
S.H.
Rose tossed a worm into her mouth, and goddamn if it didn't taste exactly like cantaloupe and pistachios. She might survive this day after all.
~the end~