as a long time lurker, and longer time snzfucker, I wanted to make a little intro post to celebrate my graduation into non-lurkerdom, so here it is!
I love to write- snzfic, fanfic, 'books' that I abandon after like 2 chapters- pretty much anything. I've posted some stuff before on ao3, but I wanted to keep that separate from snz stuff, so that's what this blog is for!
🌿About me🌿
I'm queer and use any pronouns
I'm friendly (I promise) and totally down to make snz (or non snz) friends! (inbox always open)
I am new(ish) to tumblr so I have basically no idea how anything works (pls bear with me)
🌿About my writing🌿
I will write for a lot of fandoms, probably including some fairly niche ones so feel free to reach out and check even if something isn't listed here
I will write- snz, general sickfic, light emeto, hurt/comfort, angst, fluff, characters with the fetish, ships (mostly)
I will not write- descriptive mess/emeto (sorry), scat, major illness, x reader, non-con, death
🌿About this blog🌿
This is a sneeze kink blog, so if you're a non kink blog pls don't reblog posts from here. Also minors/ageless blogs DNI, I will block.
I cannot express how deeply in love I am with you Hollanov writing. I love the patterns and characterisations you have sent up. Ilya’s really distinctive sneeze pattern, Shane always taking the tissue and folding it first - it makes it so real and easy to picture. I can’t wait for the next part of the 3 + 1 + epilogue (how did we get so lucky, I can hardly believe it). I feel for Shane to my absolute core - being sick around my parents is my legitimate nightmare, I would already be up and cancelled with some completely unrelated excuse, he is way braver than me.
I was also wondering, in your unexpected interference part 2 (you have the best names by the way) there is a line: “A memory conveniently appeared in his mind, Shane with a miserable cold, trying to be quiet while Ilya fucked him in his hotel room, one thin wall separating them from the Russian’s teammate” and is there any chance you would expand on this memory? I love stifle Shane and this is the dream.
Thank you again for all your writing - it is beyond incredible.
Only Sweat with Silence
hi anonnnn, thank you sooo much for the kind words!! I'm so sorry for the wait, I literally had three requests to write this scene, so I hope I have done all three of you justice! as I mentioned here this does not take place in the same universe as my other HR stuff so s/hane doesn't have the kink (which is tragic because this would be a dream scenario for him) but all the relationships are essentially the same.
I hope you enjoy! ♡
fandom: h/eated r/ivalry
word count: 8.1k (ayy IR81)
cw: sneezing, general illness, contagion, mess, everything nsfw, seriously this is one long sex scene, domsub dynamics kind of?
“Hey.” Hollander offered the same stupid, awkward greeting he did practically every time the hotel room door swung shut behind him, eyes darting around the small room in the dim light, trying to acclimate himself. He was wearing a mock-vintage Metros t-shirt that the team had put out a couple of years ago. It was one of his favorites. Ilya wasn’t completely sure why he knew that, but the moment he’d caught sight of it his brain had offered up the words ‘favorite’ and ‘soft’ so apparently it was something they’d discussed before.
The blond looked him over silently, with the gaze of a starved man contemplating an endless buffet. Starving man would not bother with niceties. He stepped closer, head tilting as he contemplated where to begin.
“I can’t…uh I can’t stay.”
“What?” The Russian’s trance was broken for a second. He never stayed anyway, and with the Raiders’ early start the next morning, plus the Metros’ rookie back at Shane’s place, he’d hardly thought there was a need to clarify how long this would take. They’d literally done this exact thing last week, and he hadn’t needed to state how long he’d been there before he started pushing him against the wall as they kissed.
“I just thought I should tell you in person. I want to… you know,” He nodded towards the bed, “But I can’t.”
So, what, he’d come here just to tease him? Show him what he wasn’t going to get that evening? Was he mad about the loss still? Or… did he want to be talked out of leaving? People were so stupidly complicated sometimes.
“You want, I want, so you stay. Simple.” Confident that he’d solved the situation, Ilya pulled off his own shirt.
Hollander looked pissed, pointedly avoiding eye contact with the blond’s bared torso. “Sometimes it’s not that simple, Rozanov. Sometimes it’s not just about what people w-” He paused, pressing his lips together into a thin line, discomfort appearing to suddenly mount.
Ilya tipped his head to one side, analysing him. His thoughts flitted from some mortal injury he’d somehow missed being inflicted on the Canadian at one of his last few games, to something along the lines of a chastity belt that his own nudity had suddenly made extremely uncomfortable for the brunet, to… the completely opposite possibility.
“You have plug in or something?”
“What?” The question broke Hollander’s focus, and Ilya was treated to one singular second of those wide, startled eyes that he so loved to provoke before they were slamming shut and the brunet was ducking in on himself, pinching his nose between finger and thumb. “hNGT! heHNGT!”
The sneezes made barely any noise, but what little of them was audible, was telling. There was an insistent force behind them that savored of multitudes more having preceded the double, and the Canadian’s voice squeaked with the small vocalisation, strain showing itself.
“God bless you.” The blond watched him straighten hesitantly, with a soft sniffle.
“Excuse me.” The strain persisted, and Hollander cleared his throat, gaze directed awkwardly at the carpet beneath his feet. “Thanks.”
“You are okay?” As always, making this inquiry caused the brunet to stand up slightly straighter, squaring his shoulders in a close to imperceptible demonstration of defiant strength. But Ilya had the advantage here, and they both knew it.
“Something in the air, I guess.”
“Is your fucking city, Hollander. Only thing in air is your germs.”
This assertion seemed to spark surprise-apparently they hadn’t both known that Ilya had the advantage, did he really think he was doing that good of a job of hiding his illness?- and then annoyance again, “Fine, I’m leaving. I said I was leaving, so-”
“You are not leaving.” The Russian responded impassively, taking the indignant player’s chin between finger and thumb and tilting his head back to examine his face as though assessing it’s suitability for inserting his dick into, in its current state. Unsympathetic, single-minded, salacious…. simple. This was supposed to be simple.
Ilya, distracted by his train of thought diverting, apparently tipped the brunet’s head back too far. Hollander made an interesting spluttering noise and stepped back, slamming into the door. The blond winced-at the noise, definitely not because he thought it might have hurt- triggering a brief apologetic expression as the stricken man ducked back into the safety between his finger and thumb.
“hehNGT! EhNGT!”
“G-” He began, expecting that to have been the end of it.
“hEHNGTchh!” It wasn’t. “hTSHh!” The brunet struggled to maintain control, the sneeze bursting out of his mouth despite his strong grip on his nose.
Eyebrows raised so high they were considering becoming part of his hairline, Ilya watched him gear up for another one, and, barely thinking, offered him the t-shirt he was still holding in one hand.
“Wha-ahh-t the fuck? N-hh-no. hheHTDShh!”
“Hollander.” The Russian deadpanned. “I am in charge tonight. You are making mess all over hands, and I have plans for hands later. So-.”
There was neither room nor time for argument, as Ilya manoeuvred the item of clothing into his grip, the Canadian’s eyes already shutting, and breath spiralling irreversibly, “hTDSHhew!”
“Budʹzdorov.”
“Sorry.” Hollander croaked vacantly, fabric still pressed to his face, the single word causing him to dissolve into a coughing fit that he folded in on himself and crushed the shirt over his mouth to muffle, torso shaking as he fought for air. It took him slightly too long to regain his composure, subtly wiping his nose and mouth before standing up, back against the door again.
“You are sick.” Ilya stated, once he seemed to be over the little display of symptoms for the moment.
The brunet didn’t respond, busy trying to figure out what the fuck to do with the t-shirt he’d just ruined.
“Is not problem.” Ilya continued, undeterred by the rapid disbelieving eye contact that the statement earned him. “I will fuck this out of you.”
“You will fuck this out of me?” His voice vanished in a squeak of disbelief at the end of the repeated sentence, the high pitch too much for his damaged throat.
“Yes.”
“I’ll get you sick too.”
No fucking shit, Hollander. “You breathe in my face all night at face-off, and you cough on me when I check you-” In hindsight, he probably should have realised that the other player wasn’t just doing that to be an asshole. “-so is not like is first time I get your germs today.”
The brunet looked guilty, and if he could have stepped any further back without breaking the door down and tumbling backwards into the hallway, Ilya was sure he would have. As it was, he settled for looking guilty, sighing softly through his nose like a put-upon puppy, and then immediately looking like he had to sneeze again, which currently meant making a very itchy, desperate, surprised expression, and then staring into Ilya’s far-too-close eyes with a look of extreme panic.
Wordlessly, the Russian reached out to take his hand. Hollander’s already softly hitching breath snagged, eyelashes fluttering as he tried to keep his eyes open and roving Ilya’s face for clues on what he was doing. The blond raised their hands into his line of sight, reminding him that he was still holding the t-shirt. Hollander’s expression flickered into realisation, relief, and then back to the itchy-looking one again as he lifted it to his face, Ilya letting go just in time.
“hTDSHh! hEh…hTCHhew!”
“God bless you.”
The brunet’s cheeks were tinged with the softest blush as he glanced up at him, regretfully. “Thanks, sorry, I don’t know why I’m doing that so much.”
“Sneezing?”
“Yeah.”
“You are sick, and you do not know why you are sneezing so much?”
“Shut up. What if people hear me?” Hollander looked at the walls as though they were about to slide away, gameshow style, to reveal the entire Boston Raiders roster crammed into the two adjoining rooms.
Ilya shrugged. “We win. Everyone is out, except Marleau, maybe, and you sound like girl when you sneeze anyway, so-”
“Fuck you! I don’t sound like a fucking girl.”
“You do.”
“Maybe I should just sneeze a million times so they think it’s just you in here.” The brunet retorted.
He paused, the chirp landing awkwardly, not quite rolling off him like the comments usually did, because it didn’t quite fit right. And normally Hollander was pretty good at knowing exactly where to hit to make it sting in a playful, competitive way. “Would not help. They have not heard me sneeze.”
“What?” The Canadian was completely thrown by that fact, apparently. “Never? You’re not exactly subtle about it.” Yeah, not with him he wasn’t.
“Fuck off. No, never.” Except for Marleau, who was about the only player on the roster he could trust not to use displays of weakness against him in any way, even if it was just to fuel a half-hearted chirp. Marly was freakishly good at knowing where the line was between pissing the captain off and actually making him uncomfortable. Which in itself kind of made him uncomfortable.
“Wow that’s…”
“What, you make point to sneeze in front of team? Is sign of good captain?”
“No, I don’t- I mean, maybe we sh- aren’t we supposed to trust each other?”
Ilya stared into his eyes, a million disjointed thoughts rushing through his mind, about trust, camaraderie, honesty, Hollander, vulnerability, leadership, Hollander, chemistry, strength, Hollander sucking his dick- yeah, however shitty they were as leaders did not fucking matter right then. He just wanted Hollander to suck his dick.
“Suck my dick.”
“Wha-?”
“Literally.” He took several steps back, in the direction of the bed, sticking his thumbs into the waistband of his shorts and starting to take them off. “Knees. Here. Suck my dick.”
…
Ilya was concerned that he hadn’t really noticed how much noise a blowjob made before. Not that either of them were moaning at the top of their voices or anything, or that the head was so bad that he’d found his mind wandering to the soundscape of the hotel room, but… it was kind of unignorable.
Hollander was hard at work, on his knees on the rough hotel carpet in front of the blond, bobbing up and down with the full, hardening length of him moving in and out of his mouth. He was visibly turned on too, trousers tight at the crotch, and hips shifting every so often as he grinded against the material. The sound of the rhythmic penetration was not overly loud or distracting, but the clicking of the brunet’s throat, the heavy, panted breaths, and what was frankly rapidly snowballing from urgent sniffling into some kind of deranged snorting sound were pulling him out of the realm of pleasure and placing him firmly somewhere between disgust and concern.
As much as breath control was an interesting element to bring into the act, and something they hadn’t experimented with yet, and as much as he loved the mix of determination and helpless panic in the brunet’s expression, the sniffling was kind of setting him on edge. Both because one wrong breath meant his dick would be covered in the contents of Hollander’s nasal passageways, and because it was a constant, jarring noise, when he was trying to let his mind wander to more pleasurable places.
“Okay, move.” He pressed on the Canadian’s forehead, detaching him from his dick abruptly.
The brunet kept his head tipped back as he sat down on his haunches, disgust flickering on the edges of his entranced expression as his nose clearly began to drain down his throat. “Why?”
“You can not breathe. I want to finish before you pass out.”
“I can breathe. I can keep going.” His voice started to fade out towards the end of the sentence, and Ilya found himself making pointed, obstinate eye contact through the kneeling man’s hectically fluttering eyelashes.
“You can keep going right now? You don’t want to sneeze first?” It was actually almost boring how easily he could read him right now, there was no challenge, no jeopardy if he guessed wrong, just the brunet’s heart on his sleeve and a sneeze on his face.
“N-hh-no.” His chin tilted up stubbornly.
The Russian sighed, as though exasperated, though really he enjoyed the pushback. It made it more of a game, more of a performance, more exhilarating. “What if I want you to sneeze? What if I order this?”
Hollander considered this, jaw clenched, eyebrows just barely peaked in the centre, holding the sneeze in limbo. “I could maybe do that. A-hh-are you ordering me to…?”
He made him wait. Five seconds of sadistic, spun-out speculation. And then, “Yes, Hollander. Sneeze.”
The brunet did not make him wait in return, “eHNGT! hhNGTch!”
“Budʹzdorov.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Was the muttered reply, the nasal tone to the words making him sound even more pitiful, nose still held tightly between finger and thumb. “Sorry.”
“Means ‘God bless you’. Are you ready to suck my dick again now?”
The Canadian sniffled damply, but he was smiling just a little when he lifted his head to meet Ilya’s gaze. “You have one word that means all that?”
He didn’t deem the quip worthy of a response, picking up his shirt from where Hollander had meticulously folded it and placed it on the floor, almost under the bed, clearly too ashamed of what he’d done to it to keep it anywhere in sight. Which was stupid, because Ilya had almost definitely done worse to it, and most of his other shirts, when he’d been equally sick or much more allergic. This could barely be considered damage. He could probably wear this to sleep tonight.
“Blow.” He commanded, holding it out, squaring his stance as he loomed above the still kneeling man, to enforce his position of power.
“You don’t have tissues?” He immediately voided this attempt, trying to skirt the instruction.
“No. Is shitty hotel room. And I do not use. So, no.”
Hollander looked reluctant, chewing on his lip before stopping to breathe. Ilya, tired and entirely too turned on to wait much longer, employed the eyes that he usually saved for slightly later in the encounter. The Canadian caved immediately. Not a particularly hard battle given that his options were to resist and have his nose drip down his face or his throat for the rest of the night, or to give in and be able to actually breathe during sex.
“I get you real tissues next time, yes?” Ilya ran a hand through the brunet’s hair absently, tone immediately switching to praise as he spoke over the sound of him softly clearing his sinuses out.
“Okay. Thank you.”
Neither of them even hesitated to assume that there would be a next time, even a next time that would require tissues, that whatever this was would persist long enough for the famously health-conscious player to come down sick again while they were playing one another. It was just an attempt to placate him, calm him down enough to fuck him back to health, it didn’t mean anything. Nothing he was doing meant anything to Hollander, and nothing Hollander was doing was meant to be doing anything to him, either.
…
“This is good?”
Shane couldn’t respond, only able to nod feverishly, mouth gaped both to breathe and in response to the feeling of Rozanov pushing deeper into him. This definitely felt like it was more for him than for the blond, even though he’d won the game, and thereby all decision making power for the night, but he would not be pointing that out lest it get him back on his knees on the rough carpet, trying to breathe around his dick. Which would not normally be a problem, he wasn’t the kind of person to try and get out of giving what he owed, but right now that was horrifically hard. Thanks entirely to Hayden, who had spent a week insisting he wasn’t sick and infecting half the team, had just barely lived through their last game against Boston, and then had crashed so hard in the aftermath that he’d missed the next three, and tonight’s one, incapable enough of looking after himself that one of the trainers was staying at his place to ‘keep an eye on him’. Fuck, he did not need to be thinking about Pike right now.
“Yes?” The Russian forced him to clarify, fingers closing around his wrist, squeezing to keep him grounded.
He pushed the word out, breathy and faint through cracked lips, “Yeah.”
Rozanov nodded in response, loosening his grip a bit, the next thrust inadvertently slipping their hands together, fingers interlacing awkwardly, misaligned so Shane’s first three fingers were free. He dug them into the back of the blond’s hand anyway, reaffirming the position without even thinking.
Mind overactive as ever, Shane found himself noticing that lying like this, on his back, was shifting the congestion in his face quite significantly. He’d also noted that having his legs up like this felt amazing, having been on his feet all fucking day, and that the soft bedding under his back was so comfortable that he could almost feel the edge of sleep within his grasp. But the congestion was the pressing issue. Because every so often it would start to drain down his throat with a quiet clicking noise, and then things would start to move around in his sinuses, and a violent little tickle would spring up in his nose.
Every time that happened, he panicked slightly, worrying that the sensation would peak suddenly and he’d find himself sneezing all over himself and Rozanov without the slightest chance to stop it. So at the first hint of the tickle, he would bring his hand up towards his face slightly. The only problem with that was that it was still attached to the blond’s hand, and his delicate attempts to extract his fingers were not enough to dislodge the strong grip that they were caught in.
Before he could make any progress, though, the tickle would wane, and his focus would shift back to the dick being thrust in and out of him, and the owner of said dick, muscles defined with the effort of fucking him, sweat beading on his brow, increased bloodflow turning his lips an irresistibly biteable shade of red.
Shane’s gaze flitted away, over his shoulder to the far wall, as the congestion moved again, the tickle rising in its wake. He started moving their hands closer to his face, fingers spreading wide in an attempt to clue the blond in to his desire to free himself. Don’t sneeze, you don’t have to sneeze, focus on how good this feels, focus on anything else, you’re not going to sneeze right now, you’re-
“What…are you doing?” Rozanov panted, eyes glued to Shane’s face with an expression that was half determined scrutiny and half abstracted lust.
“So-rry, I…” He paused, biting hard down on his lip as the two sensations overwhelming him, rose in synchronicity, “I kind of ha-hH-ve to sneeze again.”
“You need me to stop?” He didn’t look that much like he could, clearly hooked on the pleasure now, the tension of self-restraint apparently building in his body even just at the inconvenience of having to slow down.
“No,” He didn’t even know if the sensation was going anywhere at the moment, so who knew how long they’d have to stop for. “I- I need my hand, though.”
Rozanov shifted his weight, picking up their intertwined hands and manoeuvring them to just beside the brunet’s face, waving them back and forth a little once they were suitably close. “Is here.”
As much as he wanted to argue, his breath had finally caught in a meaningful way, and he could tell his expression was already betraying him, because the blond gave a small nod of permission or acknowledgement, keeping up the slow, predictable pace to allow him to focus on the tickle.
Shane lifted his hand to his face, pinching his nose between the first finger and thumb, momentarily distracted by what appeared to be the side of Rozanov’s thumb brushing against his lip, and then tightening his grip, and allowing his eyelids to flutter closed, as he surrendered to the feeling.
“heHNGT!”
“G- oh…god bless you.”
“hhEHNGtt!”
“… god bless you.”
“hhihEHNGTch!”
“Blya, Hollander, budʹzdorov.”
Shane could feel himself clenching around Rozanov with each sneeze, an unintended by-product of the effort needed to stifle them. Apparently, he had also noticed this, because every time Shane’s eyes opened in the wake of a sneeze, the blond’s were half shut, riding a wave of pleasure. He’d been about to apologise for ruining the moment by reminding them both how disgusting he currently was, but it seemed that he was actually only improving things.
“hhEh-”
…
Ilya watched his eyebrows pinch together urgently for the fourth time in a row, huffed breaths against their linked hands the only indicator of how close he was to the next sneeze. He was so helpless like this, Ilya controlling his pleasure, his nose controlling his pain, and yet still exerting that control over the sneezes, keeping them quiet, contained, letting his symptoms show on his own terms. It was a skill that stirred jealousy in the pit of the blond’s stomach more than any he’d seen displayed out on the ice. Self-control, discipline, unobtrusiveness, it was everything he strove to display, everything he’d been taught to embody… everything that the slightest irritant made completely impossible for him.
Hollander took another wavering breath in, and his fingers tightened around the Russian’s hand like a vice, Ilya feeling first hand the harsh treatment that the brunet’s nostrils were being subjected to. He knew it was only an unintended consequence of their linked fingers, but he allowed himself the smallest pretence that it was the Canadian’s way of keeping him close, reaching out for support, seeking some sort of reassurance as he rode out the fit.
“hhEHNGTt!” The brunet’s abs clenched, muscles starkly defined for a single second as his head jerked upwards slightly from the force of the sneeze. His hips bucked slightly too, and Ilya bit back a moan at the simultaneous squeeze of pressure around his dick. It took all of his self-control not to thrust back harder in response, feeling the pleasure rising to a tangible peak, so close to tipping over the edge. Wait until he’s done. Wait until he’s okay. And then you can fuck every last trace of this virus out of him.
Eyes fluttering open, Hollander let out a warm, shaky breath across the back of Ilya’s hand, loosening his grip, tilting his head back to inhale deeply, mesmerising the blond with his shiny pink lips, still slightly twitching nose, and discomfort-furrowed brow.
“Sorry. Excuse me.”
Ilya realised he’d completely stilled, apart from his thumb, which was stroking the back of the brunet’s hand, partially an effort to not come prematurely, but also out of some kind of instinct to watch, wait, monitor the other man in this moment of ailment and vulnerability. He almost felt like he’d forgotten where they were, who they were, there was no hotel room, no game, no history, no future, there was just him, and Sh- and Hollander, and whatever the fuck Hollander’s immune system was doing to him.
“Budʹzdorov, god bless you. You are okay?” He responded at last.
The Canadian nodded, expression quickly melting from exhausted relief, back to lustful fixation. “Keep going.”
He needed no further encouragement, falling back into a passionate rhythm again, watching, gratified, as the brunet’s mouth fell open with a silent moan of ecstasy. How he’d love to fill that mouth, if he wasn’t already occupied filling another hole.
As though he’d read his mind, Hollander started pulling their hands back towards his face again. At first the blond faltered, wondering if he had to sneeze again, but before he could slow his pace or inquire, his thumb was abruptly inserted into the other player’s mouth. The brunet held the digit between his teeth as he slipped his lips around it, heavy breaths ghosting over Ilya’s hand again.
He stared into the Canadian’s eyes as his tongue ran methodically around his thumb, the significant size difference between his thumb and his dick, and the angle making it a lot easier for Hollander to breathe while he mouthed away at Ilya’s extremities. His hips bucked again, as the blond picked up the pace and the depth, a soft moan more felt than heard as it was huffed out against his hand, and the Russian knew that if they kept this up he was going to come. This felt far better for him than it was for Hollander, and he wanted something to feel good for him, since he’d almost definitely been feeling like shit all day, and then had showed up here only to be coerced into being starved of oxygen by the blond’s dick down his throat.
Ilya pulled all the way out. “Turn over.” He’d barely delivered the instruction before his hand was under the brunet’s thigh, lifting his leg to manually flip him over, the other player malleable and compliant in his grip. Too malleable and compliant. He’d expected some kind of pushback, or at least input on the movement, but no, there was nothing, and he flipped the Canadian onto his front, quick, forceful, and unceremonious.
Hollander hit the bed hard, not dirty hit-hard, not boarding-hard, not hard enough to wind him, but hard enough to knock him out of the rhythm he’d been breathing in. There was a barely audible huffed out breath of surprise, and then he was shaking the entire bed with a violent coughing fit.
“Fuck.” Ilya muttered, watching him push himself up onto his elbows so he could try to breathe without accidentally smothering himself. Even naked, dangerously short of breath, flat on his stomach with the Russian behind him, between his legs, the Canadian made the effort to cough in the direction of his elbow. So polite, so pointless… it made him want to fuck him so hard he forgot where his elbows even were.
The blond didn’t reinsert himself, not yet, leaning forwards and running a large hand over Hollander’s shuddering back, up and down, firm enough to shift the skin around his fingers, feeling the muscles beneath. “Shh.” He clicked his tongue, as though soothing a startled animal, willing the sick man’s lungs into compliance.
Shortly, the coughs turned to intermittent splutters, and then to heavy, raspy breathing, the brunet’s head dipping down towards the mattress as he replenished the spent energy and oxygen. Ilya grimaced behind his back, unseen. He resented the silence, which made it harder to ignore the guilty conscience screaming in his ear. He likes it rough like that, normally. He mentally defended himself. How the fuck was he supposed to know it would do that to him? He needed to fix this. Wasn’t he supposed to be ‘making him better’?
“Water.” The blond spoke before he’d even connected the dots in his conscious mind, coming out in English on mere chance. He was halfway through stretching a leg out in the direction of the floor when Hollander replied, voice borderline unrecognisable, but firm and assured.
“No. Keep going.”
“You are sure?”
“Yes.”
So, he reinserted himself, hand slipping down to rest at the small of the brunet’s back, while he leaned forwards to grasp his dick with the other. The Canadian moaned hoarsely. Ilya’s heart rate picked up at the noise, honing in on his mark, knowing exactly what every single calculated movement he made was doing to-
A door slammed close by in the hallway. Hollander flinched, but the next stroke of Ilya’s fingers down his dick relaxed him again. Like butter in his hands, or whatever that phrase was. Why would you want butter in your hand? As lube maybe?
“Is making you feel better?” The blond distracted himself with the question, purred low in the back of his throat as he fucked the sick man slowly, carefully, in the wake of his mistake. But if Hollander started sneezing like that again, squeezing tight around his dick, shuddering against the mattress, making that helpless, apologetic face…
“It’s-” He began in response, only to be abruptly interrupted by a knock on the door. He flinched again, Ilya slowing his rhythm to a stop as well, both of their eyes snapping towards the sound.
“Roz?” Marly. Fuck. Could not be worse timing.
The blond elected not to reply, adjusting his position to make waiting more comfortable, placing a firm, steadying hand on Hollander’s back again, to silently tell him not to freak out, and not to move. And definitely not to cough or sneeze or make any other Canadian-sounding noises that might give them both away.
After a beat of probably trifold baited breath, the winger knocked again. “Cap? Are you okay, dude?”
“Fuck off, Marly.” Ilya shot back. Clearly he knew he was in there, maybe the headboard was banging against the wall and he hadn’t noticed.
“Yeah? That’s kind of a rough cough, man, just wanted to check you’re all good.”
Every muscle in Hollander’s body tensed, and not in the good way like right before he came or when he’d been sneezing just then. Like he was terrified. Marly was not terrifying. Marly was idiot who did not know when to quit. So, Ilya would tell him when to quit.
“Is not problem, I am fine now, you can go.” He called, before leaning in as close as the angle would allow him to get to Hollander. “I have to fuck you louder, okay? So he knows is not just me in here. If he thinks I am with girl, he will leave me alone.”
“Yeah, okay.” The brunet’s response was breathy, tense, shaky. Ilya pressed the hand on his back down harder, anchoring him to the bed.
“Breathe, Hollander. Is pointless if you pass out.”
He inserted himself again, starting to thrust forcefully, both hands steadying himself against the mattress now, focused on making the bedsprings creak and the frame shudder and whatever ‘I’m fucking someone within an inch of their life in here so you should definitely go put headphones on or go out for the night’ noises he could.
There was silence from the hallway. For the love of fucking-
“Oh yes, da, like that.” He moaned, pointedly.
Hollander’s head snapped around to look over his shoulder at him, apparently not having realised that fucking louder meant making the most stereotypical sex noises he could think of. Ilya almost laughed at how high his eyebrows had climbed up his forehead. They didn’t really get to be loud during sex much, now that he was actually thinking about it. Which was sad because he loved to make the Canadian moan and whine and whimper his name. Stupid thin hotel room walls.
The current thin hotel room walls informed them abruptly that Marleau had retreated to his room again, as the door slammed again. Ilya kept up the increased power, though, wanting to make this worth the brunet’s while. He was rewarded by Hollander’s back arching as he shifted the angle he was hitting into him at, hearing him gasp softly as he reached around to take hold of his dick again.
“Fuck, Rozanov.”
The Canadian made various soft sniffling and moaning noises as Ilya brought him methodically closer and closer to release, alternating between pushing his head into the pillow and tipping it back to gasp at the ceiling, unable to be still between the twin sieges being laid to his body, just barely keeping himself from coming apart all at once. There was that self-control again. It was so goddamn hot to see him using every last drop of it, it was not a reservoir that usually ran dry on the ice, but behind closed doors, Ilya could push him right to the edge of composure, and then over it.
He was almost over the edge himself when he noticed the tension starting to build in the muscular shoulders ahead of him again.
“What is it?” He slowed slightly to ask, running a hand up Hollander’s bare side and earning a shiver in response.
“I… have to sneeze again, I think.”
He thought? Ilya could probably tell him with greater certainty than that, just from his breathing pattern. Fuck, Ilya could probably predict the look on his face, how far he was from coming, and how much ice time he’d racked up that day, just from his breathing pattern. “Okay, so go.” Did he have to tell him every time now or something?
“What if he’s still listening?”
The anxiety in the brunet’s tone was exactly what he’d been trying to avoid. Sex was good for illness, stress not so much. “Hollander, listen to me. You will sneeze now, properly, not hold in like ‘ggt’-” He mimicked the sound of the stifles, “-you have to sneeze properly, but make it sound like girl, okay?”
“Like a girl?” He sounded reluctant, the anxiety still evident.
Ilya upped the firmness in his tone. “Yes. Can you do this for me?” It was not much of an ask, given the sound of the Canadian’s sneezes was feminine to begin with, but asking him to do it on purpose, when he knew that someone was most likely listening?
“…yes.”
“You are sure? I think you can not do this.” Maybe challenging him would be helpful.
This time the response was quicker, more assured. “I can do it.”
“Good.” The blond praised him pre-emptively.
“hhEh…” Hollander’s back swelled as he took in a hitching breath, lungs filling to capacity, and then emptying with a shaky exhale, before the process repeated, “hehH… hHh…”
Ilya slowed his thrusts further, coming into a smooth, constant rhythm, considering whether the sensation of impending orgasm was distracting him, “Is stuck?”
The brunet shook his head. “I need something to c-hh-over with.”
“No.” He responded firmly, “Is better to let it out.”
“It’s gross.”
“Nothing about you is gross.” The phrase was perhaps slightly too eager, too vulnerable, too familiar, so the Russian hardened his tone, making it a command instead of a request. He was in charge tonight after all. “Is about what I want right now, and I want you all over these sheets, Hollander. Your sweat, your spit, your cum. You will make as big of mess as possible for me, yes?”
The response was a small, hitching whine.
“Yes?” Ilya pushed.
“Y-hh-es.”
He didn’t reaffirm the promise this time, instead focusing on adjusting his position so that he was ready to take this all the way in the aftermath of the sneezing, because sooner or later (and almost definitely sooner), Hollander was going to tire himself out, and then this wouldn’t be fun for either of them. The blond placed his hand on the small of the Canadian’s back, spreading his fingers out, and the other on his hip, securing him in place. And then, keeping up the smooth, slow strokes, he waited.
Hollander’s head tipped back, tilted to one side slightly so Ilya could see his mouth fall open, the slight flare of his nostrils, the way his eyes squinted at the ceiling and then squeezed shut.
“eHTCHew!”
The sneeze was mostly directed into his bare shoulder, from what Ilya glimpsed before his own eyes shut automatically in response to the slight added pressure on his dick.
“hTSHhew!” Hollander seemed to remember his instruction before the second one, awkwardly directing it downwards at the sheets below his chest, the shockwave resulting from his head jolting downwards making his hips slam back against Ilya’s.
The blond stared at his hand on the sweat-beaded back in front of him, dug his fingertips into the skin slightly, trying to keep his focus on not coming before his stupid, extremely sick rival, who was helplessly sneezing his head off in his hotel room bed, pretending to be a girl- which he was doing a pretty good job at, actually- so that his best friend wouldn’t realise who he was actually fucking. Holy fucking-
“heHTDSHiew!” The Canadian’s hands fisted in the sheets as he misted Ilya’s pillow with the forceful, but still effeminate sneeze. “hiHSHhew!”
