Archive of Our Own

The thing is he almost only ever catches him out of the corner of his eye. He’s a spectre, a wraith, a one hundred eighty pound shadow with a gun and a knife and kevlar vest.

He’s the best the agency has. Discreet. Laser-focussed. Aim so precise he can put bullet through the eye socket of a man twenty feet away, in a moving car.

Ilya never sees him.

They finish filming, and it’s late, and Rose has her hood up, Sasha’s covered his head and face with a scarf, and Ilya’s got his hat and shades pulled low. The camera is in the pocket of his hoodie. The tripod is in Rose’s bag. Their mics are tucked into the waist band of Sasha’s jeans.  

It’s a quick transference from the warehouse into the car, and he is waiting in the driver’s seat, though Ilya could’ve sworn he was just beside them outside. A wraith.

They drop Sasha off first, always. They watch him buzz into his building, wait until the glass door closes behind him, locked, safe. Ilya and Rose always sit in the back, and they hold hands, just in case. 

Rose gets dropped off next, and then it’s just Ilya and the man who is so quiet and so still that sometimes Ilya closes his eyes and imagines the car is driving itself.

At Ilya’s building, the man parks, and gets out, and escorts Ilya all the way through the lobby, up the elevator and to his door. He does a thorough scan of Ilya’s apartment before he lets him in, then holds the door for Ilya and closes it behind himself as he exits. Ilya knows he waits for Ilya to turn the deadbolt, pull the chain. The man waits the whole minute the alarm beeps until it’s set, and only then, does he leave. 

He doesn’t take the elevator, because Ilya never hears it. He never hears his feet in the hall either, but Ilya imagines he walks to the firedoor and takes the stairs down. In dead silence.

They never catch eyes. They never talk. These are the moments they come closest to acknowledging each other – the nights he, Rose, and Sasha film, the nights the man canvasses his apartment, just in case.

Every other day of his life, the man is watching, but from a distance. Ilya has a private driver, usually. He has official security, on his real-job sets. The films he’s usually contracted to are big budget, scripts so locked down he gets his lines but no one else’s, and still, he knows the man is there, dogging his steps, a hand ghosting across a concealed weapon, stepping from shadow to shadow.

His name is Shane Hollander. He works private security, has been on Ilya’s detail for almost a year. His discretion is embedded in an armload of NDAs, the man’s own strict sense of personal ethic, and an agency contract so airtight it’s strangling.

**

Ilya never sees him, so it’s shocking – jarring – when suddenly he is there, right in front of him, eyes fast and assessing. He’s touching him – hand on his wrist, where Ilya is still holding the phone up to his ear. Ilya’s frozen. 

There’s a PA, open-mouthed, gaping at Hollander – Hollander who is definitely not approved to be on set, and who the PA has no idea has been here every day for the past month – but Ilya cannot hear a thing the PA is saying. Hollander’s grip tightens around his wrist.

“Rozanov,” he says, firmly, and Ilya’s has heard his voice before, he must have. This can’t be the first time they’ve spoken, can it?

“Rozanov,” Hollander says, and Ilya leans towards his voice, unthinking. “Tell me what happened.”

The call is disconnected. Twenty seconds long. Twenty seconds, and everything is wrong.

“I need to get to Russia,” he says, and his voice is wrong. There’s an emotion that he wasn’t meant to feel, in this moment. He knew this was coming, they all knew this way coming, he’s prepared for…

“Today?” Hollander asks.

Ilya nods.

Ilya rubs his hands over his face, and allows himself one moment to feel so, so weary, and then in the next moment, the production schedule is altered, the flights are booked, Ilya is in the airport and his passport is in his hand, and Hollander is here somewhere but Ilya can’t see him, and then they are on the plane, and Hollander is beside him and within sight for the foreseeable future.

Hollander has a gun, tucked into his waistband. He doesn’t know how Hollander got it onto the plane. He looks at it, twice, and Hollander doesn’t look at him, but on the second glance, he shifts, just slightly, and suddenly the gun is gone, tucked away, imperceptible.

It’s a twelve hour flight. It’s the longest he’s ever been able to keep his eye on Hollander. The longest he’s ever been this close to him.

Hollander’s energy is so, so calm, but his eyes are sharp, assessing. It’s a twelve hour flight. Ilya doesn’t think Hollander blinks.

**

It’s a big funeral. Lots of ceremony. Lots of men in uniform, and women in neat black dresses. Alexei grips his wife, not by the hand but by the forearm, and her face is drawn tight. Their daughter is three, with eyes too big and a face too pale. 

Hollander is here, somewhere, but Ilya cannot see him. The church is full of officers, but Ilya knows even the best of them would be hard pressed to find Hollander.

Except – the funeral is winding down. His niece and her mother are gone, the church is emptied, and Alexei has him crowded up against the wall. He wants money, which he’s wanted since Ilya got famous, and he wants Ilya to feel small, which he’s wanted since they were both boys. Ilya isn’t particularly surprised or even intimidated, but Alexei grabs his lapels and shoves him against the wall hard, and then suddenly Alexei is ten feet away from him and Hollander is standing so close to Alexei that he must be pressing a knife, very discreetly, into his ribs.

Hollander nods at Ilya, and then he and Alexei are taking a little walk. 

Alexei is police. Alexei is a bully and a tyrant, and a man who is used to breaking his things and getting away with it. Hollander walks him calmly out, and Alexei looks cowed.

Ilya feels something in the center of his chest. It feels hot, uncomfortable. It feels, almost, like relief.

**

It was twelve hours on the plane, and then twelve hours in Moscow for the service, and then it’s twelve hours back. He gets off the plane, and Hollander has somehow acquired a car, and Ilya goes straight from the airport to set and resumes shooting. It’s cost him $100,000 to slow production so he could bury his father and watch his brother be intimidated by Shane Hollander. 

It was worth it.

He finishes his day’s official filming, and then there’s Hollander with car, and they get Rose and they get Sasha and they go to the warehouse and do the filming no one can know about.

Hollander never comes in. He’s signed away his right to be curious in any way about what happens inside. He patrols, or at least Ilya assumes that he does. Ilya never sees him.

It’s the double filming. Or the back to back flights. Or the funeral. Or his fucking life.

They finish their night’s work, Hollander drops off Sasha, then Rose, and then Ilya instructs Hollander to take him to the club.

It’s not the first time. Hollander doesn’t hesitate. Ilya, irrationally, wants him to.

They go to the club, and Hollander is a wraith, and Ilya has no idea where he is, and he keeps seeing it in his mind’s eye: Hollander, the faintest glint of a blade, just there, pressed into the seam of his brother’s pinstripe suit.

Ilya wants to hit something. Someone. He usually comes to the club to trawl. Tonight, he antagonizes. He taunts. He rage-baits. He wants someone to swing on him. He wants to watch Hollander appear from nowhere, and take it.

There’s some shoving. Some yelling. Someone backhands him across the face. 

No Hollander.

He escalates. There’s pushing. A table knocked over. Someone swings a bottle at him, but misses. Eventually there’s some man, ruddy in the face, saliva almost one hundred percent alcohol, and they’re on the ground and fists are swinging, and it’s the bartender who breaks them up, not Hollander.

