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“And if you win?” Hollander asks.
Ilya could not possibly fit all that he wants into neat, nice syllables, so he grabs Hollander by the jaw and kisses him instead.
If he wins, he thinks, and even if he fucking doesn’t, what he wants most is to ruin Hollander so much that no one else will ever do. He also needs a fucking cigarette.
There’s an idea.
+
Hollander glares at him from across the hotel room, arms crossed and indignant in his little black briefs. Ilya takes another sip of his vodka.
“That is not what I agreed to,” he deadpans.
“The rules are whatever I want.” Ilya sweeps his arms out in front of him. “This is what I want, Hollander.”
Pushing off the wall he’d been leaning against, Ilya steps off the decorative platform by the windows and closes the distance, pressing Hollander between him and the back of the sofa. The glass still dangles from his fingers, wetting the cushion beneath it.
Hollander is warm and firm and bare against Ilya’s fancy clothing, unstoppable but not immovable. Ilya leans in.
“Will you disappoint me?”
“No,” he answers. Reflex.
“Good boy,” Ilya tells him with a condescending smile, reaching up with his free hand to pat his cheek.
Hollander bares his pretty white teeth. “Fuck you.”
Ilya’s fingers dig into his jaw, his smile widening. “If you want me to do that, you will be sweet to me with this mouth of yours, eh? I am giving you such a nice privilege, letting it touch something so valuable.”
Hollander gives him a flat look.
“It’s a cigarette.”
“Ah—but these are nice ones,” Ilya says, pulling the box from his pocket and giving it a gentle shake. “I would not let Shane Hollander have anything less than expensive brand, hm?”
“It’s still a cigarette.”
Ilya rolls his eyes. “You are stalling. Come here.”
Sometimes Hollander just needs a push.
Spinning on his heel, Ilya sets his vodka aside on the drink cart and reaches for the armchair instead. He grips the back of it and drags it with him toward the bedroom where the lights are lower and there’s no platform in the way, angles it in front of the view. He fetches the sleek, slender little side table from the lounge area next, settles the fancy ash tray from the bar cart on top of it and then reaches for the lighter and cigarettes in his pocket again.
They are elegant, Ilya thinks, wrapped in black and gold just like Hollander’s nice suit and shiny cufflinks that lay abandoned near the entryway. Long, too, meant to last. Plenty of time for Ilya to appreciate this as much as possible before it burns out.
Plenty of time for Hollander to realize that this will be no different than any other time Ilya has been generous enough to fill up his mouth; it will be so sweet to see the look on his face when he realizes that he enjoys it.
Not because of the smoke. Because it’s Ilya holding it to his lips.
“Where’s mine?” he asks when Ilya takes one out, sets the pack on the table.
Ilya cocks a brow. “Yours? You think we are just going to sit here beside each other and smoke like colleagues?”
Hollander shifts on his feet. “Well. Yeah.”
Chuckling to himself, Ilya leans forward and pops open the window as far as the safety mechanism will allow, just a crack big enough for the smoke to spill and the noise of the city to wade in. It’s quieter up this high, but grounding all the same.
He gestures for Hollander to grab his vodka while he makes himself comfortable in the chair, sitting reclined with his legs spread generously. Hollander huffs a little at being told what to do and Ilya lets him have it, lets him pretend for a little longer that it isn’t why he came. The glass meets the side table seconds later with a clink, and Ilya pats his lap.
Objectively, they are both very large men. Two chairs would be more sensible. But Ilya has a vision for tonight that’s been festering all fucking day, and he’s not about to give up on it now.
The armchair is wide and spacious, at least, and Ilya had checked the weight it would hold before Hollander had shown up. He pulls him toward his lap, but tuts when Hollander tries to straddle him.
“No,” Ilya says, turning him sideways. “Like this.”