Helplessly snowballing towards climax, Ilya started thrusting again, taking his hand off Hollander’s hip and taking his dick back in his hand again. The brunet gave a slightly less feminine sounding moan, which was cut off by another gasp.
Wait, just wait a second. Ilya willed him. Fucking hold it back, hold it in, do whatever you usually do, or I’m going to-
“eHTSHhew!”
He caught a last glimpse of spray drifting across the bed in the artificial light before his eyes slammed shut and it crashed over him. The blond inadvertently tightened his grip as he deepened his thrusts, seeking out every last drop of pleasure, hearing a muffled moan from the Canadian and feeling his own orgasm taking over his body as he apparently pushed his face into the pillows. This should not be such a good feeling, considering what had led up to it. But fucking hell it was an incredible feeling. Better than last week, somehow.
Breathing harder than he had all night, Ilya pulled out, watching Hollander curl in on himself in response, shaking the bed with one last, soft, “TShhew!” directed into the pillow that his face was still pressed into.
Ilya crawled up the bed and collapsed beside him, staring up at the ceiling as he panted out, “God fucking bless you, Hollander.”
…
The following morning came early, and cold, and unforgiving. Ilya stood in the hotel parking lot waiting for the shuttle to the airport, which had been delayed, warming himself with memories of the night. Pressing against Hollander’s slightly feverish skin, the sweat of exertion dripping from his torso onto the brunet’s back, fingers interlinking, tongues intertwining, changing position over and over, never satisfied with each other’s closeness, wanting to see and touch every inch of him at once, wanting to fill him with a pleasure so intense it would cancel out all the discomfort and pain.
The blond sighed, thumbing over his phone in his pocket, as still and silent as it had been since Hollander left, no update, no chirp, no anything.
“Morning.” Marleau joined him, ignoring the withering look the captain sent in his direction, detecting his desire to be alone but not enabling it.
“Hi.”
“How are you doing?”
What the fuck was he trying to start? “Amazing. Why?” Ilya responded flatly.
“You sounded bad last night. I texted you, but you didn’t respond.” Which he remembered now, a brief ‘u ok?’ sent through just close enough to Hollander’s exit for Ilya to be in the middle of coming down from the high of the encounter, and to be entirely too irritated by everything to text back.
“Is all good. Montréal girl get me sick, I fuck her anyway.” If he’d known that asking him to stay would result in having to falsely admit to sickness just to cover for them both, he would have let Hollander leave.
“Yeah, I heard her too, she sounded twice as rough as you, but people don’t get sick over the course of an hour, cap.”
“We meet last week too. You would not know because you were out all night.”
Marleau looked at him with wary but discerning eyes. “You seem kind of fine, though, and you played well yesterday.”
Ilya sniffled performatively. It was cold out here, and he’d woken up in the last two hours, and he was always at least slightly sniffly anyway, so the sound served to back-up his retort. “Is worse at night, maybe. I do not know, Marly, I am not doctor.”
“Did you see one, though?”
“No. Is not big deal.”
“Okay.” He accepted that, swiping the back of his hand under his nose, shifting from foot to foot to fight off the chill.
They stood in silence for a few seconds, Ilya willing the bus to pull into the parking lot, and willing Marleau to want to sit somewhere else so he wouldn’t have to pull any more fake symptoms out of nowhere. It was slightly daunting to remember that they wouldn’t be fake for that long, after the amount of fluids he’d swapped with the sick man last night…
“Shit.” The brunet muttered, drawing his captain’s attention again as he swung his bag off his shoulder and started to rifle through it. “hhH-Kkf-”
Whatever he was looking for, he evidently didn’t find in time, tipping his head back skywards, before snapping back down towards the floor, “hhEh-hTNGK! hEhTGKkhOo!”
“Budʹzdorov. You are sick also, yes?”
He shrugged, sliding his bag back onto his shoulder, and pinching the bridge of his nose, as though fighting off either a headache or more sneezes. “I guess I might be coming down with something.”
“Must be serious if you do not go out to see your Montréal girl.” Ilya commented absently, pulling his phone out to check that he still had no messages of importance.
Marleau sighed, and then coughed. “Think that’s where I got it from, actually.” Really? If so, that was pretty quick for him, illnesses usually took slightly longer to break through his defences, and it had barely been a normal incubation period’s worth of time since they’d last been here.
“She was sick when you saw her?”
“Mm.” He responded, and then muttered something that sounded like ‘both times.’ but couldn’t be, because they’d only been in Montréal once in the last couple of weeks.
Ilya hadn’t been planning on responding, but even if he had, the winger would have interrupted him, as the airport shuttle pulled into the parking lot, and his hand came down firmly on the captain’s shoulder. “Maybe we sit together, dude, quarantine this shit. Can’t be taking the whole team out.”
“Sure.” Maybe listening to Marly sniffle and cough and be generally disgusting would be punishment enough, in the eyes of the universe, for putting his dick in every hole in Hollander that would receive it, despite knowing that he was feeling shitty, and then he wouldn’t end up getting sick. Or maybe he was just doubling his chances of catching something. Either way, someone had to sit next to the unwell winger, and they both knew that Ilya wouldn’t be an asshole to him about things beyond his control, like the fact that he was almost definitely going to snore for the entirety of the plane ride, and that the changes in pressure would probably do unthinkable things to his sinuses.
…
Almost two weeks had passed since the game in Montréal, and Cliff’s conditioning schedule had finally lined up with his captain’s again, the two of them entering the gym at their hotel together, unspeaking, after taking the elevator down there, unspeaking, and meeting in the hallway outside their rooms, unspeaking. Rozanov was always quiet, but this had to be some kind of new record. He hadn’t been able to get a single noise out of him so far that morning.
They headed for the running machines, Marleau absently scanning the room as he stepped on, and realising that they were the only two people in there. It was early, but not so early that he’d expect to be alone in the gym. Normally he wouldn’t be bothered at all, in fact it was preferable if he was going to switch machines a lot, or wanted to feel unobserved. But with Roz being so freakishly silent… the whole thing felt kind of like a horror movie.
The hum of the treadmills coming to life was a welcome noise, faint music already playing over the gym’s speakers, but not really loud enough to feel like a distraction, or upbeat enough to make things feel less apocalyptic. There are no zombies, it’s a normal gym, you have got to stop watching horror movies on the flights.
Cliff found his rhythm quickly, revelling in the feeling of his body awakening, coming to life, paying attention to every muscle, tendon, joint that he knew would get him through the game later. It was pretty meditative, running over each limb in his mind, checking in on past injuries, feeling out the vibe for morning skate, how he’d spend his day, and then how he’d play the game. It was also an excellent distraction from the other thought in his mind, Pike. Whatever illness he’d kindly passed across to the Boston player had somehow taken the same amount of time to run through both of them, with their first games back happening on the same night, a few days ago.
He’d been lucky to only miss one game, and Pike had been pissed to miss so many more, texting him something along the lines of ‘not suspicious at all that we’re both playing tonight’ at first intermission, and strongly hinting that he should have taken one more game off when they talked on the phone afterwards. Honestly he didn’t think it was suspicious. They’d gotten sick at different times, their teams had given different reports of what the illness was, Pike getting scratched for ‘flu symptoms’ and Cliff for ‘upper respiratory condition’, and they’d literally never been connected in any significant way before. So as far as he saw it, they were in the clear.
Beside him in the mirror, Rozanov appeared to stumble, hands coming to the treadmill handles to support himself as he jerked forwards awkwardly. Concerned, he slowed his speed slightly and turned to look at him directly. He’s not turning into a zombie, he’s not turning into a zombie, he’s-
“-hKk! kKSH!-” He’s just having one of his sneeze attack things. Okay.
The blond directed the expulsions down at his chest, apparently caught off guard, because Cliff wasn’t sure he’d ever seen him sneeze in a public space like this without making some attempt to get away first before. They were alone, but there was no guarantee they would stay that way until the end of the fit.
“-hKSHh! hiHKSHh!-” He stumbled again, spritzing the running belt and his own legs.
With barely a second’s hesitation, the brunet reached across and pulled the safety key out, the machine slowing to a stop, which also seemed too much for Rozanov, who struggled to accommodate the pace change, taking the bulk of his weight on his arms as his feet scuffed against the belt uselessly.
“-hKXSHhuh!-” Cliff looked away at that one, half seeing the mess that it made, but mostly averting his eyes in time, staring at the console of his own machine as the blond lifted a belated hand to cup over his face.
“KSHh! kKXSHh! hrRSHH! hRSHHh!” Aaand he was done. Fuck, those things always seemed so exhausting, would he even still want to work out?
Marleau glanced across at him, just barely hearing, over the sound of the treadmill, some kind of frustrated curse that had to be in Russian because to him it just kind of sounded like ‘something something colander’ which made no sense at all. It also kind of didn’t make sense that these were the first concrete symptoms he was seeing from him in a week of supposedly being ‘sick’, and playing flawlessly, and seeming fine, apart from the standalone sniffs that he would give when Cliff inquired about it, and a fit that he’d seen him have in a stairwell during intermission at the last game which he was pretty sure had something to do with the rookie fucking up trying to adjust his stick and exploding sawdust all over the hallway.
“Bless you, Roz.” The brunet tossed him the towel he’d thought to grab on the way in- which the captain hadn’t- and increased the speed on his machine, with the intention of giving him the privacy he clearly needed to clean up. It took him fifteen full seconds of running and staring at himself in the mirror opposite to realise why that didn’t make any sense, but by then Rozanov had finished tending to his nose and was increasing his own machine’s speed again, their footfalls falling into rhythm.
Marleau took a deep, grateful breath in through his uncongested nose, and relished the feeling of his muscles not aching before he’d even really begun the workout. He was finally healthy again. He just had to hope he didn’t catch whatever Roz had, because the chances that in all of Montréal, both his casual hockey hook-up and the captain’s long-term girl had managed to infect them with the same cold, were incredibly low, right?
Hi!! Love your fics! Do you consider them part of the same AU? If so, when you think Ilya recognized Shane had the kink?
hiii anon, tysm and very fun question! I do mostly, except I think I said that 'unexpected interference' wasn’t part of the same canon because s/hane doesn’t have the kink in it, even though he’s still kind of weird about sneezing/vulnerability, and I am currently writing another one in the same universe as that. other than those two though, all my HR stuff is in the same universe, yes!
ok so, in answering the second question, I realised that having i/lya literally not realise and have to be told is an excellent fic idea, even though I project onto s/hane quite a lot and cannot picture myself ever confessing the kink to a nonkink partner, so it's weirdly stressful to imagine him confessing? but yeah, i/lya definitely knows that s/hane gets flustered by the blessing thing, and that he’s weird about snzing in front of strangers/his parents/teammates, but I think he thinks it’s an attention/vulnerability thing, rather than a sexual thing, because it's such a niche sexual thing. so he uses it to rile him up in some ways, but I don’t think he thinks it’s riling him up like that.
I drafted the fic lol, but like I'm probably only going to do one where i/lya knows, bc #myshane is entirely too stressed out by the cost of having to tell someone he's a freak to think about the benefit of really great sex.
devoured that fic whole omg and im still hungry - ur truly the hr writer of the century 🙇♀️🙇♀️
ahh thank you so much!! ♡♡♡ I’m never not grateful for the insatiable appetites of snzblr to feed with the fruits of my not-really-labor-bc-it’s-so-fun. I fear there is very little nutritional value to my fics but the snz is definitely enrichment of some kind, right?
also wow I hope this fandom survives a full 100 years, I want to be on my actual deathbed reading old man yaoi snz about h/ollanov lol
introducing the third and final part of this little series, where the self-indulgence reaches an all time high and I suddenly realise that I can make anyone I want to sneeze at any time, and immediately get drunk on that power.
I hope you enjoy! ♡
fandom: h/eated r/ivalry
word count: 6.1k
cw: sneezing, general illness, contagion, vague snz kink
The first thing Shane registered hearing was a thud. The second was a breathy curse word he half recognised but couldn’t translate. The third was,
“hKSHH! KSHh! hyiHKSHh!-”
The brunet sat bolt upright, gaze scanning the living room. He pulled in a breath of stale tasting air through his mouth, blinked the weight from his eyelids, and tensed against the stiffness in his muscles. His legs were in fucking agony, like they were when he didn’t cool down properly after a skate, or lounged around after getting home from a game. What the fuck was-?
“hhh…hkKSHUh!” Shane’s panicked eyes found Ilya, on his hands and knees on his living room floor, shivering violently, and sneezing completely openly down at the hardwood.
“Shit, Ilya, are you okay?” His voice was lower than he’d anticipated it being, and in the time it took him to crawl across the couch and lay a hand on the blond’s back, he’d sneezed four more times. It would definitely be mesmerising if he wasn’t so busy worrying about why Ilya was on the floor in the first place, and his boyfriend didn’t look so utterly not in control, arms trembling as he tried his best to hold himself up against the gale force winds trying to knock him over.
Shane, still on the couch as though he was simultaneously trying to win ‘the floor is lava’, manoeuvred Ilya gently to sit back so he was kneeling, the Russian’s hands still planted on either side of himself to try and keep his balance, sneezing down at his chest and thighs, “hihSHh! hHSHhOo! hKSHOo!”
“You’re okay.” The brunet decided for him, keeping one grounding hand on his shoulder as the other stretched for the box of tissues that had been discarded on the couch, pulling a few free and holding them out to him as the fit seemed to wane. “hrRSHh! hahh… RSHHhOo!”
Ilya stared at them, swaying slightly, clearly extremely removed from the present moment and trying to figure out what the strange white things being held in front of his face were.
The Canadian had been expecting him to reach up and take them after a few seconds, but instead the blond’s face crumpled again and suddenly- “hKk! Kk! hKSh-KSHh! KSHUh!”- the tissues were fluttering wildly in Shane’s hand as his boyfriend made absolutely zero effort to redirect the sneezes that were rapidly bursting out of him.
Instinctively, Shane closed the gap, pressing the fistful of tissues to Ilya’s lower face, other hand coming up to cup the back of his neck supportively.
“hMPH!” Little bit too tight. “KSH! hihhKXSHh! hAHSHhOo!”
“Bless you, Ilya- oh, okay.” The blond had, apropos of nothing, decided to blow into the tissues that his boyfriend still had clamped to his face. The latter held them dutifully until he was done, and then pulled back, closing the tissue without looking and tossing it into the pile with the rest. Ilya’s nose was decidedly pink, his cheeks very slightly flushed too- hadn’t he just given him something for the fever?- and his mouth gaped open, slow, raspy breaths drawn in through his cracked lips.
“Are you alright?” Shane asked softly, finally coming down from the adrenaline of the seemingly life-threateningly intense fit, and adjusting his position so he didn’t fall off of the couch and onto the Russian kneeling on the floor.
“Y-” The affirmation caught somewhere on the way out, and the blond doubled forwards with desperate coughs, torso shaking under his boyfriend’s hand, which slipped down to rest on his bare back.
The Canadian found that his teeth were gritted in sympathetic pain at the sound of the fit, and only realised that he was holding his breath when Ilya took his first wavering inhale, and Shane’s spiralling mind finally let himself do the same.
“Yeah.” Ilya continued as if nothing had happened. “Has been like this in morning… soon…afterwards…chto, chert voz'mi, eto slovo? Nedavno… ugh, you know what I mean.”
“It’s been like this in the morning, since you got sick?”
Ilya nodded, but Shane barely noticed, busy actually bothering to process the sentence he’d just spoken, several seconds late.
“Wait- in the morning? It’s morning?”
The blond looked up at him. “Yes. You forget that when you sleep, time still pass?”
“I didn’t know we slept for that long!” Shane ran anxious hands over his face, looking around the room as though it would explain how the two of them, both exhausted, had managed to sleep an entire night on the reasonably comfortable couch without him noticing, “Oh fuck, I didn’t mean to even fall- did you eat?”
“Yes.” Ilya was calm, significantly calmer than his boyfriend, laying a hand on his knee as a tentative anchoring attempt. “Did you?”
“Um-” He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to remember. “Not since the game, no.”
“Maybe we eat then.”
The Canadian’s neck was rapidly starting to ache with tension, shoulder blades pulling together as the discomfort of the night running away from him turned from mental to physical. “I don’t know if I can right now-” This isn’t about you. “-but you need to, you need strength to fight this shit so, yeah, we should eat, I’ll make something.” He pushed himself to stand, hands balling into fists, rolling his shoulders back and adjusting his posture as if he could get the tension to just drop away if he found the right positioning for his limbs.
“Hey, hey-” Ilya coughed against the back of his hand, struggling to push himself to his feet, and then breathing heavily as he straightened to his full height, “-hey. Is okay. You panic because routine is fucked, yes?”
“Yeah, I know.” The brunet responded irritably. He knew why he felt like this, but it wasn’t about him right now. Just because he couldn’t remember how to fix this stupid inability to cope with change, didn’t mean he was going to put that on his sick boyfriend.
“So we get back to morning routine. Fuck the night. Is-” Ilya squinted at his watch, the band marks etched into his arm where he’d been sleeping with his weight pressed against the material all night , “-like eight-thirty, what you do at eight-thirty?”
“I don’t know, eat I guess. But I normally work out and shower before that, and I was going to clean up the place before you woke up-”
“No. Is eight-thirty. So we eat.” The firm tone, the surety, the knowledge that in at least one sense he was on track, evaporated a good quarter of the stress from Shane’s body.
“Sorry.”
“No, sorry is not in schedule. Beep beep, food time, let’s go.” He doubted Ilya was actually that hungry, but he appreciated the implication that they were doing this for both of them, not just for him.
Shane gave the slightest of smiles in response, and headed to the kitchen. He was already staring into the fridge, surveying their options, when Ilya, who’d been shuffling through at his own pace, scrolling on his phone, called out to him.
“Sh-hh-ane!”
The brunet spun around, just in time to see him duck into the blanket still draped around his shoulders, and almost knock himself out on the wall, just barely catching himself with his elbow rather than the crown of his head, as he seemed to lose all semblance of balance, “hKk! Kk! hKSH-”
He crossed the room at a sprint, making it to his boyfriend and gripping him by the arms as the Russian folded in on himself again, one hand clutching his phone, the other attempting to press the corner of the blanket to his face, “-hKSH! KSHh! KSXHh! kSh!-” He seemed to be running out of air, each sneeze somehow formed out of the small amount remaining in his lungs after a breath he’d taken several expulsions ago.
“-hHKSHUH!-” Finally afforded some oxygen, his body put all of it straight back into the next sneeze, and Ilya’s knees buckled. Shane caught him around the waist, refusing to let him fall.
“hiHSHh! iHSHh! hrRSHHOo!” The blond concluded itchily into a combination of the blanket, his palm, and his boyfriend’s collarbone.
“God bless you.” Shane whispered into his ear, eyes shut, heart racing.
“Thank you.” Ilya mumbled in response, “Phone too fucking bright.”
The Canadian breathed a laugh, “Sorry. Maybe you’ll just have to watch me making breakfast instead. Better for your eyes.”
“Mm. More fun to look at.” He tilted his head, pressing a kiss to his boyfriend’s neck, and just as quickly turning back into the blanket to cough again.
The brunet pulled away, running a hand through Ilya’s curls, which had become tangled again, the mark of tossing and turning that somehow hadn’t woken him up, and dragged his mind away from the wasted hours and towards the idea of breakfast. Once he ate, everything would be back on track, and he could forget about the distress of having messed up one small part of his schedule. It had been a mistake, a one-time accidental consequence of taking care of Ilya- which he wouldn’t exchange for the world- and now they could focus on getting the blond better.
…
Shane would not say that he thought Ilya to be a particularly overdramatic person, or one who complained excessively, at least not to his face. But to say he was surprised by the extent to which his boyfriend had undersold the intensity of this virus was an understatement.
He’d played an excellent game post-caretaking-trip to see Ilya, and then a… second game three days later, where he had finished with neither a goal nor a single assist, but still found himself celebrating the feat of staying on his feet until the clock ran out. The following morning, there'd been an administrative meeting for which he'd dragged himself out of bed, uncharacteristically sluggish, and entered two minutes late, apologising as he dropped into a chair. He was the only player present, and glad that none of his teammates were there to witness him showing up late and looking like death warmed over.
The room had been stiflingly hot, and Shane had found himself largely unable to follow the thread of the conversation. It had gotten to the point where he’d been asked a question and been totally unable to produce an answer, before he had decided to pull himself together and promptly got up to ‘get some water’ from the machine in the corner. He’d hardly made it two steps before he was out cold on the floor. Or rather, out hot, as he awoke to find himself being wrestled out of his jacket by a trainer who was muttering something about “une fièvre de cheval” and “putains de joueurs irréfléchi”.
After that significant embarrassment, he’d been escorted home by the team doctor, informed he would not be playing at their next game, given strict self-care instructions- which had included a not particularly subtle implication that getting a girlfriend might be a good idea so he wouldn’t be failing so badly at looking after himself- and finally left alone to push his face into a throw pillow and try to hide from the overwhelming amount of self-reproach swirling around him.
“That tracks.” Was what Hayden had said when Shane had called him to let him know he’d come down sick, and wouldn’t be at the rink for a while. “You were out of sorts that game against Boston.” Neither of them mentioned the subsequent, perfectly normal game against Buffalo. Neither of them even particularly remembered the subsequent, perfectly normal game against Buffalo.
“Yeah.” He’d responded. “Hopefully I’ll get over it before we have to play again.”
“I’d say take your time but-” The winger cleared his throat, coughed, pretty productively, “-I don’t know how long I’ll last out here.”
“I’m sorry, dude. I’ll be back as soon as I can be, you know that.”
“I do. Nothing can keep you away from that ice.” And then there’d been an awkward pause, and a noise that Shane wasn’t sure was a sneeze- it certainly hadn’t sounded like anything he’d heard out of Hayden before. Plus he’d paused?- and some muttered cursing from the alternate captain, and then another noise that sounded a lot more like a sneeze- still not super like Hayd’ but he’d said he was alone at his place, right?- so Shane had forced himself to respond.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, sorry, think this thing’s hitting me all at once.” He’d sounded like he was speaking through gritted teeth and Shane wondered if he was in pain or just mad about the games that he was about to miss. “I need to stop sneezing.” It had been voiced almost like a command.
“Ah-” He’d acknowledged it, so Shane had felt forced to do the same, “-…bless you. I’ll leave you alone so you can rest, or whatever.” Hayden was one of about four people he’d blessed in the past… ten years, maybe? And even then he didn’t when he could get away with it. It just felt… intimate.
“Thanks, bud. I’ll see you when I see you.”
Now, four days later, Shane was still out, was dealing with some rough vestibular symptoms- that Ilya hadn’t been subjected to, he had noted- and had just heard that, along with three others, Pike had been scratched for the next game too, leaving him entirely unoptimistic about Montréal’s chances. But they weren’t playing that day. Ottawa were playing that day.
…
The air from the fan was unthinkably cold, and Shane squeezed his watering eyes shut against the onslaught. His skin was covered in goosepimples and he honestly felt like he could feel every single one of them individually. They hurt. The breeze brushing over them hurt. The places where his shirt rested against his skin and his skin rested against other skin hurt too. He just wanted this all to stop.
Damp eyelashes peeled apart again as he squinted at his surroundings, searching blearily for a solution. The fluffy blanket laid out over the end of the couch called out to him, the feeling of warmth and gentle soft fibres blocking out the cruel wind already so tangible. But no, he knew he was really too hot. The sensitive skin meant a fever was raging away beneath it, and the chills were all an illusion. The blanket would only make him feel worse in the long run. But the fan felt bad right this very moment, so-
He stretched out aching limbs, uncurling from the defensive ball he’d huddled into, braving the exposure to the harshly directed air for the relief he knew he would feel if he could just grab-
“No blanket.” Ilya said firmly as he walked into the room and immediately sussed out his boyfriend’s intention.
Shane made an extremely pathetic noise in response, moving the blond to frown sympathetically and seat himself beside him on the couch, one arm reaching out along the top of the backrest.
“I know moya lyubov, I’m sorry.”
It had taken less than 48 hours from being essentially banned from the arena for the Canadian to resort to calling Ilya and explaining what had happened, and from the time of that call less than 6 hours until he was bundled up in the passenger seat of his boyfriend’s car on their way back to Ilya’s place in Ottawa. Hayden thought he was staying with his parents, and his parents knew where he was but not why, as the Metros’ announcement of their captain’s leave of absence had been about as vague as announcements got, and Shane’s brief text update to them hadn’t included much detail either.
“I don’t want you to leave.” The brunet confessed abruptly to his only true confidante, dropping his head against Ilya’s outstretched arm and looking up at him with wide, pleading eyes.
His boyfriend stared unflinchingly into the beseeching gaze Shane had trained on him. “I want to stay too moy malen'kiy medlennyy lori, but I have to play tonight. I will come back right after.”
Shane held his tongue between his teeth to keep from asking ‘You promise?’, sighing through his nose as he nuzzled further into Ilya’s bicep and let his eyes drift shut, grateful for the blond’s presence blocking the aggressive attack by the fan, letting the constant hum of it lull him into a distant, trance-like state just below the lip of consciousness.
“You are asleep?” Ilya asked, after a moment, voice low in case he was.
The Canadian shook his head, but didn’t open his eyes.
“You are mad?”
“Mmno.” He sniffled, sat up a bit, sniffled again, frowned in annoyance at his unrelenting nose, took the tissue Ilya handed him, folded it, and pinched said nose through it, blinking in the face of the intensely adoring expression the blond was directing his way.
“So cute.” Ilya murmured, reaching out to brush a fingertip down the bridge of Shane’s freckled nose, which he scrunched up in response, the light touch sending a tickle buzzing through his face. “You should blow, though.”
The brunet frowned, pushing the tissue absently into his pocket, nose crinkling again, but this time in disdain at the suggestion. “I think my head would explode.”
“It hurts?” The Russian’s exploration of his face extended to his temples, two fingers softly kneading at the skin there, as though he could gauge the intensity of the headache. Shane moaned softly in confirmation, head drifting back down to rest against Ilya’s arm as he shut his eyes again. “Okay. Rest.” He pressed a kiss to the brunet’s forehead. “You will feel better when you wake.”
…
Thirty minutes later, arm entirely asleep under his equally unconscious boyfriend, Ilya, using his spare hand to scroll through some clickbait-y trades thread on his phone, was startled by a congested voice.
“Why the fuck would they get rid of him?”
Shane’s eyes appeared to barely be open, but they were steadily fixed on the blond’s phone screen, skimming the ‘announcement’ sideways, and, from the crease in his brow, not liking what he was reading.
“Is not real,” Ilya responded, “They just want people to comment. He did not sign anywhere else.”
“Oh. Okay.” His boyfriend said, distantly, rolling away until his head rested on the opposite couch cushion, leaving a rush of pins and needles in his wake. The Russian winced and shook out his arm as he too adjusted his position.
They sat in silence for a few moments, Ilya’s focus drawn back to the stupid posts, and the arguably equally stupid comments until he was once again pulled from the depths of the internet by a sickly-sounding Shane.
“I can’t do it, my head hurts too much.” The brunet whined, more to the ceiling than his boyfriend.
Ilya looked across at him. “Do what? Exist? You have surely had worse concussions moy malen'kiy keglya.”
“No, I can’t…” Shane turned plaintive, half-shut eyes to him, lips parted, eyebrows slightly raised. It took a single, audibly panted breath for the blond to get the message, “hEh…”
“Oh, you can not sneeze?”
He nodded with a sniff and a twitch of his eye that looked to Ilya very much like a suppressed cringing expression. What was so embarrassing to his boyfriend about all of this? It didn’t seem to be a weakness thing, like Ilya typically found himself wrestling with in close relationships, and he’d made it pretty clear to the Canadian that nothing he did could ever gross him out so…what was the problem?
“I do not know how to help.” The blond confessed. “When is stuck for me sometimes I tap-” He ran his fingers up the bridge of his nose and tapped rapidly a few times on one side to demonstrate, immediately regretting it as it started to buzz, “-just h-ihh-ere. hKk! kKh! Fuck. hKsh!” He dragged the collar of his shirt up over his face, “hKSH! KSH! hihh… AHSCHhOo!”
“Bless you.” Shane said, sullenly.
“Sorry. I was not trying to show off, it was accident. Would not work for you, either, because-” He reached out and repeated the tapping, on his boyfriend’s nose this time, to no effect, “-is not broken same way.”
“Great.”
Ilya shrugged apologetically in response, carding a hand through the brunet’s hair as he rubbed at his nose and sniffled and squinted into space, and his breath caught at infrequent intervals, only to have it all come to nothing as the pain in his head flared each time, stopping the sneeze before it could start.
It was slightly torturous to watch, both pity and vicarious frustration twinging in the blond’s gut as he drew swirls with his fingers on his boyfriend’s scalp. How he wished he could take this pain from him. Take it back, really, since it was his virus in the first place. He’d done this to him, and by some miracle, Shane didn’t appear to have processed that yet. But when he did, Ilya was sure he’d be furious. How could he not be? It was the Russian’s fault he was scratched for three games and counting.
…
Though they both wished they could lounge on the couch for the rest of time, eventually Ilya had started feeling that pre-emptive swirl of adrenaline, regular as clockwork on game days, and knew it was almost time to leave. He’d kissed the now sleeping Shane’s forehead, and slowly levered himself up from the couch, padding softly around the house collecting everything that he’d need, loading up his car, and then walking back into the living room and laying a gentle hand on the brunet’s shoulder.
“Mm?”
“It is time for me to go.”
“Noo.” The Canadian groaned, barely conscious, sitting up with his hair pointing in all directions and one eye squeezed shut at the resulting vertigo, to pout at his boyfriend.
The sight half broke Ilya’s heart, but the adrenaline wouldn’t be ignored, urging him to leave, to get in the car, to get back to the arena, back to the ice, his ice. “I know.”
“You don’t know.” The brunet insisted.
“Shane.”
He sniffled, frowning deeply as if he were wracking his brain for a better argument. “Sit back down.”
The Russian shook his head, moving as if to step away. “I am leaving now.”
“Shh, c’mere, listen to me-”
Ilya leaned in obediently.
“I- heHTDSHh!” Shane had quickly closed his hands from the cupped, whispering into his boyfriend’s ear position, to tightly steepled over his nose and mouth. Despite the close call for his eardrums, the Russian remained unruffled.
“Wow. I am so glad I was right there so I could listen to you say that. Very important.” He said, dryly, straightening up again.
“hhehH-” Shane’s mouth opened and closed uselessly as he tried to respond, despite the looming threat of another sneeze. It was very endearing actually, watching him fight this losing battle. “hTSHhew!”
“God bless you. You finally find your sneeze. I will see you after game.”
“No, Ily-aHTSHhuh!”
“God bless you.”
“hEHTSHyeh!”
“God bless you, malysh.” The blond picked the tissue box up off the table, placing it conveniently at his boyfriend’s elbow. It was slightly unsettling to see him sneezing into his hands, but what appeared to now be a full on fit had him so wrapped up in its grasp that he couldn’t think of switching to cover another way. So, Ilya had had to prompt him in some way.
Shane pulled three tissues from the box in quick succession, gasping out as he folded them, “You can’t leave m-ihh-e like thi-ihh-s-sSCHew! hehTDSHew!”
“God bless you. I will wait, is okay. You are okay.”
The Canadian made a quiet half-dissatisfied noise in response before his breath caught again. Ilya seated himself on the arm of the couch, fingers combing through the hair at the nape of Shane's neck. The urge to sneeze seemed to begin to evade him again, as sniffles started to intercut the hitches, and the brunet began to squint towards the ceiling. After almost a minute, he ducked back into the tissues again.
“EHTDSHhh!”
“There you go. Khoroshaya rabota.”
“hhTISHhew!”
“God bless you, moya lyubov.” He leaned down, smoothing back Shane's hair to press a kiss to his frustration-creased forehead. “I go now. Update me, though, okay?”
The brunet blew his nose softly, blinking dewdropped eyelashes up at his boyfriend. “Okay. Love you, play well.”
“For you, I play best.” And then with a final, firmly reassuring look back at him, Ilya stood and left the room, steeling himself to keep moving even as he heard the Canadian start to cough, shutting the front door and shivering in the cool afternoon chill as he walked to the car. It was only a few hours, and Shane would be able to see him on the TV, so he'd be okay. Ilya had to tell himself he'd be okay.
