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The aftertaste of smoke is stale in Ilya’s mouth. Sometimes it’s a lifeline. Tonight, it’s a punishment.
Remember? lines the edges of his teeth. This is what you do when you lose. The award. Russia. Shane Hollander.
Ilya is angriest with himself.
The city is alive and insistent beneath him, the people small like ants, like grains of rice, like dirt. It makes Ilya feel even smaller. He wishes he could go inside and drink, could do something to relax before he grinds his teeth to dust. But there are certain things he cannot afford, certain places he cannot let his guard down just yet, just in case. There is also the voice in the back of his head saying what do you even deserve to celebrate? Have you earned it yet? Then shut your mouth and keep trying.
And because he is very terrible and very selfish, he had brought Hollander into it. Into his mess. I am going home soon, Ilya had told him, and Hollander had said nice for you because they are not the same. Hollander goes home to his parents who are downstairs right now celebrating him, and Ilya is out here alone, thinking about ants and dust and dirt and how maybe, maybe they would find it in them to care if Ilya threw himself over this edge and returned to it.
Foolish idea. It would not change anything, and also he would never get to put his mouth on Hollander’s again.
The guilt is nearly worse than the rest of it. The way Hollander had looked at him and said and I guess I thought that maybe we… before Ilya had turned away. Cold. Safe. Better than fear, maybe. Ilya is still weighing the odds.
But the smoke clears and Hollander is gone and Ilya is alone again on this rooftop, and the cold is sobering, the tie at his neck too tight. Hollander knows fear too: No one is looking. You don’t know that.
And now he is somewhere downstairs again, with aged liquor in his stomach and Ilya’s smoke on his breath, alone but in a different way. This, too, is Ilya’s fault somehow—the rooftop, his absence, the cigarette. The way Hollander had come up here in search of something and left with less than even that.
Ilya looks down at his hands. He knows how to do more than just take, he thinks. He just has to remember.
Have you earned it yet?
He curses, jabs the flame out until it’s ash, and finds his way back inside.
+
Confetti beneath his feet and the smell of champagne in the air, Ilya weaves through the crowd lingering around the bar to survey the tables. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He can’t see Hollander.
The only reason Ilya knows he must still be here is that his parents are here, mingling and sipping wine and looking not the least bit concerned about where their son has gone. Ilya should go back to his hotel. He should leave.
He doesn’t. He rounds the ballroom to the opposite side instead, wanders a bit down the back hallway. It seems like a place Hollander might go—quieter, more dimly lit, only the occasional flurry of event staff coming in and out of the kitchen before it’s all still again.
Just past the kitchens there’s a cushioned bench up against the wall, someone’s imprint left behind. Directly across from it is the bathrooms.
And Scott fucking Hunter.
Ilya’s eyes narrow. He forces his shoulders back, casual, and stalks forward.
“Waiting for someone?” he asks abruptly, enjoying the way that Hunter’s head snaps up to him, eyes a little wide. A little guilty of something too, maybe, Ilya thinks. The hand in his pocket curls into a fist, his flat smile gnashing his molars together.
Scott Hunter clears his throat and straightens up where he’s leaning against the wall outside the bathrooms, fiddling with the front of his suit. His eyes move from Ilya to the rectangular pane of frosted glass on the door to the restroom and back again. His mouth sets.
“Yeah. Waiting for a friend to finish up.”
Ilya leans against the wall further down from him on the opposite side of the bathrooms. Crosses his ankles.
“Hollander is a big boy,” he says, because he’s impatient. “He can manage by himself, I think.”
The twitch in Scott’s face confirms it, his mouth twisting into a disapproving frown. He crosses his arms and glances over at Ilya. “I think he couldn’t stand up when I caught him on the way to the bathroom.”
Ilya fiddles with his cufflinks. “Any excuse to be needed, hm?”
He tries to listen for Hollander behind the door of the bathroom between them, hoping for the toilet to flush or the sink to run or even for a bathroom stall latch to rattle. The silence is unnerving him.
Hunter graciously fills it with a huff, pushing off the wall to face Ilya properly, taking a step forward as he lowers his voice.
