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Ilya smokes when he can’t sleep. He smokes when he can’t do all sorts of things, like lead his team to victory or punch his brother or please his father. He likes the way the smoke fills his lungs, warm and consuming. He likes the way it makes his blood rush with something other than rage or lust or longing, the way it curbs his desires for all the things he cannot have.
Tonight, Ilya has a cigarette because he can’t have Shane Hollander. Not anymore.
After winning MVP tonight, Ilya must go back to Russia, and he has to exorcise the wanting for Hollander to make room for other things, like the will to keep peace with Alexei and be kind to Polina and be the good strong Russian boy his father expects him to be. He can’t take Hollander across the ocean with him, tucked in his pocket like a piece of lint he will roll between his finger and thumb, wearing it away each day until it turns into dust.
But all the distance he made between them since Sochi has well and truly been closed. He meant to hold his ground. Hollander’s stupid wet eyes in that filthy bathroom at the MLH awards might as well have been a grenade. So now they’ve fucked–back to front because Ilya didn’t think he could look into Hollander’s perfect dark eyes tonight while buried deep inside him and live to tell the tale–in this enormous penthouse suite that he had no business booking but did anyway because his brother asked him for money he didn’t want to send. A last defiant act before crawling home on bended knee to spend his summer in supplication to a land that cannot love him back.
He wonders, cigarette held between his lips, if Hollander ever will.
And fuck, Ilya knows that whatever he carries for Hollander isn’t so innocuous as a piece of lint. It’s a torch, blazing hot against the night. If he isn’t careful, the sparks will catch and they’ll both burn to a crisp.
He lights another cigarette. And another after that. He would probably smoke the whole pack if not for the jarring buzz of his phone on the nightstand.
Marly: dude where the fuck are you?
Marly: party’s on
Marly: can’t believe you’re missing this shit
Ilya: I have better things to do than drink terrible hotel room booze and listen to Scott Hunter talk about olden days
Marly: Hunter left hours ago
Ilya smirks, preparing to reply with a cutting remark about Hunter’s bed time, but then Marleau says something that makes Ilya’s blood go cold.
Marly: Hollander’s here though
Ilya looks up, eyes falling to the side of the bed where Hollander had lain beside him and asked about Russia not so long ago, at the pillows he’d used to prop up Hollander’s hips, at the now empty vodka glass he’d pressed to Hollander’s lips. How long ago did he leave? His stilted goodbye remains swirling in the air around him like smoke. Ilya assumed Hollander would go back to his pathetic room and think pathetic thoughts and dream pathetic dreams. He wanted him to. Because then it would mean they were both pathetic tonight. But no, Hollander went and got himself invited to party with Ilya’s teammates? Not possible.
Ilya: No he is not
Marly: Some of the Edmonton guys found him skulking in the hall by himself
Marly: Still in his fucking tux, if you’ll believe it
Marly: We’re heading down to the casino in a min. You coming?
Ilya: No way Hollander goes out with you
Marly: I think he’s a little drunk
Ilya: Hollander is drunk????
He barely drank any of Ilya’s vodka. Only what Ilya gave him, which wasn’t enough to make a toddler tipsy let alone a 250 pound athlete. Ilya doesn’t wait for Marleau’s response before leaping out of bed and locating his boxer-briefs.
Ilya: wait for me in lobby
Ilya: this I must see
–
When Ilya cruises into the lobby fifteen minutes later wearing a silk shirt and his signature scowl, it is immediately apparent that Hollander is, if not exactly drunk, then at the very least, not himself. He’s listing slightly to the side, glassy eyed and rosy cheeked. His shirt is unbuttoned and askew, showing a peek-a-boo of clavicle. Ilya wants to lick it.
“Rozy!” Marleau claps him on the shoulder in greeting.
Ilya is used to the heft of Marleau’s hands–Boston is a physical team, and Ilya’s made it clear that sharing affection will not make them weak–so it’s not Marleau’s touch that sends a quake through his body. It’s Hollander’s reaction to hearing his name.