…
Shane rolled over on the couch as the first commercial of the intermission started to play, finally giving his eyes a break from the bright light of the television in the otherwise dim living room. He felt like shit. He wasn't sure if the vertigo was just constant now or if he was hungry and getting lightheaded because of that, but the dizziness was almost unbearable.
The Canadian had resorted to pressing his face into the couch cushion to relieve the frustrating floaty feeling when his phone started to buzz, a call coming in. Ilya! He pulled it out from under him and looked down at the screen eagerly, realising that it was in fact, not, Ilya, and picking up with a slightly disappointed sigh.
“Hey.”
“Hi.”
There was a beat of silence so Shane resorted to the typical, “How are you?” despite not being at all invested in the answer.
“Not great. This stupid flu won’t let me forget about it for a single second. My head’s killing me, and all the coughing and sneezing doesn’t particularly fucking help.” Hayden’s voice was slightly strained, and the words were soft around the edges like he was on the edge of slurring them, but putting in just enough effort to still be comprehensible, “I won’t ask you back, ’cause I know it’s a whole thing. What are you up to?”
The unreciprocated nicety was actually the kindest thing imaginable to Shane. Pike knew he hated the idea of burdening people with his problems, and constantly worried that he was stressing or grossing people out, so he let him skip the confession part entirely. It was one of the reasons he’d let himself get so close to the alternate captain, the way he understood that some things about Shane were slightly…different, and just sidestepped them without stopping to stare, flexible enough that it didn’t matter to him what they ate or when, or who slept in which bed in the hotel room, or whose phone alarm they used to wake them up in the morning. He was just an amenable kind of person.
“Watching the game.”
“Oh, me too. Who’re you watching?”
Shane stifled a yawn, noting somewhere in the back of his mind that this conversation was nothing like their usual snappy, efficient dialogues, and that probably both of them were too exhausted and medicated or feverish or both to really say anything interesting. So why had he called? “Uh, Ottawa.”
“I’m watching Boston.” Okay. Why? Didn't he hate them?
“Cool. Are-”
“One sec bud, I gott-ahISHhoo!”
Shane winced, never not at least marginally startled by Hayden’s habit of talking straight into the sneeze with no warning. It was a tiny bit easier to tell if you were in person, particularly if he was in the middle of an allergy attack, where he’d have actual visible build-ups for once, but mostly it just came out of nowhere and scared the hell out of people. The captain had seen him get barked at for it by multiple dogs, and had heard that an older woman had once smacked him with her handbag at a pedestrian crossing for ‘trying to scare her to death’.
“hTCHoo!” Hayden sniffled reflexively.
“Bless you.” Please just be two.
“Thanks. God, this is a rough one, huh? Starts in your head, moves to your chest…”
“How do you know it’ll move?”
There was a sound that Shane instinctively pictured as being Pike smacking his palm off of his forehead. “I just… have a feeling?” He responded evasively.
“Okay.” Shane had a feeling too, but it was mostly informed by his ‘inside man’, who’d demonstrated the course of the illness for him ahead of time. And as far as he knew, Hayden didn’t have one of those.
“So, Hollander-” Hayden made an attempt at his ‘reporter voice’ and broke off into an aggressive cough that seemed to herald the foretold migration of the virus to his chest, “-what do you miss most about the game now that you’re not playing it?”
The captain laughed, which almost sent him into an inauspicious coughing fit of his own. “I wanna say the ice? But also definitely the hockey.”
“A most insightful answer, Captain, this is why we pay the big bucks to talk to you.” The alternate captain-turned-sports-anchor mused.
Shane rolled over again, blinking at a replayed goal on the TV. “How do you think they'll do without us?”
“They're gonna crash and burn, bud.” Hayden sighed. “Coach is livid, too, wanted me to play through because we were already out a captain and an alternate.”
“Fuck. He can't do that, it's messed up. I know what you mean though, Drapeau said something abo-”
“hpTCHoo! Shi-hihSHhoo! Sorry, I was tryingnottointerru-uhTSHhoo! interrup-pTChoo!”
“Jesus Christ, Hay’, stop trying to talk through it.” Shane cringed and tipped his head back, trying to distract himself by staring at the ceiling. God, if this was Ilya it would be the hottest thing imaginable, but with Hayden it was just… uncomfortable.
“Aye a-ahTCHoo! -aye, captain.” The phone audibly dropped into the winger’s lap, or onto the couch beside him or somewhere else further from his face. “Where are those fucking tissues? Ohmyfucking- hhiHSHhoo! TSCHOo! Wow. Fuck.”
It was the worst Shane had heard him in a long while. He didn't really want to think about other times he'd heard him like this, though, he didn't even think he should be hearing it now.
“Bless you, Hayd’.” He said, as neutrally as possible, the moment he heard the device be fumbled back in what he assumed was the direction of his alternate’s ear.
“Thank you, buddy. Jesus.”
They both sat in disorientated silence for a moment, Hayden apparently recovering from the fit, and Shane musing internally about the decreased speed of his internal monologue that day, with each thought moving so slowly it felt like the words had to push through molasses to make it to the eyeline of his consciousness and be understood. Then Pike cleared his throat.
“I should go, I have… my uh fr- someone on the other line, so I’ll uh-”
“Alr-ih-” His breath had caught so suddenly that Shane startled, stopped talking, and almost tripped himself into a coughing fit, bringing his free hand to his face to pinch his nose quickly. He just had to get through the end of this call. It wouldn’t take a second. “Alright. Feel better.” His voice was nasal with his nostrils blocked off, but Hayden seemed anxious to get to whoever else was trying to talk to him, so he didn’t question it.
“You too, man. Enjoy the game.”
“Enjoy yours. Bye.”
The beep of the call ending was like a feather touched directly to the inside of his nose, and Shane sucked a sharp breath in through his mouth. “hEHNGt! hNGTchew!” He coughed, letting go of his nose as the dull pain in his head spiked at the increased pressure, fumbling for a tissue as his breath continued to hitch, “hehh… heHSHhew! hHTChew! Ugh.”
Ilya appeared on the TV, the first image the brunet saw upon opening his bleary eyes, a reused shot of him sitting on the bench, staring stonily across the ice. “Combe hombe soon.” Shane murmured towards the screen with a congested sniffle.
…
Having been tied up with an interview and then a whole lot of strategy in the first intermission, Ilya practically sprinted for his phone at the start of the second, sitting in his stall and scrolling urgently through his ‘updates’ from Shane, which were significantly fewer and more far between than his own had been.
JANE: I'm watching you warm up :) I'm definitely already warm, haha.
JANE: My fever's not that high though, don't worry, I checked.
JANE: Feeling okayish still, had some of the crackers you left.
JANE: Nice goal!
Ilya typed back.
YOU: How are you now?
“hhUHDSHHuh!” Hayes sneezed violently in the background. Ilya didn’t look up. He’d been doing that for over a week now. They kind of all had. A sneeze could not be more of a non-event than it was in the Centaurs locker room, currently.
JANE: I'm okay, Hayden called to check in.
YOU: fucking Pike
YOU: what did he say?
“huHTCHhOo!”
“Dude are you still sick or is this some new thing you’ve brought for us to try out?”
JANE: That he's watching Boston and not feeling great.
YOU: Boston will do that to you.
The conversation went on in Ilya’s periphery. “This is still Dykstra’s strain, don’t worry.”
“The fuck? I did not start this.”
“Who started it, then?”
“Bood.”
“No, I didn-”
“hUdDSCHh! hHDSCHOo!”
There was a chorus of blessings, and the room went quiet afterwards. Ilya finally looked up.
“What’s going on with you Hayzy?” Dykstra asked, nudging the goaltender to get him to look up from the towel his face was currently buried in, likely having forgone his typical elbow to the face in order to keep his gear as clean as possible for as long as possible.
He straightened with a sniffle, seeming surprised to see how many players were watching him, though the realisation didn’t immediately set him on the defensive like Ilya figured it would have done for him.
“Every time I lean forwards to try and tie my skates…” Hayes explained, dropping the towel in his lap and demonstrating, fingers barely wrapping around the laces before he was sitting back up again and scrambling for the towel to press to his face “hTCHHhOo!”
“Wow, g’ bless you, that sucks.” The defenseman laughed.
“What is it like the angle or are you allergic to your pillows, dude?” LaPointe asked curiously.
Hayes made an exaggerated face like a man being led to the guillotine, and made to lean forwards again. “The angle I think. Either way, I've just gotta push through.”
“No you don't.” Bood moved towards him, pushing the goalie back upright again and then kneeling in front of him. “I'll do them.”
“Check it out, certified team dad activity, Boodram’s gonna do the tendy's skates up for him.” Dillon laughed, whipping out his phone to record.
Shane wasn't replying now, so Ilya tuned out of the hijinks to do his own skates back up, sniffling softly as he leaned forwards. Now that Hayes had put that in his head, though…
The blond held his breath tensely as he pulled the laces tight and tied them, sitting back up and pulling his jersey up over his lower face,
“God bless times 6” Bood muttered absently as he passed by on his way back to his stall. He’d missed one, but the Russian wasn’t about to point that out to him.
Ilya dropped his jersey back into place, scrubbed at his nose, and watched with passive disbelief as Hayes leaned forwards to examine Boodram's handiwork. Was he fucking stupid?
“Oh fu-kKCHhOo!” This one was directed into his elbow, the towel having miraculously disappeared at the very moment he needed it.
“If you guys aren't careful, you'll set Dykstra off.” The winger commented as he sat back down.
“Too late.” Young commented, from his seat beside the defenseman in question.
The brunet’s head was tipped slightly back, one hand hovering a few inches from his face, the other holding a middle finger in the younger player’s direction as his breath snagged and, “hyEHSCHh! huAHSCHh!”
As Ilya returned to his phone, following the telltale buzz of an update from his ailing boyfriend, the rest of the locker room united for two words in almost complete synchronicity, “Bless you.”, a borderline sweet moment that Dykstra abruptly ended with his response.
“Thank y’ guys, but let that be the end of it now, yeah? If I hear one more sneeze, I'm gonna be scratched again.”
There was silence for a moment, and then Hayes, voice now marred by congestion, but lifted by amusement, spoke up, “God forbid.”
JUST HOOTED AND HOLLERED IN JOY SEEING THAT U POSTED!! i haven’t even read yet but ik it’s gonna be a banger :)
THANK YOU ANONN!!! to hear that my work has inspired not only joyful hooting and hollering, but pre-emptive joyful hooting and hollering is truly the highest of honors ♡ I hope you enjoyed the fic! :)
I was going to have this be two parts, but then I had the idea to split the nsfw stuff and the contagion stuff into separate parts so now it's three shorter parts. but the next part will be out sooner, so if you think about it, it's better (or something).
part one, part three
I hope you enjoy! ♡
fandom: h/eated r/ivalry
word count: 4.3k
cw: sneezing, general illness, overtly sexual content, snz kink
Unwanted thoughts crowding his brain, Shane tensed his shoulders against the onslaught, gripped the wheel, tried to focus on the warm headlights slicing through the cold darkness ahead of the car, the rumbling of the engine, the whoosh of passing cars on the other side of the road. Every single text from Ilya flashed in front of his eyes, snippets of sickness from their phone calls echoed in his ears, and then, in between all of that, was Hayden’s concerned expression, the sound of the puck hitting the post as he missed a stupidly easy shot, JJ ranting at him in the hallway before the final period, the blatant signs of malaise running throughout Ilya’s old team as they lined up to shake hands. It was a cacophony of contradictory emotions, and it was completely overwhelming.
‘-feel like my nose will fall off… everything alright?… hrrRSHH!… clang… look pretty stricken… hiHKSHh!… good gambe, mban… clang… heHh hhIH… since when do we have a problem with fucking Boston?… run out of tissues… clang… anything you need… KSH! kSH! KshUh!… absence de concentration nous casse les putains de pieds!… hope things get better, bud!… when are you comi- ihKSH!-ng to see mbe?-”
“Shut up!” He said aloud, to the silence of the car.
He honestly couldn’t tell if he was having a panic attack or if he was just so full of pent up lust that it was making it hard to breathe. Either way, he probably shouldn’t be driving.
Shane mentally picked out the next stopping place in the route he was driving, and then counted down the kilometres as he got closer and closer, flicking on his turn signal the second it appeared ahead of him, and pulling over. He unbuckled his seatbelt as he turned the engine off, pushing out his chest like removing the small barrier would make it easier to breathe. It didn’t. It really didn’t. He still felt like he was suffocating. And there was another pressure that he felt the urge to relieve, too.
He rested a hand on his thigh, alongside the problem at hand, weighing the decision up in his mind. If he left it alone, nothing would improve and then he’d be on his ailing boyfriend’s doorstep in the middle of the night, noticeably hard for no accountable reason. But if he dealt with it now, in the car, he’d have to fend off those intrusive thoughts the entire time, and then every time anyone else sat in the driver’s seat he’d be thinking about what he’d done there… but then, driving was starting to become pretty uncomfortable, and he didn’t want to be distracted from the road, because that could be dangerous-
Having given himself all the rationale he needed, Shane leaned across and opened the glove compartment, pulling a few napkins free, and reluctantly reaching for the pot of lip balm he’d started keeping in there after his lips had inexplicably betrayed him last winter and started being chapped non-stop, a sensation he hated more than almost any other.
For reasons he couldn’t quite properly justify, the brunet found himself averting his eyes as he unzipped his pants, clearing his throat awkwardly as he checked that he was indeed alone in the turnout, and slipped his dick out over the waistline of his underwear. He was not going to get caught jacking off on the side of the road, no one ever had to know that this had happened. Breathe.
Shane swiped two fingers into the makeshift lube, methodically softening it, warming it up, spreading it across his hand, before letting his fingers curl around his dick. His eyes slipped shut, and instantly Ilya was in front of him, in workout clothes, stretching one arm behind his head, fingertips linked as he tugged with his other hand. His extended bicep tensed and relaxed with each pull, the blond wincing at the stretch. Shane let his own hand slide slowly upwards, softly squeezing for a single second when he reached the head, before slipping down to the base again.
His mouth fell open, breathing growing heavier. ‘Take it off.’ He willed him, in his mind. Ilya reached for the hem of his shirt, pulling it slowly up, and then off. His abs were beaded with sweat, undulating with short, sharp breaths, like he’d only just come to a halt after a full out sprint.
‘Come closer.’
The Russian obeyed, shirt casually trailing from one hand, sweat-darkened curls overhanging his forehead, eyes intensely fixed on the brunet. ‘You like this, Hollander? You like telling me what to do?’
Without noticing himself doing it, he picked up the pace, not desperately fast, but something a little closer to his rapidly thudding heart rate. His hips drew upwards slightly, seeking more, and he shifted his weight so that his back was pressing hard into the seat, allowing himself to thrust slightly into each stroke. ‘More.’ Was his next power-hungry command. ‘Take the shorts off.’
Ilya slipped his thumbs into the elasticated waistband of the exercise shorts he was wearing, and tugged them down, stepping out of them and kicking the item of clothing off to one side theatrically, like a stripper. Shirt still in one hand, dick visibly outlined through his boxer briefs, the blond sniffled, and surveyed his boyfriend. ‘Wh-hH-at now?’
No. No, this was not going to be some weird thing. He was just a normal guy, pulling his car over to jack off to normal thoughts of his secret boyfriend stripping for him. He didn’t need to think about anything else. He found Ilya attractive even when he was healthy- or more when he was healthy- or the same or whatever. He could get off to him without him having to be a sneezy mess.
‘Are you sure?’ Mind-Ilya scrubbed at his nose with his knuckles, the back of his hand, his wrist.
‘Yes I’m- shut up and take your underwear off.’ Shane stopped himself from mentally arguing with the representation of his boyfriend who was supposed to get him off, not piss him off.
The Russian looked at him stubbornly. ‘I think you get off even if I keep them on. I thi-ihh-”
“Don’t.” He protested, aloud by mistake, realising as the action brought him back into his body that his hand had stopped moving, and his body was full of tension again. Fuck. This was the opposite of what he needed right now. Time was slipping away and the longer he sat here, the more chance he’d be caught. He just needed to get this over with, however would be the fastest.
Shane shut his eyes again. ‘Okay fine, go ahead.’
‘hhHh hKk! hKSH!’ The blond sneezed into his fist, struggling to maintain eye contact, ‘You know- hKSH! KSHhUh!- I would do this even i- ihhKSH!- if you di-ihhKSHUH!- didn’t give me perm-ISHHUh-ission.’ He lifted the shirt to his face, still conveniently clutched in one hand, and let loose, ‘hKSH-kSH! hMPHOo! hrRMPH! hRSHHOo! hrRSHH! Oh my fucking-hrRSH-SHh! haEHSHH! hRRAESHOO!”
‘Bless you, Ilya, fuck.’
The brunet’s teeth found purchase in his lower lip, digging in deep as the hedonistic pleasure rolled over him.
‘Are you okay?’ Something about the question was jarring, and Shane hesitated for a moment, having been about to request a repeat performance. Was his accent gone?
‘What?’
Ilya removed his face from his shirt, looking down at him as he repeated the question. ‘Are you okay, bud?’
‘W- Hayden?”
And suddenly it was, their two faces merging together, the generic hotel room backdrop turning into the locker room, other players appearing around them- Shane’s eyes flew open. No, NO, this wasn’t what he wanted- fuck, why couldn’t he just keep his mind on one thing?
He rolled his shoulders back, scanned his surroundings again, still nothing, still no one. He was in control of his brain, he was in control of his thoughts, he chose what he saw. The Canadian sucked in a deep breath, pushed it out, and shut his eyes again.
‘Jesus Christ, Hollzy, what the hell are you doing?’
‘Why the fuck is your dick out?’
‘Je fucking savais que tu étais un genre de pervers, capitaine, tu as l’air d’un freak.’
“Okay, no.” He needed to stay on track, or he’d never be able to finish and then he’d be pissed off all night- he needed some kind of… anchor.
Shane considered searching for porn on his phone, either the regular kind or something a little more in line with his current train of thought, something that most people wouldn’t consider to be porn in the first place. But as he unlocked his phone with his free hand, the message thread with Ilya lit up the screen, right where he’d left off, and… well, it was convenient, and he didn’t really have time to go trawling through the internet for some actually good porn, so…
He started scrolling back, drawing his hand up and down the length of his dick every time he saw the word ‘tissues’ or ‘nose’ or ‘chikh’, letting himself imagine the symptoms as they were being described to him. And then, he made it back to the voice message.
The brunet hesitated for a single moment before impulsively hitting play, eyes slamming shut as the static started to play again. This time there was no locker room, just Ilya sitting on his couch, the game playing in the background unattended, forearms resting on his knees as his shoulders shook with uneven breaths.
“hKk! Kkh! KSH!” The expulsions snapped his head forward, unrealistically visible spray ejected towards the floor. Shane started moving his hand again, feeling the possibility of release on the horizon, caught in a helpless spiral of lust.
“Stop.” Ilya spat the word out, caught in his own helpless spiral, “hKSH! KSHH! hhih…” He tilted his head upwards slightly, Shane catching a glimpse of his expression for the first time, tongue hovering between his teeth, brows pinching together urgently, eyelashes fluttering. He didn’t look at the brunet at all, like he wasn’t even there, just a fly on the wall. Maybe that was for the best.
And then the anticipation ended, his head snapping back towards the ground again, Shane watching lecherously as the resulting mist of droplets spritzed the coffee table in front of him,“hKSH! hh… hhAHSHh! KSH! KXSH!”
Watching the force ripple through him, the brunet moaned softly, feeling a single droplet of precum start to trickle down the length of him, before it was abruptly bulldozered by his rapidly moving hand, chasing the full release. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was aware that the fit would end eventually, and he fumbled, eyes still shut, to hit replay before that would happen.
“hRSh-” The silent static began again, the Ilya in his mind freezing for a moment before starting to hitch again. “hKk! Kkh! KSH!”
Shane moaned aloud, undeterred by the acoustics of the sound undermining his immersion in his mental approximation of Ilya’s living room.
“Stop.”
“No. Keep fucking going.”
“hKSH! KSHH!” Spray bursting from his lips, starkly visible against the couch, his shorts, his shirt- which he wasn’t wearing anymore- maybe he took it off because he was too feveri- shut up, stop trying to analyse your own fantasy- “hhih…” He raised his head. Shane stared into his distant, unseeing eyes, watched the need build on his face, back arching in his seat. “hKSH! hh… hhAHSHh!”
And Ilya drew the back of his hand under his nose, sneezing again before he’d even finished swiping it, spraying down his arm, “KSH! KXSH!” He shivered. Shane gasped, on the precipice. “hRSHH! Khvatit.” He looked up again, eyes watering, nose pink, lip curling at the itch as he tried to speak. Ple-hihh… hhIHSHOo!”
Shane came, head smacking back against the headrest, as his mind went blank with pure, focused pleasure. He moaned through it, drowning out the voice note as Ilya sniffled and fumbled for his phone. “Fucking bless you.” He panted to the empty car, eyes still shut, shuddering on the come-down as all his muscles relaxed and exhaustion drew over him.
He was just starting to think about opening his eyes, cleaning himself up, moving on from what no one had to know had just happened, when the silence was broken.
“Shane?”
The Canadian's heart rate skipped up again, so fast that it felt wrong. His stomach dropped as his visualisation of Ilya, previously flopped back on the couch, spent, like him, was suddenly sitting up again, staring startled into his eyes. The Russian's gaze started to drift downwards, towards where his hand was still occupied, and Shane felt a wave of shame crash over him, opening his eyes and sucking in a tense breath, fighting the pressure suddenly compressing his chest.
Glancing down at himself, the cum he’d at least mostly kept contained in his palm, the message chat open accusatorially reminding him of what he'd just orgasmed to. Had he only asked Ilya to update him so he could make himself feel good in the first place? Did he really care about him, or was the whole thing some immoral sexual crusade? If he hadn't meant to send the voice note in the first place then was it wrong to have-? The voice note. Fuck. No.
Shane's eyes had zeroed in on the voice message as he went to pause it, something looking slightly different to the last time he'd looked at it. In his stupid tapping at it with his eyes shut, trying to get it to replay, he'd somehow managed to like it.
The red heart in the corner of the message stood out unflinchingly, an uncomfortably candid betrayal of Shane's real reaction to the audio. What was happening to him? He didn’t make mistakes like this… he didn’t use to make mistakes like this.
“Fuck this. You don’t have time for this.” He couldn’t sit here on the side of the road with his dick out forever. He’d relieved the pressure, given in to the urge, and now he had to move on from it. He had to get to Ilya.
…
The rest of the drive had been a mishmash of emotions, Shane trying four separate radio stations, pulling over to connect his phone so he could listen to his own stuff instead, trying his locker room playlist, his workout playlist, a history of hockey podcast that he’d listened to over twenty times before but kept coming back to, some extremely loud playlist Ilya had made him, called ‘непрерывной гребаной хитов’, and silence again. None of it made a difference, his brain too exhausted to fight the intrusive thoughts, the guilt, the self-reproach.
So, when he finally pulled up to Ilya’s house, he grabbed only the grocery bag of supplies his boyfriend had requested, and his phone, speed-walking to the door and knocking borderline frantically. The blond had given him a key the moment he’d been given one himself, but Shane was far too paranoid to keep it on his own keyring- what if people online compared the cuts from paparazzi pictures and saw that it was the same key?- a decision which had led him to turn up without it more than once already. It wasn’t that he was forgetting to take it with him, he just didn’t think he’d need it, and then when he did he was already too far from his own place to turn back and pick it up.
He knocked again, straining his ears to hear if his boyfriend was approaching the door. The wood was too thick for him to be able to tell, and so he startled slightly when it abruptly jolted inwards a few inches.
Shane had half a second of confusion as to why Ilya hadn’t opened the door the entire way, and then was met with a sound that explained better than the Russian could have.
“hKSHHuh!”
Oh. Fuck. Already? He wasn’t even inside yet.
The door moved again, unassisted this time, and now he could see him, leaning against the wall in the hallway, a blanket around his shoulders and held up over his lower face with one splayed out hand, otherwise clothed only in low-riding sweatpants.
“kKXSHh! hKK! hrRSHh!-” He paused, breaths tripping over themselves as he stumbled into a coughing fit and then just as suddenly back out into the sneezing fit again, “hAHSCXHh! hihh…hUHXSHhOo!”
Shane stared at him, dumbfounded by the display. Blessss. “Fuck you.” Wait no. “Wait, no.”
The blond surfaced, fixing him with mournful eyes, though there was a hint of combativeness there, waiting, just in case the Canadian had meant what he said and was about to start a fight, “The fuck I do?”
“I meant bless you, sorry, it just came out wrong.”
Unruffled, Ilya knuckled at his nose and coughed. “So did sneezes. Ugh.”
“I'm sorry. Bless you.” Fuck.
“Thanks.” The blond continued to stare at him. “You come in, or you want me to come out?”
“Sorry, I was waiting for- no, yeah, I’ll come in.” He stepped in awkwardly, as though it was his first time, shifting from foot to foot, glancing around the hallway.
Ilya sniffled. “You are weird tonight. What you bring?”
“Uh, what you asked for.” He was glad to have something to do, lifting the bag and pulling things out to show his boyfriend. “I got more tissues, cough drops, I didn’t get the energy drink because- Ilya.”
The Russian had started to walk away from him down the hallway. At Shane’s admonishment, he waved a hand over his shoulder. “I go to lie down. Keep talk.”
“Okay, um, I didn’t get the energy drink because it’s not good for you to drink that stuff right now-” Or ever “-but I got the instant noodles you wanted, so maybe that’s some kind of compromise.” He dropped the bag on the coffee table as Ilya dropped down onto the couch, sniffling productively as his head fell back onto the backrest and the congestion in his sinuses shifted.
“You won.” The blond announced in a drained celebratory tone.
Shane’s confusion lasted several seconds longer than it really should have, mind lingering on the instant noodles, and then the car ride, the text thread, the game- oh, right, the game. “Yeah, we did.”
“I watch recap. And interviews. You look mad after though-”
“Mhm.” The brunet shrugged noncommittally, using the new tissue box to poke at the layer of used tissues on the surface of the table, seeking out the thermometer. The slurred words, the smile tugging on the corner of his lips, the thicker accent, all pointed to a fever, and he wanted to check how high it was.
“-but not as mad as Marly.” Ilya laughed.
“Yeah, I don’t think he was feeling too well either, so losing probably wasn’t what he needed.” Shane found the device, picking it up between finger and thumb, and turning back to his boyfriend.
“I know, he could not speak, he sounded like mouse with throat slit, they had to talk to Cadyn instead. And could hear Marly in background whole time, just- ‘hEHGGKK! NGKCHUH!’.” He laughed thickly.
“Mm.” Shane avoided eye contact, unsure how to feel about his boyfriend mimicking one of his closest friends sneezing with a less than functional voicebox. Was this attractive or just really awkward? He held out the thermometer “Open your mouth, please.”
There was a flicker of challenge in Ilya’s eyes for half a second, and then it was gone, and he was sticking out his tongue semi-obediently. His breath rasped audibly in the back of his throat as the brunet leaned in to place the thermometer in his mouth.
Ilya closed his lips around it, shuffling along the couch a little way and patting the seat cushion beside him to encourage Shane to sit down, which he did, stiffly at first, but quickly relaxing as the blond leaned into him, tension draining from both of them at the long awaited first contact. Ilya’s arm wrapped around his waist and he shifted around, trying to get comfortable, and then fell into stillness.
They remained quiet, bar the occasional liquid sniffle or discontented hum from the Russian, waiting for the telltale beeps of the device between his chapped lips. Shane carded a hand through the blond’s hair, feeling the slight dampness of sweat at the roots, and the tangles from tossing and turning on the couch all evening at the tips, methodically beginning to tackle the knots with gentle fingers.
It didn’t seem to bother Ilya, who was entirely subdued now that he was unable to ramble about the game for a few minutes, and appeared to have half drifted off against the Canadian’s shoulder.
The beeping roused them both, Shane surprised by the efficiency with which his boyfriend removed the thermometer from his mouth, handed it over, took the tissue box that he’d still been absently clutching in return, ripped away the cardboard, pulled a few sheets free and, in his most uncoordinated effort of the short routine, mashed them against his face.
“hKk! Kkh! HkK! ksh! KSHuh! hKXSH! Ohh-”
Shane’s eyes widened at the moan, which seemed more motivated by some kind of strange pleasure than pain or distress, a flash of panic running through him at the idea that Ilya knew and was teasing him.
“-hKSHhOo! hRRSHOo! hhih-” The blond stalled for a moment, clearly interrupted by some kind of realisation, and then his eyes darted towards his boyfriend for the millisecond preceding their abrupt closure once again and he finished out with a pointed, “hhuhAHpPCHhee!”
“Bless you.” The Canadian deadpanned, concealing the inner shock at the fact that he not only remembered their phone conversation, but had internalised it, apparently. And also the self-restraint to be able not to sneeze the entire time the thermometer had been in his mouth?
Ilya blew his nose emphatically, switching sides three times before deciding he was satisfied and balling up the tissues to toss onto the table with the rest. “Thanks. Good timing.”
“What was good timing?” He was busy trying to read the thermometer screen, and didn’t think about the implications of the question until Ilya responded.
“Thermometer. It beep, I ‘apchii’, very good timing.”
Oh, so not self-control, pure luck. “Okay. Or- good. Nice.” How was he even supposed to respond to that?
Before he could pull himself out of his head and back into the moment enough to read the numbers on the tiny device, Ilya interrupted him again.
“hhUHEH-”
Shane’s head snapped up, apparently disturbing his boyfriend’s focus on the tickle in his nose, because the sneezy expression was already dissipating as they made unintentional eye contact.
“What?” The blond asked.
“I um- thought you were going to say something.”
“Was going to sneeze.”
“Oh.” Shane watched his eyes squint slightly as the tickle apparently started to grow again, the Russian’s nostrils flaring, and his mouth dropping further open to take in a shaky breath. After a moment, though, nothing had happened, so he tentatively asked, in a pitch slightly too high to be casual, “Are you still going to?”
“No.” Ilya concluded, dejected, sniffling as he let his face fall back to neutrality. “Is gone.”
Overwhelmed with a myriad of positive, paralyzingly intense feelings for his boyfriend, Shane reached out abruptly and took his face with both hands. The blond looked startled for a moment, and then his eyes strayed downwards to Shane’s lips, tongue running over his own, train of thought clear on his face.
It was all the confirmation the brunet needed, leaning in and kissing him, more authoritatively than he typically would have done, the firm, passionate style the result of over four hours of craving and daydreaming and longing for this in the back of his mind when he should have been focusing on the game or the road or absolutely anything else. But all of that was melting away now that he had his tongue down his boyfriend’s throat. Or more accurately wrestling with Ilya’s own tongue, tasting the lingering flavors of cough drops and cola, feeling the blond panting out breaths every few seconds, tensely holding his breath for as long as he could in between to draw out the kiss.
Eventually, Shane took pity on him and pulled back. Ilya’s pupils were blown, his gaze fixed on the Canadian with hypnotic intensity, panting through pink, swollen lips as they both pretended to ignore his nose running into his cupid’s bow.
“You will-” The blond stared into space, blinking slowly as he searched his brain for the term, “-take this with you.”
“I don’t care.” Shane, equally love-drunk, stared back at him earnestly and didn’t bother to consider the subsequent words before they tumbled from his lips, “I want to.”
“You want?” This awoke Ilya somewhat. “Is not fun. Is cough, and fever, and sneeze-” He sniffled again, rubbing the side of his hand against his nose. “-so much sneeze, and you no play-”
His grasp on English seemed to be backsliding, and the mention of fever had the Canadian glancing back at the thermometer again, interrupting his boyfriend abruptly, “Oh fuck, Ilya, 39.8?”
Ilya frowned distantly. “Only 39 point? Is so late in season, though. Stariya utratil svoi navyki.”
“What? No, your temperature is- forget it, I’m going to get you some medicine, okay?” He stood, starting down the hallway towards the bathroom, praying that his boyfriend hadn’t run out, because he really did not want to make another run out to the store for supplies. He wasn’t sure he could face the car again just yet.
“Wait,” Ilya called after him, “Now I zarazil you, eto predresheno, so we kiss more, yes?”
