Summary:

“Why was the fucking balcony door open?” 

“I had a cigarette,” Ilya admits in a guilty rush. “You don’t like the smoke. I was—trying to get it out before you came. And then you were here, and I—” 

And then Shane was here, and any hope of thinking about absolutely anything else had vanished into the chill of the night air. But he can’t say this, can’t say that the world narrows to a fine point when Hollander enters a room, that Ilya can finally fucking get in air when all he has to do is touch Shane like breathing and not carry Cups and build legacies and grin and bear it for cameras and share a last name and an ankle-weight of a country with his father. 

“Sorry,” Ilya tells him again, hating the way his voice trembles.