Hollander’s cheeks are pink when Ilya makes him sit sideways across his lap, long, thick legs bent over one side of the armchair, Ilya’s arm around his back, his shoulder leaning up against Ilya’s chest. Ilya lets the unlit cigarette rest between his lips and pretends he cannot feel the eyes on him while he does it.
“Light it for me,” he murmurs around the stick, jutting his chin forward and slipping the lighter into Hollander’s palm.
Hollander doesn’t argue this time, eyes dropping to the silver in his hand. His brow furrows for a moment as he presses a thumb on the spark, and it takes him one, two tries to get the flame going. Ilya would grin, if he weren’t a little entranced by the way Hollander looks in the warm glow it emits.
It flickers as he lifts it toward Ilya, singularly focused as he watches the lighter and Ilya watches him. It meets the stick and catches, and a timer starts somewhere in the back of Ilya’s head. He grabs the lighter from Hollander, clips the top shut, and sets it aside.
“You watch me first,” he instructs, taking the cigarette between two of his fingers.
“I’ve seen you smoke before.”
“Okay.” Ilya shrugs. “Then try it by yourself and I will not help you when your virgin lungs give out.”
He rolls his eyes. “Fine. Just—just do it. I’ll watch. Fucking pervert.”
Ilya grins filthily and brings it back to his lips, inhales slow and indulgent to take the smoke into his lungs. He doesn’t moan outright, thinks it might be a little too performative. But it’s a close thing—Ilya does love a good fucking cigarette, and he also loves watching Hollander get all embarrassed when he’s turned on. He’s winning on all counts, today.
Holding it in his mouth for a moment, Ilya waits until Hollander’s eyes zero in on his mouth to exhale slowly to the side. It’s thin, wispy, fragrant, erotically visible atop the background of midnight-black marble and dark wallpaper. Hollander’s nose twitches, but he doesn’t say anything. Ilya goes in for another pull.
It doesn’t take much for his cock to stir in his pants, pushing up against the curve of Hollander’s ass. Ilya shifts brazenly, and he gets a flick of Hollander’s narrowed eyes on him as a reward.
“You’re getting off on this,” he says, accusatory.
Ilya blinks. “I did not ask you to do it to be friendly, Hollander.”
Impatient now, he blows the remaining smoke out the side of his mouth and lifts it toward Hollander this time instead.
“Now you try.” Hollander reaches for the stick, and Ilya pulls it away. “Ah-ah, I will hold. You breathe.”
“I can hold it,” he argues. Ilya waits him out until his shoulders sag.
“Right here,” he murmurs, parting Hollander’s lips and pressing the damp spot where Ilya’s own had been to the searching tip of Hollander's pink tongue. “When you are ready, breathe in. Slow.”
Ilya feels like he’s vibrating. He feels like when he’d first found out about Hollander all over again, greedy and terrible and unreasonably elated to be one of his firsts. The look that Hollander gets, like he’s almost scared of how much he wants, might be even better than a cigarette. Ilya can never tell anyone this.
Hollander’s lips close around it, his cheeks hollowing the slightest bit the way they do when he takes Ilya’s cock in his mouth. He’s not as confident now, still figuring out how to get the positioning just right, still glancing to and away from Ilya here and there to make sure he’s doing it right.
When Ilya gives him an encouraging nod, he inhales. Too quick, Ilya thinks, and—yes, there it is, Hollander pushes the cigarette away and turns his head to cough deeply. They are both greedy, maybe.
“Is okay. Breathe, Hollander,” he says, sliding a palm up his back, settling it in between his shoulder blades. He had gagged on Ilya’s cock too. “Try again. You are fast learner, yes?”
Wiping his mouth, Hollander tosses him a glare. “Fuck off.”
“Or maybe you are just eager to please,” Ilya goes on, unbothered. “Both good for me. Open.”