Shane wasn’t one hundred percent sure what that meant, it had involved more kissing, so, “Sure!”
In the M/arleau allergy fic you wrote, you explored his relationship with I/lya through sneezing and it is on my mind CONSTANTLY. I/lya avoided sneezing in front of C/liff for all of that time, and was confused when he didn’t get chirped for his multiples. C/liffs casual manner about it was both sweet and sexy! Now I/lya has at least one R/aider that he is 10% comfortable sneezing in front of. That whole added dynamic is permanently etched into my brain, so thank you!
hi anon, I’m so happy that you took so much from that fic! I lovedddd playing around with their dynamic. I’ll take any excuse to yap about my platonic relationship headcanons for these lil guys, so let me expand upon this a bit further for no reason at all.
[warning, excessive yapping below. also my updated WIP list.]
so literally at that point he and m/arly had lived together for a full year, and since then had been playing together for like 4 years? and rooming together for hotels on and off like the entire time. and i/lya only let that happen because he wanted to give m/arleau an excuse to display the frustration/disgust that he thinks he’s feeling after the game (and the whole almost killing him thing), so it’s not a trust thing at first it’s literally him punishing himself. or like him trying to get c/liff to punish him bc he sees him kind of as an older brother figure (but not like his actual brother obvi fuck that guy) or like a trustworthy authority figure if that…makes any sense at all?
and it’s very much not the first time he’s done something like that, like he messes up in practice sometimes just to get yelled at when he’s feeling bad about himself, because it’s like…natural to him? you do something wrong, you feel bad, you get yelled at, you get over it. but now that he’s not with his dad (or other ppl who were like that to him) all the time, no one yells at him, so he has to trigger the response in ppl on purpose (also I’m totally thinking that he’s gotten into fights at clubs and stuff on purpose after bad games) just to move on from mistakes. anywayyy, m/arleau has seen that face, like the defiant ‘I know I did something wrong, what are you going to do about it’ face he makes after he’s done sneezing there, before, when he’s trying to piss off the coach, so he kind of knows what he wants him to do (be angry or negative towards him) even if he doesn’t know why.
and then our king c/liff is so chill and positive in response because he is not a complete idiot and totally knew that i/lya was playing through illness and hiding when he was sick when they lived together, even if he didn’t ever actually really see any of the symptoms. so he knows that him openly sneezing in his presence is unusual and probably purposeful, so he’s not going to get involved with this weird self-punishment thing bc he likes his captain and doesn’t want him to be mad at himself? so after this he literally ends up modelling ‘weakness’ in front of him to show him that its okay, and stopping him from ragebaiting ppl when they lose, and gets halfway to the whole ‘taking care of r/oz ‘ list that h/ayes makes here as he works it all out. also m/arleau is fully the only r/aider he ever sneezes in front of on more than like one occasion, which makes his relatively quick habituation to ALL of the c/entaurs even more of a miracle.
I have another fic with those two coming up (I’ll post my HR WIP list below ↓) so I’m super hyped to get to explore the little emergency confidante vibe a bit more with that!
part two of this shane kink fic
hollanov one shot based on the flashback from this fic
hollanov caretaking fluff
combination skip and hollanov fic (probably multiple parts)
ok, sooo I have been writing this one on and off since like february, as my lil self-indulgent background piece, and I thought it should finally see the light of day. it's very overtly snzkink s/hane, especially the second part, so if that's not your vibe, I would maybe skip these (lol skip). I wanted to play with the whole text based relationship thing, and I originally wrote out a lot more of i/lya's update texts but then cut them bc it was kinda tedious to read, by which I mean I actually fell asleep proofreading it. anywayyy, here's part one.
part two, part three
I hope you enjoy! ♡
fandom: h/eated r/ivalry
word count: 5.1k
cw: sneezing, snz kink, general illness, mentions of contagion
Shane ran his thumb back and forth across the bottom of his phone, staring at Ilya's contact, debating calling. He had only a few minutes before he'd need to head into the arena for the game and he would really like his anxiety level by then to be about half of what it was now.
When they'd spoken last night, Ilya had mentioned having a pretty bad headache, half his face scrunched up against the dim light of the lamp he seemed to have turned on only to talk to Shane, two fingers rubbing incessantly at his temples. He'd been sniffly too, although he was almost always at least a little sniffly, and it hadn't taken either of them very long to connect the dots to a flu that was making the rounds in their conference, principally because of the fact that a good quarter of the Centaurs were currently out with it.
So the fact that Shane couldn't get him to reply to a text currently was more than a little worrying. The last three texts he'd sent- “Ilya. Ilyaa. ILYA.”- had been more than 30 minutes ago, and the blond hadn't so much as read them.
Shane glanced over his shoulder into the back of the car, checking he had everything he'd need this evening. Nope, clearly he didn't because there wasn't a gorgeous blond Russian man curled up asleep there. Not that he’d feel particularly good about leaving his probably sick boyfriend in the fucking car while he amused himself on the ice for a few hours. Which is what this game would be, amus-
The phone buzzing in his hand came as such a shock that he almost dropped it, head whipping back to the device to read the notification.
LILY: whatttttt
LILY: I am alive
He sighed in relief, double checking the time before typing out a quick response.
YOU: Ok good. Stay that way. I love you. Keep me updated on how you’re doing, please.
And then with a click, the phone was off, and he was hopping out of the car to grab his bags, the pre-game adrenaline already starting to flood into his system. Kit? Check. Boyfriend? Alive. Win? Incoming.
…
He didn’t get a chance to check his phone again until after warm-ups, having been the mostly unwilling mediator in a stupidly heated debate about if it would be better to be reincarnated as a hockey puck or a stick. These guys seriously had too many concussions under their belts.
Despite the extended departure from his phone, it hadn’t been that long, and Shane was borderline alarmed to find he had more text messages than his lock screen would provide a specific number for, having resorted to a simple “10+”.
He unlocked the device, scrolling through to see a plethora of short messages from Ilya.
LILY: i love you toooo
LILY: update- doing ok
LILY: update- still doing ok
LILY: update- drinking water
LILY: update-lost fucking tv remotw
LILY: update- found
And so on. For over 30 messages. Some of them Shane couldn’t decipher however, either due to misspellings or Romanized versions of Russian words that he couldn’t quite translate. One however, appeared many times over.
LILY: update- chikh
LILY: update- stolko chikhhhh
Shane frowned.
YOU: I’m glad you’re okay. What is ‘chikh’?
Ilya read the text immediately.
LILY: timing is crazy. you are psychic?
LILY: is like spxhhi
What the fuck did that mean?
“Hollander! He’s making the stupid tape point again, you gotta come tell him he’s wrong!” Fuck.
With an anxious glance back to the still bouncing ‘typing’ bubbles, Shane tossed his phone back into his stall and returned to his captain duties.
…
He hadn’t had a spare second to consider what the last messages had meant in the whole of the first period, their opponents coming out strong and not letting up the entire time. A stupid fight had left them shorthanded, and Shane was so focused on not letting the disadvantage tip the score, that he’d forgotten all about his boyfriend’s ‘condition’ until he was lining up for a face off, flying high off the relief of a goal.
His stick clicked against the ice, and he kept his eyes down, uninterested in meeting the opposing center’s fiery hot gaze. Before the puck could drop, he heard Hayden, off to his left, say, “The fuck are you doing, dude?”, and then a sound that snapped his attention across to the wing.
“hEh…Kkf- hUhTNGKk! hhUh…hHTNGXhoo!”
It seemed that the illness that had the Centaurs flat on their backs was also running rife through the Raiders. So it would have gotten Ilya even if he hadn’t move- Oh, fuck, Ilya! He was watching, probably, although how much of the actual game he was taking in with the distraction of his symptoms was anyone’s guess. And the symptoms themselves, echoing through his empty house, no one to acknowledge them, acknowledge him… it was a tragic mental image. Or at least that was what he was forcing himself to think. Because he’d give anything to be a fly on the wall in that house right about-
Head still tilted to the left, eyes distant, stick hovering nowhere particularly useful, Shane, unsurprisingly lost the face-off. Fucking-
He turned fast, sharp, anger and embarrassment creating a flush high on his cheeks, ready to give chase. Thankfully, the defense had closed ranks behind him, and, with their right winger still flagging, Boston had lost possession.
After thirty seconds of what was essentially just keep-away, and Shane glaring hard at the puck, and the players around him, and trying to stay focused, he was heading back to the bench, turning to Hayden as they sat down, seeing the frown on the winger’s face.
“Sorry.” He muttered.
“Huh?” Pike looked like he’d been pulled from deep thought, “For what?”
“I fucked up the puck drop.” He confessed, shocked that the alternate captain hadn’t already picked him up on it.
Hayden reached for the nearest bottle, skying the liquid into his mouth as he stared absently at the jumbotron, swallowing before responding, “It’s no big deal, we can’t win ‘em all, right?”
“…right.” He doubted that he’d take the same attitude to the game itself, so he needed to get it together. They all did. For the love of fuck, Coach had better yell some sense into them at intermission, or they’d be losing to a team of invalids who would probably pass along this flu for their trouble.
…
Trudging into the locker room at what barely remained a 1-1 draw, Shane felt his heart rate pick up, knowing he’d get to answer those questions that had been building up in his mind ever since he’d lost half his focus to his boyfriend just over halfway through the period. Nowhere near the ice and still stealing his attention. Remind him not to tell Ilya that when he saw him.
“He literally sneezed like, right in my face, I mean, can you believe that?” Hayden was still complaining as they made it to their stalls.
“Yeah- or, no, that’s wild.” The captain was more focused on retrieving his phone and checking for updates, stripping off the unnecessary layers one handed as he unlocked it.
“I think that counts as biological warfare, for real. I hate that dude. I think I’m starting to get the way you feel about Rozanov.”
“What?” He looked up, having been just about to click on the aforementioned player’s contact when his name was voiced.
Pike looked slightly taken aback by the speed with which he’d met his eyes. Well, he wasn’t exactly known for his love of eye contact at the best of times. He actually couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked into Hayden’s. “I’m just saying, who does that? Like yeah, he looked really pathetic about it afterwards, but like, cover your face, man. I almost feel sorry for him, but instead it’s just like pure…hatred.”
“Yeah.” You keep telling yourself that, buddy.
As Hayden considered his ‘hate’ for the opposing winger more quietly, Shane finally opened the message thread, and started back up where he’d left off.
LILY: I type wrong
LILY: still chikh
LILY: can not see
LILY: *apchhi
LILY: apchhi! apchhi! you know?
LILY: you know bc I do all fucking summer
Shane’s eyes went wide.
“You okay, man?” Hayden nudged him, lightly, but Shane almost dropped his phone all the same.
“Yeah, I- sorry, I have to take a call.” He headed out into the hallway, eyes skimming back over the messages. No way Ilya was…live texting him his fucking sneezes?
…
It had taken him a good minute to get his breathing under control enough to hit call on the contact and even as it rang, he found himself leaning back against the wall of the corridor to try and stop his head from spinning.
“Hello?” Ilya’s voice was destroyed, so muffled and broken that it sounded like the phone line was bad. Which it wasn’t because he could hear the TV playing commercials in perfect clarity in the background.
“Hi. I uh, just finished the first period.” He knows that, dumbass, he’s watching the game.
“I know.”
“Some of the stuff you were saying, I couldn’t understand it, so I just wanted to call and check you’re okay.”
“I am good. What couldn’t you understand?” He broke off to cough throatily away from the receiver.
“The um-” It was slightly easier, saying it in a different language, if he was saying what he thought he was saying, that was. “-the ‘chick’ thing?”
“Oh, chikh. I explain already, Shane, is like- wait. I will do for you.”
He would fucking WHAT?
There was a snorting sound on the other end of the line, and then some kind of soft tapping noise. Shane waited silently, breath baited.
“hH-here I go-hKk! Kkh! hHKSH! KKh! hKSHuH! hrRSH! HRSHH! hhAHSHhOo!”
“Bless you.” He whispered, pressing his back against the wall in the corridor as though he could disappear into it, stomach flipping so intensely he worried it would get caught in his ribs somehow. Why did the idea of Ilya doing…that… on purpose make him feel like he was about to pass out?
“Thank you. How you not understand, though? I spell it out and everything.”
“You said ‘apchi’. That’s not a sneeze.” He hissed. If he framed it like an argument, he could ignore the words coming out of his mouth, right?
“What is it in English then?” Ilya sounded less than bothered, vaguely interested but also like his real focus was elsewhere.
Shane clenched his jaw, heartbeat thudding in his ears at the thought of having to verbalise the stupid sound, “It’s like… it’s like ‘achoo’.” He wished for the ground to open up and swallow him.
“What? Who the fuck says ‘a-choo’? That’s stupid.”
“You literally did five seconds ago.”
“No, I didn’t.” He paused, evidently playing back the sounds he’d just made, in his head before conceding. “Is because I spend so long listening to idiot Americans and Canadians doing this, now I sound like idiot too.”
“Fuck off.” Shane pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to get his thoughts and his heartbeat and his dick under control. The idea of the sound of a sneeze being contagious… he could only hope Ilya hadn’t caught that strangled sounding thing that he’d just heard from their winger. “I have to go now.”
“Okay, I keep you updated.” There was a clear smile in his tone, and it did nothing to help the snowballing panic that was overwhelming the Canadian. Ilya was taking over his fucking brain, and he needed that to play. Not everyone did, clearly, but for him hockey was a mind game, which kind of necessitated showing up with your mind there in your skull and not over a hundred kilometres away with its metaphorical dick out, laser focused on your secret, sickly, so so sexy, boyfriend.
He’d walked about five steps down the corridor when his ringtone rang out again.
LILY: update- finish tissue box
Oh, god, this was actually going to be the death of him.
…
During one of the previous flu outbreaks in the league, the Metros had started a policy where they’d take all the players temperatures before they hit the ice; warmup, first period, second, third, like clockwork, and Shane was exceedingly glad that they weren’t doing that now- not that they’d ever actually scratched anyone based on the results- because he was full of a fire that was part anger part lust, and that had beads of sweat rolling down his face before he even had his gear all the way back on.
He considered the feeling while benched between shifts, the furnace-like heat in his chest, making every breath feel hot enough to start melting the ice- he was almost sure he could feel his mouthguard turning soft and pliable between his teeth- and then that tightening feeling slightly higher up than the fire, like a rope being pulled taught, like at the slightest slash of a blade, it would snap. And he wasn’t sure what snapping would involve, but it would almost definitely end with him in the penalty box or back in the dressing room, regretting the entire night.
On autopilot, he stood as the receding line approached the bench, vaulting the boards and hunting down the puck, focused, ruthless, ready. He took possession, finding Pike and passing to free himself of the three Raiders who’d immediately descended upon him the second his skates hit the ice- clearly their intermission speech had involved the instruction ‘stay on Hollander’- trying to find space to receive it back.
Before he could make the pass, Hayden disappeared into a sea of white and gold as the puck got trapped against the boards. Shane joined the mass of players, trying to get eyes on the puck, and his winger, whom he couldn’t actually see among the taller Raider players.
Normally he’d leave this stupidity to happen on the other side of the ice, while he found a nice open area, ready to receive or intercept depending on who came out in possession, but right now he could not be left alone with his thoughts for the amount of time that that might take. So here he was.
His thoughts, as he realised belatedly, one weak swipe in the puck’s direction in, did not wait politely outside of the huddle, they clung to him with sharp, spiteful grips, and at the slightest invitation, would most certainly be taking back over his mind. He was surrounded by Raiders, and, right as the group shifted, and his balance was thrown, pressing him against the player to his left, said player sniffled pretty urgently and muttered a curse word in what definitely sounded like Russian. And even though he knew it wasn’t Ilya, and he could have turned to stare into the idiot’s face to confirm that, had he so wished, he froze, a shiver running down his spine, mouth going dry and gaze going distant as his mind ran away with him for a moment- Ilya draped over his back like a blanket, sniffling in his ear while he made lunch for the two of them, Ilya trying to speak through his typical early morning fit and cursing his nose out as it interrupted him, Ilya pressed against him in a hotel elevator, heat radiating off of him as he breathed noisily through his mouth, accent tinting each exhale-
The puck was freed. The puck had been freed somewhere close to four full seconds ago, and here Shane still was, staring at his own reflection in the glass, seeing someone entirely different. Once again cursing his own imagination, and his lack of concept of time passing, he spun, barely a millisecond behind the player ahead of him, but several crucial seconds behind the one in possession, opting to sprint rather than bother to push off and try to pick up speed, making it out to center ice just in time to see the flash of a stick and the crack of impact and then be promptly deafened by the goal horn. Fucking great work.
Shane never noticed it before, but the sound effect that played in the Metro’s arena when the opposing team scored had this ‘ding’ to it that kind of sounded like a phone notification. Like his phone notification. And as he was skating back to the bench, face blank, head down, all he was thinking about was his phone lighting up over and over in his bag in the locker room with notifications of every single development in his boyfriend’s illness. Every cough, every noseblow, every sneeze. He felt like he was visibly flinching every time the sound repeated, because it was definitely making his heart skip a beat each time. How quickly was it possible to become conditioned by a noise? He was pretty sure he had either just broken a record or at the very least tied that dog with the fucking bell. At least the dog actually got its food, while he was just imagining the reward- there was definitely something seriously wrong with getting gratification from your boyfriend’s flu symptoms right?
“Hey, game’s not over yet.” JJ clapped him on the back as he passed by.
In lieu of responding ‘get your fucking hands off me, I’m too fucking riled up to deal with this shit’. Shane nodded silently, following him through the door and slumping down on the bench, pretending not to notice how that impact felt as it jarred through him.
The jumbotron, which he’d glanced up at as a distraction, kindly displayed a shot of the opposing bench, players grinning and banging their sticks against the boards, and on the edge of frame, a player with his head down, apparently emptying his sinuses into a towel, glancing up, massaging his nose, and flushing when he saw himself on the screen.
Shane swallowed dryly, gratefully accepting the water bottle as it came his way and taking several gulps as though it would cleanse him of the endless temptation towards distraction that this game had apparently decided to present.
…
Period two had stayed 2-1, both teams starting to flag slightly, the Raiders, it seemed, out of pure exhaustion, and the Metros falling apart as their first line went to pieces for no apparent reason. Shane had made his way back to the locker room with his head down, not even attempting to offer the rest of the team any words of encouragement, because deep down, he knew he was the problem. Or, one of them at least. Pike was inexplicably all over the place, too, missing passes, and almost falling face first over the boards as he hopped over for one shift, not to mention the attempt to pull Drapeau that had seen the goaltender head halfway to the bench and then immediately have to sprint- or as close as he could get to it- back to the crease to field away a shot.
Shane, against his better instincts, dropped down into his stall and unlocked his phone. Maybe if he could just check what Ilya had said, he wouldn’t spend the entire time thinking about it, right? He’d know for sure, and then he could stop imagining things.
The latest two (or really three) messages, though, stopped him in his tracks.
LILY: Voice message. 00:41
LILY: did not mean send that 🫵
LILY: *👍
What the fuck could be in this voice note? Oh, this was a hundred times worse than just not knowing what the texts said. He wasn’t about to pull out his headphones and listen to what very well might be actual fucking audio porn in the middle of the damn locker room. But there was… another option…
Unconsciously gritting his teeth as though the button had a fifty-fifty chance of exploding the entire planet, Shane clicked ‘view transcription’.
0:05 stop
0:08 [Music]
0:13 harsh
0:14 [Music]
0:15 fight it
0:16 his shoe
0:22 oh wait
0:24 Shane
0:25 I do not mean to do this
0:27 what the fuck is
0:32 okay I don’t know what it is doing
0:34 how do I delete
0:36 ha I send you this as update
0:39 so you know what I am doing
0:41 okay love you miss you bye
An accidental voice note, then, so it wouldn’t necessarily be too…salacious. But his eyes were drawn to the notation at 16 seconds, reading it over and over in his mind, considering how it sounded…
“Hollz.” The voice in his ear was unexpectedly quiet, and he looked up into Hayden’s wide, focused eyes. “Is everything alright?”
“Uh-” Shane struggled to adjust to the conversation, feeling like the untoward thoughts in his brain were visible in his eyes, audible at the close distance, obvious to anyone who even glanced his way. But no one knew. No one knew what this was. What he was. “-yeah.”
“You sure, bud? You look pretty stricken there, and you have every time you’ve touched your phone tonight. Is someone in your family sick or something?”
What a fucking question Hay’. Yeah, he considered Ilya a part of his family now, even if it wasn’t something that he could really declare to anyone beyond the man himself, and his own parents, and yes he was sick, but… “It’s kinda complicated.”
“Okay, well you know, if there’s anything you need, or you wanna talk about it…”
“Thanks.” He was standing before he’d even really processed the desire to leave. “I’ll be back.”
Hayden nodded, with this disquieting look of ‘understanding’ on his face. Shane grabbed his headphones from his bag and walked quickly towards the door. He’d made it a single step into the corridor when he heard JJ’s voice from behind him,
“Where the fuck is the capitaine running off to again? We are falling apart here, people!”
And Pike’s response, “Shut the fuck up Boiziau.”
…
Shane was fumbling the earbuds into his ears before he’d even shut the door of the bathroom stall, fingers hovering over the play button the moment he’d realised he was alone, breath coming in embarrassingly urgent little puffs as the various combatant feelings within him swelled to a crescendo, heart thumping so loudly in his ears he wasn’t sure he’d be able to hear whatever this turned out to be.
He slammed the bolt across, leaning against the wall and not even bothering to try and calm himself down this time- he had like no time at all before he’d have to be back out there, and he needed every single second of that time for calming himself down AFTER he’d listened to it.
With a final strangled-sounding attempt at a deep breath, his thumb came down on the screen and his ears were filled with static. And then-
“hKk! Kkh! KSH!” Oh this was exactly what he’d hoped and dreaded it would be.
“Stop.” Ilya pleaded with, apparently himself, in the recording, to no avail, “hKSH! KSHH! hhih… hKSH! hh… hhAHSHh! KSH! KXSH! hRSHH! Khvatit. Ple-hihh… hhIHSHOo!”
Shane shuddered, the sweat-drenched material of his compression shirt sticking to the tiled wall he was leaning against, almost holding him up. Ilya panted, loud and unrestrained in his ears, catching his breath. The Canadian shut his eyes, imagined the blond’s head pressed against his chest as he recovered, pressed his hand there just to make it feel a tiny bit more real.
“Oh, wait.”
He let his hand drop again, pressing his damp palm against the cool tile, trying to regulate his body temperature a little.
“Shane?”
The brunet pretended that his heart hadn’t just ejected itself from his chest to sit disobediently in his mouth, leaving an aching, unappeasable pit of desire in its place, at the sound of his name. God, he couldn’t last another second without him, right now. He couldn’t play without him, couldn’t live without him, couldn’t- apparently he couldn’t stand without him either, as his legs crumpled beneath him and he fell to his knees on the floor, eyes opening to stare up into that unyielding gaze, that stony expression that so poorly hid his boyfriend’s adoration for him now that he’d seen it fall so many times, that face, of the man he loved. And he saw only ceiling tiles, harsh lighting, the cold empty walls of the room he’d locked himself in to let down walls of his own. The prison of his own making.
“I do not mean to do this.” Ilya inadvertently apologised for the false hope the audio had given his boyfriend, brow somehow audibly furrowed as his voice got closer to the phone.
“What the fuck is-?” He was silent for a moment and then, “Okay, I don’t know what it is doing. How do I delete?”
More silence, and then, in stark contrast, giggling. “I send you this as update-” He broke off laughing again, the sound wheezing faintly in his chest as he struggled for breath, “-so you know what I am doing.” His voice was playful, but there was nothing lucid about it.
“Okayyy.” Ilya stretched the word out long, like they were on the phone and he didn’t want to be the one to hang up. Shane told himself that the sheen over his eyes was from staring into the ceiling lights, and blinked it away. “Loveyoumissyoubye!” He half-yelled, all as one word, and then there was a slight popping sound and the audio came to an end.
Shane took a shaky breath in, checked how much time he had left, and started to respond.
YOU: Bless you. The voice note was cute, even if it was an accident.
YOU: Do you know if you have a fever?
And then he typed, and promptly deleted, ‘I want to leave the arena right now and drive straight to Ottawa. I want to fucking hold you, I want to fucking fuck you, I want to devour you.’ He swallowed, watching the letters disappear again. No, there was definitely a less aggressive way to say that.
YOU: I love and miss you too.
…
The next hour had passed so quickly, he wasn’t sure it had happened at all, a blur of adrenaline and ice and yelling, and drinking unthinkable amounts of electrolytes as though that would help the time pass quicker, and staring at the clock, and scoring- nice- and then back to a blur again.
Shane took his post game interview- shot from the collarbones up essentially- rhythmically clenching his gloved hands into fists and then flexing them all the way out again, out of sight of the camera, while he gave some pointless answers that really could have been supplied by any of the other players’ kids just as well as they were by the captain.
“What the fuck did he ask you?” Pike had called after him as he’d walked in, already half stripped down, sorted his gear from his jersey and his compression clothes at an eyebrow raising speed- or so he gathered from the look on the winger’s face as he turned- and headed straight for the showers.
“The usual shit!” He’d yelled back, clearly not answering the underlying question- ‘why are you so pissed off?’ and throwing himself under the nearest free jet of water.
Having deftly dodged all other responsibilities for the night, he was now speedwalking out of the building, and navigating to Ilya’s contact, heart rate picking up again at the realisation that he’d made it, he was free from the purgatory of a game that he really should have been enjoying, and now he was-
“H’lo?”
“I’m coming to see you.” He delivered the words forcefully, no room for argument.
“Bless you.” This response was softer, spoken more closely to the receiver, and his fast pace across the parking lot faltered too, mental resolve weakened by the audio display of weakened physical resolve he’d been presented with.
“Thank you.” A thud.
“Are you okay?”
Ilya moaned. “Remote fell. I think I sleep through end of game.”
“Did I wake you?” He was fumbling for his keys, trying to force himself to visualise the inside of his bag pockets rather than the sweet, sleepy expression that was probably gracing his boyfriend’s face right now.
“Yeah.” The Russian’s voice broke on the single word, and he broke off coughing, not moving away from the phone, though Shane could hear him shifting his position on the couch.
He finally managed to find his keys and unlocked the car, jogging the final few steps, opening the back passenger side door and shoving his bag in before slamming it shut again and rounding the vehicle towards the driver’s side like he was trying to outrun a hoard of zombies. “I’m sorry, I just wanted to let you know I was on my way.”
“’S good.” The blond was whispering now, whether because his throat hurt, his voice was gone entirely, or he was simply too tired to make any effort to speak louder, Shane couldn’t discern. “I look forward to meeting you.”
“What?” When he was really out of it, but still coherent enough to retain some English, he’d noticed that his boyfriend seemed to revert to textbook phrasing, sentences he’d probably had drilled in before anything else, and they’d stuck. That was his theory for the overly formal blessing habit, too. And he wouldn’t change that for the world, no matter what it did to him.
“Love you.” Ilya continued, “Have a driving license.” From the tone he could only assume he meant something along the lines of ‘have a safe drive’ , but the first collocation that had come to mind for ‘driving’ was ‘license’. The man really was full of linguistic phenomena.
“L-” He began to reply, only to be abruptly cut off.
“hKk! KKh! hKSH! Kkh! hKSHUh! hKSHooh!” Cutee, why was there no ‘record’ button on phone calls for moments like this? He could have gotten weeks of teasing out of this clip, and months of… other amusement. “hhiHKSHh! KSHUh! huAHSXHh-ugh.”
“Bless you.” He winced slightly at the sound of that last one, “Love you. See you later.”
“Loooove you.” Ilya coughed, what sounded like the start of a whole fit, but put the phone down before he could hear it get to that point.
Ah, yes, also he was very much full of the flu. Linguistic phenomena, adoration for Shane, apparently, and the flu, that was most of what made up Ilya Rozanov right now. And his boyfriend, though it made his gut twist with guilt, couldn’t imagine a better combination.
🍓 anon here. Thank you so much for the recent fic!! I had honestly forgotten I'd requested it so thank you so much for writing!! Poor Sco/tt . I wanna squish kink! k/ip!!
They're so adorable and thank you again for writing this couple !! Looking forward to read more of your writing🌸
hi 🍓 anonn, you’re so welcome! tysm for the request, I am truly sorry about the delay :’) and I also very much want to squish him hehehe
I'm intrigued by Sco/tt's usual daily sneeze count and him during allergy season if you could write that please🍓 love a doting Ki/p
21, Sun, Salud
hi anon, thank you for the request! I also love a doting k/ip, and a snzkink k/ip, so I wrote both :) very self-indulgent, I know. the sneeze count concept is from this fic, and the arithmomania is me projecting lol. this is set post coming out, pre wedding.
I hope you enjoy! ♡
fandom: h/eated r/ivalry
word count: 7.2k
cw: sneezing, snz kink
The sound that woke Kip had his heartbeat climbing and his eyes searching the room before he’d even processed what it was. There were clothes and various other items spread out across the floor, so clearly there had been other noises prior to that one, and he’d awoken purely because of the implications that the sound of tape ripping away from plastic had carried.
“Uh, good morning?” Scott was kneeling on the floor at the end of the bed, looking slightly stunned by the speed with which his boyfriend had awoken, frozen with a tissue tented over his nose like a deer caught in the headlights.
Kip flushed, lying back- he hadn’t even realised that he’d pushed himself up onto his elbows for a better look- and staring innocently at the ceiling, “Morning.”
The older man blew his nose, pointed and productive like he’d been waiting a while to be able to, and pushed himself up to stand with a small grunt of effort. He walked around the bed to look down at his fiancé, who was still doing his best to look like he hadn’t identified the sound of a travel pack of tissues being opened while completely unconscious and responded as if he’d heard his own name called out.
“Sleep well?”
Kip finally looked at him again, noticing that he was dressed in workout clothes, and looked like he’d already been down to the hotel gym, face lightly flushed from the exertion. He was still holding the balled up tissue in one hand- which was perfectly normal and totally not doing unspeakable things to Kip’s train of thought right now- and breathing mostly through his mouth, occasionally interrupting himself to sniffle softly.
“Yeah, you?”
Scott nodded, “Mostly. Thought I’d get a quick run in before I have to leave for practice. Sorry I woke you.” They both knew he hadn’t woken him by coming back in, but it was nice of him to pretend so Kip could save face.
“It’s okay, I wanted to see you before you left anyway. How long until you have to go?”
He knuckled at his nose with the hand that held the tissue, glancing at his watch on his other wrist. “About five minutes.”
“But you’re coming back here afterwards?”
“Straight away.” The taller man started to walk back towards his bag laying open on the floor, pulling out a pair of trousers and tugging down his shorts to change. “I’m not going to be out there for a second longer than I have to.”
Kip went back to staring at the ceiling, knowing that those sculpted abs were the last thing he needed to be staring at right now, thoughts already wandering towards pulling his fiancé back into bed.
Scott took his silence for offense, amending his statement, “And of course I need to get back to my ridiculously handsome fiancé…”
The younger man laughed, running his hand through his hair as he listened to the ambient noise of clothes being tugged on and off and out of bags, letting his mind wander to breakfast, possibly brunch with the WAGs, considering the various pleasures of being on the road with the man he loved until he heard the zip of Scott’s duffel close, indicating that he was ready to leave.
Sitting up again, fully this time, he voiced the sentimental musings. “It’s really nice to get to be here this time, watch you and celebrate with you in person, rather than over the phone.”
Scott laughed, “Yea-” He cut himself off, squinting into the distance for a moment before his breath caught abruptly and he raised his free hand to his face in a fist, “heHTSHh! hEHTSHh! tTSHh!”
“Bless you.” Kip watched him drop his shoulders and raise his head back up.
“Ugh, thanks.” The older man sniffled. “Now you get to see and hear all of this-” He gestured exasperatedly at his face, “-in horrifyingly disgusting 3D glory.”
“I don’t think it’s disgusting.” His fiancé contested, coyly.
This sparked some of the most intensely suggestive eye contact Kip had ever been on the receiving end of, and he was mostly sure that he didn’t even breathe in the few seconds before Scott replied, voice low and husky, “I know you don’t.”