“I’m looking out for him.” He pauses for a moment, eyes Ilya intensely. “What I’m trying to figure out is what you’re doing here.”
“Always in my business,” Ilya dismisses easily. “You just cannot stop thinking about me. Wishing you were back in your glory days, probably. Is fine to admit that skill lessens with age.”
“God, you’re fucking insufferable,” Hunter scoffs. “Is everything a joke to you?”
Ilya’s eyes dart briefly to the bathroom door. Too quick. Telling on himself.
“No.”
Neither of them move for a long moment. Ilya does not care. He is going to stand here until Hollander comes out, and soon he is going to find a way in there if Hollander does not make some kind of noise like he is still alive.
Eventually, Hunter’s jaw unclenches and he sighs, loud and big into the hallway. He glances over his shoulder.
“Look, you were also nominated tonight. You should get back out there, enjoy your party.”
Ilya shrugs. “If you are so eager to party, you go. I will stay with him.”
The quiet returns. Hunter takes another step forward.
“Back off, Rozanov,” he murmurs.
Ilya burns. It is difficult to keep his voice even when he says, “I will not leave him alone with you.”
Hunter’s eyes flash, daring him. “And why is that?”
“You know why.”
Sucking in a breath, something shifts in Scott Hunter’s face, something Ilya does not like. He takes one more step forward, face to face with Ilya now, and if that is supposed to be intimidating, it fails. Ilya would laugh, if he weren’t so close to breaking his jaw.
He almost does, when Hunter has the nerve to give him a satisfied, sour little smile.
“Then you know why I’m not letting you in there either.”
Ilya’s eye twitches. He thinks of ants. Of dirt. Of Scott Hunter’s face broken into pieces, blood on Ilya’s white-knuckled fist. The fear is all distant now, separate from this other feeling in his ribs, sore from a hit he hasn’t yet taken.
Or maybe he has.
The bathroom door rattles and opens a fraction, and Ilya shoves his way around Hunter to stand across from it. In the gap, Hollander appears, visibly still drunk but otherwise seemingly okay, and something in Ilya sighs in relief.
“Hollander,” both of them say at the same time, Hunter’s sharp command and Ilya’s baritone invitation. Hunter’s eyes snap over to glare at him, but Ilya doesn’t take his off of Hollander’s face.
With wide eyes of his own, Hollander sways lightly, gripping the doorway, and glances somewhere in between them. His chin drops eventually, fingers gripping his temples like he’s decided he can’t deal with this now.
“I don’t feel very good,” he mutters.
“That is because you are a lightweight who was forced to take shots with the elderly,” Ilya says.
Hunter makes a fist at his side. “Nobody fucking forced him to—”
“Rozanov,” Hollander says with his forehead pressed to the door frame, tired, soft, decided. He blinks heavily, face miserable, looking at Ilya like he can fix it.
He’s the only one.
“Come here,” Ilya says, even though he’s already meeting Hollander halfway. He stumbles and Ilya catches him, his forehead falling to Ilya’s shoulder, his hand making a fist of the material of Ilya’s suit at his hip. “We need to sober you up, Hollander. Come on.”
Hollander makes another soft noise into his chest, something he would be mortified about if he were not drunk, and Ilya can’t resist feeling a little smug. Can’t deny himself one last look at Hunter behind him. See how he trusts me? he thinks. How he picked me?
See how I will earn this too?
They stare at each other again for a short stretch, until Ilya cocks a brow at him. Hunter’s shoulders drop, his head shaking. Ilya slips a hand under the side of Hollander’s suit where he cannot see it, presses a palm to warm flesh where the shirt underneath has ridden up. Hollander presses in closer.
“I hope you know what the fuck you’re doing here, Roz,” Hunter mutters.
“What was your nice American saying?” Ilya taunts, tilting his head. “Back off.”
With a final scoff, Scott Hunter raises his eyebrows, lifts both hands palms up, and then walks off down the hallway toward the party. Ilya watches until he’s fully rounded the corner, and even then he flips the lock extra loudly when he gets Hollander inside the bathroom again for good measure.
