Chapter Text
Despite being Canadian, Shane Hollander is America’s sweetheart. He’s on every-other magazine cover and Hollywood Reporter spread, his name plastered to headlines everywhere. Right alongside his, is Rose Landry’s.
They’re inseparable.
Even Ilya, who finds himself living under a rock in the wilderness for half the year, could point the two of them out in a line up.
Co-stars turned lovers, every gossip magazine at grocery store check outs boast, with their paparazzi pictures blown up in 4k.
As much as he tries, Ilya cant get far enough away from the modern world. Even his satellite TV has enough stations that one of them is almost always playing a Hollander movie on the weekend.
It’s background noise for his quieter days, when the chirping birds and snapping of twigs in the forrest gets too loud for his trained ears to tune out.
Ilya hasn’t worked in months.
He hasn’t talked to anyone that isn’t a check out clerk in just as long.
Svetlana’s last message was loud but easy to ignore, I’m here when you’re ready to talk.
Marleau’s was just as avoidable— It wasn’t your fault.
Ilya’s client, his longest friend, bleeding out in his arms felt a lot like his fault to him.
It’s six months later that his phone vibrates an endless ring on his kitchen table as he’s stripping his handgun for the third night in a row.
The name there pops up, then goes away, again and again until Ilya debates whether smashing the thing would prove more useful than having it.
A text comes through, the phone still ringing, the number unknown. Answer before I send a patrol to check on you.
Ilya rests his head against the table.
He could answer.
He could rejoin the world.
Or he could stay here another week, another month, another year, in the surround-sound silence until the memory of Sasha’s glassy eyes stop haunting him.
“Hello?” His English is choppy, his voice hoarse after months of misuse.
“I have a job for you.”
“I don’t want it.” He hangs up, plunging himself back into the silence he once craved for so long. Now, that silence sits heavy on him like the dirt laid over Saha’s grave.
They had grown up together. They were boys together.
Ilya was told the job he was hired for would be dangerous. Sasha’s father was an important man, one with many enemies.
The family was used to threats. They were accustomed to violence.
It felt special, to have a job protecting someone he loved rather than his usual bouts of politicians, government figures, and high risk inmate transfers.
For some reason, it never occurred to Ilya that the life he chose could end with his longest friend going boneless in his arms as he bled out.
On the table in front of him, his phone dings.
“It’s time, Ilya.”
***
Ilya ignores his phone for three days more, call after call coming in until it’s Marleau’s name that’s there on the screen.
He’ll actually come out to the cottage if Ilya doesnt answer, so Ilya picks up after the third ring and lets the silence stretch until Marleau fills it. “It’s an easy job, Roz. I’ve already signed on. You should too. I’ll be good for you, for us. Get you back in the saddle—”
“I don’t ride horses.”
Marleau scoffs, the sound familiar enough that Ilya presses the phone a little tighter to his ear.
He wouldn’t admit it, but he’s missed him—this, the banter and camaraderie.
“It’s easy money, kid,” Marleau argues, as if Ilya isn’t swimming in money from every high profile security job he’s ever taken.
For years he did nothing but work.
It’s not the money that kept him coming back for more. The adrenaline and purpose it gave him were their own payments.
It got him out of bed.
It kept him sane.
These days, he strips his guns methodically while surrounded by nothing but the comfort of a warm home, miles of forrest, and a small town.
There’s nothing to shoot, nothing to fight against besides his own, weakened mentality.
“How easy?” He’s not going to agree to it, he just wants to know.
He can hear the smile in Marleau’s voice, like he knows he’s already got him. “Have you heard of Shane Hollander?”
Ilya nearly puts the gun to his head.
***
Three days later, Ilya turns up in Montreal in a suit and tie, the fabric too tight around his collar. He hasn’t worn clothes like these in far too long and the lack of stretch is nearly as suffocating as the anxiety building in his chest.
He should’ve known better than to accept a job with a celebrity client. They always cared about the optics of it all, wanting the best cars, bodyguards in suits, guns hidden. Ilya’s sits heavy on his hip, tucked beneath his coat jacket.
He wishes he could shoot something just to calm the too-frantic pulse of his heart.
The hotel he’s been sent to is nice, but not nearly up to par for what he’d prefer safety-wise.
He only had a three hour flight to look over blueprints and exit plans. It wasn’t enough.
The fact that he was assigned lead on a security detail when he hasn’t worked in six months is its own tell. They want him buried in this, for his head to get screwed back on the right away as he’s drowned in work and planning.
It doesnt help that they’ll be changing venues every other day, sometimes multiple times per day.
Marleau, when he sees him, doesn’t falter. He walks into the hotel lobby with his hand on their client’s back, leading him straight to Ilya, who’s been waiting at the elevator for nearly thirteen minutes now.
Shane Hollander is somehow even more eye catching in person than he is on the cover of those magazines.
He’s wearing sunglasses, a hoodie, and a hat, the brim pulled down as he types something out on his phone. Despite the shitty disguise, he’s still effortlessly cool and collected in a way that makes something like envy stir in Ilya’s stomach.