He leaned down and kissed the shorter man, still half under the bedcovers, though he scrambled to simultaneously free his legs, bringing them up under him so he could kneel up to close the distance Scott was having to bridge. The latter smiled into his mouth at the adjustment, but then pulled back after a moment wearing that expression again, shaking his head in irritation as he tilted his head back towards the ceiling, drawing in a wavering breath. Kip reached into the net pocket on the side of the bag on his fiancé’s shoulder and pulled out the pack of tissues, deftly removing one and holding it out to him.
Scott glimpsed him out of the corner of his eye, and accepted the offering, bringing it to his face without unfolding it and pressing it over his mouth and nose as he jerked in on himself, apparently trying not to knock the bag off of his shoulder with the motion, “hEHMPHh! hMPHSHhoo!”
Kip smiled, still delighted that he didn’t have to hide his attraction or at the very least endearment in moments like these anymore, watching his fiancé try to redirect how the forceful reflex puppeteered his body with limited success, “Bless you.” It was almost comical, the way the otherwise extremely strong, determined, put-together player completely lost all ability to function in the face of a teeny tiny tickle in his nose. And maybe to some people it would have been. But to him, it was an arrestingly vulnerable display of humanity, and to Scott it appeared to just be an inconvenience that he largely ignored.
To his surprise, though, when the older man straightened, he was smiling too, “Thanks. I’m at twenty-one!”
“Twenty one… sneezes?” He still had to hesitate before that word, though. Some things would just never feel natural.
“Yep.” Scott leaned down and kissed him again, on the head this time, and then started back in the direction of the door, swiping at his nose with the tissue, “That’s good luck. I’ve gotta go before there are any more. See you later!”
“See you! Love you!”
The captain stopped for a second, holding the door open, though he was already out in the corridor, to look back at him. “Love you too.” Then he let the door swing shut, and Kip was alone.
He laughed, surprised by the whirlwind exit, and amused by the superstition. If something could be counted or numbered, and was likely to reach 21, some part of Scott’s brain would be keeping track of it. From the date to hotel room numbers to car numberplates, to, apparently, sneezes. Normally he wouldn’t get close to double digits, but in Raleigh, right at the end of the regular season? 21 before he even left for morning skate was nothing.
It was Kip’s first time seeing it in person though, and the emotions were surprisingly bittersweet. He was excited and turned-on by the possibilities for after the game, but still concerned about the game itself, and how Scott would fare for the better part of the day without strong meds. Watching the typical post-exposure, pre-meds paroxysm over Facetime- or more accurately, watching the hotel room ceiling fan spin while listening to Scott wrestling with the allergy attack, which usually took both hands and all of his concentration- was absolutely nothing like watching it build from the first moments of exposure in the morning to the breakdown late at night. He had great confidence in his fiancé’s ability to play through the issue, but he couldn’t help but pity him for having to. Even if it was the sexiest thing imaginable, and totally something he’d daydreamed about any time he’d caught a hockey game prior to catching one of the actual players. Which it was.
…
“This is the worst.” Scott groaned, leaning shirtless against the wall of the bathroom, looking like he was anything but at his worst. Practice had given him that post-exertion glow, and his muscles looked extra defined after the workout. Even the pink tinge to his nose seemed to be more of a blush than rawness or irritation, though he couldn’t underestimate the frustration and discomfort of the constant itchiness he knew the older man was enduring. It was pretty undeniable that he looked hot while he was suffering, though, more in spite of it than because of it, even from Kip’s point of view.
“I know, I’m sorry.” Kip responded, hand in the spray of the shower, checking the temperature. His fiancé had been returned to him a congested, crotchety mess, so he hadn’t hesitated to suggest a steam shower to try and clean him up and clear him out before they relaxed. Reportedly he’d held at 21 sneezes until setting foot in the arena- which was the important thing apparently- but that was as far as his luck had taken him.
The older man cleared his throat a few times with audibly limited success, and Kip was just turning around to face him to let him know that the shower was ready, when his breath scissored abruptly.
“hEhH…” His eyes fluttered back open and their gazes met, Scott’s face flickering into something sweet and loving for a moment in response to the younger man’s attentive expression before his eyes went distant again, “huEHh…”
Kip watched him try to hold on to the sensation, chasing the relief of release, but as the tension in his facial muscles shifted from involuntary to an intentional mimicry of the automatic expression, in a way that the younger man could definitely detect but probably not describe, the tickle seemed to wane.
“Did you lose it?” He asked, sympathetically.
Scott nodded, raising a hand to rub at his nose, and at the last second taking that gasping breath in again and clenching the hand into a fist in front of his lower face instead, “hyEHhoo!” He dropped his hand again, frowning in dissatisfaction. “I have no idea what the fuck that was.”
“Bless-” Kip started.
“Don’t.” His fiancé waved him off. “I don’t deserve it yet.”
The younger man raised his eyebrows, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Scott started to step out of his boxers, sniffling as he closed the distance between them. “Just that if you’re going to be stuck saying that all day, I’d rather not give you the extra work.”
“It’s not work, and I’m not stuck.” He stripped down too, following the taller man into the shower, “I say it because I love you, and I care.”
“Yeah, and because you think it’s hot.” Well…yeah, but more for the sentimental reasons.
Kip shook his head, laughing as he averted his eyes. His reaction made Scott laugh too, for all of two seconds before he was breaking off to cough roughly into his fist, the steam filling his irritated lungs. His fiancé sobered immediately, taking his waist and rubbing his thumbs soothingly up and down the older man’s sides, feeling his ribs contracting forcefully, and his torso quaking with the effort.
The fit lasted only a few seconds, but it sucked most of the fun out of the small room, and when he broke the quiet, Kip spoke softly, barely discernible over the rushing water, “Are you alright?”
“Yeah.” Scott matched his tone, voice raspy, eyes reverently traversing the younger man’s face, “Everything’s just so fucking itchy.”
“I bet.” He reached out for one of the washcloths on the towel rack just outside the shower. “You’re probably still covered in pollen. Let me help.”
His fiancé didn’t reply aloud, just closing his eyes and nodding, submitting to his care so he could preserve every ounce of energy for later. His hands drifted to the shorter man’s waist, anchoring them together.
Kip wetted the cloth in the spray, and then cupped Scott’s face with one hand, while he swiped slow, steady lines across it, working from bottom to top, outside-in, re-wetting the cloth every so often. He started along his jawline, then moved to his cheeks, his temples, his forehead, and then the area just below his eyes, and softly across his eyelids themselves, before venturing towards his nose.
The sides seemed like a less sensitive place to begin, so the younger man ran first up one side, over the bridge and down the other. Then he tackled the area just below his nose, carefully wetting and cleaning Scott’s moustache, pausing as his lip curled a little at the pressure, and then continuing. Then he hesitated. There was no way that this bit was going to go smoothly, right?
“I’m going to do the end of your nose now.” He warned, the words clunky and awkward in his dry mouth, flush rising on his cheeks as if he’d suddenly made the caring act perverted.
“Mmhm.” Scott only hummed in response, and then coughed, mouth still shut, as the vibration irritated his face.
“Okay.” Kip muttered, hesitantly moving in. He tried a firm touch, not wanting to contribute to the tickle, squishing his fiancé’s nostril with the cloth until it was amusingly almost closed, and then dragging across it. Nothing seemed to have happened there, so he moved across and tried the same thing on the other one. Again, there was no catastrophic response. He couldn’t fully tell if he was relieved or disappointed about that.
Confident that he’d managed not to make the older man feel worse with the sweet gesture, and had given him a few precious moments to relax while Kip took care of things for a bit, he smiled, shifting his grip on the cloth and then swiping it upwards along Scott’s septum. He’d used a little less force for that, because he knew the captain had broken his nose before, and didn’t want to cause him any pain by pressing too hard. This, however, turned out to be a mistake.
At first, he just sniffled, nose wrinkling up, and face twisting in response to the touch. Kip opened his mouth to apologise, but Scott, nostrils suddenly flaring, and eyes shooting open, beat him to break the stillness between them.
“hEIHSHh!” He turned his face towards the side that didn’t have his fiancé’s hand cradling it, spraying the glass, although the evidence was immediately washed away.
Clearly not done, Scott acted first again, pulling the shorter man into his chest, one hand pressing into his back to keep him close, the other coming up to loosely cup his nose and mouth.
“hHTSHoo! TSHhuh! heh…hH… TSCHh!”
Kip stared at the tiled wall, wide eyed. His arms had somehow ended up over his fiancé’s shoulders, so he’d awkwardly clasped them behind his neck, and now he was trying not to get so distracted by the naked torso shuddering against him that he would lose his balance and pull them both to the floor. Clearly Scott had thought this would be the most stable position to ride out the fit in, but maybe he hadn’t accounted for the shorter man being bowled over by lust. Because it was starting to feel like he might be.
“heHTDSh! TSHh! Ohmygod.”
As Scott let go of his back, his fiancé pulled away gingerly, looking up at the desperately sniffly man in front of him, who looked just seconds away from dissolving into another fit, and forcing himself not to lean back in for a kiss. “Bless you. I’m sorry, that was my fault.”
He shook his head emphatically in response. “N-hh-no I-ah-”
Kip pressed the washcloth into his hand, judging that he probably wouldn’t survive another bout pressed against him- not standing anyway- “Here.”
The taller man nodded his acknowledgement, turning away, towards the wall, shoulders hunching, and steepling his hands with the cloth over his nose. Please don’t accidentally waterboard yourself.
“hMPHh! hMPHh! hMPHShOo!” The sound was muffled, but still forceful, and Kip thought that he could probably still feel the force exploding into his hands through the barrier. He wasn’t sure if there was anything on the earth that could fully contain those expulsions when he really got going, and it was only worse when he was sick, so really they should both be grateful that this was just allergies.
“hrRSHHuh!”
“Bless you, bless you, bless you.” Kip took him by the shoulders, gently turning him back around to face him.
Scott didn’t look him in the eyes, ducking down further to blow aggressively into the cloth before he straightened fully again, and even then his posture sagged slightly, like he barely had the energy to stay upright. “Thangk you.”
“Okay, we’re going to finish up in here quickly, and then how about we lie down for a bit?” His heart ached with pity, and he tried not to let himself think about all the times that the older man had had to ride this out alone- and still indulged him over Facetime after the game…-his stomach twisted with guilt.
“That sounds good. ‘m fucking exhausted. Need to sleep a bit.”
Kip cupped his face again, leaning in slightly and waiting for him to close the distance. He did, kissing him gently between soft little pants for breath, and then the younger man pulled away. “You can sleep for as long as you want. I’ll wake you in time for us to leave.” If you’re feeling good enough to leave, that is. Because right now he looked like he should be anywhere but out on the ice, well, not anywhere, not like in the middle of a field full of cats and flowers and long grass, but definitely better in the hotel room than at the rink. Kip trusted him to know his limits, but he didn’t necessarily trust him to stick within them.
…
Scott unbuckled his seatbelt before Kip was even all the way into the parking spot, opening the glove compartment and pulling out a travel pack of tissues that he dragged the first two from and tented over his nose.
At his fiancé’s curious expression he explained, “I just want to- you know- get it all out before I have to go in there and act like it’s not bothering me.”
“Oh, okay, sure.” Kip responded, putting the car in park and pulling his phone out of his pocket like his full attention wasn’t focused on Scott. He didn’t have to pretend, but it was sweet of him to at least give Scott the illusion of privacy.
The older man blew forcefully, coughed a few times, leaned forwards in his seat to blow even more forcefully, and then cursed on a sharp inhale, before “hTDSH!”
“Bless you.”
“W-hh-ait- aHSCHhUh!”
“Bless you.”
Scott gave his nose one more blow for good measure, crumpled the tissues into one hand and sniffled as he straightened up. “Thanks.”
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay to play? I can’t imagine even having to walk around like that, let alone skate at full speed and score goals and be on camera for several hours.”
“Yeah.” He sniffed, frustrated to discover that his nose was starting to run again, and swiping at it with the tissue. “It’s always this bad before I get in there. Adrenaline and air conditioning kinda take care of it, though.”
Kip frowned sympathetically. “If you say so. I brought the meds with us so you can take them right after. You won’t have to wait until we get back to the hotel.”
“You’re an angel.” Scott leaned across the center console, staring into where his fiancé’s eyes probably were- both of them still wearing their sunglasses given the early hour- “Or at least a lifesaver.”
“Wow, demoted from heavenly being to a piece of candy.” The younger man laughed, but he closed the distance between them all the same, the two of them sharing a short kiss, before Scott tried to pull away to sniffle back the flow of what were probably redirected allergic tears, again. God, his whole face was one big fucking itch. People who thought allergies were just a slightly tickly nose were severely mistaken and also blissfully ignorant.
Tried was the key word there, as their sunglasses accidentally linked together- ironically by the nose-pads, and he yanked his fiancé’s pair off, and into the shorter man’s lap, with the movement, watching as his eyes squinted shut against the bright light, taken too much off guard to even move his hands from where they’d ended up- holding onto the lapels of Scott’s jacket, as he ducked forwards into the space between them.
“hTChhew! hhIHSHiew!”
“Fuck, sorry, bless you. God bless you.” The taller man fumbled the glasses back up onto Kip’s face, “Sorry.” The latter staying statue-still so he didn’t get his eye poked out.
Once he was safely protected from the mid-afternoon sunshine again- not exactly the most foreboding nemesis- his fiancé reassured him, “You’re all good, really I should be apologising, I don’t think I turned away like, at all.”
“It’s not your fault, you weren’t expecting it.” Scott shook his head dismissively, cupping the younger man’s face in his hand, “And I’m pretty sure neither of us mind that much.”
Kip blushed. “Get out of my fucking car Scott.”
He ran his fingers along his fiancé’s jawline until he held his chin. “Not until I make sure you’re alright.” Also it wasn’t his car. It was a rented car. But he wasn’t going to point that out and add insult to injury.
“Me alright? It was twice. You’ve been going at it all day. I think I can handle two without turning to dust.” He sniffled, fingers twitching in the taller man’s peripheral vision as he apparently tried not to touch his nose and refute his own point.
Scott decided not to pick him up on not actually voicing the word ‘sneeze’, although it was completely adorable that he couldn’t bring himself to say the ‘salacious’ word. “Yeah, please don’t turn to dust, that might be the end of me.”
The younger man laughed. “If I’m going to die like that then I’m taking you with me.”
“Yeah, till death do us part, for all of two minutes.”
“Wow, you think it would take two full minutes to die in a car filled with one whole human’s worth of dust?”
Scott snorted and shook his head. “Yeah, no, probably more like twenty seconds. Okay, I’ve gotta go in now, before they start thinking I’ve died of pollen exposure or something.” He sighed. “God, I fucking hate spring.”
He leaned in and kissed his fiancé again, noticing that the shorter man was holding his sunglasses on by one arm as they parted.
“See you afterwards.” The latter said with a smile, and another sniff that he’d clearly tried to delay until Scott was out of the car. “I love you.”
The older man opened the glove compartment again, grabbing another napkin and handing it pointedly to Kip as he opened the door with his other hand. “I love you too.”
…
Kip scrolled through his Instagram feed, trying to make the minutes until Scott would come out for warm-up go quicker. As he refreshed it for probably the fiftieth time, he saw that the Admirals’ page had posted a video of cut-together clips of the players walking in towards the locker room, captioned something that he hardly read about ‘game faces on’. Because the face that his fiancé was wearing was not his game face. It was his I’m-trying-really-really-hard-not-to-sneeze face.
The brunet watched the clip over and over, taking in the flaring nostrils, tensed jaw betraying gritted teeth, eyebrows raised in what probably looked to most people like an attentive expression as he he nodded towards the press, but to Kip was blatantly an attempt to keep his eyes from fluttering closed so he wouldn’t give in to the tickle.
He frowned, slightly anxious on his fiancé’s behalf, pulling up their message thread to check on him.
…
“huAHHSHh!-sorry.” He’d managed to muffle the preceding one into his jacket sleeve in the empty corridor, but his entrance into the locker room had occurred simultaneously with the latest sneeze and he’d looked up to see several people looking his way in mild alarm. It kind of had sounded like he’d just come in and yelled for no reason, so, valid reaction.
Thankfully it seemed like the only people in there were players, currently, no family members, or trainers, or press. The team had seen him succumb to whatever the fuck hated him so bad in North Carolina many times now, bar maybe the rookies, and were largely unruffled. He preferred not to get through his apparently mandatory pre-game respiratory system clean-out in front of people he knew less, people who might be overly concerned about his health, or anyone holding a camera or mic, though.
Scott headed for his stall, already squinting as the sensation grew back to a distracting presence in his face again. He braced himself against the shelf, palm planted squarely over his name plate, and raised his other fist to his face, “heHTSCHh! hTDSHh! hh… hyEHSHhoo!”
“Jeez, bless you.” Vaughn said from where he was visibly leaning away from the captain, sitting in his neighbouring stall, one hand raised to his ear dramatically as though Scott had just fired a gun at the same range.
“My bad. Thanks.” He sighed, shoving his bag out of the way and taking a seat, immediately reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose in the hopes that he could quell the itch and the sinus headache in one go. He made no significant impact on either of them.
Vaughn sat up straight again, eyeing the captain in commiseration. “All good. How many are you on now?”
It was definitely one of his more niche superstitions, but an oddly fun one for the team to monitor, apparently, and he had multiple memories of late spring roadies where every sneeze was followed by the corresponding count chorused in response by the rest of the bus, with excited exclamations every time he reached someone’s jersey number. “Fifty si-ihh hiEHTSHh! TSHhUh!”
“God bless.”
“Thanks.” He sniffled heavily. “Fifty eight.”
“Wow.” Carter whistled, impressed. “I wonder what the most I’ve ever gotten up to is.”
Scott almost snorted, and then thought better of it with the current state of his nasal passageways. “Like ten, maybe? Do you even have any allergies?”
“Nope.” He popped the ‘p’ proudly
The captain tried not to glare at him in jealousy, reminding himself what good fortune these allergies had turned out to be with his fiancé’s…tastes. “Well, count yourself lucky.” He fished a tissue from his bag, blew his nose forcefully, much to the winger’s unabashedly vocalised disdain, and started to get changed. He was halfway through lacing up his skates when the message came through,
Kip: [shared a post by @nyadmirals]
Kip: bless you, I’m assuming :/
Kip: how are you doing?
Scott clicked through to watch the clip and winced seeing his desperate expression. A quick scroll of the comments told him that, thankfully, no one other than his wonderfully discerning fiancé seemed to have noticed.
You: Thanks 👃 🫠
You: I’m better knowing that you’re here, but I definitely made a pretty dramatic entrance to the locker room…
Kip: oh?
Kip: maybe you’d like to re-enact it for me later ;)
You: Oh absolutely 😉 Not really sure I’ll have a choice in the matter though.
Kip: will it still be bad after you take the full strength stuff?
Kip: I don’t want you to suffer for my sake :(
You: It won’t be great. I’ll be comatose though, so I’ll wait to take it until afterwards. It’s basically a choice between 👃 and 💤.
Kip: I’m sorry :(
Kip: also stop sending me nose emojis you fucking tease. we have a whole game to get through.
You: I have a whole game to get through. You just have to sit and look pretty. Maybe we should even out the suffering.
You: 👃👃👃👃👃👃👃
Kip: turning my phone off.
Kip: good luck.
…
Scott had assumed that, after warm-ups, he’d be completely in the clear. He’d been inside, in filtered air, for a while by then, and his adrenaline was starting to pick up ahead of the game. Once he was in that headspace, there was no way he’d be able to get distracted by anything his immune system had to throw at him.
But he wasn’t quite in ‘game mode’ yet. Because he had to stand here, for almost two minutes, while they sung the anthem. Stick in one hand, helmet in the other, doing his best to only sniff or scrunch his nose when he wasn’t in danger of being on the jumbotron. Which was essentially never.
The captain dropped his gaze and stared at his skates, shifting from one foot to the other, biting his tongue behind closed lips, fighting against the tickle that had swelled in the brief moment of pre-puck-drop calm. They’re halfway through, come on, just hold it in.
His chest juddered involuntarily with a hitching breath, and Scott immediately raised his head expression neutral, lest it look like he was crying or laughing or something. He let himself glance around the arena, knowing where Kip was, that he was watching him, that he probably knew exactly how badly Scott had to sneeze right now, that it was definitely driving him crazy to watch…
He sniffed, the camera feed safely focused on a slow pan across the flag, and suddenly it all came apart. The tickle burst into a burning itch, like a pollen bomb had just detonated inside his nasal passageways, and as he was helplessly fumbling his helmet into his other hand so he could raise one to cover his face, eyes squinting shut, he caught a glimpse of a white jersey and what looked very much like the Empire State Building drifting across the jumbotron. Fuck, they were panning along the line again. He could only hope he’d seen wrong or it was the bench, or they switched the feed before he-
“aAHSCHh! heHTSHh!” Most of the noise was muffled by his glove, he couldn’t even hear it echo off the ice, and there was far too many other sounds currently happening to have drawn the attention of anyone beyond the players to each side of him. Visually, though- he glanced up at the screen, braced for what he knew he would see- himself, halfway through ducking back out of his glove. Oh great, so literally thousands of people had just watched him do that. He couldn’t wait to hear what that signified for his performance this season, and his career trajectory as a whole on every single sporting information source he encountered for the next two weeks.
A glance over at the benches showed him that players on both sides were smirking up at the screen, and even openly laughing as they glanced in his direction. Assholes. This did not mean anything for the game. The game was going to go perfectly.
…
“I looked like an idiot.” Scott lamented, hands planted on the bathroom counter on either side of the sink, as he stared into his own slightly puffy eyes in the mirror.
Kip, squeezing toothpaste onto his toothbrush for him, paused, “No you didn’t. They only really caught the second one on camera, and you had your face hidden anyway. It was cute.”
“I don’t want to look cute before a fucking game.” He frowned, “I want to look intimidating.”
The younger man held out the brush to him, watching as moving one of his supporting hands away to take it made him tilt dazedly to one side. Those were the allergy meds kicking in, making him sleepy and uncoordinated, hence the help he’d had to provide him in preparing to brush his teeth. “It doesn’t matter how you look if you play like that. And I think Carter lost more face than you anyway, he almost face-planted from laughter.”
Scott, already halfway through scrubbing uncoordinatedly at his molars, made eye contact with him in the mirror, speaking awkwardly around a mouthful of toothpaste. “But he was laughing at me. I made us both look sloppy.”
“Try and stop thinking about it.” Kip suggested. “I’m sure everyone else has. You scored, you won, you’re in a great position for the playoffs, no one cares about one little blip during the anthem.”
His fiancé wrinkled his nose bridge doubtfully, and then leaned forwards to spit into the sink. “I wish you were right, but I have a feeling I’m gonna be hearing about sickness and conditioning and the ‘beginning of the end’ until someone else starts to pick up retirement rumors. Bennett already sent me an article called, ‘Admirals’ 5-2 win in Raleigh nothing to sneeze at’.”
Kip fought against a laugh, Scott looking too dispirited to be amenable to having the humor of the situation pointed out to him, deciding to place a sympathetic hand on the taller man’s shoulder as he went back to attacking his teeth with depleted swipes of the brush, eyes drifting shut as he exhaustion became overwhelming.
Neither of them spoke until he was done, leaning forwards to spit again and then staring blankly at the faucet like it would turn itself on and rinse his brush automatically. In the absence of such magic, his fiancé stepped in, taking the toothbrush from his hand as Scott continued to brace himself over the basin, too tired to move away independently.
The younger man watched him in the mirror as he finished the task for him, eyes shut, breathing heavily through his mouth, pausing with the occasional sniffle. Suddenly, just as Kip flicked the faucet off again, his breath caught on the wake of a forceful sniff and he gave an irritated cough against the bicep further from his fiancé.
“Oh fuc-kTSHh!” He ducked towards his chest, trying not to spray the shorter man or the countertop beneath him, “hEHDjsh! The sound came out compressed from the crunched up angle, and his arms shook with the force
Kip set the toothbrush down, “Bles-”
“N-hh-no. huhTSHh!” He stumbled a step backwards, snapping towards his abdomen, fingers clawing at the countertop for purchase.
“You’re going to knock yourself over. Here.” The younger man guided him upright again, pulling him into an embrace, and gently steering his fiancé’s head towards his own shoulder. “There you go.”
Scott’s arms looped around his waist, already leaning heavily on him despite the word that he forced out, “S-sure?”
“I’m sure.” It was more of a ‘sure you understand what I’m going to do?’ than a ‘are you sure you want me to do it?’ and Kip was affirming both. Beyond the fact that his boyfriend dissolving in his arms was unthinkably sexy, he also wanted Scott to feel safe to be at his worst in front of him, they were getting married after all, and to understand that he’d bear the brunt of whatever Scott needed him to without complaint. He wanted him not to have to ask at all, but he knew that the confirmation only being a single word was kind of a miracle in the first place, and he’d already earned so much of the older man’s trust.
“hheHSHh! TSCHh! hyETDSHh! hhH… hTSHh! TsH-TDSHH! huEHSHh!-” It was definitely a longer fit than Kip figured either of them had been expecting, and he found his mind occupied more with keeping both of them balanced, predicting when Scott was about to pitch forwards so he could shift his weight accordingly, and running a soothing hand up and down his back, than with the lewd side of things. “-hyEISHhoo!” He finished, at last.
“Bless you.” Kip said, fixing his fiancé with concerned eyes as he pulled back.
“Thank you. Fucking toothpaste set me off.” He sniffled, “God, it’s always something.”
The shorter man pouted sympathetically, retrieving some toilet paper from the roll and offering it to him. He seemed like he’d already well and truly cleared out any irritants there, but it had left him sniffly, and maybe blowing would make it a little easier to breathe?
Scott, barely paying attention, took it and made towards him, swiping once at the fabric of the hoodie he’d just buried his face in, before Kip pushed him back.
“Not for here.” He pointed at his shoulder. “For here.” He pointed at his fiancé’s nose.
“Right.” The older man blinked slowly. “I think those meds might be kicking in.”
…
He sat on the closed lid of the toilet, staring broodily into space as Kip brushed his own teeth, free hand carding through his fiancé’s hair. They drifted towards the bed after that, though Scott redirected back to the bathroom before he’d even sat down to blow his nose again.
The younger man settled himself sitting back against the headboard, legs stretched out, skimming through his messages to figure out their plans for the next day. They had a little while before the next game, and were spending several days in Raleigh, which was the reason he’d come along in the first place, the slightly relaxed pace was contrary to what was often typical for these roadtrips, and the opportunity to see his boyfriend in the full clutches of spring allergies without the stress of a game… he had a feeling they wouldn’t be leaving the hotel room all too much.
Several squeaky, unproductive sounding noseblows later, Scott joined him, sitting down beside his fiancé and dropping his head to rest on his shoulder. Kip tilted his head to rest on top, privately wondering if he’d noticed the dampness still clinging to the fabric from the fit earlier, since it was the same shoulder. If he had he didn’t seem to show any sign of it, sighing softly and vocally as he fully relaxed.
Kip continued to scroll through his phone, unsure whether the older man was paying attention or if he was already drifting off to sleep. He definitely wasn’t fully asleep though, as he proved seconds later,
“hTDSHh!” Legs jerking with the redirected force as he tried to keep his head on the shorter man’s shoulder.
“Bless you.” Kip, having felt their heads hit softly together as he jolted, rethought the position, pressing a kiss into his messy curls before moving away a little.
“Yeah, b- hEHTDSHhOo! Whoo!” This one threw him fully forward, and his fiancé couldn’t help but think it probably would have been three or so smaller sneezes if the medication wasn’t starting to keep them at bay-and keep him from having any real control over them, it seemed.
“Bless you.”
“Bless me.” Scott echoed with a breathy, distant, laugh. He leaned back, head already dropping towards Kip’s shoulder again, but he missed, thunking against his chest instead, and, too tired to redirect his course, he slid down him until his head was in his lap, shifting his body so he was laying perpendicular to his fiancé, blinking up at him.
“Comfy?” Kip smiled, amused.
“So fucking comfy.”
The younger man extricated his phone from under his fiancé’s shoulder, and watched as his eyes started to drift closed. His breathing slowed and deepened, and he seemed moments from drifting off to sleep when his nose wrinkled, and he raised a faltering hand to rub at it.
Kip watched him scrub at one nostril, and then the other, and back to the first, and then his breath was switching to a different, faster, rhythm, and he was tugging up the collar of his shirt over his nose and mouth.
“hTCHuh!” Scott did half a sit-up. “hyehSHh!” He let the shirt drop back down, and started to relax again.
“Bless you. It’s taking a while to let up, huh?”
“Thanks.” He responded, and then frowned suddenly and deeply, after a moment shutting his eyes and scrunching his face up as if enduring some great pain or pressure. And then his expression was peaceful again.
Kip pressed a grounding hand to his fiancé’s chest. “What’s wrong?”
“Forgot the number for a second.” He responded, tone that of someone who’d just narrowly avoided making a fatal mistake.
“The number?”
“I wanna keep count.” Scott said, seriously, though he addressed the statement more to Kip’s pecs than his face. He was still counting them?
“Why? You’re way over twenty-one. You can relax now.” The younger man smoothed his hair back, supporting the verbal encouragement with a physical one, and watching as his fiancé’s eyes drifted shut, momentarily giving in.
“What if I hit one hundred and twenty-one though? That could be like…” He opened his eyes again, frowning as he tried to concentrate on what that number could portend, “double good luck.”
“Or it could be a visit to the medic to get sedated because one hundred and twenty-one in twenty-four hours is a lot.” Kip pointed out. “What do you need double good luck for anyway? The game’s over. You won.”
“Maybe a hundred twen’y one-” He was slurring his words now, “m’ns g’d luck f’r the whole r’st ’f th’ season!”
The younger man looked doubtful, not that Scott was watching him, because he wasn’t, he actually looked about 85% asleep. “Maybe. I don’t think you need it though. I mean, you’ve got me. Aren’t I enough luck for you?”
“Y’re-” His fiancé poked him in the chest, eyes still shut, and then suddenly gasped, turning his head away from Kip’s body, “hTDSHh! Eighty-si-ihh-x. huAHSHhOo! Eighty-s’v’n.”
“Bless you times eighty-seven.”
“Th’nks. Y’re more th’n ‘nough, ‘kay? For ev’ryth’ng.”
Kip laughed softly, “As sweet as that is, I don’t think I’m enough of a pillow so-”
“You aree.” Scott interrupted, pressing his face into the younger man’s abdomen in an attempt to convince him not to move.
“Not enough for you to wake up without hurting all over, and then even two hundred and twenty-one… sneezes won’t save your game, okay? So-” He patted the taller man’s hip. “Let’s lie down properly, and then you can sleep.”
Scott groaned, but pushed himself up enough that Kip could slip out from underneath him and they could both shift over to their pillows. Kip glanced over at him, arm outstretched to turn off the lights with the switch by the bed, and saw that he was smiling- or his best approximation of a smile under the heavy influence of the medication.
“What?”
“You would f’cking love two hundr’d twen’y ‘ne sneezes. Th’ts your dream.”
Kip, floored by the completely accurate accusation, flushed. “The only dreams you should be thinking about right now are the ones you’re going to have when your head hits that pillow, okay? I can’t believe you’re this out of it and still trying to rile me up.” It was actually fucking adorable that he wouldn’t let himself go to sleep without getting in one last little teasing comment, but if he let Scott know that, he wasn’t sure that either of them would ever get to sleep.
“Mmokay.” Scott’s head hit the pillow with a thump, and he sighed, eyes drifting shut and face slackening as he gave in to the medication and exercise induced exhaustion.
The younger man flicked the lights off, and laid down opposite him, about to close his own eyes, when his fiance muttered, with surprisingly lucid determination, “One day imma g’ve you two hundr’d f’ck’n sn’zes.”
Kip laughed, reaching out blindly to find his hand and squeeze it gently. This prompted one last elaboration from Scott, “M’ybe f’r your b’rthd’y.”
hi anon! I have previously, but it’s not snz stuff, or h/eated r/ivalry or anything like what I mainly do here. I probably won’t be reposting across there either, just because I want to keep these things on separate accounts, and I know that sometimes the response to kinkfic in the wild is a little… negative?
Three Times the Centaurs Tried to Care for Their Captain, and the First Time they Succeeded
+ One: On Final Approach
part one, part two, part three
ta-da! the final part of this cute lil series. I definitely heard ppl say less angst, and then I definitely did not listen, so I am sorry for that. I'll have some cute fluffy s/kip out next tho, I promise.