The gaggle of hockey players ripples at Ilya’s arrival. The other Boston players let out a loud cheer. A winger from Philly shouts “Now the party’s here!” while Vancouver’s goalie audibly groans, “Not this fucking guy.”
But Hollander… Hollander remains angled away from Ilya, he doesn’t look at him at all. Anyone not fluent in the language of Shane Hollander’s body might assume Shane isn’t paying attention, but Ilya knows better. Hollander’s non-reaction is a reaction in and of itself. The controlled palatable mask of disinterest is pulled over Hollander’s expression again. Only Ilya knows what he looks like when he lets go, when he stops performing for the benefit of everyone else and lets himself want something for himself. It makes Ilya’s tongue feel too large for his mouth.
“Da, this fucking guy,” Ilya replies, announcing his arrival with arms spread wide. He joins the throng, bumping shoulders with the goalie, flicking an enforcer’s ear, ruffling a rookie’s hair.
Brushing elbows with Shane Hollander.
Hollander flinches back from the touch, casting a scowl at the ugly carpeted floor. “Fuck off,” he mutters.
The familiar words are like the smooth fabric of Ilya’s favorite shirt against his skin, the glide of his hockey stick across ice, the aroma of freshly made pelmeni wafting in the air.
Ilya flashes a lopsided smile. “Mm, no. I don’t think I will,” he says and squeezes between Hollander and Carter Vaughn as he heads for the bar.
He orders shots for everyone–vodka, of course. He briefly considers adding a ginger ale to his tab for Hollander, but the weight of the cigarette pack in his pocket reminds him he’s not supposed to care about Hollander anymore. He pulls out the pack and taps a cigarette into his palm. The pack is half-empty. Good. Now they match.
After a shot, Ilya lights up. The air already smells like tobacco here in the casino, but he catches Hollander’s eye and waits for the scolding to begin. Hollander’s lips find the edge of his shot glass in a tentative sip instead. Ilya nearly chokes on the smoke crowding his lungs in his haste to pluck the glass from Hollander’s fingers.
“You don’t know how to take shot?” he asks with a raised brow.
A couple of the guys laugh, throwing back their own shots before dispersing into the stupidly lit casino.
“Yes I fucking do,” Hollander grumbles, making a swipe for the glass. “Give that back.”
“Nyet.” Ilya holds the shot out of Hollander’s grasp, running the pad of his finger slowly around the rim, holding Hollander’s gaze like a lungful of smoke. “You have done shots before, Hollander. Maybe you have had enough? Too much?”
“I’m fine,” Hollander says with a bland expression. “I’ve had like one beer.”
“I believe only one of those things.” Ilya surveys Hollander, searching for signs of inebriation that aren’t there. He’s seen Hollander unguarded, without inhibitions. This isn’t it. Maybe cockdrunk and boozedrunk Hollander are two different animals, but something tells Ilya this is different. If Hollander is not drunk, like Marleau said, then that means something else is going on. Something else is wrong.
They’re alone at the bar now, the rest of their crew scattered within the casino. Ilya clocks two Admirals at the blackjack table, a collection of western conference defensemen playing roulette, and the rest hooting and hollering amongst the slot machines. No one is watching. He could press a finger to Hollander’s lips, wait for Hollander to open for him. He could slide the pad of his thumb across Hollander’s tongue, tip his chin up, and pour the liquid into his mouth. He could watch the bob of Hollander’s throat as he swallows it down.
Ilya takes a drag from his cigarette instead.
“What?” Ilya asks as Hollander stares him down, not unlike an enraged bull. “You are going to tell me not to smoke? Is Vegas, Hollander. No one cares.”
“Neither do I,” Hollander mutters, turning away toward the bar. “Are you going to give my drink back?”
Ilya glances down at the shot glass in his hand and shrugs. “No. Is mine now.” He throws the shot back, suppressing a wince at the taste of subpar hotel bar vodka. When he looks up again, Hollander is already walking away from him into the sea of brightly colored slot machines.
