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PLEASE NOTE: the specific type of lockdown is left intentionally unspecified within the fic. if you'd like more details about it prior to reading, please see the end notes!

not yet proofread. please kindly let me know if any tags need to be added. x

Ilya follows like there’s a string attached, the click of his dress shoes echoing seconds behind Hollander’s as he weaves through the twists and turns of the back of the stage. It’s dark here but Ilya feels him like a pulse, thrumming and unignorable after being apart for so long. 

Hollander is not special for being angry with him. Everyone is, generally. Ilya himself included. 

He’d had a plan for all of this; show up just late enough to get Hollander curious and asking questions, leave him guessing long enough for Ilya to find his eye again in the crowd when he walks to accept his award. He’d had a good feeling about his chances for it, and also for managing to get Hollander to come to his suite later tonight to help celebrate. 

What Ilya had failed to account for is that the six months of his absence would actually have been consequential. That Hollander would actually care that he’d disappeared. Ilya isn’t used to that, and he’s not so sure that he enjoys the bitter lining of guilt behind his teeth. 

He’d spent the whole summer disappointing his family and his country. He’d hoped, maybe, that this wouldn’t be the same. 

Ilya spares only a moment to force his shoulders back before he pushes open the door to the bathroom, palm cold against the frosted sheet of glass in the middle of it. It obscures the inside completely but the shape of Hollander is unmistakable as he steps inside, his head dumped forward, hands braced on the marble, cheeks flushed from the lights and frowning when he glances up at Ilya in the reflection. 

He says nothing. Ilya steps further inside toward the opposite end of the sinks and leans his shoulder blades against the wall, watches Hollander’s knuckles turn white. 

“Not like you to run from your problems, Hollander.” 

It earns him a cheap laugh, quick and harsh. Ilya will take it. 

“Rich, coming from you,” Hollander snaps. 

“I told you. I was busy.” 

“Bullshit.” Pushing off the counter, Hollander stands fully and faces him, brows drawn and mouth twisted. “One minute you’re begging for me to let you fuck me and the next you hardly even look at me. It’s been six fucking months and the only time you’ve given me the time of day is for this stupid bit.” 

Ilya swallows, glances down at his cufflinks. Sniffs. 

“I did not think you needed attention so much.” 

“Fuck you,” Hollander scoffs. “You’re unbelievable. You touch me like that out there and then you just—” 

“You missed me touching you?” Ilya asks. He hates how genuine the question is, how much he wants to know, which is probably why he doesn’t get to have an answer. 

Instead, Hollander takes one defeated step backward until his own back meets the opposite wall, chin tilted back and eyes tired and half-lidded. Not even the makeup they’d put on them keeps Ilya from noticing the shadows on his face in the shitty fluorescents. Then again, he’d known far before then too, had he not? 

He feels the same, after all. 

“What the fuck do you want from me, Rozanov?” he asks, and Ilya thinks he could have played it off if Hollander had yelled it, had shaken him, had foamed spit and bared teeth in his face. 

But the edges are too soft, the question just as genuine as Ilya’s had been, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. It lands somewhere underneath his ribs and aches, and suddenly, Ilya feels the need to escape this room, the expectation in Hollander’s eyes before he can disappoint either of them anymore than he already has. 

He opens his mouth to make an excuse, but whatever lie he’d been prepared to deliver is drowned out by a loud, shrill sound coming from the event speaker fixed in the top corner of the room. Ilya winces but Hollander gives a full flinch, his body thudding rigid against the wall behind him as he brings his hands up to cover his ears. Ilya’s brow furrows. 

It wails three times over, and then pauses briefly. In the gap of silence, Hollander gingerly removes his hands. 

“What the hell is that?” he says. 

Ilya is two steps away from the bathroom door to check when the PA rumbles again, some sort of warning spilling from the speaker in curt, urgent syllables. Ilya does not process things so well when he’s panicking but he can make out enough; lockdown and quiet and shelter in place. It means shut up and do not move, and this, at least, Ilya can probably accomplish. 

He resumes his trek toward the door, turns the lock and flips the lights off until only the emergency ones above the sink remain. When he turns, Hollander is alarmingly pale, eyes wide and, for once, looking directly at Ilya’s face. 

“Rozanov,” he says, thin and shaky, and then the alarm starts up again. 

Ilya touches his shoulder. In between the noise, he urges, “In the stall. Come on.” 