I hope you enjoy! ♡
fandom: h/eated r/ivalry
word count: 7.5k
cw: sneezing, mess, general illness, negative self-talk, blood
Sometimes, Ilya found that he just couldn’t stop making bad decisions. Maybe there was a word for it, ‘self-sabotage’ or something, but he never noticed it early enough to name it before one bad decision had led to another, and another, and another. Which was what had happened that week. And after being hit in the face by consequence after consequence after consequence, he didn’t really have the energy to try and fix anything by himself anymore. And who was going to fix it for him? No one.
The blond sat in his car, staring blankly at the dashboard, fingertips just barely clinging to the bottom of the wheel. He’d been there for five minutes already, engine off, but unable to muster the desire to get out. Maybe if he just sat there, zoned out, hardly moving, barely breathing, time wouldn’t move at all, and he would never have to go out and face his own inadequac-
His next shallow breath caught on something, and suddenly he was jerking forward, so suddenly that he almost hit his face on the steering wheel, coughing phlegmily from deep in his chest. Each cough tore at his throat, strained at his already almost empty lungs, and made his head throb with pressure. Each tiny, crackly inhale in-between only served to move the congestion around his chest, very little air actually getting in. Static started to dance in front of his eyes.
Ilya pounded on his chest, squeezing his eyes shut, visualising the mucus breaking up as if that would make a difference. Or maybe he’d just die in his car in the parking lot? Jesus fucking-
Finally afforded some oxygen, he tipped his head all the way back, sucking in a deep, grateful breath, and blowing it back out shakily. He shuddered involuntarily, feeling the malaise creep back in as the adrenaline of fighting for his life ebbed away. He was only able to stand the initially restorative position for a few more seconds before his neck started to ache and he began to feel lightheaded, forced to lean forwards again just to keep himself conscious.
He’d intended to take one more deep breath and just brave the stupid freezing cold Ottawa weather, but the change in position also changed the lay of the land in his sinuses- congestion wise- and he found himself gasping in a desperate breath,
“hKk! Kkh! hKk! hKsh!-” The tickle was momentarily overwhelmed by irritation in his lungs and he coughed roughly a few times to settle that before his breath caught again, restarting the fit where he’d left off, “hKSHh! Kshuh! hAHKSHh! huh… huhAHKXSh! huAHSHHhOo!”
Having ducked all the way forwards, aiming towards his own chest, the blond sat up slowly, breathing jaggedly. He smacked at the visor to flip it down and stared at his reflection in the mirror. Tears were streaming down his cheeks, mucus was pooling in his cupid’s bow, and his forehead shone with sweat. Overall, he looked a fucking mess.
Ilya let his gaze rove over his destroyed countenance for a masochistically long time, taking in what he’d done to himself in its full, thoughtless, disgusting glory. What the hell had happened to him?
Realistically, he knew exactly what had happened to him, and it was literally entirely his own fault. Several days before, he and Shane had had a fight about something that Ilya had said. He’d kind of known that it wasn’t the right thing to say at the time, but he’d been tired, coming off back to back losses, and knowing the opposite was true for the Canadian, and maybe his jealousy had come out sounding like criticism. And then he hadn’t clarified, or apologised. They hadn’t really talked at all, actually.
Ilya had vented his feelings- or punished himself, depending on how you looked at it- with a 18-mile run, the last 6 miles of which had been in a torrential downpour- why the fuck did people choose to run outside anyway?- and then lain on his kitchen floor and sobbed in wordless self-hatred until he felt empty enough to strip down and stand and sip at a glass of vodka while staring into space before falling into bed and sleeping through to the next morning. Coping was one of the many things that he was not excellent at.
And when he’d realised, two days later, that he was getting sick, he hadn’t thought, like a normal person, ‘Might be time to slow down a bit, take care of this before it takes care of me’. No, he’d wondered if being scratched, or maybe even hospitalised, would be a good way of getting Shane’s attention, and maybe, just maybe, the brunet would make the drive over to see him, sit by his bedside, and forgive him. And then, of course, by the time he’d come to his senses and realised that that was a horrible, selfish idea, and the team would never survive without him, he’d been- he’d been halfway to the arena, actually. Keeping yourself sleep-deprived, overworked, and/or slightly tipsy at all times was an excellent way to impair your critical thinking skills.
The blond coughed again as he scrubbed his face dry with a napkin that he was currently pretending he had put into the glove compartment- or maybe they had just magically appeared in there on their own- and forced himself to take several deep breaths. Glancing back in the mirror, he saw that he’d managed to repair most of the damage, a slight flush still visible on his nose and cheeks, but that could easily be attributed to the bitterly cold wind. Speaking of which- Ilya opened the car door slightly, just enough to let the outside air in.
He knew it would take him a few seconds to acclimate, and he’d much rather do that at least mostly out of sight than standing in the middle of the car park where anyone could see him.
The cold air burned his nose, his throat, his lungs, made goosepimples break out all up his exposed forearms, but also cooled the raging hot fire sitting somewhere below his ribcage. He was pretty sure he’d already sweated through his shirt- it was the main reason he wasn’t wearing his jacket yet, actually- and the reminder that he wouldn’t feel this hot forever was an extremely welcome one. Okay- he told himself as he sniffled against the drip that was starting in response to the temperature change- you got yourself into this mess, you get yourself through it. You’re going to play, you’re going to give a good speech and a mediocre interview, you’re going to go in there and be the fucking captain, okay?
His response to himself was, predictably, a fit of desperate, damp little sneezes that he caught half of in his hand, “hKk! Kk! hKsh! hKSH! KShh! KSHHuh!-” and half of in another ‘magical gift from the universe’ napkin that he hastily retrieved at the first sign that his palm wouldn’t be able to contain the expulsions, “hKSHH! KXSChH! hiHKSHh! hrRSHh! huhRSHHuH! hSHHOo!”
Trying not to let himself wallow in the discomfort too much- concerned that he might not end up going in at all- the Russian blew his nose forcefully, coughed with his eyes squeezed shut against the pain, dropped the napkin in the footwell- fuck it-, snagged his jacket and phone and stepped out of the car.
He greeted the Canadian climate with a muttered curse word and a scowl that was undermined by his watering eyes, courtesy of the wind, and started towards the arena. His calves were sore, just enough to make him second guess every step, the result of overworking at the gym that morning- which he knew better than to do before a game- but he was frustrated by how quickly the pain melted away as he walked. Now there was nothing to ground him, keep him out of his head.
Ilya blanked the press as he walked by them on his way to the locker room, thankful for the years he’d spent maintaining that severe, intense reputation, knowing that his attitude today would go unnoticed. Maybe everything about him that day would go unnoticed, he wasn’t exactly feeling positive about his anticipated performance.
…
The energy in the locker room had been off since he’d entered, Ilya just hadn’t really been able to figure out why. The team seemed wired, but not just with excitement, it was like- it was like there was some rumor going around that he wasn’t privy to. The captain frowned, trying to tune in to the closest conversation from where he sat in his stall, halfway dressed.
“It’s kind of rude, right?”
“I’ll say. Were they this badly organised under Roz?”
“What?” The blond instinctively responded at the sound of his name, and the players who’d been conversing to his left, turned to look at him.
“Just saying, cap, were Boston this late when you ran things?” Oh fuck, that was right. They were playing fucking Boston.
“What do you mean?” He asked, frowning.
“Did you not hear?” Hayes smiled widely at him, delighted to be the one to impart the news. “They’re not here yet.”
Ilya glanced down at his phone. “How the fuck are they not here? Game starts in like two hours. They should not have left after morning skate.”
Boodram snorted. “No, man. They weren’t here for that either. They’re not in the province yet.”
“What?” The Russian wondered how the fuck everyone else seemed to know this except him, when he was the one who’d used to play for the opposing team. “Where are they?”
Bood shrugged and pointed skywards. “Up there, I guess. Their flight was crazy delayed. This weather’s no joke.”
“Fuck.” Ilya sat back in his stall, trying to adjust to the new possibilities of a delay, a significantly less fearsome opponent for this game, or even no game at all. He had been dreading facing his old teammates like… this, but he’d also kind of been hoping to get some words in with Marly, knowing a conversation with his old linemate would probably make him feel better. But it had to be a chance encounter on the ice, he couldn’t just reach out to him. That would be fucking pathetic, and also pretty useless since the older man was usually across the border and out of helping distance anyway.
Ten minutes later, Coach Wiebe entered the locker room, the look on his face silencing the various conversations and the slightly questionable background music, the pick of one of the rookies -who’d apparently taken a DJ apprenticeship under Dykstra- within seconds.
“Alright, sorry to have made you all come out here for nothing, but the storm hasn’t moved off like we’d hoped, so the team’s plane has been redirected, and there’s just no way they’ll be here, and set up in time. So, no game tonight. Really sorry guys. I’ll let you know as soon as there’s any news about rescheduling.”
Ilya tried to remind himself that he hadn’t actually been looking forward to the game anyway, so there was no reason for him to feel crushed by its cancellation. This did nothing to help. Since pushing his body to- and probably slightly past- its limits that morning, he’d been slowly feeling that restless tension building back up, expecting to unload it on the ice. But now, he couldn’t. And he couldn’t vent at Marleau, and he couldn’t go home and Facetime Shane, and-
Chest tightening dangerously, the captain fumbled in his bag for his phone, headphones, water bottle- the final object taking just slightly too long to find- fuck it-and stalking out of the locker room. He took the hallways of the arena at a jog, praying no one had, or would have, the same idea as him. These guys weren’t exactly hardcore about conditioning in the same way that he was, though, having found their training and playing rhythms, and not too bothered by a slight disruption to it.
Mercifully, he found the gym to be empty, and immediately made his way to a treadmill- as if he could outrun his mind and his body at once- the thought only making the claustrophobic sensation pressing down on him, infinitely stronger. He was hitting the button to up the speed before he’d even put his headphones on, and struggled to navigate through his phone to find the most strident, distracting, adrenaline-stirring playlist possible. ‘Что, срываешься?’ seemed to be calling to him.
The feeling of his already aching muscles fighting to keep him moving fast enough not to trip, the rush of adrenaline that hit perfectly in time with the first beat drop, and the burn in his lungs as he fell into an oxygen deficit, were exactly what he needed. He felt gratified by the pain, numbed against the bitter emotions that had been lingering for days by endorphins flooding his system, and the music and almost unachievable pace served to completely shut out his thoughts. It wasn’t quite as medicinal as an actual game, but it was certainly making a dent.
He ran until he felt like he was actually about to die, hardly able to suck in breath anymore, passively acknowledging the black spots showing up in his vision but not stopping or slowing down until he stumbled, and felt his heart rate- already high from the exertion- spike sharply as he almost fell face first onto the rapidly moving belt. The interruption to his rhythm threw everything off, and suddenly he could hardly keep his feet hitting the right spots, almost stepping off entirely as he smacked the ‘cooldown’ button and felt the pace start to decrease.
Ilya kept his hands on the handrails and his eyes shut until the machine came to a stop. He was breathing heavily, and completely disorientated between the music blaring in his ears and the impaired vision. He removed his headphones, wincing at the sound of his breath rasping loudly in the otherwise silent room, and stumbling off to kneel on the floor. He couldn’t tell if everything was actually spinning around him or if he was swaying back and forth. It was making him feel even more dizzy and nauseated, though, but every time he shut his eyes, he felt as though he were falling into a void of nothingness, so he kept them uncomfortably open. He wasn’t about to let himself pass out and be found unconscious on the floor of the gym by the arena’s security team or something.
Breathing deeply was painful, so he kept his breaths shallow for a bit, just until he felt a little less like triggering a coughing fit would make him throw up. The captain had no idea how much time passed before he felt like he could get up and stagger across to grab a towel, wiping the copious sweat from his face and neck, and then collapsing back to his knees and coughing into it. He coughed until the burn in his lungs came back, until he felt the phlegm build into what felt like a baseball sized lump in his throat, until he tasted the coppery tang of blood so strongly that he felt his teeth must be flecked with red.
Only then could he muster the energy to swallow, to sit up relatively straight, blink at himself in the mirror across the room, “Ya seychas, blyad’, umru.”
…
The look the captain had sent Wyatt as he’d limped back through the door of the locker room had been somewhere between extreme disdain and blind panic. Clearly he hadn’t expected anyone to still be hanging around, but a few of them had, talking over the idea of going out for a meal, maybe even drinks. And startling Roz, apparently.
Rozanov had made his way to his stall and was sitting there, staring at the floor, the only one still in any of his gear- a compression shirt and his entire bottom half, bar skates and pads- seemingly totally soaked in sweat. The Russian had yet to say anything, or even look at anyone, something that had not gone unnoticed, Wyatt throwing several looks in Dykstra and Bood’s directions, silently communicating his intrigue.
Not yet having been added to the Centaurs’ telepathic group-chat, Barrett continued with the conversation as though the captain’s silent entrance wasn’t a cause for alarm. He was mid-joke about Boston’s defensive line, and metaphorically tossed the mic to the blond, “-right, Rozanov?”
The Russian didn’t respond, gaze still firmly fixed on the floor as if he were making sure it wasn’t about to run away from underneath them all. Unease started to awaken in the goaltender, the behaviour uncharacteristic even for the frequently distant and brooding captain. Something wasn’t right here. It wasn’t even like Rozanov to stick around after a sudden freeing-up of the schedule like this anyway, now that he thought of it. So why was he still here? Did he even know where he was? The look on his face said possibly not.
The silence seemed to throw Barrett somewhat too, a flicker of self-doubt crossing his face before he opted to double down. “Wow, Roz missing a chance to chirp his ex-teammates, what’re you dying or something?” Wyatt watched in what felt like slow motion as Troy’s palm moved towards the captain’s forehead and… made contact? He hadn’t expected him to get that far.
“Fuck,” The winger looked thrown. “You’re… burning up.” Suddenly all the bravado evaporated at once, and Wyatt could sense the question that was about to be asked. Apparently so could Boodram, who swooped in and pulled his linemate away.
“Barrett, I think I heard Harris say something about wanting replacement content to make up for no game, you should probably-” Bood was already at the door, steering the shorter man carefully out of it, “-go check in with him, see what he needs from us.”
Troy, to his credit, had also apparently sensed that something was wrong, eyes wide and apprehensive as he backed up into the hall with no protest, like he instinctively knew to get the hell out of there. Someone should probably update him on the whole ‘Captain doesn’t act like a normal guy when he’s sick’ thing.
The others all stood, too, making pointed eye contact with each other as they strolled not-so-casually en masse towards the door. The question on everyone’s minds ‘Who’s going to be the first to poke the tiger?’ went temporarily unanswered as they all exited together, Rozanov not even looking up as the room emptied out.
…
Dykstra was the first to make his way back in, after a brief but intense conversation in the hallway, which Chouinard had accidentally almost exposed halfway through by leaning on the locker room door, just enough to crack it back open. The sound of the captain coughing violently, muffled by some kind of fabric, had made it through the gap, alerting them to the security breach.
“He sounds like you, D.” Bood had muttered with a wince, as the doors were hastily tugged shut again.
Before Dykstra could protest that he wasn’t the only man on planet Earth to get bad coughs with his colds, Hayes’ eyes had alighted on him meaningfully, and so now here he was, slipping through the doors with an energy that he hoped was nonchalant but was probably more like a kid pretending to be a spy, theme music playing in his head and all.
Rozanov was still struggling to breathe without choking on his own lungs- he sounded like he’d been sick for a while, why the hell had he showed up in the first place? If he was gonna sit in the fucking press box he should have a) mentioned it, and b) not gotten changed, right?- so he strolled coolly on past to his own stall and fished through his bag for the reason he’d been sent in.
Waiting patiently for the Russian to finish the aggressive sounding fit, Evan watched him out of the corner of his eye, watched his shoulder blades judder and his hands shake trying to keep the towel pressed to his mouth. It was a tough listen, the Canadian’s own lungs aching in sympathy as he mentally rooted for the blond to win the battle with his breath.
Eventually, Rozanov surfaced, just barely lifting his face away from the material, and breathing shallowly. Evan took slow steps towards him, letting him process his presence and his approach, so as not to startle him or piss him off, and also not wanting to seem like he was rushing over, just casually sidling up.
“Here ya go.” He held out the tube of throat sweets like the captain had asked for them, no fuss, no sympathy, no judgement. It was sort of a wordless question now, like they were presenting their assumption- ‘You’re sick, right?’, and if he took it, it was a good sign that he was, and that he’d be kind of amenable to help. Evan was the sacrifice that Hayes sent in to check they were all good to move on to further stages of help. He didn’t mind, though, he’d rather it was him getting his head bitten off than anyone who needed to cooperate with Roz for actual game reasons, like Boodram or Barrett. The Russian could stay pissed at him for a week, no problem.
Rozanov took the offering without looking up, and, to Dykstra’s surprise as he started to walk away, opened it immediately, and put one in his mouth. His throat must be fucking killing him if he’s willing to do that in front of someone.
Evan messed around with his bag for another few seconds, waiting to see if the captain would say anything. When he didn’t, the defenseman figured his part was done, and strolled back in the direction of the door, eyes flicking in the blond’s direction as he passed. What he glimpsed almost made him stop dead in his tracks, but he forced himself to keep a neutral face and keep walking.
Up close, Roz’s face was ashen, so pale it bordered on a blueish gray, but with a red flush across his cheeks and up the bridge of his nose like he’d been sunburnt. He was glistening with sweat as well, visible beads on his face and drips falling from his chin. His eyes were slightly sunken, though it was almost masked by the swelling around them, and his nostrils and upper lip were rubbed red raw, probably from the towel. The towel itself, though, was what had struck a flicker of panic into Dykstra. Because the visibly sweat- and saliva-soaked towel that Rozanov clutched in one hand, was flecked with tiny spots of bright red blood.
…
Wyatt wasn’t particularly bothered about being casual, entering and grabbing his bag from his stall before moving to sit in the one next to the captain’s and dropping it on the floor. They both knew why he was here, it was pointless to keep up the charade, especially if something really serious was going on.
“Where are you heading after this, then?” He asked casually. Because from what Dykstra had said, it sounded like the answer should be ‘the hospital’.
Rozanov didn’t respond, towel now balled up in one hand, so the goaltender couldn’t confirm the blood that Dykstra had glimpsed. He was leaning forwards, too, blinking slowly at his own feet as if they were the only thing keeping him grounded- which technically they kind of were, that’s how feet worke- Wyatt shook his head, trying to lock into caretaking mode, the energy he’d built up in advance of the game keeping his mind whirring away unhelpfully. He needed to take things slow, not spook the captain. He had a feeling that this was an important one, and if he failed, there might not be anyone else to help him out.
They sat in silence for a few seconds, Wyatt mentally perfecting his next attempt to get some kind of information out of the Russian, when the latter sniffled abruptly. It brought the goaltender out of his head, because up until then, he’d kind of just been letting intermittent drips fall from his nose and soak into his shorts-clad thigh- not a particularly attractive sight, but a sign of how bad he was feeling, maybe- why the change? Was he pulling himself together to acknowledge the goalie’s presence? Was he about to say something?
Instead, the captain let out a rapid burst of coughs, curling in on himself. Wyatt remained hopeful that this was the prelude to some kind of speech, raising his eyebrows expectantly as Rozanov took a deep, preparatory breath in.
“hKk! Kk! hKk!-” Nope, just more coughing.
“-KSHh!-” Ah, not coughing, sneezing. Those first ones were deceptively close to coughs, so it was an easy mistake to make. Also, there was the fact that he’d made absolutely no effort to cover his face, seemingly far too focused on gripping the bench, and tensing every muscle in his body in an attempt not to fall off of it.
“-hKSHh! KSHhuh! KXSHh! hUhSHH! huAHSHH! hhH…” He swayed, dizzily, “hAHSCHHuh!”
“Bless you.” He fought to keep the concern out of his tone, and off of his face. But it didn’t really seem like Rozanov cared, because there was no sharp discerning look shot his way, no verbal admonishment for acknowledging the sneezes, no response at all, really. Was he too sick to protest- because that would mean some kind of ambulance, Wyatt was pretty sure- or was there something else going on?
Hoping to replicate Dykstra’s success, the goalie reached into his bag, tugging out a travel pack of tissues, and removing one to hand across to the captain. Roz took it, apparently on instinct, still white-knuckling the bench with his other hand. The towel had fallen to the floor in the chaos of the fit, Wyatt squinting in its direction to discern whether it was only sweat soaking the fabric. No, he could definitely see a few flecks of red on there. That was concerning enough that he ached to be able to message Lisa, get some kind of estimate of just how bad of a sign it was.
“Do y-”
Roz interrupted him with a sharp gasp, “hKk! Kk! hKk!-” Okay, fine, so this wasn’t going to be a conversation. At least he didn’t seem to be trying to hide his symptoms though, although that might be more a sign of flat-out exhaustion than trust.
“-hkSH! KSH! hUAHKSHhUh!” Apparently having winded himself with the force of that one, Rozanov sucked in a desperate breath, tilting forwards like he was about to fall off the bench entirely, eyes distant like his vision had cut out. Not good. He couldn’t just sit there and watch that.
Wyatt lunged across, catching the captain around the chest with one arm, other one dragging the Russian back upright by the back of his shirt like he was a puppy.
“-hMPHh! MPHH!-” Apparently just lucid enough to note the Canadian’s increased proximity, Rozanov made an uncoordinated attempt to press the tissue he’d been given to his face, upper body juddering in the goalie’s grip.
Once he’d gotten him stable enough to be held up with one arm, Wyatt switched to gently patting him on the back with his free hand, encouraging him to submit to the fit, although the Russian didn’t really seem capable of doing anything else. “hRSHHh! KSHh! hHRSHH! rRSHHHuh! hihh… huhH… huHRRSHhUh!”
“God bless you, Roz.” Wyatt frowned over his shoulder, where the captain couldn’t see him, unable to stop himself from breathing out a soft, “Fuck.”
Rozanov didn’t respond again, his breathing shaky and purposeful, like he was trying to steady himself, but he made no move to push the goalie away. After a few moments his breath started to waver again, and Wyatt braced himself for another fit. He really should have given the captain the whole pack of tissues, but would he even have been able to get one out by himself? Right now the typically invincible player was a trembling mess in his arms, so it was really anybody’s guess.
But another fit didn’t come, and after a few seconds of wondering if he was going to hitch himself unconscious, Wyatt realised. Oh no. No. No, he’s fucking crying.
“Captain?” He tendered.
This only seemed to make the Russian cry harder, jagged breaths intercut with quiet moaning noises as he tried and failed to pull himself together.
“Listen, I don’t think-” He persisted over the noise of his teammate completely falling apart in his arms. “-you should drive yourself home. Or drive at all, uh, or go home actually.”
The more he spoke, the quieter Rozanov became, as though the sound of the goalie’s voice was relaxing him, or captivating him, or something. “I think you should come over to mine, Roz. I got a spare room and- you know, it’s not a big deal- but it’ll be just us, and if you n- want anything I can grab it for you- or if you wanna be alone you can just-”
“Okay.”
The word startled him slightly, thick and gravelly and so accented that Wyatt wasn’t totally sure he hadn’t just said something that sounded like ‘okay’ in Russian.
“Yeah?” He asked, incredulous that the offer had been accepted so easily.
“Yeah.” Roz muttered, sniffling and shifting his weight so he was sitting up on his own.
Wyatt pulled back, looking him over briefly before digging back into his bag for that travel pack of tissues, and handing the entire thing over. The captain took it, leaning against the side of his stall, tears still intermittently dripping down his face, eyes shut, looking the picture of exhaustion. Poor kid. How he’d lasted this long on his own was absolutely beyond Wyatt.
“I’ll be right back, alright?” He stood, walking slowly to the door, as though he didn’t feel like sprinting and jumping and punching the air in victory. Holy hell, had they actually managed it?
…
The rest of the players who were hanging out in the hallway had been updated by an ecstatic Wyatt, who felt almost like he’d just made some kind of scientific breakthrough, and then he’d orchestrated their individual entrances back into the locker room to grab their stuff and leave until it was only his stuff and Rozanov’s in there. And Barrett’s, actually. Where had the winger wandered off to? He’d seemed a little freaked out by the sudden evacuation of the locker room, hopefully he hadn’t abandoned his stuff entirely and run for the hills.
Dykstra, last out, clapped Wyatt on the shoulder, “Good work and good luck, bud. If you need anything…”
“Thanks, man.” The blond nodded, waiting until the defenseman was at least halfway down the corridor before heading back in himself.
Rozanov had his elbows on his thighs, both hands wrapped around his water bottle, head dipped and eyes shut. He was stiller than Wyatt had really ever seen him before, like the slightest movement would make him collapse to the floor in a pile of sand.
“Good to go?” The goaltender asked, starting to zip his own bag and glance over his stall for anything he might have left.
“Yeah.” The captain replied, still not moving. You don’t look it, bud, but alright.
“Alright, I’ll grab your bag- just cause I can.” Finding ways to explain his sympathetic gestures casually was actually kind of hard.
He re-zipped the bag, swung it onto his shoulder and stared at Rozanov. What if he couldn’t walk? Maybe he should take the bags to the car and come back for him?
Before he could think of a way to explain that idea though, the center was grunting and rolling his shoulders back and pushing himself up to stand. Wyatt watched, poised to spring forwards and catch him if he started to slump towards the floor, but after a few seconds of squinting into the middle distance with one eye shut, Roz blinked, and started to walk towards the door.
It had taken a while to make it to the exit, and Wyatt’s shoulders ached from carrying both of the heavy bags, but it seemed like every single part of Roz ached ten times worse, so he wasn’t going to complain. The goalie held the door for his captain as the latter limped slowly out into the late afternoon sunlight
Wyatt had no sooner joined him than the Russian was stumbling to one side, arm outstretched to find and brace himself against the wall of the building, other hand raised to cover his face,
The violent expulsions dragged him forwards, fingers clawing at the brickwork to keep himself upright as his other hand fought a losing battle against bursts of spray that glowed golden in the setting sunlight.
“Bless you.”
The Russian straightened silently, though a shudder ran through him when he reached his full height. The reality of the situation hit Wyatt in the face at a hundred miles an hour. He’d taken the guy outside in just his fucking base layers, and they were soaked in sweat. It literally had to be minus 5 degrees out here, maximum, and here he was, in his nice wool coat, watching the captain shiver and sniffle and sneeze because he was dripping wet and barely clothed. What was he trying to kill the guy?
Wyatt dropped the bags carefully on the floor, and started to shrug out of his coat, holding it out to Rozanov the second he had it in one hand.
“Here. It’s fucking fr- I mean, I’m boiling, dude. You should wear this.”
…
Ilya stared blearily at the item being held out to him. He was pretty sure it was the violent sneezing fit he’d just had that had earned him the offering, and he could attempt to tell Hayes that it was the sun, not the wind that had caused that, but honestly he was freezing, possibly to death, and he wasn’t sure he could remember any of the stupid words to describe the photic reflex.
So, he took the coat. “Thank you.”
Slipping it on, he could feel the heat of Hayes’ body still lingering in the fabric, and it made him think about succumbing to his agony in the goalie’s arms back in the locker room, which was something that he was pretty sure had happened. But not totally sure, because he also had a fairly vivid memory of putting on his skates, which had inexplicably needed to be laced all the way up to his thighs, and he certainly wasn’t wearing skates of any kind now.
The goaltender had picked up their bags again, and started to walk in the apparent direction of his car, slow enough that Ilya could catch him up once he’d gathered his thoughts, and match pace without too much trouble. His nose was dripping again, and he was loath to touch it, the skin painfully sensitive from too much scrubbing and pressing and swiping with various items of varying softness and absorbency. Being slightly behind Hayes, Ilya decided to just let it run down his lip, he was far too frozen through from the wind, and achingly stiff from the workout and the fever to coordinate cleaning himself up while walking anyway.
They made it to the car in what Ilya felt had been no time at all, but from the slight shiver the goalie suppressed as he hit the button to unlock it, they’d apparently been out in the elements for quite a while. The captain ducked as he climbed in, hiding the mess on his face from Hayes, who was pretty occupied loading the bags in anyway.
Once he was in and seated, he dragged the collar of his compression shirt up, dropping his head as low as possible to get close enough to wipe his face down, wincing as the stitching scraped across his skin, and muffled a cough into his fist, not wanting to be heard or to actively contaminate the goaltender’s coat. God, he was fucking disgusting. Why the hell did the goalie want him in his house like this? Really, all that mattered was that he did want him, because the most lucid part of Ilya’s brain had been non-stop screaming at him since he’d left the gym that he shouldn’t- couldn’t be left alone.
Hayes’ first move upon turning the car on, was to turn the heat up as high as it would go, before he even put his seatbelt on, rubbing his hands together for a few seconds before pulling his phone out of his pocket and typing away for almost a minute, apparently sending multiple messages. He leant away from Ilya slightly, but the captain wasn’t sure he would have been able to read anything anyway, the way the world was swimming in front of his eyes. He was exhausted, and they hadn’t even played.
As they drove, and the temperature slowly moved back towards a more manageable number, Ilya started to sniffle again, warmth encouraging the congestion to shift and loosen. Hayes glanced his way, but didn’t speak for almost a minute.
“There’s napkins in the glove compartment, or a towel in my bag in the back, if you need.” The Canadian offered, finally.
Ilya, to his own surprise, was initially relieved at the information, rather than frustrated by the acknowledgement of his struggle. Something about the heat, and the quiet music from the radio, and the smooth movement of the car, had relaxed him. He felt safe, weirdly, safer than he would have felt in his own car, with his own music blaring from the speakers, driving himself home. He felt calm and amenable but with this twinge of nostalgia threatening to make him cry if he focused on any one thing for too long. The road passing by, the coat Hayes had given him, the goaltender’s fingers drumming on the wheel. It was all fuel for that stupid part of his brain that linked the present to particularly emotional memories when it was scrambled from sickness. Or from being concussed. Or from being sick and concussed- he winced at the memory.
“Thanks.” The captain said, quietly, contemplating the options for a second and then leaning forwards and opening the glove compartment to get the napkins- they were closer, and he wasn’t sure his equilibrium would cope with twisting around to grab the towel anyway.
Ilya pinched his nose through the napkin several times, with a squelching sound that was so awkward on its own that he decided to blow anyway, because he couldn’t possibly be any more disgusting. He filled the napkin immediately, and fumbled for another to catch the excess. Trying to breathe in through his nose as he reached for a third, led to an uncomfortable vacuum sensation in his left nostril, which made him cough a few times- though he kept his mouth shut, having no hands free- and then, as he frantically brought the tissue to his face-
“hKk! Kk! Kkh! hKSh-KSH! … KSHh! hhuhHKSHh! hhih… hihKSHh!-” This was getting messier than he could really deal with, he thought as he pressed the utterly destroyed napkins pointlessly to his face, only feeling like the pressure and the mess were exacerbating the itch.
Wordlessly, Hayes leaned across, eyes still on the road, and pulled the rest of the napkins out of the glove compartment, setting them in Ilya’s lap, and patting his knee supportively, before putting his hands back on the wheel, and continuing to drum his fingers absently on the leather. Ilya snatched another tissue from the, now accessible, stack, and pressed it to his face.
“-hrRSHH! kKSH! hHRSHHUh! hhH… hAHSCHhuh!”
“Bless you, Roz.” The emphasis hurt, sent a stinging prickle of anxiety across his fever-sensitive skin, but it also soothed some sharp ache in his chest that he’d forgotten was there until the words laid across it like cool salve.
“Thank you.” He muttered. Obviously he knew that it felt nice when Shane expressed care or concern for him, even if that sometimes came with a heaped serving of guilt as well, and he’d kind of learned to live with check-ins and reality checks from Marleau, but this was the first time he was feeling this with his new team, and not feeling like he didn’t deserve it. He couldn’t help but feel like if he’d pushed them away this many times and they still wanted to help him, that it wasn’t obligation, and they actually cared. They felt like he was a member of the team even if he himself didn’t, and they were determined to treat him as such. And now, maybe he’d be okay with letting them, because he’d learned that it didn’t mean pity, or ridicule, or disappointment, just a helping hand when he really needed it. Which is what the team was for, really. Maybe understanding that would make him a better captain, and a better team member, and a better friend. Or maybe this fever was just getting him really high and nothing he was thinking would make sense or be remembered once it came down again. Either way, he definitely hadn’t cried for the last time that night.