–
Ilya is going to enjoy himself tonight. That’s the plan. Drink, flirt, gamble. He is in Las Vegas, after all. Party boy Rozanov, here for his last hurrah before Mother Russia sucks all the joy from his limbs like an overgrown, thirsty leech. But, as the hours dwindle on, it becomes clear to him that no amount of alcohol or winning hands of poker are going to distract him from what he really wants. Not while it wanders the casino like a lost puppy.
Hollander is everywhere Ilya looks. Or maybe Ilya looks everywhere Hollander is. He can’t tell anymore. Maybe he is the lost puppy, the way his gaze follows Hollander around the casino. He watches as Hollander doubles back to the bar and orders a ginger ale, as he nurses his drink slowly at the periphery of everyone else’s fun, as he absently tugs on the handle of a slot machine and walks away before the dials finish turning. A forward from Jersey hollers after him when he wins, but Hollander doesn’t bother turning around to collect his winnings.
Eventually, Hollander joins the rest of them at the poker table. Ilya loses that hand on account of his distracting closeness, but cleans house the next two hands as silent revenge. He handily wipes the floor with Hammersmith and Marleau, and then Sullivan, and Matheson. He cackles as they depart in shame, scooping the chips into his arms like a mad action movie villain.
“Denise, you have made me very happy man tonight,” Ilya says to the dealer with a wink before turning back to the others. “Who will I humiliate next?”
“Kill him for us, Vaughn,” Matheson says.
“No way. I’m out.” Vaughn shakes his head. “I can’t afford to lose to Rozanov.”
“No?” Ilya taunts. “The Admirals do not pay you enough.”
“Oh, I have the money, just can’t take the hit to my ego.” Vaughn grins sheepishly. “Maybe Hollzy can handle him.”
“Come on, Hollander,” Marleau says. “Take one for the team. Can’t let him win MVP and a fuckton of money on the same night. He’ll be insufferable.”
“He’s already insufferable,” Hollander mutters hollowly, but then he looks up from the floor and meets Ilya’s eye.
Ilya suppresses a shudder. Hollander’s gaze is stony and cold, far away like Ilya’s already traveling across an ocean. But there–Ilya catches it for only a second. Warmth, waning, fading, dying. Like embers of a blaze long extinguished.
Lips curling into a sly smile, Ilya gestures to the seat across from him. “I am already best hockey player. And fastest skater. And highest scorer. And hottest–”
“Get to the fucking point, Rozanov,” Shane grumbles.
“Tonight, I am best poker player in MLH too.” Ilya shrugs. “Unless you want to challenge me?”
“Please, Hollander,” Sullivan groans.
“Wipe that smug smile off his face and I’ll buy your drinks for the rest of the night,” says Hammersmith.
Ilya only grins wider. The betrayal of his own teammates might sting more if it wasn’t serving his purposes exactly. Goading Hollander into competition is his favorite pastime, second only to fucking him through the mattress, probably. And here in the wee hours of his last day of freedom, Ilya will take whatever he can get.
“Yes, Hollander,” Ilya says while lighting another cigarette. “Is your last chance, no?”
“Last chance for what?” Hollander spits back, eyes flicking to the glowing end of Ilya’s cigarette.
“To prove you’re better than me at something.” Ilya takes a drag from his cigarette to stop himself from smiling too wide. He knows he has Hollander on the hook now.
Hollander’s fingers ball into fists atop the table. He grabs Vaughn’s abandoned drink, downs it, and glares daggers at Ilya before plopping into a seat. “Deal me in.”
They play with careful ferocity. Best of seven hands, they agree–just like the playoffs. Hollander wins the first with a pair of jacks, then Ilya with a straight. The third goes to Ilya again, catching Hollander wetting his lips–a clear sign of nerves–but the fourth and fifth go to Hollander. Ilya stops smoking after he catches Shane watching the progress of his cigarette, letting it fall still lit into the ash tray. He wins the sixth hand with a lucky high queen, tying them up for the seventh and final hand.
“I should have known you’d go all the way, Hollander,” Ilya says with a wink. “You have–what is the word–stamina.”