“You came back,” Hollander slurs, hot breath spilling over Ilya’s neck. Ilya’s pulse kicks up as he walks Hollander backward toward the counter, grabbing one of the little complimentary water bottles off the shelf by the door on his way.
“Yes. And you are drunk,” Ilya says. He lifts Hollander by the hips onto the countertop and lets him lean against the wall to the side, then uncaps the bottle and raises it to his lips. “Here. Drink.”
Hollander does not argue either point. He yields just like he does with anything Ilya tells him to do, eyes falling closed while Ilya holds the water to his mouth. Ilya watches his throat move as he swallows and tries not to let the fear creep back in—yet another voice, not quite his father’s, not his own that says here is someone who trusts you. Here is one more person you must not disappoint.
It doesn’t matter now. Hollander is not here with Scott Hunter or with anyone else, and Ilya would rather be here and be undeserving of it than to leave him to someone who does not know the weight of what they’ve been given.
Hollander finishes the bottle and chases it when Ilya pulls it away, lashes fluttering. Ilya tosses it into the trash and grabs his face with both hands, admires the dark pink flush on his cheeks and the way it makes his little marks—vesnushki, his mother would say, sprinkles of sunlight—stand out against his pale skin even more.
His nose wrinkles, but he doesn’t pull away. “What’re you doin’?”
“Making sure you are okay,” Ilya tells him. He continues his perusal, scanning over Hollander’s face. He is more drunk than when Ilya had seen him last, like he’d had more after coming back inside. After Ilya had given him a reason to.
He reaches over with one hand to grab a couple of paper towels from the dispenser, then taps a knuckle against the marbled sink until the water runs right between hot and cold. He wets the towels and then turns it off, lifting them to Hollander’s furrowed brow.
His face relaxes at the cool relief, the weight of his cheek falling completely into Ilya’s palm. Ilya strokes over it with his thumb while he presses the towel to every inch of red skin, as he wipes over Hollander’s mouth, as he thinks please please don’t remember this, you will have too much of me if you do.
“I think I might throw up again,” Hollander says eventually.
Ilya tosses the paper towels in the trash too and lifts a shoulder. “Is okay. Will make you feel better, probably.”
But then he doesn’t throw up, doesn’t even seem like he might, so they just sit there like that, with Hollander’s face in his hands, until a groan makes its way through his lips and he drops his head to Ilya’s shoulder instead.
“You—” he murmurs into the fabric, “I thought you were mad at me.”
Ilya swallows and does not look at himself in the mirror over Hollander’s shoulder. “I am not angry with you.”
“I thought maybe…”
When nothing else ever comes, Ilya lifts a hand, lays it on the outside of Hollander’s bicep and squeezes. “What did you think, Hollander?”
“I thought maybe you’d changed your mind about… wanting this. Me,” he admits, quiet enough that Ilya wouldn’t have been able to hear it over the sound of running water. “That maybe it was only fun for you if you were winning, and I ruined it. Tonight.”
His reflection is already looking at him in the mirror. Ilya takes a very long, very deep breath, feels Hollander’s restless, uncoordinated fingers fidgeting with the hemline of his suit.
“You do not have to look at me. But you will listen, yes?” Ilya says, setting a loose hand on the back of Hollander’s neck and feeling him nod. Feeling him shiver. “I do not stop wanting you when you win, Hollander. We have public competition that makes it fun and sexy and exciting, but when we are alone, it is about us. It is about wanting. Nothing else.”
Hollander sniffs, tugs a little at his shirt. “And you… want?”
“I want,” Ilya squeezes his neck, “when you are sober. And when you have not been throwing up nasty drinks on bathroom floor.”
Another groan, this one more intentional as Hollander lifts the hand off Ilya’s waist to rub at his eyes. He lifts his head and Ilya feels his body heat like a vacancy, his own hand slipping off of Hollander’s neck as he shifts to lean against the wall.
“I didn’t mean to get drunk,” he mutters. “I’m embarrassed.”
“If anyone here should be getting drunk, is probably you.”