Marleau guides Shane forward, past him, Ilya stepping in front of them both easily while the elevator doors close.
His hand goes to the control panel. “What floor?” For a second, he finds himself self conscious of his accent.
“Fourteen,” Marleau answers.
They’re visiting a friend of the actor’s, who’s staying here while shooting their own movie. Ilya would’ve already scoped out the room if it didn’t belong to someone else.
Normally, clients don't address them, used to the press of faceless people at their sides. Shane Hollander is apparently not so blind. “Who are you?”
Ilya glances back.
Hollander’s head is tilted up, his sunglasses tipped down to reveal stunning honey-brown eyes.
“Rozanov,” Ilya offers, turning back around to avoid his stare.
For a while they’re left in silence as the elevator climbs floor after floor.
Until, “Is there always going to be two of you now?”
“Three,” Ilya corrects. He added Barrett to their security detail on the flight over after seeing some of the more creative death threats the actor had received over the past year, most by direct messages across his social media accounts.
Those messages were apparently the least of their worries. What the actor’s manager was most concerned about was a stalker who proved they didn’t care much about the repercussions of breaking their restraining order.
Ilya hadn’t had enough time to read through all the suspected contact from the stalker, physical and digital. He would tonight, after Hollander’s third location change of the day.
Already this job was giving him a headache.
“You can both stay out here,” Hollander tells them after knocking on the hotel door he brings them to.
Ilya has half of a rebuttal on his lips when the door opens to none other than Rose Landry. She, like Shane, somehow has a star-like quality to her aura despite the casual hoodie and sweatpants she's wearing, her signature wavy hair pulled up in a tangled web.
“Took you long enough,” she complains, fisting her hand in Hollander’s sweater to pull him into the room. The door closes behind them both with a solid thud, Marleau’s hand on Ilya’s chest all that stops him from following them both in.
“We didn’t check the room,” he bites out, only for Marlow to shove him back a step.
“This isnt a hit job we’re waiting for, Roz. They’re fine.” He always was the calmer of the two of them. But he’s right. This isnt a president. It’s not a visiting government’s ambassador.
Ilya forces himself to nod and accept that their client is both out of sight and somewhere he hasn’t already scoped.
Marleau finally grins, hitting his shoulder harder and harder until Ilya shoves him off. “It’s good to see you, Boss.”
“Is always good to see me,” Ilya shoots back, but even he cant deny the emotion building in his chest at finally seeing his friend after so long apart.
He lets Marleau drag him into a hug, if only for a second before pushing him back a step. “Easy job, you said?”
“I’ve been working with the kid for a month now. We just follow him around, babysit. You know the drill.” Marleau leans his body against the wall casually. His earpiece isnt even in, laying forgotten on his shoulder from where it ropes down the back of his suit coat.
“You’re getting lazy,” Ilya corrects, lifting the piece from his shoulder like it’s a cigarette. “You leave this in from now on, yes?”
“This isnt like Boston,” Marleau’s eyes roll, grabbing the ear piece back to shove it in.
Ilya finds his body stiffening despite his best efforts. “No,” he agrees quietly, “it best not be like Boston.”
“Roz,” the apologetic, gentle tone isnt one Ilya’s accustomed to, especially coming from Marleau.
“Enough,” Ilya decides. “We must watch hallway now.”
The corner of Marleau’s lip ticks up, his eyes glancing both ways down the empty walkway. “Right, Boss. The ugly interior might strike the people’s prince down dead.”
For four hours they sit there, nodding at anyone who passes by and catching up in the meantime.
It almost feels wrong to sit here doing nothing but talking, knowing how much they’re getting paid.
Hollander makes them work for it a minute later, coming out of the hotel room with his jacket half off and a hickey on his neck that Marleau immediately clocks, helping the star fix his hoodie to cover the mark.
There’s an easy relationship between the two of them that Ilya finds himself almost envious of.
Ilya wonders if Hollander will open up the same way to him, letting him into his personal space with the same easy confidence that Marlow’s been granted after only weeks on his protective detail.
Their next stop is a commercial shoot, only twenty minutes away and not nearly as secure in terms of safety.
Ilya touches his ear piece as they make their way back to the elevator, calling down to the car waiting on them. “South entrance departure,” he tells the driver, “lights off.”
He can feel Hollander’s eyes on him, just like they were before. “That hardly seems necessary,” he says after a beat of silence.
“Is dark,” Ilya answers stiffly. “We do not need to draw attention to your vehicle.”
“Draw attention?” Shane echos, looking to Marleau. “Is he for real?”
“This is for safety,” Ilya answers over whatever dumb, appeasing thing Marleau was sure to say to his client. “I am responsible.”
Later, once the car’s door is closed on the star, “he’s not in any real danger,” Marleau says to him, quietly.
Ilya raises a brow at him. “Did you read the messages?”
“They’re the same every celebrity gets,” Marleau argues right back. “You need to relax, Roz. This is a layup case, alright?”