“Fuck off,” Hollander mutters under his breath.
Ilya wishes they could play a hundred more rounds. He would give every chip on his tray if it meant he could keep making Shane squirm like this. “Yes,” he said with a crooked smile and a glance toward Denise. She is pretty, with long dark hair and a heart-shaped face, but Ilya knows he won’t be taking her back to his penthouse tonight. Hollander doesn’t, though, and something about that sends a thrill through him. “Maybe I will. After.”
Hollander gives him a sharp look, as if to say don’t push it.
Ilya heaves a performative sigh. “So boring, Hollander.”
“What, now poker isn’t interesting enough for you?” Hollander rolls his eyes. “Thought you liked throwing money around.”
Ilya leans forward. “Money is boring. Money is… whatever. We both have money.”
“I mean, yes, but I don’t think–” Hollander flushes, glancing at their more reasonably paid colleagues.
“We could make more interesting wager, don’t you think?”
Hollander freezes, catching on. “Rozanov,” he says with a hint of warning in his voice.
Ilya raises his eyebrows, trying to communicate to Hollander that he isn’t stupid. He’s not about to say anything, not in front of a dozen hockey players and Denise, who could easily sell their secrets for a hefty sum. He is cleverer than all that.
“Same bet as last time,” he says instead. “You know the terms.”
Ilya’s heart beats a bruise against his ribs as Hollander surveys him. It doesn’t even matter which one of them wins. Ilya will do whatever Hollander wants. As long as what Hollander wants is him, he doesn't really care. He suppresses a shudder at the memory of Hollander, stripped naked on the bed, hands on his body, gaze on fire, words denting Ilya’s carefully constructed armor. I need you. Hollander didn’t mean it–not the way Ilya wishes he did–but Hollander’s thready voice, pleading and open and aching, fills Ilya’s blood with a yearning too powerful to contain. The kind of yearning he can’t take with him to Russia, can’t take with him past tonight into the dawn.
“Do we have a deal?” he asks, voice almost cracking as he swallows down the memory. He picks up his cigarette and takes a long drag.
Hollander levels his gaze at Ilya and wets his lips. Fireworks alight in Ilya’s lungs at the looming victory, but then Shane sets down his cards and pushes back his chair.
“Ah, you forfeit?” Ilya asks with a sinking feeling in his stomach. “You are letting me win? Is this allowed? Denise, tell him this is not allowed.”
“Just realized I don’t actually have anything to prove.” Shane shrugs, looping his thumbs in his pockets. “Don’t really care what you think of me. Have fun, Rozanov.”
He leaves Ilya at the poker table with a staggeringly tall pile of chips as the surrounding players explode.
“That was fucking metal, dude!” one shouts after Hollander. Another throws a handful of chips in the air. Someone orders more drinks.
The cacophony of groans and cheers fades into the background as Ilya’s mind plays Hollander’s words on a loop. I don’t really care what you think of me.
Fuck that. Ilya will make him care. By the end of tonight, Hollander will care. He will be half-sick with how much he cares. Just like Ilya.
Ilya slips away from the table to follow in Hollander’s path, putting out what’s left of his cigarette on the way.
–
Ilya tracks Hollander out of the casino, across the lobby, and to a bathroom near the elevators. Ilya isn’t sure he can face down an angry, wet-eyed Shane Hollander in a bathroom again so soon, not without his resolve crumbling completely, so he steels himself for a moment before following after.
“Hollander,” he says with a sharper edge than he probably needs to. “Hollander.” He repeats his name more softly this time as he catches sight of the other man leaning against the row of sinks, shoulders hunched.
“Come to collect?” Hollander asks vacantly. “You won, right? What do you want?”
Hollander looks up, face reflected in the mirror, and Ilya feels like he’s been checked onto the ice. Hollander’s eyes are red-rimmed, moisture welling in the corners. He looks utterly wrecked, and Ilya hasn’t even put his hands on him yet. That inkling he had before at the bar that something was wrong with Hollander returns tenfold, and Ilya crosses the room in a few long strides.