…
“Hayes.”
The goalie turned at the sound of his name, seeing Barrett in the hallway behind him, shifting from foot to foot awkwardly.
“What’s up?” He responded, evenly, wondering what had the winger so antsy, because he knew it wasn’t their relationship. They were essentially chill now, he’d sort of found his place within the team, Wyatt was keeping an eye on him, but Barrett didn’t know that, so there was no reason for him to feel nervous.
“That whole thing with Rozanov at the Boston game, what happened? He won’t talk to me about it, and I just thought, if it happened again-” Oh. Yeah, that was a much better reason to be nervous. His lack of predictability could be slightly scary.
“Alright, man, but you can’t tell Roz what I’m about to say.” Wyatt pulled him to the side of the corridor and stared at him intently. He didn’t trust Barrett fully yet, but the way him and Roz had started to get on- was something else entirely. The two just seemed to understand each other. So if Barrett could get some important information and experience the inner workings of the team, and Wyatt could maybe get them an inside man who knew how to approach Roz when he wasn’t doing his best, that would be a win-win, right?
“For sure.” Troy nodded.
“He was sick, like really badly sick, and he gets a bit… closed off when that happens. We’ve been trying to figure out how to help for a while now, it was just pure coincidence that he was open to it this time, I think his girlfriend and he fought or something-” Wyatt could see Barrett processing, eyes flicking between him and the corridor as he thought through his words. “-anyway, he wasn’t doing great. There’s a really specific way to approach him, when he’s like that-” Wyatt pulled his phone from his pocket, navigating to the notes app and flipping it around to show the forward.
The note was titled ERIS (standing for Emergency, Roz Is Sick), and the first line, which was about all he gave Barrett time to read, read- “Avoid the 3 P’s- Publicity, Pills, Pity”. They could brief him on the rest if it actually came down to it.
“The three P’s?” The winger looked doubtful.
“Yeah. It’s the golden rule, everything else is luck and tact, I think. And trust. He really trusts you, so next time he comes down sick, you might be our best bet.” The goaltender sniffled, knuckling at his nose before suddenly taking a step back and bringing his elbow up, “hHTCHyhOO! God, excuse me, I’m still getting over the shit that Roz had.”
“Bless.” Barrett shifted his weight onto his back foot, as if that small amount of additional distance would save him from this, “Is it really a whole team thing? Like you coordinate to look after him? He’s an adult.”
Hayes shrugged, clearing his throat. “He’s also our friend, and our captain. It’s nice to have people to lean on, or people to look after you, when you’re sick, right? Even as an adult. He just needs to be reminded of that.” And from the look on Barrett’s face, it kind of seemed like he might need to be, too.
After a silent moment of thought, the forward ran a hand through his hair and sent Wyatt a serious look. “You guys are like… a real team. Like you really care about each other.”
“Yeah.” The goaltender replied, like it was obvious, nudging Barrett’s shoulder. “We do. All of us.”
good dayyy, I interrupt my regular posting schedule to bring this belated birthday fic to my fav from across the waves @poetic-illness. twas supposed to be cute r/oselana fluff and... I fear I strayed into some slightly different themes by accident. anyway, please accept some established but not concrete or public relationship r/ose and s/veta, and my sincere apologies?
I hope you enjoy! ♡
fandom: h/eated r/ivalry
word count: 7.2k
cw: sneezing, general illness, brief death mention, sexual undertones? overtones?, thematic inconsistency
Luck was usually on Svetlana’s side, she found. Things just kind of seemed to go her way, largely because she was an incredibly perceptive and slightly Machiavellian sort of person, but also because, as her previous boyfriend had told her when he was absolutely blitzed out of his mind on cocaine, ‘the universe was in love with her’. Whatever that meant. God, she really needed to stop falling for these secretly whimsical sensitive guys with the aggressive exterior. Partially because a lot of them turned out to be gay- or at least bisexual. To be fair, though, so had she.
While the universe’s love for her seemed to have wavered that morning, a certain unnecessarily chipper actress’ love for her- or like for her, maybe- had not. She’d received sixteen texts from Rose this morning, and each of them had sparked a spike of guilt in her gut. She seemed so excited, it would be a shame to- The brunette paused, mid-step, raising her free hand to her face as her head tilted back automatically-
“nGt! hNGTchiew! hiHIhShiew! Fuck.” She glared at the floor, a small puddle of smoothie at her feet where she’d accidentally jolted the glass in her other hand as she’d sneezed. Seriously, the universe must be pissed that she was cheating on it or something, because this morning was not going her way.
Right on cue, her phone buzzed with a text from her more corporeal paramour. Sighing dramatically as she placed the glass down on the countertop, retrieved a cloth to wipe up the smoothie and crouched down beside the spill, Svetlana fished the device from her pocket.
Unlocking it one-handed, she found a close up photo of Rose’s face from the eyes upwards waiting for her, the redhead’s eyes squinted slightly as if she were smiling below the cut-off.
розочка (2): sooooo excited to see u later!! need this meeting I’m in to be over alreadyyyyy
Once again, Svetlana felt the rush of warmth and excitement, followed by the pang of guilt and dread. She really didn’t want her own bit of bad luck to ruin her girlfriend’s day too.
you: I can’t wait :)
you: Shouldn’t you be paying attention tho? They wanted you there for a reason, no?
She put the phone down at her side, starting to clear up the mess as she waited for a reply.
A buzz as she turned on the tap to rinse the cloth out, drew her eyes back to the screen, now taken up with a new picture, of Rose pouting faux angrily. So, it wasn’t an in-person meeting, then. Unless she’d gone full ‘movie star mode’ and started taking selfies when people were trying to talk.
Finishing the task quickly, Sveta dropped the cloth in the sink and crouched to read the other messages she’d heard come in in that time.
розочка (2): that rhymed!
розочка (2): still mean tho. they a million percent do NOT need me here >:(
She squinted at the screen dubiously, but, not particularly keen on starting an argument when they were going to see each other in a few short hours, and she had no real investment in the topic at hand anyway.
you: You won’t be there for long. Don’t focus on the time.
Apparently focused on anything except the meeting, Rose replied instantly.
розочка (2): are u coming to whisk me away?
розочка (2): pls say yes
you: No, sorry. My car’s still fucked, remember?
розочка (2): oh yeahhhhh. shit.
розочка (2): ok I’ll be brave and push thru
Svetlana smiled, helplessly endeared by Rose’s nature, as always. She’d seemed so polished from afar, but somehow, getting to see all the chaos that made her up, up close, had only made what she’d initially deemed a ‘girl crush’ into pretty much adoration.
you: Good luck.
She clicked her phone screen off, mind flicking back to the various tasks that needed to be done before the actress would arrive, plus her smoothie, which she still hadn’t finished. Excitement fluttered somewhere just below her diaphragm, the thought of the afternoon and evening ahead of them, having Rose all to herself, at this cute little late night café the redhead had ‘discovered’ that was apparently very discreet. It had kind of fucking better be. Neither of them really had a plan, as far as she knew, for ‘coming out’ yet. It would probably be a hell of a lot less damaging for Rose, although she’d implied that it might be bad for some other people close to her- whatever that meant- but still, neither of them were quite ready to bid goodbye to the comfort of comphet, and the lack of scrutiny it brought, just yet.
Fingers hooking over the edge of the counter, she pulled herself up to stand, glancing around to locate the smoothie she’d just placed down and suddenly frowning. The excitement in her chest had morphed into butterflies, and then what felt like tiny birds beating at her ribcage, and suddenly there was a sinking feeling in her stomach and black started to encroach on her vision.
“Perestan’” She muttered, pressing down on the countertop with her hands, the sensation lost to a feeling of static that started at her elbows and swallowed her fingertips entirely. Svetlana slid forwards so her face rested on her forearms against the counter, standing on her tiptoes as she tried to will the blood back into her head. “Come on. You are not going to fucking faint. You are fine.”
And in thirty seconds, she seemed to be, raising her head and blinking slowly at her hands. Maybe some of those tasks that needed to be done could be…delayed slightly. Not because she didn’t feel well enough to do them, just… because she wanted to finish her smoothie. In her bedroom. Maybe in bed. And then maybe she would go back to sleep, just for five minutes. After all, an outing with Rose took a lot of energy, and wouldn’t necessarily end at the allotted time, so she needed to be ready to maybe stay up all night.
A small smile once again graced her face at the thought of all the possible endings to that night. Maybe they’d end up at a club, dancing close together in a crowd where no one looked twice at them, making out in a bathroom stall, holding hands underneath Rose’s coat in the car on the way back. Maybe they’d explore the city some more, the redhead inexplicably breaking out into a run, making Sveta chase her, both of them laughing until their lungs ached at everything and nothing at once. Or maybe they’d end up right here, drinking vodka sodas or- what was that shit Rose had doordashed all the ingredients for last time? Sex in the driveway?- or that, and just talking, and staring softly at each other like strangers until they fell into bed and made out, so instinctively and easily, like lifelong lovers.
The anticipation-fuelled movie still running in her mind, the brunette made her way slowly back through to the bedroom, stripping down- it was suddenly pretty hot- and sipping on her drink as she dropped her phone on the pillow and unmade the bed one-handed, before flopping down to sit on the edge of it. God, she was exhausted.
Svetlana had no sooner finished her drink, than her phone buzzed again. With a groan that she stifled halfway through- seriously, are you not grateful that this beautiful, sexy, intelligent woman is messaging you? That she’s coming to see you later? Okay, now if it wasn’t Rose, she was going to throw her phone against the wall.
розочка (2): meeting is overrrrrrr
розочка (2): WOOHOO
розочка (2): going back to the hotel to change for laterrrrr 😉
Sleepily setting her glass on the nightstand and lying down as she brought the phone to her face to text back, she took a moment to mentally remind herself to set an alarm so she too could get up and change before they headed out. How long did she want to sleep for? Like an hour? Then she could take her time getting ready and she’d be totally awake for their date.
you: Text me when you’re here.
…
For a brief moment after her eyes had opened, Svetlana had no idea where she was. Her vision was blurred from deep sleep, she was far too hot, and there was a weight on her chest. Still working its way slowly back into full gear, her brain compiled the clues and told her she was in her apartment in Moscow, at the height of the summer, with her adorable, if ancient, cat, Gipnos, lying on her chest. Under this illusion, she raised her head slightly to smile affectionately at him, only to be greeted by the unsentimental sight of her phone laying there, and the bedsheets of her Boston apartment beneath it, and the stark reminder that Gipnochka had passed away several years before.
Svetlana let her head fall back onto the pillow with a thump, tears inexplicably springing to her eyes at the harsh reality that she’d been dragged back into. She missed him so much. She missed a lot of things from that time, although she loved her new life in Boston, too. It was all so confusing, all these mixed up emotions that she normally dealt with just fine. But right now, it was too hot, and despite just having woken up, she was exhausted, and she was probably stressed about her plans for the day, which were… what day was it, even?
With a sniffle, she retrieved her phone and unlocked it to check the day and time. And that was when everything came rushing back to her. She had a date with Rose that afternoon. She’d forgotten to set an alarm. Rose would be there in…. fifteen minutes. Fuck.
All systems dialed to ‘running catastrophically late’ mode-not one she engaged often- she threw herself out of bed, stumbling on sleep numbed legs as she ran to the bathroom. First- shower.
…
Despite hoping that the shower would make her feel better, she’d spent that entire five minutes changing the temperature back and forth, shivering in the cool water and sniffling in the steam, trying desperately to run through her typical body shower routine at 2x speed until the temperature changes started to make her feel dizzy, and she was forced to shut the water off.
Consciously steadying her breathing, Sveta wrapped herself in a towel, and ran through to sit at her vanity, applying SPF and primer haphazardly to her face and neck, fingertips pushing the product around uncoordinatedly, mounting her frustration. What the fuck was wrong with her right now? She didn’t even have time to figure it out, she was far too fucking late for that.
She’d left her phone on the bed, so she was flying totally blind on what time it was, rushing through her base makeup, and mentally picking out an outfit- she had it narrowed down to three already, which made the job significantly easier- while she applied her mascara. One side done, she paused to try and take a deep breath, steady herself. Just finish here, grab the clothes, let your hair down, it’ll be fine. She’s always late anyway.
Two swipes into the second side, mind occupied with which shoes would be best, she felt a sudden tickle in her nose, barely giving her enough time to pull back from the mirror, and raise her free hand to hover in front of her face.
“nGt! hNGXchiew! hHCHiew!”
Before she even opened her eyes, she knew what she’d just done, and reluctantly peering into the mirror confirmed it. The mascara on the side she’d just started was stamped in a stark black shadow of her lashes, below her eye. Realistically, it would only take an extra two minutes to fix, but it was two minutes that she knew she didn’t have.
“Da yebal ya eto! Fucking why?” Her eyes flooded with angry tears, and before she knew it, there were dark smudges below both her eyes as the fresh mascara bled, tear streaks carving lines in the foundation on her cheeks. She stood, ignoring the towel as it fell to the floor, running through to the bathroom and scrubbing at her face in the sink, not even trying to fix the mess, actively aware that she was making it worse.
She drew in a shuddering breath, staring down at the water flowing into the drain, purposefully avoiding eye contact with the monster she’d created in the mirror in front of her. Calm down. This isn’t helping. You can start again. You have time.
Still sniffly from crying, she pulled a few tissues from the box on the counter and blew her nose, sighing out an, “Okay.” afterwards as she leaned back against the wall. Everything suddenly felt completely overwhelming, and she realised she hadn’t bothered to take stock of her body since she’d woken. The exhaustion she’d noted, but now she was also becoming aware of the nausea of her nose draining down her throat, the achingly desperate thirst of dehydration, and the foreboding sensation of a single droplet of sweat running down her bare back. So, clearly she wasn’t going to get through this without some kind of medication, and as much liquid as she could get down before Rose arrived, because if one thing was for sure, it was that she wasn’t going to cancel.
…
Shifting from foot to foot outside Svetlana’s door, Rose frowned at her phone. She’d already waited five minutes to be buzzed into the building, and even then had only slipped in when someone had been on their way out, and now she’d knocked twice, with no reply. Maybe she’d missed a text or something?
veuxtrouver 👀: Text me when you’re here.
you: will do! see you spoon!
you: soon, not spoon lol!
veuxtrouver 👀: Maybe both…?
you: i’m literally going to crash my car.
you: didn’t crash! I’m hereeee
Nothing. Not even a read receipt. Twisting her lips in thought, the redhead decided not to let herself spiral, and to just try sending another text.
you: at ur door :)
Rose scrolled through Twitter, wandered along the hallway looking at the carpet, and leaned against the wall by the door until almost five minutes had passed. Then she bit her lip, directed a last, desperate look at her phone, and an anxious one at the door, and hit the doorbell. She was so not a doorbell kind of person, and she didn’t really think Sveta was one either, the sound loud and jarring in a way she tried not to have her entrances be, already aware that some people found her ‘too much’, and not desiring to set that tone if possible. But right now she was desperate. Oh God, was she ignoring her on purpose? Why had that only just now occurred to her? Now she looked like some obsessive-
The locks clicked, and, with just enough time for her to pull herself out of the mental tailspin and relax back into that easy, excited smile, the door opened.
Sveta looked… different. She was definitely still arrestingly beautiful, and the redhead’s heartbeat picked up at the sight, but she didn’t look as put together as Rose would have expected. She tried not to let her gaze visibly catch on the running shorts and ancient looking Raiders sweatshirt that the brunette wore, neckline so stretched that it had now become an off-shoulder top on one side. Her hair was pulled back into a low ponytail, and Rose could see that some of the curls were sticking to the sweat-sheened skin on her neck and shoulders. Had she just been working out? Was she early by accident? That would be an actual honest-to-everything miracle. They looked kind of notably inconsistent for an outing though, with the actress in her open crochet sweater and her miniskirt, and her girlfriend in… that.
“Hey.” Rose realised she’d gotten through her whole examination of her girlfriend’s outfit without either of them saying anything, and hurried to greet her.
“Hi.” Sveta stepped back so she could enter, expression unreadable.
The redhead walked in, swinging her arms awkwardly as she waited for the door to shut behind her, and then cocking her head at her host as she stood apathetically opposite her in the hall. She was never this dispassionate, and she’d seemed so excited earlier, something must be wrong, surely.
“Are you okay?” She tendered, shocked when, the words barely having left her lips, Svetlana’s expression crumpled and she raised a hand to cover her face.
Rose panicked, stepping closer, catching the glint of a tear falling from the brunette’s eye, gently reaching out to rest her hands on Sveta’s upper arms. “Are you- can I do something to help?”
Though she didn’t respond, she did step forwards to rest her head against the actress’s collarbone, shaking with quiet sobs. Rose let her hand drift up and down her girlfriend’s back, waiting readily for her to confess what had her so distressed. It was truly uncharacteristic of her to appear this… disarrayed. She’d seen her girlfriend with her guard down before, but never in such a completely and unapologetically devastated manner. It was honestly heart-breaking.
Almost a full minute passed before Svetlana started to explain, words coming out fast and jumbled in an almost incomprehensible vent that was interrupted by jagged breaths and the wavering of her voice. To Rose it sounded mostly like-
“…universe hates me... and I spilled my fucking smoothie… too tired… texting you… woke up and thought- thought that-” and then she was crying more loudly again, “my baby… so much… love cats and… because of stupid landlords… fucking Boston…” and a pause to force herself to take some deep breaths, “-and I showered but it didn't fix anything… ruin my makeup… can’t remember… wanted to be perfect.. so late… made you wait… so fucking-” and then she straightened abruptly, breathing heavily, but expression more distantly frustrated than upset.
“It’s okay.” Rose said softly, one hand on her back and the other on her side, staring lovingly into her eyes. “What do you need?”
Sveta met her eyes, but just barely, gaze drifting uncoordinatedly. “Do you think you can hold me?”
In opposing synchronicity, the redhead’s eyes widened while her girlfriend’s slipped shut, the brunette suddenly dead weight in her arms. Oh, so by ‘hold her’ she meant hold her up, not…
Rose carefully lowered them to the floor, as slowly as she could- which was in about three seconds and with a slight jolt that made her wince, but didn’t seem to affect Svetlana in the slightest- and leaned her against the wall.
“Svet? Can you hear me?” She reached out, softly patting her cheek. Fuck, how did you help an unconscious person again? She was sure she’d done some kind of first aid course as a kid or something, but other than chest compressions, she couldn’t remember any of it. And Svetlana was breathing, so she had a heartbeat, right? Was that how that worked? “Hey, Lana, sweetheart. Come back to me.”
After an achingly long pause, Sveta’s lashes fluttered, and she blinked at Rose dizzily. “Mm?”
“Are you okay? What happened?”
The brunette coughed roughly against the back of her forearm, adjusting her position to something more comfortable than ‘dropped on the floor like a ragdoll’. “I forgot.” She murmured distantly, seemingly chiding herself for something.
“What did you forget?” Rose asked her, hands on her shoulders to try and keep her attention. Had she forgotten to eat? Or forgotten that she couldn’t work out that day because it would activate a semi-dormant poison in her system? Or forgotten to take some kind of vital medication that Rose didn’t know about? Shit, maybe she should have asked her that sort of thing earlier, you know, ‘Hi, nice to meet you, you’re gorgeous, I think I’m gay, do you need to take a pill everyday that keeps you alive?’.
“Really dehydrated.” She pressed her fingertips into her temple with a soft wince. “Forgot to drink anything.”
“Okay, hold on.” The redhead pushed herself to her feet, jogging through into her kitchen- shoot, should she have taken her shoes off?- and opening the fridge, retrieving a sports drink and just barely missing hitting herself in the face with the door as she spun around and took off back to the hallway. Sveta was still conscious when she returned- thank God- and took the drink gratefully, chugging almost half of the electrolyte water before leaning back against the wall with a half-stifled groan.
“Ugh, thank you.”
Rose stayed standing. “Do I need to call someone? Or something?”
“Something?” The brunette looked a little more lucid now. “Yes, please call the vending machine at work and let it know I won’t be there for my midday soda tomorrow.”
“I meant like an ambulance.” Rose amended, finally relaxing enough to seat herself next to her, back against the wall. “Are you feeling better?
“A bit.” Sveta let her head slowly slide down the wall to lay on the redhead’s shoulder. “I don’t think I can go out, though.”
“I wouldn’t have let you, even if you thought you could.” She responded firmly. “What’s going on?”
She didn’t get an immediate answer, the brunette sighing heavily before sitting up to take another few sips of her drink. “I guess I was pretending it wasn’t an issue, but-” She hesitated, and then brought a hand up to cover her lower face, eyebrows raising in anticipation for- “nGk! hihGKkchiew! hIHSHhiew!”
“Aww, that was literally the cutest thing I have ever seen.” Rose laughed as her girlfriend turned doubtful eyes to her. “What? You’re actually adorable. Bless you.”
Sveta turned away from the outpouring of affection, with a breathy laugh that only exaggerated the adoration thrumming through Rose. She reached out to squeeze the brunette’s other hand, earning a glance back in her direction, before Sveta’s expression flickered back to that unguarded, hesitant one, and she twisted away again to- “nGT! hNGTchiew! hhH… yiESHhhiew!”
“Bless you, babe.”
“Ah, sorry.” She let her head fall back against the wall again, not looking at Rose. “Thanks.”
“Are you sick, sweetheart?”
“I think so.” Svetlana almost looked drunk, slurring her words and staring dazedly into the distance. “Forgot to take anything for it, too, fuck. My brain is just-” She trailed off.
“Oh you poor thing. We should get you back into bed then, hm? Come on.” Rose stood up, moving around so she was in front of her girlfriend and holding out her hands. “Are you going to be okay standing up?”
She shrugged, “Probably.”, setting her drink down and taking the redhead’s wrists, the two of them working together to get her upright. Once there, she did seem to be okay, offering her girlfriend a small reassuring smile, though Rose waited a few seconds before starting to move them any further to be safe. Passing out once, she could deal with, but more than that seemed like a medical emergency, and she’d really love it if them coming out- if that was going to be a ‘them’ activity- didn’t involve ambulances or emergency rooms.
They headed for the bedroom with small steps, probably unnecessarily slowly, but she wanted Sveta to be as comfortable as possible, and Svetlana herself seemed too out of it to think to change their pace herself, lost in thought. So it was slow going, and Rose occupied herself by reminding herself of the layout of the apartment, and mentally guessing at where the brunette was likely to keep her sick day supplies. Was she a medication in the kitchen, bedroom, or bathroom kind of person? That could probably be a kind of personality test, though what it would show, she wasn’t sure.
The bedroom was unexpectedly messy, a towel thrown on the floor, a glass with the remnants of some kind of purpleish drink, -a smoothie, if Rose had to guess- by the bed, makeup strewn across the vanity, rumpled bedsheets barely visible beneath several discarded items of clothing. She’d been here a few times before and it had never looked…quite like this. Not when she’d gotten there, at least.
Guessing that her host was probably a little embarrassed by the state of the room, though, she ignored it, leading Sveta to the bed, and watching her immediately sprawl out there, staring at the ceiling, though the movement had jolted her slightly, and she started to cough against the back of her hand.
“I’ll get your drink.” Rose snagged the glass from the nightstand as she went, dropping it off in the kitchen, where she also retrieved a new glass of water, and then returned to the hallway for the electrolyte drink again. This was the first time either of them had been sick in their short time dating, and honestly she hadn’t expected it to be Sveta whom it happened to first. She also hadn’t really expected the brunette to be so forthcoming about it, either, having been initially fooled by her cool, poised exterior, and then surprised by the bubbly, passionate personality underneath. She’d just assumed there’d be more layers she’d have to work to peel back, but no, it appeared that Svetlana really trusted her. That or she was just out of her mind with fever.
Toeing off her shoes beside her girlfriend’s ones, and trying hard not to spill either of the drinks, Rose paused to assess the surreal nature of the situation. She, who’d spent years joking about how she ‘wished she was a lesbian’, who’d re-enacted stories about kissing her friends drunk as an excuse to kiss them sober, who’d said in multiple interviews that she was ‘just an overexcited ally’, was now somehow neck-deep in this whirlwind but also incredibly grounded relationship with a woman who was everything she’d always dreamed to be, but maybe also always dreamed to be with? Svetlana was put-together, she was socially apt, she was good at keeping secrets, and knowing what to say, and being on time. She was always the most stunningly beautiful person in the room, and it didn’t even seem to matter to her. She was so layered, could talk for hours about hockey and never repeat herself, could analyse exactly why an outfit worked the way it did, could predict the twists in movies before they happened. She was Rose’s opposite, but also her perfect copy, the only person to balance her out and meet her where she was at simultaneously. And when Rose returned, she was- “Naked?”
“Mm?” Svetlana looked glassily at her, still stretched out on the bed, though the Raiders sweatshirt and shorts were now on the ground. Which left her in tiny black boyshorts… and nothing else.
“Uh-” Rose averted her eyes, looking over her shoulder through the doorway as though she’d forgotten something. “- you’re naked?” This did not seem to be Sveta trying to be sexy, and she wasn’t totally sure the brunette knew she’d taken her clothes off in the first place.
“It’s really hot.” Was the plaintive, but simple, reply.
The redhead frowned sympathetically, now focusing on crossing the room to place the drinks down without staring openly at her girlfriend or shutting her eyes entirely, anticipating that either of those choices might lead to her tripping and spilling everything. “I think that might be a fever, sweetheart. Do you have a thermometer?”
“Bathroom.” She was back to staring at the ceiling again.
Rose settled the drinks on the nightstand, pausing to cup Sveta’s face with a condensation cooled hand- the brunette’s eyes closing in brief bliss- before quickly stepping through to search the bathroom. So she was a bathroom first aid person, meaning she was… practical, clinical maybe? Someone should really start working on this theory. Someone who wasn’t in the middle of trying to play nurse with her first ever girlfriend.
It didn’t take her long to find the thermometer, neatly tucked in a drawer that Rose noted also held various kinds of medication that might be useful once they had a figure to work with. As she stepped back through, eyes on the device, focused on figuring out how to work it, her girlfriend’s breath caught sharply.
“hNgt!” Her body jolted upwards, as if drawn by a string attached to her collarbone, falling down again for a brief moment before, “hnGTchiew! hiiHSHhiew!” She didn’t move up at all for that one, Rose thought with vague interest, almost seeming to ground herself against the bed and put the force into the sneeze instead.
“Bless-” She hesitated, at the bedside now, realising Svetlana’s hand was still raised in front of her lower face, eyes still squeezed shut, sniffling softly and anticipatorily. Were there more to come?
“NGt!” Apparently yes. “hNGTChiew! heiHISHHiew!”
As hard as she’d tried to keep her focus sympathetically trained on the brunette’s face- and even that had some less than pure connotations, the expressions inextricably similar to…certain other ones- it was pretty hard not to notice the effect the hitching and convulsing was having on the rest of her body out of the corner of her eye. “Um.” Rose swallowed. “Bless you.” For someone whose eyes seemed to be magnetised to her girlfriend’s chest, it sure had taken her a long time to figure out how much she liked tits.
“Thanks. I’ll stop now, I promise.” Sveta smiled at her, though her gaze had already started to wander back to the ceiling as she dropped her hand to rest at her side again.
“Why?” Jesus, you don’t have to sound so upset about it.
The brunette raised a single finger to point at the device in Rose’s hand. Oh, right.
She laughed awkwardly. “Ah, good thinking.” With slight hesitancy, she offered the thermometer first to Sveta’s hand, which made no move to take it, and then to her mouth, which opened obediently. “Don’t hurt yourself keeping them in though,” She advised as she pushed the button on the device, “We can always try it again.”
“Mm mm mm mm-mm, mm?” Whatever she’d said seemed to be some kind of witty retort, if the look on her face was anything to go by.
“Really? Wow.” On instinct- maybe something to do with growing up with brothers who’d been the recipients of some pretty rough dental procedures that left them mostly unable to speak for several days at a time- she pretended to understand her girlfriend’s incomprehensible mumble, plastering a doe-eyed, innocent look on her face simultaneously that always worked to maximise the mute individual’s frustration.
Svetlana huffed, unimpressed, and scrunched her nose up, in what Rose initially considered to be petulance. Cute.
She was wrong. “nGT!” Still cute.
“Oh, do you want me to take it out?” She can’t answer you, which probably means yes, you should take the thermometer out. The redhead reached forward, only to have her hand smacked gently away, a determined look briefly visible on her girlfriend’s face.
“ngGT!” Unconsciously, the brunette had taken hold of Rose’s skirt, probably mistaking it for the bedsheets, fisting the material in her hand as she focused on keeping the thermometer in her mouth.
“nGK!-” She took several short consecutive breaths in through her nose, eyebrows tenting in anticipation, “-nGk! NGk! nGk!”
“Bless you.” Rose brushed a stray curl from her girlfriend’s forehead and stroked her thumb over her cheek softly. “That was an impressive display, but you can’t tell me it didn’t hurt.”
Sveta shook her head, eyes wide and sincere.
“Really?” The redhead asked again, meaning it this time. Okay, maybe now she wouldn’t feel so bad about having let her gaze wander briefly during the fit.
The thermometer beeped and she gently slid it from between the brunette’s lips.
“Really.” Svetlana responded, finally able to use her voice again. “No more than sneezing the regular way.”
Mentally banking that comment for a moment, to interrogate her about as soon as she could remember to, Rose squinted at the numbers before her. “38.4? What does that even mean?”
The brunette took the device from her, hitting a small button and handing it back.
“Oh, 101.1. That’s pretty high. You must feel bad?”
“I guess.” She sniffled softly, and then shivered, pulling her limbs in to move into a foetal position, on her side, head tilted to look up at Rose.
“Are you too cold now?” Her girlfriend guessed.
“Yes, but I don’t want to put that-” She nodded towards the discarded clothes, “-back on.” Sveta moaned in frustration, pushing her face into the pillow, mumbling, “Too myagkiy, it prilipayet k moyu kozhu.”
“I’m sorry, babe.” Rose patted her hip awkwardly, not wanting to put her cold-ish hands directly onto her skin lest she make the chills worse. “Hey, what about my sweater?”
The brunette peeked back at her, examining the offer.
“I’ve got a shirt underneath, so I won’t get cold.” She pulled the sweater off, showing Svetlana her cami top. The way her girlfriend’s eyes roved her newly more exposed body made her feel kind of like she was the half naked one, and the attention drew a flush to her cheeks that was far closer to excitement than embarrassment.
Sveta half sat up, apparently interested.
“And look, it has these holes-” Rose poked her finger through one of them to demonstrate. “So you won’t get too hot.”
“Okay, thank you.”
She watched the brunette slip into the item of clothing, full upper body still technically visible if she really looked, but that wasn’t why she’d given her the shirt. She wanted Sveta to be warm and comfortable, and as long as she was both, then so was Rose.
“Can I get you some kind of medicine for this?” She asked, gently, truly wanting to do anything she could to ease the discomfort.
“The blue box, in-” Once again, she was gesturing in the direction of the bathroom, and Rose was heading through to retrieve it. She was pretty sure she’d seen a blue box in that drawer.
Box in hand, she hurried back, handing it over and moving the clothes off of the bed and onto the stool for the vanity while she waited for Sveta to take the pills, passing her the glass of water- though she seemed to have already swallowed them dry- and smoothing back her hair from her forehead as she drank.
They moved in comfortable silence, bar Rose’s extremely fast inner monologue considering her girlfriend’s every hypothetical need, and the hypothetical solutions for them. The brunette sniffled, and before she’d even had time to raise her fingertips to press under her nose, the redhead was making her way once again back through to the bathroom to pull a few tissues from the box on the counter there and return to present them to her. q
“Thank you.” She responded absently, raising them to her face and blowing her nose unabashedly. The force of it seemed to trigger something and, with a gasp that tugged on the loose edges of the tissues she was holding to her face, her eyes squeezed shut.
“hTSHiew! TSHhiew! hihh…” Sveta’s head tipped back as she chased the sensation. Rose watched, rapt. So they weren’t always those tiny held-in ones… intruiging.
“hihIHSHhiew!”
“Oh, b-”
“hehh…” Damn, just when she thought she’d got the pattern down.