He keeps one hand splayed against Hollander’s back to feel his breathing, lifts the cigarette back up to his mouth with the other. When he inhales this time it’s less ambitious, slower. Ilya lets him have a little and then pulls it away, and Hollander holds it only for a handful of seconds before wrinkling his nose and blowing it out toward the window. They repeat the process a second time and by then Hollander's settling cautiously back into his side, relaxing more.
“Okay?” Ilya asks.
“Okay,” Hollander nods. He rolls his lips together, wets them with his tongue. “It’s not, um. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. The taste, I mean. It’s mostly just the smell.”
“Yes. Smell is very strong. Like a high, for some people.”
“Says the guy with the nicotine addiction,” Hollander quips, his mouth curving upward. It drops a second later, and he tenses in Ilya’s lap. “Shit. Wait, these aren’t—they don’t have anything else in them, do they? I can’t—”
“Hollander, relax.” Ilya slides a hand up to the back of his neck and grips. “I cannot smoke anything either that would show up on physical. And I would not make you smoke something you did not know was there.”
He blows out a breath—a clean one this time—and drops his shoulders. “Okay. Yeah, okay.”
The furrow between his brows is back though, and Ilya wants it gone. He ashes the cigarette over the tray and brings it back between them.
“More now?”
Hollander relaxes further. “Yeah.”
“We take turns,” Ilya proposes.
So they do; Ilya first, and then Hollander, until the tension bleeds out and Hollander’s cheek rests against his shoulder, Ilya’s fingers warm at his hip, tracing the skin. Ilya can’t honestly remember the last time he’d smoked with someone else. And even then, it hadn’t been like this.
It’s peaceful, almost, with the steady weight of Hollander strewn across his thighs, the outside world distant background noise below them. Just the steady in-and-out of their lungs, heavy breaths and warm smoke, both of them hard but neither of them making a move to do anything about it.
The top buttons of Ilya’s shirt are undone, the sides of his bowtie hanging down from his collar. Hollander’s fingers touch the skin of his chest, lightly at first and then more firmly, through the hair and across his necklace, over to the thump of his heartbeat underneath the material. Ilya is very pleased with his pick of a long-lasting choice.
Eventually, when Shane’s palm has mapped out every inch of his chest and shoulder, he reaches past Ilya toward the side table, picks up the box of cigarettes and brings it to his lap. Ilya glances down at it as he inhales smoke, watches Hollander trace a fingertip over the black and gold lettering as he exhales.
“These aren’t the ones you smoked before,” he says with a rasp.
Ilya ashes the cigarette, brings it back to Hollander’s mouth. “Before what?”
“Outside,” he exhales. “At Juniors.”
The cigarette wavers dangerously in Ilya’s grip, and he quickly brings it to his lips to hide it. The memory is sharp, vivid; Ilya fumbling with a lighter outside of an event center in Saskatchewan, feeling too big for his shoes and too small for the rest of the world. For the expectations on his shoulders. Feeling like he was one bad light away from setting the entire fucking place on fire just to get away from it all.
Hollander had extended a hand. Ilya’s light had sparked. The rest is history, he remembers hearing somewhere. It feels fitting.
He can’t believe Hollander remembers the brand of fucking cigarettes he’d smoked. Even as he’d been telling him not to.
“I could not afford fancy cigarettes back then,” Ilya agrees. Sniffs. “Nice of you to remember. Very romantic.”
“Shut up. I just…” he trails off with a shrug, the tops of his cheeks pink. “The smoke smells different, is all.”
Ilya takes the box from him and sets it aside again, pushes the half-finished cigarette toward his palm. Suddenly, Ilya is very motivated to touch as much of him as he can as immediately as possible. It’s probably unrelated.
“You hold it now.”
Hollander wrinkles a brow. “Why?”
“Because my hands will be busy.”
He tries for suggestive, but it likely comes out just as eager as he feels when he shoves his now-free hand in between Hollander’s thighs and palms his cock through the material.