“You are sore loser?” Ilya asks, cornering Hollander against the wall, pressing a finger to the center of his chest. “Cannot bear to lose in front of all your little friends, so you just give up?”
“What? No. Fuck off.” Hollander swats at his hand.
“So, what is this? You are so eager for round two you do not even bother playing? You want me to drag you back to bed?”
Hollander swallows hard, eyes dropping to Ilya’s lips even as he’s shaking his head. “You are so fucking full of yourself, Rozanov.”
“Mm, I will be the one filling you, I think.”
Hollander’s head hits the paper towel dispenser and he tips it back, exposing his throat, which Ilya’s fingers are all too eager to encircle. He traces his thumb down the side of Hollander’s jaw with patient devotion, charting the path he plans to take with his tongue. But then Hollander reaches up and tugs Ilya’s hand away with a plaintive whine.
“Stop,” Hollander says, like the word has been punched out of him, and glances at the bathroom door leading back out to the lobby. “I don’t want–” he shakes his head. “Guess it doesn’t matter what I want. You won, right?”
“Hollander, no.” Ilya drops his hand and takes a step back, then another and another until he is pressed against the opposite wall. Every inch of distance is a painful stretch between them, but Ilya needs Hollander to understand that he would never touch him without consent. “That is not how this works.”
“Then how does it fucking work, Rozanov?” Hollander throws his hands in the air. “You seem to be the only one who knows, so enlighten me.”
“Enlighten… is like… to bring light?”
“Explain it to me,” Hollander clarifies. “You don’t talk to me for months, then you want me to fucking perform for you, then you fuck me, and just…”
“And just what?” Ilya asks, genuinely curious. Hollander has never been very forthcoming about his feelings–not that Ilya’s given him many opportunities–but Ilya knows this thing between them is shared. Hollander may not tell Ilya what he wants, but he always shows him, eager and ready.
“Never mind,” Hollander grunts, cheating his gaze down to the floor.
Ilya’s stomach twists into a tight knot of fear. “Hollander, if I have hurt you, you need to tell me.”
Hollander shakes his head. “No. It’s stupid.”
“Tell me.”
With a shuddering breath, Hollander says, “You just threw me away, like I didn’t fucking matter. And I know I don’t. This is just… whatever the fuck it is. It’s not like you care. But fuck, Rozanov.” He heaves a sigh, and the words spill out, small and quiet like he’s trying not to say them. “We didn’t even kiss.”
We didn’t even kiss. That was by design. That was how it had to be. Ilya promised himself he wouldn’t–not again, not after the bathroom before. Kissing Shane Hollander isn’t something to be done lightly, he can’t kiss Shane Hollander halfway. When he kisses Shane Hollander, he means it, even if Hollander can never really mean it back. It’s always been that way, Ilya trying not to want him more than he can afford to, and though he may be flush with cash, he is bleeding whatever currency is accepted here in this taut and twisted space between them.
Ilya didn’t think Hollander would notice. He thought, after he got what he wanted, Hollander would be glad to leave him. But here he stands, telling him exactly the opposite. Hollander is almost shaking with the effort of his honesty, and it takes every muscle in Ilya’s body not to go to him right now, to hold his body and keep him close. Ilya thought he was only depriving himself, all the things he cannot want locked behind the cage of his ribs. But maybe Hollander needs them, too.
“What room are you in?” Ilya asks, voice cracking.
“Seriously?” Hollander huffs. “Penthouse suite not doing it for you?”
Ilya doesn’t know how to explain that the penthouse is tainted, now. It is for celebrating victory and filthy fucking and wallowing in the empty void of his own want. It is for waiting out the hours until he has to go back to Russia, smoke curling from his lips, desire bleeding from his heart. The penthouse is not for making amends, for putting broken things to right. There is no room for tenderness that high up in the sky.
“You think I’m going to let you have your way with me again?” Hollander asks, incredulous. Then, he moans and sinks down the wall a few inches. “Who am I kidding? Fuck. Where do you want me?”