Ilya is kicked to the curb, and the night air so cold, and his face hurts, and his knuckles hurt, and his ribs are fucked, and makeup is going to kill him tomorrow, and it’s only then that he notices that Hollander has materialized beside him.

“You’re supposed to protect me from fighting,” Ilya says, mildly. His mouth is full of blood. He spits, and the glob is pink. 

“I think you wanted that one,” Hollander says. As if it’s that simple. 

Ilya feels that something hot in his chest again. 

He looks away from Hollander, takes an inventory: ribs bruised, but probably fine. Cheeks cut from teeth, but no split lip. Lump on the side of his head, but probably hidden by his hair. Split knuckles, but coverable by liquid bandaid and concealer. 

Hollander must have left; Ilya missed it. The car pulls up, and Hollander is driving, and will this man ever stay tangible, ever stay in one place?

“You have work in the morning,” Hollander says, window rolled down, and this evening is more words than Hollander has said to him, maybe ever. “Get in.”

Ilya defies every pre-established convention of theirs, and instead of sliding into the back, arranges himself up front. 

Ilya watches Hollander drive, all controlled lines and smooth ease. They are driving almost twice the speed limit, but Ilya would not have known, if he hadn’t checked the speedometer. The car feels slow. Boring.

Hollander drives him home, escorts him up. Does the pre-checks, waits for the alarm to set. Ilya never sees him leave. Never hears him. There’s nothing to notice, because Hollander keeps it that way. 

Except, this morning Ilya flew in from Moscow and filmed all day for the big studio, and filmed all night with Rose and Sasha, and picked a fight at the club and bled all over the concrete, and now Hollander hesitates a moment before he disappears. 

Ilya feels it, through the door. There’s a moment, where Hollander waits, and something very very small has shifted and Ilya doesn't know what it is.

And then the moment passes, and in the same way he knows that Hollander was there, just a second ago, he knows he is now gone, out of reach. Away. A shadow, again.

**

Ilya expands the parameter of his contract. 

Officially, Hollander was hired to actively keep him safe while working with Rose and Sasha, and to more abstractedly keep an eye on him while he’s in the public eye. Ilya has security everywhere else – on set, at the talkshows, at the events, on the red carpet.

Ilya expands the parameters of Hollander’s contract, and now he is not a wraith. Now when people see Ilya, they see Hollander. 

It might be overkill. If any one knew what he was doing at night, in secret, there would be trouble, undoubtedly. But in the daytime, the danger is the public. Is the obsessed, para-social fans. No one is likely to come at him with a knife, or a gun, or even a swinging fist.

And yet.

It’s a red carpet. The premiere of something he shot almost two years ago. He played a villain, because he always plays the villain. His speciality is the blunt-instrument Russian caricature that provokes a frisson the American public finds sexy. He doesn’t care, really. The pay is good. The security. The notoriety.

He walks the red carpet, and Hollander is just a step behind him, carefully out of focus. Ilya feels the warmth of him; this distance from Hollander’s shoulder to his is less than an inch, and somehow hot as a brand.

He sees the hand first, before he understands what he’s seeing. There is a hand, suddenly, splayed across Hollander’s chest. He realizes, belatedly, that Hollander has calmly placed himself in front of him, has diverted a grasp meant for him. 

The hand is white against Shane’s black t-shirt, and immediately repulsive to Ilya. Without thinking, he shoves it off and yanks Shane away from the press line. 

Hollander calmly detaches himself from Ilya, and steps back behind him. The grasper has been seized by festival security, is being escorted away. All of this has happened within the span of five seconds, and so subtly almost no one has noticed. 

“It’s fine,” Hollander says, very quietly. His voice brushes the back of Ilya’s right ear, and Ilya fights the urge to turn around. He can’t stop seeing the hand, there over Hollander’s chest.

“They were touching you,” Ilya says without looking back, aiming for the same neutral, quiet tone. 

“They were trying for you,” Hollander says. “It’s my job to intervene.” 

Ilya can’t stop thinking about the hand. Ilya can’t stop the hot thing in his chest from spreading, uglily, through his torso.

**

It happens again, and again. The fans are benign. Harmless. Passionate to the point of stupidity.

They keep reaching for him, throwing themselves at him, and always, Hollander is there. He intervenes, he side steps, he detaches. Hollander is smooth and seamless, and Ilya is bothered they keep touching him.

They are in a hotel, somewhere in mid-nowhere America on a press-tour, and the door is cracked open on Hollander in the bathroom, and Ilya sees the scratch marks and short circuits.

Ilya can’t recall the face of whoever it was who leapt at him this day. Someone with long hair, and, apparently, sharp nails. There are long stripes across Hollander’s chest, angry and red, and Hollander is calmly disinfecting each one, and applying butterfly bandages.

He doesn’t consciously decide to do it, but he’s on his feet, and he’s pushing open the cracked bathroom door, and he’s staring at the scratch marks, and he’s meeting Hollander’s eyes in the hotel mirror.

“I don’t like this,” Ilya says. 

“Don’t watch,” Hollander says looking back down. 

It’s nothing. Ilya knows it’s nothing. He himself has been injured more severely and more often. But something about seeing’s Hollander’s skin, split, makes it real for him. 

“Hollander –” Ilya starts.

“It’s my job,” Hollander says. “Go to bed.”

**

Ilya and Sasha keep filming in secret. Rose keeps all the footage on a hard drive she keeps on her body, or in the hidden safe in her house. She edits in on a computer that also lives in the safe. 

“It’s nearly finished,” she says, unnecessarily, clasping his hand in the car, aiming for a neutrally pleasant expression, just in case the paps find them, just in case they have a long range camera, just in case just in case just in case.

“Doesn’t matter yet,” Ilya says.

“I know.”

Hollander is driving up front. He’s armed with two guns, one on his hip, one under his shirt across his chest. On nights like these, he wear a knife in a holster on his leg too.

“The longer it exists, and the longer we can’t put it out ourselves…” Rose doesn’t finish the thought. He knows. He knows.

“My citizenship is still processing. Sasha’s too. You know we can’t.”

“I know.”

Hollander pulls up out front Rose’s. She doesn’t get out. 

There is something going unsaid in the car. Ilya feels it. He watches the line of Hollander’s shoulders tighten, watches him brace, and knows he feels it too.

“There are rumours about you,” Rose says, softly. “I hear them.”

“There have always been rumours about me.”

“What happens, if it doesn’t go the way you planned?”

“It will go the way I planned.”

“But the timeline…”

Ilya lets her trail off. He knows the risk, better than her. He knows the plan, and why he made it, and why Sasha made it, and why it’s going to work. He’s being careful. They’re all being careful. The plan is going to work, and he is going to get to do this his way, and it’s a matter a time. He trusts this. He has to trust this.

“Goodnight, Rose.”

He thinks she might say something else, but she doesn’t. She leans forwards and kisses him on the cheek, and both he and Hollander watch her go in. She lives in a small house, in a quiet neighbourhood. The one concession to her celebrity status is the electric security gate; they wait for her to clear it, wait for it to seal up behind her. 