Hollander huffs, a smile tugging at his lips. “Well, yeah, but. My parents are here. People I look up to are here. I shouldn’t have—I just didn’t want to think about—”
He is not smiling anymore. Ilya reaches forward, grabs his face in one hand until Hollander’s eyes shift to watch his mouth. It’s something. Ilya will take it. If it’s Hollander, he will always take what he can get.
“No more thinking. I want. You want. I am gone for three months. After that, we will figure something out.”
Briefly, Hollander’s wide, glassy gaze flickers up to meet Ilya’s. The imprint of Ilya’s fingers clings to his cheeks. “Yeah?”
“Da. Yes. I am man of my word, Hollander.”
For a handful of seconds Hollander only stares at his chin, and then his arms are slipping around Ilya’s shoulders, their faces cheek to cheek.
Ilya freezes. Hollander sighs, rubs his jaw against Ilya’s, fingers splayed over Ilya’s shoulder blade as if this isn’t the most terrifying thing they have ever done with each other before.
The fear is back, thick and sticky in his throat. But Ilya, on the brink of going somewhere so cold, so lonely, a place where the only people who will touch him will be to exchange money or push salt inside his wounds or get him off and be gone by morning, can’t bring himself not to take it.
He lifts a hand, sees it happen in the mirror, sets it in the middle of Hollander’s back, right in between his shoulder blades. His body thaws into it little by little, other hand gravitating toward the back of Hollander’s head, into his hair, until they’re both boneless, until they’re the only thing left holding each other up.
Ilya has not been touched like this in so, so long.
Time passes. Ilya isn’t certain how much. But no one comes looking for them, which feels important. Feels like permission, somehow. When they finally separate, Hollander pulls back with a sigh, looking significantly more aware than the last time.
“We should get back to the party,” he says, glancing down at himself. He kicks his ankles, nudges Ilya’s with the toe of his shoe. “I feel a little more like my legs might be able to function again now.”
“But you look so pretty like baby deer,” Ilya coos.
Hollander laughs, then, and pushes himself off the counter, shoving him out of the way so he can grab another water bottle. “Fuck off.”
“Ah.” Ilya nods. “You are back to normal then, yes.”
He turns and leans against the sink to watch as Hollander uncaps it and tilts it back to his mouth, the muscles in his jaw, the slope of his nose Ilya thinks of tracing with his finger, the wetness that clings to his lower lip when he’s finished until he wipes it with the back of his wrist.
Shifting a little awkwardly in the aftermath, Hollander tosses the bottle and then comes back over to him, gingerly fixing himself up in the mirror. He clears his throat.
“Hey, um. Thanks. You didn’t have to…”
“I wanted to,” Ilya says.
He is saying want an awful lot tonight, isn’t he?
Hollander dips his chin, nods. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome.”
His suit jacket rests discarded over the back of the lounge chair by the door. Ilya makes it there first, keeps his eyes lowered as he holds it up for Hollander to slip his arms into. Tries not to let his fingertips linger when he pretends to wipe lint from Hollander’s shoulders afterward.
Hollander turns the lock, head on a swivel as if he’s leaving one of their hotel rooms and not a public restroom at a party they are both on the guest list for, and then steps out into the hall. Ilya follows.
“So I guess I’ll see you after the summer,” Hollander offers mildly. “Next season. Did I—? I feel like I said that already.”
Ilya puts his hands into his pockets and smiles. “See you next season.”
Hollander lingers for a second more, then seems to realize that there isn’t anything left to be said. Ask me again and I will be different this time, Ilya thinks as he watches him go. It rattles, loose inside his head. And I guess I thought that maybe we…
“Hollander,” he calls.
He stops immediately, just the slightest bit breathless when he glances over his shoulder at Ilya.
“Yeah?”
Shut your mouth. Keep trying.
“Good job tonight. With award.”
Hollander turns away for a moment, hiding a flush that Ilya has already memorized, has already held in his palms. When he lifts his head again, there’s a soft smile tilting his lips. He nods.
“Thanks, Rozanov.”
Ashes to ashes, Ilya thinks as he calls a car back to his hotel, feet pressed to the pavement, lighter heavy in his pocket. But it doesn’t feel like less than he’d started with anymore.
He wonders if Hollander still smells like smoke. He wonders if that was a lifeline too.