“Fuck,” Hollander hisses, the cigarette dancing in his grip as he yanks it out to the side over the floor, a couple of stray ashes floating through the air and catching the light.
“Woah. Careful,” Ilya says. “Will not be so easy to explain if you get burned.”
Hollander chokes on a moan. Ilya files it away for later and spits into his palm, then shoves it beneath the band of Hollander’s boxers to grip him properly.
He makes himself go slow, enjoys the way Hollander’s shoulders curve toward him, the strong muscles of his stomach tense, eyes fluttering. Ilya has to remind him he’s still holding the cigarette, and the next inhale he takes is shaky at best.
“Into my mouth,” Ilya instructs, nosing at Hollander’s jaw until their mouths are aligned. After a moment holding it on his tongue, his lips part, and he breathes out right up against Ilya’s groan. “Da, Hollander. Just like that. Fuck.”
They don’t kiss but this is almost worse in a scalding sort of way, chasing whisps of smoke back and forth, grazing lips but never locking. A flick of Ilya’s tongue here, a small sigh from Hollander, a whine only narrowly stifled when Ilya leans back so that Hollander can press the cigarette to his lips again.
They smoke the rest of it that way, the stick dwindling as Ilya pumps him with his fist and smears smoke-scented kisses down the side of his neck.
“What was it you said earlier, when I told you what I wanted?” Ilya asks, purely to be an ass. “‘If I do this, you should enjoy it. It’s the only time it’ll ever happen.’ Sound right?”
“Shut up,” Hollander breathes, eyes half-closed as Ilya blows smoke into his face.
Ilya does not. “I think you like it. The same way you like cock, hm? You just need to be told first.”
“Fuck you, Rozanov,” he bites. Ilya can feel his lips move when he talks.
He pulls his hand from Hollander’s boxers, lets the band snap back into place against his hips. Delights in the way Hollander jumps a little and presses closer. Precisely where Ilya wants him.
He takes one last deep drag of the cigarette and then stubs it out for good on the tray, grabs Hollander by the jaw and kisses him once, hard, shoving the smoke between his teeth. Hollander moans as if he suddenly enjoys the taste when it’s wrapped around Ilya’s tongue, and chases it until Ilya pushes him back.
“Get on the bed.”
He’s sick with it when he watches Hollander roll off of his lap and stumble his way toward the bed behind them, overindulged on too many good things and wondering when his luck will run out. As long as the answer is not right this second, Ilya supposes, he’s going to make the most of it.
The mattress dips, taut, lithe lines of Hollander’s hard muscle splayed amongst the sheets. Ilya grabs the vodka off the side table, downs the last of it smoothly, then reaches for his belt as he stalks toward the inviting spread of Hollander’s thighs.
He’d planned on fucking Hollander on his front, hands and knees until he ended up facefirst in the pillows. But this vision is too dizzying to give up, the open offering of his body as he looks up at Ilya on his elbows, pupils blown and teeth sinking into his lip as the thwip of Ilya’s belt is pulled from his slacks and discarded. Ilya will fuck him face to face, he decides.
It’s a well-learned dance at this point, the plié of Hollander’s knees to his chest, the taps and clicks of the lube and their locked lips, the pirouette of Ilya’s fingers pressing in, opening him up and up. He yanks Hollander’s hips to the edge of the bed when he’s finished and takes the foil of the condom between his teeth, ripping it open and rolling it on, spitting out the trash to be dealt with later.
Ilya sinks inside of him and thinks he’s going to smell like me after this. Thinks, it will cling. Thinks, like a revelation, I fucking want it to.
He braces himself on a palm beside Hollander’s head, his upturned chin and open mouth where smoke still clings to every exhale. One is not enough for an addiction; Ilya would know. But he’s taken something from Hollander tonight—another piece just for Ilya, wedged out by his fingers, molded by his palms, put back in a way that won’t ever be the same again. No matter how many showers Hollander takes, no matter how much he scrubs his tongue and douses himself in cologne, Ilya will be underneath it somewhere. They will know.