“Club,” Ilya says, tired. Hollander’s professionality doesn’t let him argue. He nods. 

They go.

**

Sex is good. Sex is fun. 

He picks up women, brings them home. Hollander does his pre-checks invisibly, and none of the women ever see him. 

And then, inevitably, within ten minutes of their leaving, Hollander is there again, checking him over, scouring his house, waiting for him to set the alarm.

The sex is good. He enjoys it. He smudges out for a bit, and it’s nice.

Hollander is sworn to at least seven kinds of secrecy, and still, it’s three years before Ilya picks up a man under his watch.

Ilya is subtle and Ilya is discreet, and a hookup in the accessible stall at the club is basic but controlled enough that it’s okay. He doesn’t see Hollander, but he knows he’s keeping lookout. He knows he will have watched him pick up this man, direct him to the washroom. He knows he will have watched the door, will have set his stopwatch and waited with his thumb brushing the safety of his weapon. He knows he will look at Ilya’s face, when the door opens. He will look at the other man’s hands, his clothes, his pockets. Will look for weapons, will look for threats. But he will look at Ilya’s face. He will look to see if Ilya is okay, and he will see the flush in Ilya’s cheeks, the wet of his eyes, the glistening of his mouth.

He wants to watch Hollander’s face, when Hollander watches his.

**

It’s risky, to hook up with men. He almost never does it.

He and Sasha did it first, did it for a year, stopped, stayed friends. Two Russian boys on temporary visas, flirting with America, flirting with each other. 

Sasha works hard, to pass as straight, to maneuver Hollywood with his queerness scrubbed. American masculinity is a performance, and the public will never know that Sasha’s most nuanced work is done on the daily and not on screen.

Ilya’s comp-het is more legible to the general public. He’s big, he’s muscled, he’s brash, he’s harsh. He does most of his own stunts, of his own fights. His voice is low, rough. His accent tilts low, where Sasha’s tilts high. Ilya passes.

The film he and Sasha and Rose are making is horrendously exposing. Intimate, tender, messy. Gay. So very, very gay.

It’s a protest and a provocation, and a safety line they’re throwing to their younger selves back home – to the young ones back home that need it – and they can’t share it, can’t do anything at all with it, until their green cards come through.

They’re close. They are so close. They are both A-listers now. Household names. Multi-millionaires. Their talent visas have gone through, and gone through, and gone through. They pay astronomical taxes, always on time.

Sasha’s application is further along than Ilya’s, which seems to be endlessly, inexplicably delayed. Ilya gets cast as another cold war Russian villain, and wonders if there is a correlation.

So they wait. The film is edited, it lives on the hard drive which lives in the safe at Rose’s house. They watch it together, once. It fucks Ilya up so bad he gets in the car, shaking, and Hollander holds his hand the whole the drive home. 

Not that either of them ever acknowledge this.

**

Ilya is filming... something. The film is virtually indistinguishable from every other period piece he’s ever done. The uniform he wears is too stiffly starched. The buttons gleam, plastic painted gold.

He is saying… something. Working himself into the kind of performative rage that sells well, and his focus is sharp and direct, and the camera is close enough he can feel it, and Hollander comes onto set. Mid take. The camera is rolling, the camera with the special lens that is costing them thousands of dollars a minute to use.

Hollander calmly takes Ilya’s hand and leads him off set. The crew is so bewildered they’re frozen. The director is shouting… something.

They’re shooting in a judicial building. Hollander leads him down a hall, into a small windowless room Ilya’s never flagged. Hollander closes the door, and there’s a lock on it, which he turns. Hollander calmly places Ilya behind him, and faces the closed door. He withdraws his firearm. 

Within a minute, Ilya hears them. Fans, he thinks, but deranged. Yelling, shoving, screaming. There is banging, and what sounds like a metal pipe being struck. Ilya hears his name again, and again, and again. Where is he?? Where is he?? Ilya?! Ilyaaaaaa?!

Ilya doesn’t want it to bother him. These fans don’t know anything. These fans think they love him. These fans want to devour him, but they don’t think it’s harm. They can’t hurt him, really. They are not the thing he fears.

He thinks about Hollander’s calm, Hollander taking him by the hand and leading him here. Calm. So calm. 

He doesn’t mean to reach out, but he lifts his hand and it’s shaking again, and he touches it to Hollander’s solid back. Hollander is breathing deeply, steadily. They don’t speak. 

The voices get louder, and then there’s some kind of scuffle, and then everything gets quiet again. Hollander’s phone buzzes once in his pocket. He reaches for it with his free hand, passes it behind himself to Ilya. Ilya takes his hand off Hollander's back to take it. 

“What does it say?” He says quietly. His head doesn’t move. His eyes don’t move from the door. 

Ilya looks down. Hollander’s screensaver looks like water. Like a lake, maybe. 

“All clear” he reads. 

Shane lowers his gun, stows it, turns to look at Ilya. 

“Do you need to leave set?” He asks, like it’s simple, like the director won’t be pissed, like he won’t get an invoice from his agent for how much this is costing production, like he might not ever be asked back, like this might not affect his citizenship application. 

“Yes,” Ilya says. 

So they go. 

**

Hollander updates the crew and the security team as they are driving away. He calls from the car. His tone invites no objections. 

“There was a threat to his person. He will not continue to work in a place that is unsafe. We will wait for news of more adequate security. Or we can leak to the press your negligence.”

His tone is so even. Ilya realizes he’s been watching Hollander's chest rise and fall. He realizes it’s helping him not lose his shit. 

“Do you want your house or somewhere else?” Hollander asks as they turn off the lot.

“They could have found my address, yes?”

“My system didn’t alert for anyone entering your apartment, but they could have, yes.”

Ilya closes his eyes, leans on the window. 

“I don’t have another place in town,” he admits. 

“No problem,” Hollander says. 

Hollander takes them to a nondescript three story condo building. He parks in the back and takes them up the back stairs. 

“It’s empty,” Hollander assures him. 

“How do you know?”

“I bought the whole thing.”

“When?”

“When you hired me.”

Ilya pauses on the landing, while Hollander disarms the door.

“You’ve lived in an empty three story building for three years.”

Hollander opens the front door. “Yes.”

“But this is so lonely.”

Shane doesn’t answer. 

The apartment inside is nearly antiseptic in its impersonalness. It looks like the inside of a magazine. The couch looks like no one has ever sat on it. 

There is an office. The door is open; the room is softly lit by several screens. 

Ilya floats towards the security feeds, and Hollander doesn’t try to divert him. He watches the cameras trained on the front of his building, the front of his door.

“No cameras inside my apartment?” Ilya doesn't know whether to be relieved or not.

“Movement sensors, only.”

“For my privacy?” 

“Yes.”

“You watch this,” Ilya waves at the screen, “All night.”

“I also sleep.”

“When you are not working, you are here… still working.”

Hollander lifts one shoulder, drops it. It’s so subtle, Ilya takes a moment to read it as a shrug.

“I signed an agreement.”

“And you are this diligent? About everything?”

“Yes,” Hollander says. 

Except… Ilya thinks he’s lying, maybe. There is something, under his voice. Just something… human. Revealing. Like maybe he is this diligent about this, and specifically this, and maybe only this.