He is good at hockey and not much else, but Ilya knows these things; knows how to keep quiet, how to listen for footsteps and fractures, how best to assess a threat. He’d learned to absorb a blow far before he’d taught himself how to throw the first punch. How to survive and be scared about it later, when it was something he could afford again. 

“Hollander,” he gentles when nothing happens, squeezing the tense muscle underneath his palm. “Come on.” 

The stalls are singles and not meant for two people, but Ilya pulls them into the farthest one regardless and latches the door. He leans himself against the inside wall where he can listen and can see the best, and then pulls Hollander into his chest, unsure which one of them he’s trying to keep steady.  

The monotone voice of the repeated announcement feels far away compared to the noise Hollander makes against his shoulder, fragile and uncharacteristic. He shakes underneath Ilya’s hold, hands slid underneath Ilya’s suit jacket, making fists of the material of his shirt. 

It’s difficult to tell if Ilya is trembling too. He makes himself keep moving so he doesn’t have to think about it, rubbing the back of his neck, pressing in between his shoulder blades, murmuring nonsense until the noise finally cuts out. 

The silence is worse, almost, when the alarm stops momentarily. Hollander stiffens and makes an awful choking sound against the side of his neck, and Ilya presses against him harder. 

“My parents, Ilya—” he whispers. 

Ilya squeezes his eyes closed and tries to breathe. He’s heard that tremble before, that hitch in breath. If he looked at Hollander’s face right now, Ilya bets it would be not unlike his own, somewhere colder and younger and equally as terrified in Russia. 

He cannot make any promises. But he can maybe give Shane the kindness of letting him feel that Ilya was not allowed himself. To be scared without recourse or recompense. 

His voice is thick when touches his mouth to Shane’s ear and says, “I’m sorry.” 

He clings to Ilya fully then, wetting skin and expensive fabric with tears and spit as he stifles himself to keep quiet. His arms have gone solid around Ilya’s middle, locked and unwilling to let go. Ilya’s ribs ache, but he doesn’t ask for less. 

His own arms fold around Hollander’s shoulders. Ilya strokes a hand over the back of his head and covers his ears when the siren wails just intermittently now, waits because it’s the only thing he can do. Somewhere in the back of his mind it comes to him; this is the closest the two of them have ever been without sex, the first time they’ve held each other for more than a couple of minutes in the lingering afterward. Ilya’s nerves are so loud that his ears are buzzing but this, the warmth, the firm press of Hollander’s body against his, is nice. 

Six months had not cured him of his affliction, then. Maybe he’d been foolish to think it would. 

Sweat makes the back of his shirt cling by the time the speaker above their heads crackles to life again and finally dissolves the order to shelter in place. Neither of them move as the protocol is explained, but Ilya hears the words all clear and no threat and struggles not to let his legs buckle in relief. If he weren’t holding on to Hollander so tightly, he thinks, maybe they would have. 

If they’re in the restrooms, they’re supposed to wait until an attendant comes to clear them out. Ilya’s too grateful for the extra minute to gather himself to bother being paranoid about both of them being caught in here together. 

They stay pressed against each other for longer than necessary. His limbs feel stiff, weighted as he unsticks them from around Hollander’s body and pulls them back to himself. The lone emergency light hardly reaches them from this far, but Hollander’s face no longer seems to be swimming in shadow anymore. He looks vivid and alive in Ilya’s vision, vulnerable in a way that makes his teeth hurt; in a way that Ilya probably also looks himself. 

Ilya clears his throat, but his voice still comes out a rasp. “We should…” 

“Not yet,” Hollander says. Eyes wide and glassy, face gone perfectly blank again. “One more minute. Let me just…” 

Ilya forgets that Shane knows survival in his own way. 

But here, now, is not that yet. For just the one more minute it’s a trembling hand on the side of Ilya’s face and a dry, bitten mouth shoved up against his, the jump of a pulse underneath Ilya’s palm and wet lashes grazing his cheek, impossible to tell whose. 

It lasts only as long as he’d promised, but it unfolds slowly inside of Ilya. Will keep him afloat for the next several hours, probably. Days, maybe. Weeks. Maybe he’s more likely to take whatever he can get than he’d thought he was. 

Hollander’s forehead touches his when they part, a muscle in his jaw twitching as he swallows. Ilya touches two fingers to it, and he pulls away. 

“We should get cleaned up.” 