“Hollander.” Ilya holds his jaw tight, afraid if he lets go of any of the tension in his body now he will lose the will to do this right. “I am not going to… have my way with you.”
“You’re not?” Hollander almost looks disappointed.
“You will tell me room number, and I will meet you there in five minutes.” Ilya shakes his head. “I will not do this in hotel lobby bathroom.”
“Do what, exactly?” Hollander asks.
Ilya pushes off from the wall and takes slow steps across the room. He raises a hand and brushes Hollander’s hair back from his face, fingers tracing from his brow to his jaw, before taking his chin between thumb and forefinger. “What I should have done before.” Ilya leans in and brushes his lips featherlight against Hollander’s, a promise, an oath. “I am going to take care of you.”
Hollander gives him a keycard.
–
Five minutes later, Ilya leaves the bathroom, checking that the players are still busy in the casino, then follows Hollander upstairs. He prays with each floor that the elevator will not stop for anyone who knows him. He hasn’t been shy about booking the penthouse, so he has no reason to visit the lower floors. Thankfully, he reaches the sixteenth floor and carves a path down the hall to Hollander’s room without incident. He considers knocking, but Hollander gave him a key for a reason, so he swipes it and pushes the door open.
Hollander is waiting at the foot of the bed, head in his hands, rocking back and forth. Ilya toes off his shoes by the door and pads softly across the carpet to sit beside him, placing the flat of his palm against Hollander’s spine.
“Are you okay?” Ilya asks, even though he knows the answer.
Hollander straightens and clears his throat. “Sorry. Just freaking out.”
Ilya increases the pressure of his palm and rubs Hollander’s back in slow circles until some of the tension leaves Hollander’s shoulders and he begins to lean into the touch.
“Fuck,” Hollander says through a broken laugh. “You probably think I’m pathetic, huh.”
“Thought you did not care what I think of you,” Ilya says, moving his hand up to the nape of Hollander’s neck to tangle with his hair.
Hollander groans. “Course I do. Wish I fucking didn’t, but… yeah. Of course I do.”
“I do not think you are pathetic,” Ilya says with a shrug. “Maybe it is me who is pathetic.”
Hollander pulls back to look Ilya in the eye. “What do you mean?”
Ilya averts his gaze. “I have to go back to Russia.”
“Yeah, you said before–”
“Is not a good thing.” Ilya’s chest tightens, an unnatural cold creeping over him. “Russia is not good place for me. My family is not… not like your family. We are not good to each other. We hurt each other, mostly. Sometimes I worry that is all I am good for. Hurting people.”
“Rozanov, no–”
“I fight people on ice, I fight people in bars, I fight people at home. Is normal. Is expected.” Ilya sighs heavily. “But I do not want to hurt you.”
“You didn’t. I swear, you didn’t.” Hollander pulls Ilya’s arms around him as if to prove it. “I’m in one piece, I promise.”
“I do not mean physically. Not always.” Ilya shakes his head. “Russia is… when I go home, I have to be, I don’t know. Stronger, or harder. Colder. Is how I survive.” Ilya has never had to explain this before. Everyone from his old life in Russia, like Svetlana, already understands this. There has never been anyone in his new life important enough to tell. “When I come back, after, sometimes I am different. And before I go… I feel…” He gestures to his chest, unable to put it to words.
“Panic?” Hollander suggests.
Ilya shrugs. “Maybe. Like slow panic.”
“Anxiety.”
Ilya doesn’t know if that’s right either, but it doesn’t really matter. The word isn’t important, just the feeling. “It makes me… outside myself. Like I am leaving me behind in America to go be the version of me that is for Russia.”
“Okay, I think I get that.”
And maybe Hollander does. He may not have Russia or a mean father and a terrible brother, but Hollander knows what it’s like to be one person for the world and another for himself. Ilya wants to tell him the rest of it, that it isn’t just that he has to be this other version of Ilya Rozanov in a few days, but that the Ilya Rozanov that goes to Russia cannot be falling in love with Shane Hollander. Not that any version of Ilya Rozanov is, of course, but Ilya can feel his footing slipping with every encounter, the ground beneath his feet growing thinner and thinner. He knows the drop is coming. He just hopes Hollander is there to catch him when he falls.