“I thought you might want to see the camera feed, that’s why I brought us here,” Hollander says, eyes sliding away from Ilya’s. “But there are suites below and above here. They’re all security-enforced. If you want space, or more privacy, you can have it.”

Ilya looks at him. He thinks about the fact that he is in Hollander’s home, on an unnegotiated timeline, in a space where there is no one to bother either of them, and, ostensibly, no threat.

Ilya looks at Hollander, and lets himself size him up. He feels the beginning of a small pull at his lips, and he watches Hollander’s eyebrows crease, and then, because he’s always wanted to, Ilya’s draws back his fist, and throws a punch. Impossibly fast, Hollander neatly sidesteps, expression moving quickly through puzzlement to careful neutrality.

Ilya feels a ridiculous grin blooming on his own face.

He fought, back in Moscow. He learned to cower, from his father. He practiced blocking, against his brother. And then he went to school, and to the clubs, and to the gym, and he learned to hit. Street fights, party fights, jumpings in alleys. There’s a reason the American audience believes him when he plays violence; his body remembers the dance.

Hollander is the best his agency’s got. Ilya’s watched him disarm would-be-attacker after would-be-attacker, barely raising his elbows. So now Ilya pounces. He wants to make him sweat; he wants to make him break his infinite cool. He wants to dance. 

They fight, and Ilya does not pull his punches. He does not think about lesser damage or low impact. He fights, hard, dirty, aggressive. And Hollander fights him back.

It’s stupid. It’s juvenile, probably. But Ilya is angry. He is angry that his work was not safe. He is angry that he can’t go home. He is angry that he’s sitting on secrets and doesn’t get to decide when to share them. He is angry about all his careful code switching. He is angry about being discreet. 

He is angry that Shane Hollander is in his life every day and his chest is molten and he can’t make it harden again and he is so angry and Shane Hollander is fighting him but actually just disarming him and letting him burn off his energy, and when Ilya is done, when Ilya collapses onto the couch nobody has ever sat on before, he is not even be surprised to find that he is unbruised. 

“Sometimes I like to fight,” Ilya mumbles into the sofa arm.

“I know,” Hollander says, and there’s something fond in his voice. “You can rest; I’ve got you.”

Ilya’s eyes are already falling closed. He feels the weight of a blanket over his back, and it can’t weigh anything at all, but it feels like it’s dragging him down and down and down. His consciousness is slipping, and there was a threat on his life today, and he should be hyper-alert and hyper-vigilant, and Hollander is watching his back and Ilya is already asleep.

**

With their film finished, Ilya sees less of Sasha. Less of Rose. They all know that the three of them being linked publicly will lead to speculation, will lead to a greater chance of their film being found out before they want, so they avoid each other.

And it makes Ilya so, so sad. 

Hollander notices, of course. He alters his driving route so that they pass by both of their homes, so Ilya can glare at their front doors and imagine himself inside him.

Hollander also takes him to the club. A lot.

People recognize him, all the time. Mostly, Hollander does a good job of screening who Ilya doesn’t mind touching him, and who he does, and intervening as needed.

Because he’s famous, people want things from him. All the time. Pictures. Autographs. Touches. Sex.

Sometimes he says yes. Sometimes he doesn’t.

Because he’s famous, people want to give things to him. They hand him pills and powders and keys to the private rooms upstairs.

Sometimes he indulges. Sometimes he doesn’t.

He spends a lot of money, when he goes out. He’ll buy a round for the whole bar. He’ll pay to keep the club open longer. The money goes and goes and goes and there’s still too much of it, and he still doesn’t have his citizenship, and he keeps saying yes to the terrible blockbuster movies that assure his visas and buy his social credit and pay his bills, and he doesn’t see his friends and Hollander takes him to the club, again, and again, and again.

“Don’t disappear,” Ilya pleads, and his hand is on Hollander’s hand, and Hollander could shake him off in an instant if he wanted to, but by some miracle he doesn’t. 

Hollander stays within his view, stays close. Ilya is dancing, Ilya is trying to replace his heartbeat with the bassline of whatever over-mixed club beat is playing, and Hollander is not dancing, but he is there, and Ilya can see him, and Ilya wants to grab him, and Ilya wants to put his body on his, and Ilya wants him to dance, and –

Ilya needs to stop. Ilya needs to hold himself together.

A man comes and presses himself onto Ilya, and it’s too public, and he’s too… something, but Hollander is right there and Ilya cannot let himself get distracted by Hollander, and Ilya nods at this man and directs him out the door.

And then Hollander is a problem, in a new way, in a way he’s never been before.

“No, Ilya,” Hollander says quietly, hand on Ilya’s upper arm. Hollander has never said his name before. It makes his brain fizz.

Ilya shakes off Hollander’s hand.

The man is trying to fuse himself into Ilya. He's nuzzling into Ilya’s neck. They’ve made it out to the street. There’s no one around, but there could be, and it’s dangerous, he knows it’s dangerous, and –

Hollander does that thing where between one heartbeat and the next he disappears then reappears and he’s got the car. 

The man is almost on top of Ilya, sloppily kissing into the juncture of his neck and shoulder, and they are in the backseat, but Hollander is not driving.

“Where do you live?” Hollander asks the man, coldly.

The man blearily looks up at him from Ilya’s lap. He turns his gaze to Ilya and Ilya doesn’t meet his eyes. Ilya is still looking at Hollander, and the hardness in his eyes.

“Can’t we go to yours?” The man whines, and Ilya doesn’t actually think he wants that at all.

“Yes,” Ilya says.

Hollander’s face is stone. “Not this man, Ilya.”

“Yes this man. Drive, Hollander.”

Ilya is surprised that he does. He is surprised that Hollander drives them to the condo, rigid, tense. Surprised that Hollander follows them out of the car, into the elevator, up to his door. Hollander never follows him up on nights like these.

“Put your arms out,” Hollander says to the man, who looks bewildered.

“What are you, his body guard?” The man scoffs.

“Yes,” Hollander says.

Haltingly, the man puts his arms up. Ilya pushes them down, puts his body in front of the man’s.

“No. Hollander go home.”

Ilya opens the door, practically throws the man through, and slams the door in Hollander’s face. He sets the alarm, out of pettiness. All three of them listen to it beep; the silence when it’s done is astonishing. Outside the door, Hollander is seething. Inside, the man is trying to reattach himself onto Ilya’s body.

Ilya closes his eyes, tries to redivert his attention into his body, into sensation. The pressure of this man’s hands is pleasant; his tongue is wet, and skilled. His face is… fine. Attractive. Not interesting at all to Ilya, but it hardly matters when his brain is so eager to super-impose someone else’s.

Ilya breathes and tries to let himself enjoy the sensation, the pressure, the warmth of this stranger. He’s not Hollander, but it can’t be Hollander, and a substitute is good. A distraction is good. Sex is good. Not thinking is good. This will be good. He can let himself let this be good.

He makes himself actually look at the man, actually notice his features, actually open himself up to an attraction. When Ilya leans in to kiss him, it’s because he wants to, because he wants to play, to lose himself a little together. The man smiles up at him. It’s a pretty smile. Maybe a little forced too. But pretty.

