I feel like I've seen several posts about how good Shane is at poker and I firmly subscribe to that belief but here's what I find interesting. Playing poker against Shane is when Ilya realises that Shane actually isn't a bad liar. He's just bad at hiding his desire from Ilya. Actually, when playing against him he has no fucking tells. None at all. And Ilya knows him. He knows his face. He knows how to read him. He recognises every minute shift of his features. He has every microexpression catalogued. And yet. Shane. keeps. winning. Ilya tries everything, every trick in the book. He tries to distract Shane, tries to catch him off guard, tries to intimidate him but with every attempt the only the only thing he manages is to rile Shane up and so he's sitting across the table from him and the only thing Ilya can read in his expression is that he is definitely hard and desperately trying to cover that fact up and he really is horrible at hiding it but Ilya still doesn't know if he's fucking lying about his cards.