“Come,” Ilya says instead. “You need to shower.”
“You calling me smelly, Rozanov?”
“Warm water will clear your head.” Ilya takes Hollander by the hand and leads him toward the bathroom. He doesn’t really know if Hollander’s head needs clearing. He obviously didn’t drink much–despite Marleau’s assertions that Hollander was drunk before–but Ilya can’t bring himself to continue the conversation until they’ve washed away the sweat and salt and sting of the penthouse. He needs them to be clean, he needs them to start fresh.
Hollander follows him into the shower, pliant as ever. Ilya lathers soap across Hollander’s back, his front, his abs, his legs. He leaves no scrap of skin unwashed, trailing soft kisses wherever he goes, then back up to Hollander’s lips. More than once, Hollander tries to drop to his knees, but Ilya holds him up and whispers “Nyet” into the hollow of his throat. Ilya isn’t trying to start anything here tonight; he’s just trying to fix it.
When they are both washed and dried, Ilya retrieves his underwear and borrows a t-shirt from Hollander.
“You unpack?” he asks, in awe as Hollander shows him to the dresser. “MLH awards are only one night.”
“Shut up,” Hollander says, but there’s a fondness underneath that wasn’t there before. “It keeps things from wrinkling.”
Of course Shane folds-his-clothes-before-sex Hollander would care about wrinkles. “You are a madman,” Ilya says with a chuckle as he pulls the t-shirt on.
Beside him, Hollander does the same–tossing the shirt over his head before sticking his arms through the holes like an overgrown toddler. Ilya wants to rewind the tape and watch him do it again and again.
“Now what?” Hollander asks.
Ilya turns, sets his sight on the pristine bed, and dives into the sea of pillows. He lands on his stomach, then flips over and pats the bed next to him. “Now, we spoon, and I tell you how pretty you are.”
Hollander picks up a pillow from the floor–a casualty of Ilya’s belly flop–and throws it at his head. “What is this, a slumber party?”
“Mm, yes. We can play truth or dare and talk about all the boys we like.” Ilya pushes himself up to sit back against the remaining pillows and waits for Hollander to join him.
“All the boys we like?” Hollander asks, sitting gingerly on the bed, leaving a healthy amount of space between them. “You finally ready to admit to your giant crush on Scott Hunter?”
Ilya makes a retching sound. “Gross. Hollander, no. Why would you say that? Mood is ruined now.”
“You’re the one who brought it up.” Hollander smacks Ilya lightly on the chest, but doesn’t remove his hand. “So you’re not secretly into a bunch of hockey players?”
Ilya laces his fingers with Hollander’s and tugs him closer. “Mm, no. Just one is plenty, I think. Is too much trouble to deal with more.”
“Thought you liked trouble.”
“Da,” Ilya says fondly, pressing a kiss to Hollander’s forehead. “So much trouble. He is so needy–always begging for my cock. More than one would be too much work.”
“Fuck off.” Hollander inches closer, tangling their legs together and resting his head on the pillow of Ilya’s chest.
“I will tell you more about this hockey player, da?” Ilya wraps his arms around Hollander.
“The one you like?”
Ilya makes an affirmative sound, not quite ready to admit to it out loud. “He is so pretty, you know. On the ice, he moves like no one else. And he has the most beautiful freckles.” Ilya brushes his thumb across Hollander’s cheek, wondering if he will someday be given the time to count them. “And he is so smart. Highest hockey IQ in league, but also he is always teaching me new words. Never makes me feel like shit for not knowing. He… enlightens me.”
“Englightens you,” Hollander parrots with a smile.
“He deserves better, I think.”
Hollander tightens his grip. “What?”
Ilya looks up at the ceiling, unable to meet Hollander’s watery gaze at this particular moment. “He is so good, so perfect. Everyone says so. They do not know him how I know him, but they are right. He should have the best, not… not whatever I can give him.”