“Bedroom?” The man asks, and he sounds nervous, just a little.

Ilya picks him up under the legs, and goes.

**

When the man leaves, it’s morning. Ilya wants to be surprised to see Hollander waiting outside the door, military-tense and with dark circles under his eyes, but he is not.

Hollander does a quick scan of the man as he awkwardly waves, leaves, scurries out, and then he turns on Ilya. He does his usual once-over, checking for injury or stiffness. Ilya wants his face to be mocking, or something, but it feels like… nothing. Empty.

“He was fine,” Ilya says. “Safe. Fun. A good time.”

Hollander nods.

“You were out of line,” Ilya says.

Hollander nods again, more curtly.

There is an awful moment, where they just stand and stare at each other, and then Hollander breaks it, eyes drifting away from his, fixing somewhere indiscernible on the wall.

“Would you like to request another agent?” Hollander asks evenly, and Ilya’s brain glitches.

No, he opens his mouth to say. Why would you even ask that?

But they both know. It’s formless, murky, almost nothing, whatever is between them now, whatever snakes through his ribs and rattles them. It's murky, but indisputably something. Something that made Ilya take home a stranger to stop himself from touching him. Something that made Hollander inexplicably try to stop him.

He opens his mouth to say no, and makes himself say yes instead.

Hollander’s face shutters into blank neutrality, Ilya’s feels his own face cave in, and then he’s behind the locked door again. He sets the stupid fucking alarm, and when Hollander leaves, he takes the elevator, so Ilya can hear it.

It’s all so, so stupid.

**

The new agent is meant to be arriving within the next five hours. Hollander has left. Ilya is waiting for the call connecting him with the new agent, and so when his phone starts buzzing he thinks it’s that.

Except it goes on too long. Except it doesn’t stop. The phone buzzes and buzzes and buzzes, and it’s text messages, and alerts, and DMs, and they just don’t stop. Ilya looks at his phone, aghast.

Rose is calling. And now Sasha. And now Rose again. And if it’s Rose and Sasha, that means that –

Hollander calls, and Ilya picks up. 

“Hollander, what is –”

“Ilya, is your door locked?”

“Of course my door is locked. You were there–”

“I need you to draw all the curtains. Can you do that for me?”

This cannot be happening.

“What–?”

“Ilya.”

“Yes. Okay, fine. Done.”

“Can you push the bed away from the window please?”

Hollander’s voice is very even. Very direct. It’s the voice he used, when they first met. My name is Shane Hollander, my specialities are personal protection, surveillance, and high risk operations.

“Hollander, you are scaring me.”

“Rozanov, move the bed, please.”

Ilya does, the phone crammed between shoulder and ear.

“Your new security detail should get to you in about three hours,” Hollander continues, in that same even voice. “I need you to not open the door until then.”

“Hollander –”

“I’m guarding the building, I’m sorry there’s nobody but me yet, but if anyone makes it past me, please promise you won’t let them in –”

I’m sorry there’s nobody but me yet.

Ilya’s head is spinning.

“Hollander what is happening? My phone is blowing up, and now you are calling like there’s a bomb threat. Is there a bomb threat?”

He can hear Hollander exhale shortly. Ilya doesn’t need to brace; he’s been bracing this whole time. He knows what’s happened. He should’ve known it was inevitable.

“Your tapes were leaked, Ilya.”

“The film.” 

Ilya thinks about Sasha, and his heart shatters. Rose and Sasha, calling and calling and calling – 

“No,” Hollander says, hooking a hand into his spiralling, and then sending it careening a whole other direction. “Your sex tapes. That man, whoever he was – he… I don’t know. Sold them. Sold you out.”

“What?”

It’s so left field that Ilya doensn’t know what he’s supposed to think about it. He sits on the bed, freshly made, and looks at last night’s sheets, messily shoved in the hamper. Ilya tries to remember the man’s face, and it’s already gone. He tries to conjure it, and just sees Hollander’s. 

“This is not happening,” Ilya says, stupidly.

“I’m sorry,” Hollander says. Stupidly.

“So you were right,” Ilya says and he feels delirious. This can’t be real.

Not this man, Ilya.

None of this can possibly be real. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. There was a plan. He had a plan. He was so careful with the plan.

“Are you okay? Ilya, can you sit down for me? Can you breathe?

Ilya tries to focus on Hollander’s voice. He tries to make sense of anything. He had always thought he was going to do this on his own terms, with his own narrative, and nuance. It was going to mean something. He was going to burn the bridge between him and Russia, and he was going to throw the match himself. Wasn’t it supposed to mean something?

This video, this tape – and how did Ilya not notice he was filming? Where did he put the camera? When? Ilya was so distracted, was thinking only of….

“Hollander you are here? Guarding building?”

“Yes, I’m sorry. Just for now. Someone else is coming, they should be here soon –”

“Get me out of here,” Ilya says. “Please.”

**

Hollander escorts him from the building and into his car, which he was parked so close to the door that the paps that are already staking out his building scream at them when they can’t get a clear shot.

Hollander drives him back to his three story fortress. In the car, Ilya calls Sasha, he calls Rose. He calls his agent, and his lawyer.

He watches the tape. 

It’s shaky, somewhat out of focus. It’s unmistakably him, and unmistakably him with another man. They look good together, Ilya thinks, uselessly. The sex is good. Hot. 

The existence of the tape is so so painful. Its implications on his life are devastating. Ilya starts to shiver, and then he can’t stop. 

Hollander brings him into the building, The moment the door is closed, Hollander takes his hand. Holds it, very tight, like a weapon.

“Do you want your own space?” Hollander asks quietly, as they mount the stairs, as they pass the doors that are not his.

“No.”

Hollander scouts his own apartment before he lets Ilya enter, even though they both know he’s outfitted it to be impenetrable, with bullet proof window coverings, and reinforced locks, and sensors everywhere. Ilya wants to believe it's excessive, but he actually doesn’t know.

Hollander gives him the all clear, and Ilya enters, and he can’t start to think too far ahead, or he disintegrates. He takes off his shoes, puts them beside the neat line of Hollander’s by the door. He takes off the coat he doesn’t remember putting on, hangs it on the rack beside Hollander’s. He sits on the couch no one sits on – registers its shade of dark blue – and moves his eyes until they find Hollander.

Hollander is in his security office, the door open. The screens show Ilya’s building, his apartment, but also Rose’s and also Sasha’s. That’s new. He wonders distantly when Hollander figured it out, about their film, when he started keeping tabs on them too. He wonders if his friends know, if they would be bothered to know about the cameras. He thinks probably yes. 

Ilya watches the shadows of their bodies moving in their windows, and feels profound relief.

It’s not over for Sasha yet. Russia is not closed to him. His family is safe, his ability to go unrestricted, and with his citizenship due to come through any day…

Ilya’s thoughts trail off. There were plans. For their families. Before the film could ever be released, they needed to protect their families. They agreed. They planned for it.

“Hollander,” Ilya says, and immediately Hollander is up from the office and in front of him. 

His posture is almost militaristic, wide shoulders, wide stance, hands crossed behind his back. His attention is absolute.