If Hollander had remembered that first time, when Ilya had fumbled his lighter and hesitated to shake his hand, he’ll remember this. Ilya will make sure of it. He won’t hesitate this time.
“You would have let me,” he breathes hot against Hollander’s cheek. He presses the tip of his thumbnail hard into the plush curve of Hollander’s hip. “You would have let me put it out here.”
A moan punches out of Hollander’s chest. “Fuck, Rozanov.”
“Say it. Tell me.”
“I—” Hollander tries, tossing his head back when Ilya fucks him harder, deeper, rougher, chasing him up the bed. Ilya grabs his chin, pulls him back.
“Tell me.”
“I would have let you,” he gasps like a confession. “Fuck, Roz—I would have. I would. Whatever you want.”
“Whatever I want,” Ilya purrs. “You would burn for me, Hollander? You would sit at my feet like ash tray? You are that desperate?”
“Fuck,” Hollander spits. His eyes pinch closed, then flutter dazedly back open like he can’t look away. “For you—yes. For you.”
Ilya curses this time, something filthy and incriminating and completely in Russian so it doesn’t scare Hollander away, and wraps a hand around Hollander’s cock when his own orgasm looms too close. He can’t leave marks. Can’t sink his teeth into Hollander’s skin and bite, can hardly leave a pink press of his handprint behind.
He pictures the falling ash from the cigarette in Hollander’s hand. The elegant bend of his wrist. The shape of his mouth obscured by smoke. Pictures, just for a moment, leaving a small circle of a mark somewhere secret, somewhere else that’s only for Ilya. If Hollander would wince when his clothes brushed it. If he’d squirm, cheeks blotchy red, remembering.
“Shit, Rozanov, I’m—” he chokes, body a livewire under Ilya’s hands and cock, and Ilya takes the fist from between his legs, sticks two fingers, sticky with Hollander’s excitement, straight onto his tongue.
“Come on,” Ilya says. “Come for me, Hollander. Let me see.”
His whine is muffled around Ilya’s knuckles, spit at the sides of his mouth, Ilya trying to reach the smoke in his lungs. He’s always liked the twist of Hollander’s face, the way it looks like it hurts. His eyes water, stuffed full of Ilya’s fingers and his cock while his own spits white between their stomachs, but he takes it. He takes and takes and fucking takes, and maybe they aren’t so unalike after all.
Before he’s even finished Ilya is ripping his hand away and slapping it down against the sheets, pushing hard into Hollander and coming harder than he has in weeks. He buries his face in the side of Hollander’s neck and sucks at his pulse, says yes and fuck and good boy again and fucking means it.
With the last of it he pushes himself up, kisses him with his eyes open, runs his tongue along the ridges in the top of Hollander’s slack mouth up to his teeth. Every time you smell smoke you will think of me, he wants to say. I will always be under your skin.
These are not thoughts that Ilya is allowed to have, though, so he keeps them to himself. Pulls out of Hollander’s warm and willing body and fetches something to clean them up, hates the way his hands itch for a lighter even now.
Hates himself even more when he gives in, keeping a cigarette between his lips so Hollander’s mouth can’t touch the same spot. His hands shake long after he’s alone again, withdrawal from an entirely different kind of addiction.
It’s all a smokescreen anyway. Ilya squints through the fog, closes his eyes when they water too much to keep blaming it on the fumes.
+
Ilya leans against the outside of the training facility back in Boston and thinks about texting Hollander you were right. The shitty cigarettes don’t smell the same, but they’re still fucking close enough to turn Ilya’s stomach.
He watches the ash dive for the pavement. Sighs. The smoke tastes stale on his tongue.
At the very least, he reasons, it will probably be very easy to quit smoking now. That is good. Or it’s something, anyway.
Ilya stubs out the cigarette. He doesn’t text.