“Hey.” Hollander nuzzles closer. “I like what you give me.”
“Not tonight, maybe.” Ilya sighs. “I am not nice to you tonight. I am selfish and careless and lazy and you should have something better.”
Hollander moves on the bed beside him and for a moment, Ilya thinks he’s pulling away, the pain of inevitability lancing through him, but then Hollander throws his leg over Ilya and flops down so they’re pressed chest to chest, Hollander a heavy weighted blanket pinning him to the bed.
“Stop talking about yourself like that,” he says firmly. “That’s my–uh… I don’t know. That’s my guy you’re talking about.”
“Your guy?” Ilya raises his eyebrows.
Hollander flushes pink. “Sorry, I don’t really know what to call you–what you are to me. I know we’re not… not anything, but I don’t know. We’re also not nothing.”
“No, we are not nothing.”
Ilya sighs into the pressure of Hollander’s body on his, brushing his fingertips against the warmth in Hollander’s cheeks. They aren’t nothing. They haven’t been nothing in a long time.
Ilya finds Hollander’s mouth with his own, kissing him slow and soft. Their touches melt like butter, and Ilya would do anything to keep the sun from rising outside, to keep whatever this is between them alive under the cover of night. But Ilya knows when the day breaks, he has to go back to pretending. He will have to leave this newfound something behind. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, that’s how the saying goes. But they are still in Vegas for one night, and Ilya is going to make the most of it.
–
Ilya wakes in the cradle of Hollander’s arms, naked and warm. They are pressed together, neither relenting in their battle to be the bigger spoon even in slumber. Ilya smiles against Hollander’s chest, and presses a kiss to his sternum before gently extracting himself, careful not to wake the man beside him. He throws on his pants before sliding open the door and stepping onto the patio.
It’s still mostly dark, but rays of sun are beginning to brighten the sky. Dread pools low in his stomach at the impending dawn and all the day brings with it–rushed goodbyes and airport security lines and cramped plane seats and months away from the boy who makes him feel a little like crying, who reminds him that summer is worth fighting through.
Ilya doesn’t dare look behind him at Shane–somewhere between working him open, taking him in his lap, coming with their lips locked, and falling asleep in each other’s arms, he became Shane, not Hollander. Only in his head. He hasn’t tested the name on his lips out loud, not yet. He won’t. Not until he comes back from Russia.
Russia. It looms ahead of him, the summer months stretching out like a gangplank. He hopes at the end of it, when he comes back a little harder, a little more broken, Shane will still want him. Ilya will still want Shane, even though he’ll have to tuck that part of himself away until the end of summer. He tries to think of him not like a secret he has to hide, but one he has to protect, but it still feels like a death sentence somehow.
Ilya reaches for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket instinctually as he watches the sun inch over the horizon.
“Hey.” Shane’s sleep-soft voice comes from behind as he joins Ilya on the patio. “Thought you might’ve left.”
Ilya plants a kiss on Shane’s head and hums gently into his hair. “No. I would not do that.”
Shane reaches for his hand, lacing their fingers together, and pulls him back toward the room. “We still have a few hours.”
Ilya glances at the horizon, and something shifts inside him. Yes, he has to leave soon, and yes it will be horrible, just like it always is. But for once he feels like maybe the passage of time isn’t sending him hurtling back to Russia like a neverending trebuchet of familial obligation and nationalist duty. Instead, maybe each day is bringing him closer to returning to Shane again.
“Pretty sunrise,” Shane murmurs against Ilya’s bicep.
“Mm, yes, pretty.” Ilya tilts Shane’s head up and brushes a kiss against his lips. The sun is climbing in the sky now. Enlightening it, maybe. He’ll look up the word later to make sure he’s using it right. But even as the sky turns bruising shades of purple before them, he can’t help but think Shane is the brightest thing around. His own personal sun.
“Come back to bed?” Shane asks against his lips.
“Da, solnyshko,” Ilya says, following Shane inside.
He leaves the pack of cigarettes on the patio.