“I am okay,” Ilya says. Hollander flicks his eyes to Ilya’s hands which are still trembling, back to his face. Ilya dismisses his insinuation.

“I knew this could happen,” Ilya continues. “It is dangerous. My citizenship is not assured. But for now, I am here. I am big celebrity. I have security. I have lawyers. I am safe .”

Hollander’s focus is very intense. His expression says, … and what?

“But my family is not safe,” Ilya says, very quietly. “And I…”

Ilya takes a very deep breath, tries not to let the shame eat him whole. “And I cannot go home and protect them, now.”

Ilya hands this failing to Hollander, and Hollander takes it.

“From the public?” He asks, “Or from your brother?”

They both, at the same time, remember Alexei, remember’s Hollander’s knife.

“Both,” Ilya says. He tries to keep his voice even, the way Hollander’s always is. 

“Alexei will be unstable now,” Ilya explains. “He will be facing political pressure. I don’t know what he will do.” 

Ilya's panic surges, and he breathes it carefully down.  He tries to sync his breaths to Hollander’s. Even, even, even.

“He will be very angry with me. And..." Ilya swallows. "My niece looks very like me.”

And then he has to close his eyes, and hold very tightly to his own calm. 

He feels Hollander move, feels the warmth of him as he kneels in front of Ilya. As he places his hand, gently, on Ilya’s knee. Hollander waits for Ilya to find his way back to his body, back to the back of his eyes.

Ilya opens his eyes, and Hollander is so close Ilya can’t see anything else, and it helps him to stay close, to stay here.

Ilya watches Hollander's face. He is sifting plans, Ilya can see.

“I have some connections,” Hollander says, mind moving. “In Russia. I can connect with the agency, get someone on your family's detail.”

“I want them out of there,” Ilya says, and it’s an impossible ask. 

“An agent can’t extract them without governmental or police clearance.”

“I know." 

They both know that Alexei is the lifeblood of the police. They both know there is no world where they get clearance.

There is a long pause. Hollander is watching his expression, and Ilya doesn’t know what he sees. He feels cracked open. He feels so, so vulnerable.

Hollander’s phone chirps and the moment breaks. He looks at it briefly. 

“It’s your new agent,” Hollander says, “he should be here within the hour, and then–” 

Hollander breaks off. Ilya watches a million thoughts fly over his face, and then he nods, and his face is carefully blank again. He stands up, he turns away from Ilya, and Ilya feels the place where he touched his knee like it’s on fire.

Hollander shifts from man to shadow again. He is pulling things together from all over the apartment, weapons and devices and clothes and documents sealed in ziploc bags. He ghosts through the office, and now the computer is processing transactions in four tabs, and now the printer is spitting out paper, and now Hollander is dialing on the phone, impossibly fast.

“This is Hollander. Airport, private car, run the card on file. Yes? ‘Kay.”

He hangs up, starts another call. He is packing a bag while he speaks, hands steady and perfect.

“Hey, buddy, you worked a hostage situation back in, what ‘04? Could you put me together a briefing? I’d need it within the hour. Yeah? I owe you. Thank you.”

The printer is spitting out paper. Hollander's hands are nimble, sorting them, sorting clothes, organizing everything into a briefcase he produces from nowhere.

“Hi, Svetlana,” he says, and his hands are somehow still moving. “I’m sorry for the time. I’m landing in Moscow in maybe sixteen hours. I need an associate, a local. 10k a day, probably max 10 ten days. Standby? Okay.”

He ends the call, and the briefcase is packed and there was a backpack slung on the back of the door, and then Hollander is standing in front of him, packed, armed, steady.

They look at each other, and there are a lot of things Ilya wants to say. Thank you, for one. Will you be okay? for another.

“Give me your phone,” Hollander says, and Ilya hands it over unhesitatingly.

Hollander does… something. Hands it back.

Hollander looks at him, and Ilya doesn’t understand why he looks suddenly sad.

“I’ve never worked a case like this,” Hollander says. “I will likely be slow.”

“Hollander,” Ilya says, “will you–”

“Your new detail is named Hayden Pike. He’s very good. Calm, smart, fast. He’s with you for the foreseeable future. This place is outfitted for security, but if you don’t want to stay here, Hayden can get you set up somewhere else. I wouldn’t recommend going home, not with the location exposed in the tape, but if you decide to, Hayden will protect you.”

“Will you–”

“Whatever happens, do not go to Russia, and do not mention me. As far as everyone knows, you fired me when I failed to protect you from the man who recorded you.” Hollander’s expression flickers, bittersweet. “It’s even the truth.”

“Hollander –”

Hollander’s phone pings.

“Hayden’s here.”

Hollander picks up his briefcase, his backpack. Ilya belatedly gets to his feet; Hollander is already out of reach, already by the door.

“If you would do one thing for me,” Hollander says, and he doesn’t turn around. 

“Anything,” Ilya manages, and his chest hurts. His chest hurts so fucking much.

“Let Hayden shadow you. Wear the kevlar vest, even though you hate it. And if you go to the club…”

“I won’t go to the club.”

Hollander nods, one too many times. Ilya watches the back of his head. Ilya needs him to turn around; Ilya needs to see his face.

“Okay. Okay, thank you.”

And then he’s out the door, and then there’s someone new coming up the stairs, and then Hollander is gone.

**

The new guy is fucking annoying. 

He spends his first hour as Ilya’s security detail assuring him that he will not have to deal with Hollander anymore, and we’re so sorry your previous agent failed you, and don’t you recognize how inappropriate it is to stay in this apartment and won’t you let me move you somewhere else?

The answer is no. The answer is Ilya glaring so viciously, the agent – Pike – has to lock his muscles to avoid flinching.

Ilya has had personal security for years. He has been in the public eye even longer. He has surrendered his privacy, his solitude. Hollander has shadowed him for almost half a decade. He doesn’t mind the invasion.

Pike shadows him for half a day, and he wants to rip his skin off.

He goes to text Hollander, to say… something, anything. He goes to text Hollander, and there’s no chat history. There’s no contact card. 

He opens his emails, and Hollander is wiped there too.

Ilya remembers Hollander taking his phone, swiping, doing something. He didn’t realize he was erasing himself. 

Whatever happens, do not go to Russia, and do not mention me. As far as everyone knows, you fired me when I failed to protect you from the man who recorded you.

Ilya gets very angry very quickly. And then the anger cools, molten and misshapen in his chest, and he gets very, very scared.

The video is everywhere now. He opens social media and sees it. He opens google and sees his own name in the headlines. He turns on the American news, and they’re talking about it. He flicks to the Russian news, glimpses his own name, and turns the TV off so viciously that Pike’s head snaps towards him.

So, it’s out. So, everyone knows. So, Hollander is there, in hostile territory, with his brother, with his family, with the police.

And Ilya’s green card is not yet cleared.

Rose comes for a bit. That’s nice. Pike goes through her bag, pats her down, clears her, and Rose doesn’t even complain. She brings their film, she hands it to him with careful fingers. He promptly passes it off to Pike, and wishes for the millionth time Pike were someone else.