The sink looks far more vast than it had before, Hollander on one side and Ilya on the other. The cold water on his face does little to bring him out of the buzz inside his head, but watching Hollander piece himself back together—his hair, the bags under his eyes, his crooked bowtie—makes him try a little harder. 

He still misses the mark. Hollander flicks a glance over at him in the mirror and Ilya can’t bring himself to act like he hadn’t been staring. Shoulders swelling with a breath, Hollander dries off his hands with a towel and then closes the distance, and Ilya turns without being asked. 

He ducks his head for the hands that fix his hair, turns it sideways when a damp towel dabs at the spot on his collar streaked with tears. He fixes Ilya’s bowtie last, hands lingering, then sliding up to his jaw. 

“We’re okay,” Hollander says, seemingly for them both. 

Ilya swallows. Are we? he thinks. 

He nods instead. “Okay.” 

A knock at the door interrupts them a minute later, one of the attendants coming to escort them back to their seats, and the space between them doubles as they splinter apart. 

It’s bittersweet, walking side by side down the back hallways as they’re chaperoned back to the auditorium but unable to touch. He can see Hollander out of the corner of his eye, the way he keeps glancing over every few seconds just to make sure he’s there. Ilya lets him look. 

The lights have been raised again instead of the dim sconces and singular spotlight, the auditorium much less elegant with all the dark corners visible and the people in varying states of disarray inside of it. The ceiling is too big, the room too wide, the tables and chairs cheap placeholders for the people gathered between them. 

He and Hollander cross the threshold at the same time. The moment they’re visible Ilya hears a sob, and Shane’s head whips sideways at the sound of his own name. He stumbles only a little as he meets his parents halfway, the sturdiness of a body that knows this; the press of his cheek against his mother’s shoulder, the stability of his father’s age-spotted hand in the center of his back. Each of their eyes wet with it, the relief of an almost that hadn’t ended in tragedy. 

Someone pushes past Ilya’s shoulder in a rush to get past, and Ilya realizes belatedly that he’s still blocking the entrance. He steps sideways and then idles there for a moment, the huddle of Hollander’s family staining the backs of his eyelids. Ilya blinks hard, shoves his hands inside of his pockets. They are still there. His mother pets a hand down the back of his head, and Ilya has to turn away. 

He finds his phone in one of his pockets, everything silenced from before the awards. Opening the thread with his agent, Ilya responds to her messages as he walks the opposite direction down the corridor, past the people rushing back toward the auditorium. She will be upset with him for leaving maybe, since she had projected he would win. 

He cannot bring himself to care much about that anymore. By the time Hollander looks up to check, Ilya is already gone. 

+ 

I don’t want to be alone tonight. 

Hollander’s text stares up at him from the screen, sharper and more potent than the vodka on the nightstand or the cigarette tucked between his fingers. His coach and a few of his teammates have reached out over the last couple of hours, evidently having seen the headlines. Nothing from his family. 

And now, this. I don’t want to be alone tonight. Even though Hollander has two parents and Ilya knows they wouldn’t leave him alone, if he asked. Even though Ilya is drunk and miserable and mourning the past so much as he is the future, no energy left in him to do anything but take the next sip, inhale the smoke, blow it back out again. It’ll turn his lungs black quicker than it’ll make him clean, but is that not what a crucible is? He touches his fingertips to the cross at his chest and burns and burns. He supposes he can add this to the list of things he’s good at. 

He stares at the text again. I don’t want to be alone tonight.

He wonders, briefly, if he is really so transparent. More concerningly, Ilya worries that Hollander seems to speak his language so fluently that he knows Ilya cannot say no to this; that he can’t deny himself when it’s packaged in something he can provide. 

Penthouse 1, Ilya sends back.  

Hollander promises, be there in 10.

Ilya puts the phone down and makes himself move for the first time in hours. He stubs the cigarette out in the watery excess of his vodka and listens to the crack of his joints when he sits up, feet touching the floor. Ten minutes is not enough to pretend that everything is okay, but he can shake off a little of the dust. Maybe, when Hollander is here, he can stop bracing for disaster. 

The tile is cold underneath him when he crosses the room to get to the window. Ilya cracks it just enough to let out the smoke and waits for the knock. 

pre-read warnings: an emergency lockdown is initiated while shane and ilya are in the bathroom at the awards, and they have to shelter in place together until the warning is lifted. however, the lockdown ends up being a false alarm and everyone is okay. (for my rwrb folks, it's sort of like the closet scene, just with less exposition and more introspection sjdhgsdkjgf.)

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