“No,” Ilya shakes his head. “is not alright.” People die when you let your guard down.
He should know.
***
The commercial shoot is it’s own personal hell, for Ilya.
It’s too many people in the dressing room, all of them coming and going freely with no real vetting process.
There’s a make up artist flittering around Shane, a hair artist behind him, two managers sitting on the couch next to him, a friend sitting on the vanity.
Rose Landry joins them later on, one of the few faces Ilya recognizes in the sea of people.
“Where is your pass?” Ilya asks the hundredth person who comes into the room unannounced, tapping at his hip where the backstage lanyards are supposed to hang with the venue’s credentials.
“They don’t need it,” Hollander barks over the thrum of the room, waving the person in.
Ilya grits his teeth and tries not to burn a hole through the actor’s head with the way he’s glaring.
Any of these people slipping in could be the stalker or one of the thousands of creeps in Hollander’s DM’s.
Something needs to change.
***
Shane hates days like today, that have no real structure.
He gets back in the car around eleven at night, grateful for the silence that surrounds him. They’re in an escalade now, which means while Marleau takes the front seat, Shane’s left to share the back with the new bodyguard.
He doesnt feel like talking, even though it’s the polite thing to do.
Instead, he pulls his hoodie up over his eyes and tries to block out the light of oncoming traffic. Without asking, someone raises the partition between the front and the back, quieting the car even more.
Shane’s sinking further into his seat when the new bodyguard’s voice forces his eyes open. “You did not eat tonight.”
“Oh,” he says stupidly, looking to the man and then quickly away. “It wasn’t in the schedule today.” Sometimes, it’s not easy to plan around the million and four things he has to do. Normally an assistant or one of his managers will get him something. They probably just assumed the other had.
The bodyguard’s eye brow raises, his eyes raking down him in a way that feels disarming. “You need schedule to tell you when you are hungry?”
“No,” Shane’s head shakes. If he’s being honest, he’s learned to ignore his body’s cues. Sometimes you have to slim down for roles.
“You have food at home?”
Shane tries not to grab the handle and jump out of a moving vehicle just for some peace and quiet. “Yes,” he lies. He’s going straight to bed the second he gets there. “What was your name again?”
“Ilya,” the guard supplies, offering his hand out. “Ilya Rozanov.”
“Shane.” He takes his hand, Ilya’s touch warm and firm, his hands calloused. “Shane Hollander.”
“I will be heading your protective detail now,” Ilya supplies, his accent somehow even thicker after the long day.
It makes Shane smile gently despite the exhaustion deep in his bones. “You take this stuff pretty seriously, don’t you?”
The letters from his stalker didn’t freak him out, but his Mom had found the last one. The security detail was hired the next morning.
Maybe it was the constant DM’s or hate comments buried in a sea of adoring, loving fans, but Shane didn’t find they bothered him much. If he didn’t read them, they couldn’t hurt him. It’s something he learned early on in his career, when he’d read every bad review and twitter warrior’s analysis of his acting.
With age, came a thicker skin.
“I take it very seriously,” Ilya agrees. “We will make changes. First one, tonight.” Shane’s eyes flick to him, wondering what’s urgent enough to be dealt with as it creeps closer to midnight.
“You must eat,” Rozanov says eventually, pressing a finger to his ear piece as the car slows down at the turn in to his driveway.
Shane nearly rolls his eyes. “I’m fine,” he tries to argue and still—after Rozanov sends Marleau to check the security system and clear the house—he’s lead to the kitchen and forced to sit.
It’s not weird watching someone open his cabinets like they own the place, but it is weird watching Ilya do it. “No allergies besides opioids and peaches, yes?”
“Yeah,” Shane answers, slow. How much information did they give this guy?
Behind him, Marleau comes up with a hunch to his shoulders that Shane sympathizes with. It’s been nearly eighteen hours since they left the house this morning. “You headed to bed?” When they first told him his security detail would be living in his guest house, he hated the idea. Now, it’s made him realize just how lonely he was before. Marleau’s practically became a brother to him in just the few weeks he’s known him.
“If the Boss lets me,” Marleau chirps, nodding at Rozanov.
“I’m letting you,” Shane corrects, right over Ilya, looking to him as if daring him to say something about it.
Rozanov’s mouth rightfully snaps shut.
“Goodnight, Marleau,” Shane calls to him, slumping himself agains the kitchen island where he’s made himself comfortable.
Rozanov is balancing three containers, pulling them out to add to his haphazard pile of ingredients.
“You know I have a private chef, right?” They don’t live on site, but if he called they’d be here in less than fifteen minutes.
“Da,” Ilya agrees. “But this is faster. And I have not yet done background check on chef.”
Shane’s eyes do roll, this time. “She’s worked for me for five years.”
“Sometimes,” Ilya answers, turning on a burner and adding enough butter to the pan that Shane winces, “it is the people we least suspect, who have been close all along, that are the most dangerous.”
It keeps Shane awake that night, thinking about the letters in a way he hasn’t since he got the first one, months ago.