They curl up on the couch, and watch Rose’s worst movies, and Ilya can’t even enjoy all the easy ammunition she is giving him. They try to watch one of his, but the Russian supervillain motif is too loud, and they shut it off. 

They talk. They cook. They avoid everything important.

“You changed your security?” She asks, gently.

Ilya knows what she’s asking, and what he’s supposed to say. What Hollander wants him to say.

He changes the subject. 

It’s a testament to the moment, that she lets him.

**

Hollander said max ten days, on the phone. Ilya thinks he can do ten days. Ten days is only one day, ten times. 

Rose visits on the third, and on the fourth he gets so claustrophobic, he makes Pike design a security protocol that lets him go outside. He walks the streets, he goes to the park, he eats in a restaurant and tries to be amused by the way Pike twitches every time someone comes too close.

As promised, he does not go to the club.

On day seven, Sasha comes. He doesn’t stay long. 

His green card has finally come, and he’s come to ask whether Ilya wants him to go back.

“What can I do for you, for your family?”

Ilya stares into his face, and wishes he could rearrange its features. Wishes he could blink, and Sasha could be Hollander.

Which is ridiculous, and unfair.

“Nothing, Sasha. I am happy for you.”

“Do you need comfort?”

Ilya knows what he is offering. They have not been lovers for a long time, but their friendship is fluid and they know each other, almost better than anyone else.

“Go home, Sasha,” Ilya says limply. He can’t stop looking at the door, as if it might open, as if it might already be ten days.

He’s looking at the door, so he mostly misses Sasha’s look of pity. 

Sasha kisses his head, and leaves, and then Ilya goes back to waiting.

**

Hollander doesn’t come back at ten days. Or fourteen.

On day 19, Ilya is about to light the whole building on fire, and Pike jumps to his feet, because an unmarked car has just appeared on the security camera, and there are too many people getting out of it.

Pike is running out the door, gun drawn, face set, and he tries to shove Ilya behind him, shove him back behind the enforced door, but Ilya saw a child on that camera, he saw a child with his mother’s face, and he is coming, goddamnit he is coming.

His niece is there, just outside the building. And her mother, and another woman Ilya doesn’t recognize, and the shameful thing is that he should be weeping with relief at seeing his family, and he can’t stop looking for the man who is not there.

“He is still alive,” The woman he doesn’t know says, in quiet Russian. Svetlana, he imagines. 

Hi, Sveta. I need an associate, a local. Probably max 10 ten days. Standby?

“It was complex,” she continues, “to get out. To stop your brother from following. To keep him from tracing this back to you.”

“He is still there,” he says, numbly.

“Yes.”

“Inside,” Pike cuts in, and his voice is sharp and authoritative, and Ilya just does not care. “Now.”

Ilya doesn’t know how it happens, but everyone gets inside, everyone gets spread out amidst the three floors of apartments Hollander had outfitted. Pike outlines security protocol, Svetlana translates, his family go to bed. Pike and Svetlana stay up, exchanging processes and comparing weapons, and Ilya stands in the bedroom he knows must have been Hollander’s and tries to get his breathing under control.

I want them out of there, Ilya said. I want them safe.

And Hollander did it. 

Ilya did not think to say, and you too. Out of there. Safe. Here. With me.

Ilya sits heavy on the bed. In the other room, he hears the soft murmurs of Pike and Svetlana. It's all gibberish to him. 

He is alive, Svetlana said. 

Ilya loops the words into a chain he worries between his fingers like a rosary.

He is alive he is alive he is alive he is alive he is alive he is alive.

**

A visitor’s visa is 90 days max. The logistical thing that becomes immediately evident is that his family cannot stay. 

He is waiting on his own greencard. It’s been years of talent visas, none as easy to get as they should be, and his greencard is still so delayed, and of course his family cannot stay. This is obvious, to everyone.

This was, clearly, immediately obvious to Hollander. Probably obvious to Hollander before even got on the plane.

His family come, and he has never spent this long with his niece, or with her mother, Ekaterina. He has never known either of them outside the orbit of his brother’s destruction. He did not know, for example, that Ekaterina’s mother is Polish, that Ekaterina holds passports in both countries. That his niece holds passports in both countries. That, now out from his brother’s control, they have refuge and a place they can stay, safely.

Ilya does not doubt that Hollander did full reconnaissance, that he put together full profiles on each of them. Hollander knew this – he knew it well enough that they have flights booked to Warsaw next month, and accommodations secured. Svetlana is contracted to accompany them, to set up basic security for them, to oversee their settling into the new country. 

And yet, Hollander arranged for them to come here, first.

“I think he thought,” Svetlana says to him quietly over breakfast, while Ekaterina mentions her mother’s house in Poland and Pike volunteers to drive them all to their airport when the times comes, “that you would need to see them safe and well, with your own eyes.”

Ilya doesn’t respond. What can he say? 

It’s been ten weeks since Hollander left for Russia, just over two months his family have been with him. He spends his days getting to know them, and going on heavily surveilled ventures into the city with them. His niece is so small that she holds two of his fingers, instead of his whole hand. Ilya’s chest aches.

At night, they put his niece to bed, and then he, Ekaterina and Svetlana watch the news in Russian while Pike does whatever he does in Hollander’s old security office. 

On the TV, they watch as a thread of corruption in the Moscow police force is unearthed. Every night, someone new is caught, sent to prison. The news posts their pictures and plays grainy videos of their misdeeds. Some of the faces Ilya remembers, from his father’s circles. Ekaterina can name every single one of them. 

“That was his partner,” Ekaterina says one night, voice hushed like the man's mugshot may disappear if she names him at full voice. “They worked very closely together. Closer than anyone.”

Hollander is prowling behind all of this. A shadow, pushing these men into the light. Every day, he gets deeper, he gets closer. Alexei’s partner is arrested; Ilya and Ekaterina exchange glances full of hope, and worry, and “what if?” They wait.

When Alexei is finally brought in, he is the only one of his lot to go to prison with a crooked nose and two black eyes. The news reports that his corruption is such that he will never have security or vulnerable sector clearance ever again. 

No one mentions who is behind the exposition of all this corruption. Who has sent all these men to prison. Who has left Alexei with mottled bruises.

In bed, Ilya brings up Alexei’s mugshot on his phone, zooms in until he can see the knuckle marks on Alexei’s face. He touches the screen, lightly, and thinks about Hollander’s hands.

**

They’re coming back from the park, just inside the door and moments away from mounting the stairs, and Pika freezes.

“Svetlana,” Pike barks, then he is sprinting up the stairs.

Svetlana moves fast, an arm sweeping out, and then all three of them are behind her and her weapon is drawn. She faces up the stairs, face set, aim steady.

“What’s happening?” His niece asks, in her very small voice.

Ilya hears raised voices, but no sound of gunfire, or impact. His stomach turns over, and he is aware of his niece, and aware that any threat that is here is because of him. Her life, once more, endangered because of him.

Except the voices are raising, and he hears Pike, and then he hears the other voice, and then Ilya is shouldering past Svetlana and her gun, and taking the steps two at a time.

Pike comes into view first, hands up and face flushed.

“You know better than this! You’ve been dismissed! You have no clearance to be here!”

“Pike, I just need to  –”

“Do you want me to call the cops? Do you want a restraining order? Do you want me to hurt you? I will hurt you, so help me god –”

“Pike,” Ilya says, as steady as he can, heart racing. His eyes are only for Hollander, who is looking at him with the same panicked desperation. “Go back to my family. Take them to a hotel. Don’t come back until morning.”

“I’m here to protect you–” 

“I am safe,” Ilya says. “Leave. Now.”

Ilya doesn’t look away to see him depart. He hears Pike’s feet, light on the stairs, and then he is in front of Hollander.

His face is tired, shadowed. There are stitches angled over his left temple and eyebrow. There’s a bruise across his jaw, deep green.

Ilya only gets a moment to catalog him before Hollander’s hands are on his chest, running over the edges of the kevlar vest he has not taken off since Hollander left.

Hollander’s mouth is moving and moving, his voice so quiet Ilya has to lean in to hear it. 

“You’re okay you’re okay you’re okay you’re okay, oh my god you’re okay, oh my god.”

Hollander’s head bows just for a moment, so his forehead touches right over where Ilya’s heart is slowly evening out.

And then he straightens, steps back, nods, tries to settle his face back to what Ilya remembers from before. From when he was wraith, and nothing else.

“I’m sorry,” Hollander says, stiffly. “I just needed… I just wanted to make sure you were safe. I will… I’ll go. Sorry. I’ll get Hayden, and, uh, I'll…”

For some absurd reason he is backing away, as if this could possibly be what Ilya wants or expects.

Ilya reaches for him, takes his hand, the way Hollander has taken his, so many times. 

“Shane,” Ilya says, soft as he knows how.

Shane looks at him, expression too open, eyes too wide, too wet. For years, Hollander has been invisible, weightless, wiped clean. Here, in this moment, he is solid and tender and real.

Ilya tugs on their joined hands, just lightly, and Shane comes. Ilya wraps his arms around him, tucks Shane’s head into the nook of his neck, and holds on to him. They breathe together, and Ilya’s hands are on the rigid muscles of Shane’s back, the miracle of his lungs expanding and deflating and expanding again. 

“Are you hurt?” Ilya asks, because he has to know.

“No,” he says, into Ilya’s neck, and Ilya feels his whole body relax.

“Is it over?”

Shane nods, and Ilya closes his eyes.

“Thank you, lyubimiy.”

**

Ilya brings him into the apartment. Shane is so tired he can’t even think. 

Ilya takes his hand, leads him to the ensuite bathroom. There is blood in Shane’s hair, and his clothes are dusty and creased. He needs a shower, he needs to change his bandages, he needs to clean the airplane off him; Shane enters the bathroom, and hesitates. Ilya watches his hand tremble on the edge of the open door.

“I just… can you… Can you stay where I can see you?”

And it doesn’t make sense, because Shane is the one who has been risking his life. Shane is the one in bloodied bandages. Shane is the one who went away and left Ilya to fear the worst.

Can you stay where I can see you?

They leave the door open. Ilya sits on the bed across from the open bathroom door, and keeps up a steady stream of conversation that means nothing. It’s domestic, maybe. It feels like a balm.

Shane comes out of the bathroom, hair wet, towel slung down his hips, and Ilya sees the bruises over his chest, the lines of stitches over his shoulder, across his stomach. Shane sees him see it all, and his cheeks pinken.

“It’s stupid,” Shane says. “I did everything else clean. But I… wanted the fight.” He smiles bitterly. “I wanted it dirty.”

And this… this Ilya understands completely. 

Ilya hands him clean clothes from his own drawers, and Shane dresses efficiently. Ilya watches the tender way he moves, the way he folds the towel before he drops it.

And then Ilya takes his hand again, pulls him down to lie beside him on the bed. They have no precedence for this, but Ilya wants to hold him, wants to feel him real and whole and alive. Shane lets himself be pulled.

They curl into each other, and Ilya realizes he is desperately exhausted. Shane touches two fingers to his pulse point and softens, and somewhere in there Ilya’s eyes fall shut. 

They fall asleep that way, and somehow, it makes perfect sense.

**

In the morning, Ilya wakes up in an empty bed, but it smells like him. He takes a moment to roll over, to turn his face into Shane’s side of the bed, to breathe deep. He allows himself one moment of indulgence, and then he gets up.

Hollander is in the security office – of course he is – checking the cameras, tweaking the perimeter of the sensors. He is on the phone with someone Ilya imagines is Pike. Maybe Svetlana. 

Ilya listens as Hollander arranges Ilya’s family’s return to the building, as he gets updated on the last month. The call ends, and he turns immediately, aware and attuned to Ilya.

“Did you sleep?” Shane asks, first.

“Yes.”

Ilya comes just a little closer. He wonders if it will be different, in the day time, both rested enough that their inhibitions are intact again. He raises his hand to the stitches on Shane’s head, touches them with light fingers. Shane leans his head into Ilya’s hand, and closes his eyes.

“Mmm.”

Ilya moves his thumb, back and forth on Shane’s soft cheek, just under his eye. The shadows there suggest he has not been sleeping well, maybe not for weeks.

“You scared me,” Ilya says.

Shane doesn’t open his eyes to say, “That’s stupid. I’m very good at what I do.”

Ilya keeps moving his thumb, and his chest aches with tenderness. “I know.”

Shane turns his head so his lips brush Ilya’s palm, and Ilya can’t tell whether it’s intentional or not. Shane pulls back to look at him. He looks sad again, and Ilya doesn’t know why.

“You shouldn’t have fired Hayden,” Shane says. 

“Why would I keep him now?”

“Because he’s good. Almost as good as Svetlana.”

“But not as good as you.”

Something that might be smile skitters across Shane’s face, before he wipes it away.

“Maybe once,” he says.

Ilya reaches for Shane’s hand again. Holds it. Feels the pulse in the center of his palm, languidly beating against his. 

“You don’t want to guard me anymore? I ask too much?”

“Never, Ilya,” Shane says. “It’s only that… It would not be appropriate anymore.”

This makes no sense.

“Why not? Because you hurt my brother? I am glad you hurt my brother. I wish you had hurt him more.”

“Because I am compromised, Ilya. I am compromised by you.”

Shane steps into him, and his face is so clear, so beautiful.

“My professionalism, and your safety, hinges on impartiality.” Shane squeezes his hand. “I cannot be impartial about you. Not now.”

“I was never impartial about you,” Ilya admits, and to his surprise, Shane laughs.

“I know. You made my job so hard.”

“Because I pick fights with everybody?”

“Because you’re too likeable, asshole.”

“Oh, asshole.”

They keep moving towards each other. They are so close to each other now that Ilya can feel the vibration in the distance between every part of them that is not touching.

“So you can't guard me,” Ilya says, and Shane shakes his head. "Stay anyways?"

“Do you want me to?”

Ilya tilts his head, and Shane leans his forehead into Ilya’s. They are stitches there; Ilya feels them on his temple. 

Ilya thinks about hurting, and tending, and the time it takes to heal.

“Yes,” Ilya says. “Stay. Stay forever.”