“hihTSHhiew! TSH-SHhiew! hiHSHhyiew!
“Oh bless you, Sveta, sweetheart. This-” She was immediately drowned out by the brunette blowing her nose again, and laughed, sincerity and pity evaporating in favour of being amused by the new unreserved side of her girlfriend that this illness had brought out. “-this is a really sneezy cold.”
“Sleepy cold, too.” She yawned behind her hand, unbothered by the observation.
Rose made a sympathetic noise, “You want to take a nap?”
Svetlana nodded, moving herself across in the bed, so she was slightly more centred. “Lie down, if you want.” Rose did want, and she’d wanted to since that exhausted expression had first taken over the brunette’s face, when she’d flopped down onto the bed, but she’d been waiting to be invited, and hoping not to be told to leave.
The redhead turned and pulled her legs up, so she was sitting beside her girlfriend, who made a satisfied little noise and started to snuggle into her side. Wanting to lean forward to kiss her on the top of the head, but not confident in her neck’s ability to bend that far without pulling something, the actress settled for smiling lovingly at Svetlana’s curled up form as she drifted off to sleep.
…
Rose had a lot of practice sitting still for a long time with nothing much to do, mainly in the makeup chair, occasionally before interviews or auditions, so, while Sveta dozed on her chest, she occupied herself in the usual ways, mentally running lines for her current project, reworking conversations she’d had recently that she felt had gone particularly poorly, and, her favourite mental exercise- the infinite hotel buffet, where she challenges herself to create the ultimate plate in a single run.
Thirty minutes of “I thought you were dead!” and “Actually, I think you’ll find that…” and incredibly precisely stacked food that defied several laws of physics, and most of the laws of nutrition, later, the brunette stirred.
“Hey,” Rose spoke softly, “How are you feeling?”
“More alive.” Sveta sighed, rolling onto her back, the redhead’s arm stretched out behind her neck, and reaching up to lace her fingers with Rose’s. “Sorry about our plans. This just came out of nowhere.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. I still get to spend time with you, so I’m literally not missing out on anything.”
“Really?” The brunette cleared her throat, tone flat and disbelieving. “This isn’t boring for you?”
Rose laughed. “Not even the most boring thing I’ve done today, I’d so much rather be here than anywhere else, right now.”
“You’d rather be here than in a meeting, I’m flattered.”
“Stop.” She protested, amused but still slightly indignant, clarifying, “I’d rather be in your apartment with you, even if you’re stressed, or sick, or asleep, than out at a club with anyone else on the whole planet.”
“Wow. Now I really am flattered.” Sveta made playfully affectionate eyes at her girlfriend, which really made the actress want to pounce on her, an instinct she resisted due to the brunette’s current condition.
“You should be.” She continued, faux conceitedly, looking away with played-up false modesty, “I could probably actually get most people to go with me.”
When her girlfriend didn’t laugh, Rose’s head snapped back to face her, concerned she’d taken her seriously, only to see her shaking her free arm around weirdly, which the redhead eventually realised was her one-handed attempt to push back the sleeve of the loaned sweater, which was stuck over her hand in an adorably inconvenient sweater paw.
“Oh, wait. Let me help.” She caught Sveta by the wrist, using her own single hand to pull back the clothing to expose her palm, hardly given time to let go before the hand they’d collaboratively uncovered was flying to cover the brunette’s face.
“nGt!”
“Bless you.”
“hNGTchiew!”
“Bless you.”
“hhISHhiew!”
“Bless you!”
“Thank you.” She sniffled softly, hand still raised. “Are there sal’vetki- tissues, over there?”
The redhead craned her neck over her shoulder to look at the nightstand, catching sight of a box of tissues- ah, so she hadn’t had to go all the way to the bathroom last time- and stretching out to drag a few free, not close enough to pick up the box itself. “Here you are.”
“Thanks.” She took them one handed, blowing her nose softly, fingers still intertwined with the her girlfriend’s on the opposite side.
Rose watched the bridge of her nose wrinkle as the action seemingly irritated it, watched her eyelids flutter back open almost in slow motion, watched her lower the tissue, revealing just the hint of a flush to her nose, and her full lips, parted to breathe- “You’re so pretty.”
The brunette shot her a look that made her laugh on instinct, the word “seriously?!” communicated perfectly without her saying anything at all. “No, really,” She clarified, “How are you so beautiful 24/7? I know if I was even half as sick as you, I’d look like roadkill.”
“Well I guess we’ll probably see if that’s true in about a week.” Svetlana looked slightly regretful, grip on her hand loosening almost imperceptibly, as though she were thinking about pulling away. “Sorry about that.”
“I don’t mind. As long as you repay the favor and take wonderfully good care of me.” The redhead kissed her on the forehead, both of them giggling at the sweet gesture, before Sveta sobered up slightly and looked her in the eyes again.
“Firstly, you know I will. Secondly, I’m not actually ‘beautiful 24/7’ or whatever you said, you’re just biased because you-” She broke off.
Hoping she wasn’t reading into this the wrong way, Rose kept her gaze. “Because I…?”
Several seconds of weighted silence later, the brunette’s intense expression was replaced by a brief one of relief, and then she turned away, raising her hand-
“nGTchiew!”
“Bless you.”
“hNGKhiew!”
“Bless you.” Rose waited patiently, both for the third sneeze, and for them to return to the unfinished sentence. She would not be getting out of this that easily, especially if she’d been about to say what the redhead thought she had.
“hhuhISHHiew!”
“Because I… what?”
The repeated question, or maybe the impatient omission of the blessing, earned her the restored eye contact she’d been awaiting. “I don’t remember what I was going to-”
“Because I’m in love with you?” The words almost barrelled out of her mouth before she could stop them, but she didn’t really want to. She wanted to know if this feeling was real, if it was mutual.
“Yes.” The brunette answered after a beat. “Are you?”
“Yes.” Rose echoed, unable to control the smile that spread across her face. “Are you?”
Svetlana laughed, nodding, not looking at her again. The redhead’s heartbeat was thumping in her chest, a myriad of emotions overwhelming her, helpless in the face of the tidal wave of joy and adoration and passion. She cupped her girlfriend’s face in her free hand, breath catching at the profoundness of the feeling as their eyes met.
“Can I kiss you?”
“Only if you're interested in sampling this sickness.”
Rose leaned in and captured her lower lip with her own, feeling the brunette smile before she fully kissed back, the two of them falling into an endless cycle of staring into each others’ eyes and giggling, and then closing their eyes to kiss, softly at first, and then deeply, until one of them started to smile again, and they both began to laugh.
It took a minute before Rose sat up with a gasp.
“What’s wrong?” Sveta asked, squeezing her hand, while she dabbed at her nose with the tissues she still held in her other one.
The actress looked guilty. “I didn’t say ‘bless you’ the last time.”
Her girlfriend stared at her, dumbfounded for a moment, before bursting into laughter.
“What?” Rose was indignant. “It’s polite!”
Svetlana shook her head, still smiling widely, and reached up to pull her girlfriend back down to her level. “Don’t worry about it, rozochka. I’m sure you’ll get plenty more opportunities to say that."
Three Times the Centaurs Tried to Care for Their Captain, and the First Time they Succeeded
Three: A Technically Correct Approach
part one, part two, part four
so, I'm supposed to be doing postgrad applications rn but it's so hot and I'm suffering on so many levels, my brain is just like nope, snz and hockey and that's it, so have some of both. third time is very much not the charm for the cens, unfortunately, but I firmly believe this approach would have worked if it wasn't for... well, you'll see ;)
also I'm closing requests for now, but I will still be working through the ones already in my inbox, which are all so gorgeous and fun, and I'm super excited about all of them!
Wyatt was unsurprised by the captain’s absence from the locker room, which he noted as he walked in, nodding greetings to the players who were present. The Russian had been known to dip right before practice, games, meetings, to take covert phone calls, or stand outside, downwind of the smoking area, staring at it longingly. So, as usual, he only glanced into his stall to see that his stuff was there on his way past. Which it was. Good, he was here, he was probably fulfilling one of his two cravings, this would be a good practice.
But when he stepped out into the hall, on his way to hit the head before donning his goalie gear, he caught sight of the captain, unexpectedly exiting the physio room, walking backwards, talking to the team doctor about something. Wyatt hesitated, watching the conversation, though he couldn’t make anything out. Rozanov was doing a lot of nodding, and Terry was doing a lot of firm staring as he delivered what seemed like instructions.
The captain took a half step in Wyatt’s direction, about to turn, and the goalie quickly averted his gaze, starting back towards the bathroom again as though he hadn’t stopped to stare in his direction in the first place. A tiny, shrill alarm started to sound in the back of his brain, part warning, part muster call. And what had seemed like it would be a typical practice was shifting, a new mission appearing in his metaphorical peripheral vision. Look out for Roz.
…
The rhythmic clicking of skates down the hallway as they headed for the ice struck calm into Ilya’s chest. There was nothing quite as therapeutic to him as practice, working out, or a really easy game. Anything with a lot of exertion, predictability, and adrenaline. Practice was maybe his favourite of those, though. He’d been something of a rink rat as a kid, which was only partially his choice, his father pushing him to be the best, train the hardest, stay the longest. But what little autonomy he’d had had only been used to reinforce that message. He loved every second spent on skates.
So now, heading back for their first real practice in a while, feeling the chill blowing off the ice before he could even begin to see it, he felt every ounce of tension drop from his shoulders. The cool air also made his nose start to run a bit, not unusual, still annoying. He sniffled, frustratedly inhibiting the urge to swipe at it with his glove, as the appendage was already raw and sensitive, and the thought of the rough material against the damaged skin was…
Tilting his head back slightly seemed to keep the flow at bay, and he kept his eyes on the helmet in front of him as they walked to maintain the unnaturally high eyeline. It took no time at all for the clicks to be replaced by the swish of blades and the clattering of pucks to the ice as the players began to warm-up. Also sounds that healed something deep within him.
The barrier in front of Ilya was suddenly removed as the player ahead of him took off rapidly across the ice. He squinted at the bright white expanse, fighting the powerful itch that had sprung up in the center of his face. It usually wasn’t enough to set him off, especially during games, when his adrenaline was too high and his focus too occupied to enable the reflex. But today-
Aware of the queue behind him, the captain stepped out onto the ice, passively skating a few strides to one side to get out of the way of the next few players.
“huhHih-” His breath juddered ominously, and he felt his eyelids instinctively start to flicker shut. Resigned, he dragged his jersey up over his lower face,
“hKK! hKk! Kkh! hKSH! KSH!-”
Though he usually balanced in skates on ice just as well as he balanced in sneakers on concrete, the combination of closed eyes, involuntary jerks of his torso, and returning to the ice after a little while away combined to make him unsteady. He reached out for the boards, gloved fingers greeting the plexiglass and slipping slightly on the surface as he grounded himself, trying not to drop his stick.
“-hKSHuh! KSHuh! hhAHKShh!”
Ilya cleared his throat as he let his jersey drop back into place, pushing off and starting to skate a lap the moment his eyes were fully open again, letting his gaze drift across the rest of the team, checking for observers.
Those closest to him were looking away, absorbed or faux-absorbed in their stretches, but as he turned the first corner, he made eye contact with Hayes, paused halfway through scuffing up his crease, watching him unabashedly.
They maintained eye contact for the entire time it took Ilya to skate the length of the ice, and the second he got close enough for his expression to really be visible, he threw a challenging look at the goalie, raising his eyebrows, daring him to confront him. What little of the Canadian’s face that he could see, seemed to smirk back. Fuck him and his stupid ability to get under Ilya’s skin.
The temptation to stop and yell at him was there, but he could also feel the tickle stirred up moments ago threatening an encore performance, so he continued his lap, skidding to a halt behind the goal and surveying the rink, checking no one was approaching him, or really looking his way, and then, with a desperate, “hiHH-” he started up again.
“hKk! Kkh! Kk!-” His gloved fingers fumbled clumsily with his jersey, the threat of slipping overwhelming his concentration. “-hKSH!-” The sneeze sprayed out into open air and he realised he’d run out of time to try and get the material to his face. Ilya slapped his free hand up against the glass again, cupping the other, glove and all, over his face, stick knocking against his helmet like it was admonishing him for his ill-thought-out form. “-hKSHuh! KSHH! hAHKSHh! huAHSHH!”
He didn’t even look at his hand as he lowered it, shifting his weight to head off again, leave the scene of the crime, when-
“Bless you.”
Hayes only looked at him for a second this time, before his eyes dropped back to the ice again. That just barely took the edge off of Ilya’s anger, but the wrath that the goaltender had spared himself from, only turned right back around and smacked the captain in the face, full force. Fucking idiot, why’d you stop to lose control right behind the exact guy who’s going to call you out for it?
He didn’t reply to the blessing, picking up speed as he finished the first lap, and started a second. He’d always had some pretty heavy emotions circling expressions of vulnerability like that, mainly self-reproach and frustration because he was out of control, being disgusting, being dramatic, blah blah blah. But now, it was different. He hadn’t really been chided for those kinds of things since getting drafted, chirped sure, in Boston, but here there was none of that energy. It was more like trepidation, concern, worry. And Ilya hated that.
He broke off the lap before he got close to the goal Hayes was occupying, again, snagging an unclaimed puck and turning fast to take it back the way he’d come, eyes on the boards at the far end, watching the black circle bob back and forth in his peripheral vision. The admonishment, punishment, vitriol, he could deal with. It struck him hard, but it didn’t cut deep, feeling like he’d earned it, and like he would end up a stronger, tougher person at the end because of it. Plus no one who had just called you disgusting wanted to stick around and continue to watch you being disgusting. But pity… that was something else entirely. It was like ice cold water poured over his head, soaking through his defences, chilling him to the core. He felt like a child again, too small, too weak, too helpless, too soft. And people who pitied you wanted to keep pitying you, watching you like a car crash, too hideous to look away from.
The captain shot the puck ahead of him, along the boards, ricocheting it off the wall behind the goal when he caught up with it and spinning quickly to catch the rebound on the tip of his stick, before starting back the other way again. Disdain felt normal. Disdain felt like his father. Disdain felt like the walls going up, being reinforced by layers of concrete, steel beams, jagged edges, broken glass, harsh internal architecture that hurt whichever side of it you pushed from. Pity felt eerily familiar. Pity felt…like his mama. Pity felt like phantom fingers, reaching through his walls to drag him out into the open and expose the terrified, weak little child that still hid itself inside of him. Pity was dangerous.
…
They’d moved into starting-stopping drills, rapid back-and-forth stuff, just to start. They were rotating lines, and to stop the guys who weren’t in the midst of it from tuning out, the coach had set up a peer monitoring system, where anyone who didn’t stop within a reasonable distance of the line, had to skate three laps. It was chaos, but it was firing them up.
It was also, Ilya thought frustratedly, finishing out his third lap after a mistake that had led to at least six guys calling out his name in amused unison, fucking exhausting. He headed for the bench, retrieving a water bottle and making his way back so he was almost standing in the tunnel before starting to sky it into his mouth in short bursts, turning to watch the drill continuing as he did so.
The whistle blew and the players in the center of the ice started to make their way off as well, Dykstra coming to stand nearby the captain, panting for breath and leaning against the wall. The Russian eyed him, but determined that he wasn’t there for any untoward reason, watching as the next group lined up to start.
Two sets in, one of the younger players, who’d rather cockily been trying to beat everyone else back to the line by stopping especially fast, placed his weight wrong and fell. Ilya had just been taking another sip of water, and the sight of the kid faceplanting and then immediately scrambling to his feet, red in the face, had drawn a half-laugh out of him that had drawn the water half-way into his windpipe.
His throat was clear of the irritant in three short coughs, but he couldn’t stop, once again grabbing at his jersey and pressing it to his face to muffle the sound, although the raucous laughter at the kid’s mistake probably would have drowned him out regardless. The fit felt reflexive, his body overreacting in a frustratingly unstoppable manner. By the time he’d managed to bring it to a stop, his lungs ached, and his throat felt raw, though the whole ordeal had only lasted about 7 seconds.
With a sigh that was significantly more shaky than he would have really liked, Ilya raised his head, taking an immediate swig of water, and then looking sharply across at Dykstra, whose eyes were on the ice, but he strongly suspected had only just made their way over there. The Canadian said nothing, though, which he was appreciative of. Not as appreciative as he would have been if the other player had walked away entirely, but he’d take what he could get.
The captain blinked slightly watery eyes back at his team, watching the drill again, suddenly really wanting to get back out there, because he could feel the warmth and energy draining out of him with every second he stood still there. He sniffled, the tears of exertion, having been turned away at his lashline, apparently having decided to make their way into his nose instead. Their second exit plan would, it appeared, be the successful one, as the sniffle immediately made his nostrils flare with irritation, and he angrily reached out to grab a towel from a nearby stack, pressing it over his nose and mouth. Two fits right on top of each other he could probably brush off as coincidence, but three would be too much. The less people that witnessed this one, the better.
“hKk! KK! hKK! HKSH! hKSH! hMPHH! hhihhMPHH! hrRMPH! hihh… hRRMPHHoo!” He very nearly broke off coughing again, managing to keep it to just two, and a rough rub at his nose with the fabric before he looked up to be repaid for his troubles with,
“G’ bless you.” Dykstra was already moving back towards the ice as he spoke, which was the only thing that saved him from the conflagrating gaze that Ilya was sending him. Finally the defenseman had gotten the message about walking away… after he’d already made a fool of himself, wonderful.
…
“Hey.”
Wyatt looked up from where he was lounging on the bench, excused from the current drill for obvious reasons. Technically he was supposed to be doing his own exercise but watching and chirping the others every time they messed up was much more fun. Dykstra sat down beside him, staring out at the ice but with the air that he wasn’t really watching anything. This felt like a spy meet.
“Hi.” The goaltender replied.
“You think there might be something going on with Roz?” He asked, straight to the point, not turning towards Wyatt in the slightest.
“Yeah. Do you?”
“I just watched him cough his way into a sneezing fit and then nearly sneeze his way back into a coughing fit, so yeah.”
The blond nodded, making a grim facial expression that Dykstra didn’t bother to look over at. “I don’t think he wants anyone to know-”
“As usual.”
“Mm. But I’ve been keeping an eye on him-”
“As usual.”
“Yes. And I guess at some point we should probably try to see if he needs anything, although I don’t know how well that will go-”
“As usual.” What had him so snappish today?
Wyatt smacked him on the arm with the back of his glove. “We know him better now, we’ve got experience, it doesn’t have to be a trainwreck.”
“Alright.” The defenseman turned to look at him, finally, as he stood up to climb over the boards, “If you think it will help him, consider me in, but if it all goes to shit again, consider yourself warned.”
“Fine.” He watched the groups switch out, eyeing Rozanov as he stepped back onto the ice, tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling for a moment, face twitching for a brief moment with a sniff that Wyatt imagined he could hear even though he definitely couldn’t, the sound so characteristic of their captain that he probably could have picked it out of a line-up despite not having been teammates for all that long.
The Russian glanced in his direction, and he was quick to shift his gaze to the shaft of his stick, faux scrutinising it just to look preoccupied. This whole thing made him kind of nervous, but third time was the charm, right? Things weren’t looking overly good so far, he’d tried to send the captain a casual smile earlier, but had been meet only with vitriol. And then he’d sort of known the blessing was a mistake, but it’d been just the two of them up that end and he was right there, so he’d obviously heard, and it would have been weird not to have said anything, right?
He ran through the last few tough times with Roz in his head, noting their mistakes, the revelations that followed, searching for anything that would guide how he should approach the issue this time. No pills, that was the main thing. He didn’t even know what the dude’s symptoms were, other than sneezing, which he did reasonably frequently anyway- Wyatt often found himself following the captain out of the arena after practice and had noted the effect that the change of setting seemed to have on him, for whatever reason- and coughing, and a mean attitude that didn’t seem all that removed from his typical personality. So he’d have to try and get him to communicate. The goaltender sighed, more resolve than frustration, but not blind to the futility of the operation. The operative word being ‘try’.
…
The drill they were working on was a new one for the Centaurs, but it was similar to something Ilya remembered working well in Boston. They were training line cohesion, awareness, precision- passing back and forth in place with their eyes shut. He was paired with Dillon to start, though he knew the exercise would probably go slightly easier with Boodram. There was more of a connection there. If he had to pick between the two wingers, Bood and he were just a little more in sync, usually.
He’d been getting into a good rhythm with the right winger, though, and they were starting to build confidence. It was definitely a useful skill to have on the ice, Ilya thought as the puck hit his stick with a ‘CLICK’ and left it again with a forceful push in his linemate’s direction.
He did not hear the satisfying ‘clack’ of it meeting Dillon’s stick, though and when he opened his eyes, frustrated, he saw the winger chasing the puck down the boards. Ah, forget it, they were so fucking out of sync.
There was barely a second for him to even think that, before a violent, unignorable tickle started to grow, responding to the sudden, rudely unprecedented, influx of light, thrashing between the very back of his nose and between his eyes, snagging his upper lip, face twisting and twitching in helpless itchiness as his breathing faltered.
“hHh-” He swallowed, gritted his teeth, snorted out a half-breath through his nostrils like a compromise, the function of a sneeze without all of the drama. Shut up. Stupid fucking reflex. Stupid fucking sensitive nose and stupid burning, aching lungs, and stupid oxygen-
“My bad. You ready?” Dillon had returned.
Without thinking, Ilya nodded, grateful for the excuse to clench his eyes shut, trying to focus on their positions, and the sound of the puck moving across the ice, to meet- CLICK- his stick, perfect. He sent it back- clack-
Lungs at capacity, he let out a shaky breath, the sensation of it leaving his chapped lips somehow stirring the tickle back up. Seriously? How was his mouth even relevant to an itch in his nose caused by a light in his eyes? Said eyes flew open as the blond panicked, trying to control the situation, catching a glimpse of black skidding towards him, shifting his grip on his stick-CLICK-
“hHuAHKK!-” Apparently he could only focus on so many things at once, and, given an inch of opportunity to sneeze, his nose had taken a mile, “-hKK! KKh!-” and didn’t seem intent on stopping. Accidentally getting his wires crossed between the drill and his instincts, Ilya timed his next sneeze with a haphazard swipe at the puck still in front of him, “-hKSHH!-”, hearing it thwack off the boards as he finally thought to drag his jersey over his face, “hKSH! KSHhUh! hhRSHHH! RSHHUh!”
“Bless.” Dillon had retrieved the puck, apparently, moving it absently from side to side in front of him, and had also closed the distance between them, eyes fixed on the captain, warily.
Before Ilya could tell him to move back to his spot so they could keep going, the coach’s voice rang out across the rink, “Rozanov! C’mere a second.” Fucking wonderful.
…
Hayes watched with interest from the goal, where he was fielding backhand shots from Boodram, as Rozanov skated off towards the bench. Bood paused, slightly insulted, as Wyatt let two shots pass by uninterrupted, and glanced over his shoulder at the scene that had drawn the goaltender’s attention.
“What’s going on?”
Wyatt snapped back to the exercise, not wanting to create additional focus on a situation that the captain probably already felt was too public, retrieving the two pucks from behind him, and passing them back towards the winger as he answered, “Something’s up with Roz. Guess Coach has picked up on it.”
They both watched as the two conversed, the captain removing his gloves and knuckling at his nose as he spoke. Their coach looked concerned, but not completely worried, Rozanov’s words apparently placating him somewhat. He started to reply, but the Russian cut him off, pulling his shirt over his face, the fit still faintly audible from the other end of the rink-
“…-ksh! -ksh! -kshUh! -ahksh! -aehshh!”
Wyatt winced slightly. Oof, God bless him, that looked rough- the last few had bent him double.
“He sick?” Bood asked, lining up and taking another shot, which the goaltender caught easily, both of them preoccupied with their own thoughts.
“Yeah, think so.” He tossed the puck back.
“Jesus, he just never stops, does he?”
“Showing up to practice, or sneezing?” The blond dropped to his knees, blocking the shot that Bood had apparently been trying to distract him from noticing he was lining up. “Either way, no.”
To Wyatt’s surprise, Rozanov skated back out to his spot opposite Dillon moments later, rather than taking a seat on the bench, or heading down the tunnel, as he’d expected after the conversation. How the hell had he talked his way out of that? It was one thing to push through for a game, but for practice when they had games coming up soon? That wasn’t just tenacity, it was actual stupidity.
“You gonna try and help him?”
“Always.” Always up for a long shot, that was.
Bood nodded, clearly equally as unoptimistic as Dykstra, but less keen to voice that opinion. “Alright, well, if you-” He launched the puck into the top corner of the goal, beating Wyatt’s lunge to redirect it by barely a second, “-ha! If you need anything…”
What he needed was an actual miracle, probably. “Thanks, man.”
…
Ilya was about halfway to the locker room, having been the last off the ice, drinking in the final dregs of adrenaline as the post-exertion exhaustion started to kick in, when he met Dykstra coming back the other way.
The defenseman didn’t look him in the eyes at all, but moved close enough to him in the not-really-all-that-narrow corridor to slip something into his hand. The captain paused, watching him walk away with about as much purpose as a remote control car being piloted by a three year old with no concept of U-turns. What the fuck was that? No, literally, what the fuck had he given him? Also where was was he going?
He opened his hand to be confronted by a familiar looking tube of lozenges. He was pretty sure Dykstra always carried them, being known for destroying his throat yelling, and for some impressively awful coughing fits when he came down sick. And now here they were in his hand. Was this some kind of weird chirp that he hadn’t stuck around to deliver the punchline for? Because if it had anything to do with the captain’s health, the line would definitely be followed by a punch.
Ilya glanced over his shoulder again, the defenseman already around the corner and out of sight. Fuck, why were these guys so complicated? Everything with Boston was exactly as one-dimensional as it seemed, no one gives a fuck about your private life, get on with the games, get drunk, get girls. or at least pretend to. But here, things were all open and friendly and attentive and fucking terrifying. He felt like he wasn’t keeping up, and there wasn’t even anything to really keep up with. People got on with their lives and left him to his own devices, and they trained and they played and they talked, and it still felt like nothing he was doing was enough. Because he had no idea what they expected of him.
Mind whirring angrily, he continued on his way to change, rolling the cylinder back and forth in his palm. More focused on his surroundings now, vigilance awakened, he saw the next figure approaching from further away, tracking them as they headed towards him. He kept his face stoic, but his stomach roiled with anxiety. What if this was the whole team banding together to tell him to shut up and get out or something? That felt more warranted after a game than practice, but still, maybe it had been brewing over the off-season. He hadn’t exactly been particularly present with the team in that time. Maybe they wanted a captain who was more-
“Hey.” It was Hayes, slightly out of breath, stripped to just his compression gear and shorts, footsteps silent in socked feet against the smooth flooring.
Ilya only nodded in response, guard up against whatever this was about to be. If it was some kind of joke, he had no doubt that the goalie would have taken great pleasure in volunteering to deliver the payoff.
“Just uh- good practice.” He smiled easily, though the words were awkward, like he’d only started thinking of what to say once he’d already called out for the captain’s attention.
“Yes.” If you give him nothing, he’ll probably go away. Ilya ignored the bitter regretful feeling that the assertion stirred in his chest. Everyone went away. Because he never gave anyone anything.
“So, I wanted to ask-”
The captain shifted his stance, trying to find a comfortable way to stand that didn’t make him feel like he was about to fall over. God, he was so fucking tired.
At the same time, he ran a finger under his nose, only for his knuckle to collide with his septum, exhaustion and multitasking making his spatial awareness dip, creating a buzzing sensation that he didn’t even try to fight- Hayes had probably already seen it happen three or four times that day so what was another one on top of that?- taking a half step backwards so he could turn away towards the floor.
“hKK! KKh! hKk! hKSH! hKSHH!-” His hands immediately fell into position, bracing against his knees to keep his upper body at least somewhat upright, the stick still clutched in his off hand clattering against the wall behind him. “-hKSH! hihKXSH!-” Unexpectedly forceful, the latest sneeze spritzed significantly more than just miniscule droplets in the direction of the floor. Ilya dragged his jersey up again hurriedly, belatedly noticing it was still damp from the last time he’d done that, “hKXSHH! haHKSHH! huAHSCHHUh!
When he raised his head again, the goaltender’s gaze was averted, as though he couldn’t even bear to look at him. Fuck, he was such a mess he’d even managed to disgust pretty much the most unbothered guy he knew.
…
“God bless.” Wyatt looked away slightly as he spoke, wondering if it was the staring that was the problem, waiting for the captain to take the pack of tissues before glancing back at him, neutral. He looked exhausted, though, like the practice had really drained him, shoulders slumped, blinking slowly as though he were half asleep. And the sweat beaded on his brow made the goaltender start to worry about a fever, and how on earth he’d get the other player to let him check for one.
“Thanks.” Rozanov said, carefully, pulling one out and scrubbing angrily at his lower face with it.
“You need anything else?” He nodded towards the tissues, and the lozenges Dykstra had left the locker room with, both now clutched defensively in one of the Russian’s hands.
He frowned in response, glancing between said hand and the goalie before a look of exasperated realisation took over his face. “I am not fucking sick.” Oh. Really? That sort of put a hole in his plan.
“Uh, right. So, this is…?” What, allergies or something? He’d seemed a lot worse last time Wyatt had seen him allergic to something, and there weren’t exactly a whole lot of prevalent triggers in the area.
“Is just lights and air and stupid shit.” He gestured around wildly, throwing blaming hands at the environment surrounding them.
“That doesn’t normally bother you this much.” He knew he was pushing it, but if this was already a failed attempt, he was absolutely going to use it to gather more information. He was nothing if not determined, and once he’d set his sights on a goal, he wasn’t going to drop it.
Rozanov looked slightly thrown by the assertion, and his response was quieter, almost unresistant, “I know,” He thumbed at his nose, “Is still- nevermind.”
Wyatt saw the walls starting to go back up, and unknowingly made his biggest mistake so far in an attempt to keep them down. He made a sympathetic face, and a stupid guess. “You just getting over something, then?”
The responding expression on the Russian’s face was initially shock, and then recognition, and then pure, unadulterated rage. “Why the fuck you care? I am not sick now. You think I am weak or something? Like you are better than me because you are never sick? You are. I have seen you-” He paused, seemingly coming to the realisation that this line of defense was thin and sounded petty.
“Roz-” Wyatt took the chance to interrupt. “-I’m not heckling you here, bud. I just want to help.”
“I do not need help.” His face flickered from scorn to regret for a moment. “I am supposed to help you, no? But I don’t, so you think we do this other way round. That is not how this works.”
“I kind of think it is.” The goalie proposed, hesitantly. “Yeah, you’re the captain, but we’re a team, right? We’re equals, we help each other.”
“But captain is not supposed to need help.” Rozanov insisted, body tensing as though he was trying to physically put himself behind the points he was making to bolster them. “That is why they get position.”
‘Who told you that?’ was how he wanted to answer, but instead he simply shook his head. “None of us need you to be perfect, Roz. You’re human and that’s fine. We check in with you because you’re one of us, and we want to make sure you’re comfortable. It-”
The captain interrupted him, ducking to one side to cough, and when he looked back, the anger seemed to roar back into full fledged fury again, Wyatt suddenly aware of the concerned expression he’d unintentionally donned, because Rozanov’s gaze was roving all over it in enraged disbelief. Damn, he needed to learn how to control his face.
“See? Is not equal.” He surged forwards, getting up in the goaltender’s face, finger extended accusatorially, “You make face, you fucking pity me. You look down on me. You try help me, and I don’t fucking need it. Not equal.”
The Canadian flushed, swallowing the angry words that threatened to burst out of him in response, ‘Maybe that wouldn’t happen if you fucking communicated with us, idiot.’ Fighting to keep his face neutral, he took a breath before responding, “I’m not looking down on you, I’m looking out for you. You can’t keep this macho shit up, it’s not sustainable, you’ve gotta let someone in.”
The captain wasn’t really that scary close up, not when you kind of knew him. His rage was overwhelming, all-consuming, but if you really looked at it, stared into the heart of the fire, he was just a kid having a tantrum because he didn’t feel like an adult. He didn’t want to be respected, or feared, or whatever bullshit he was saying, he clearly just wanted to be treated like his problems didn’t make him any less of a person, handled at arm’s length until he knew he could trust them. So Wyatt would do just that, and then Rozanov would trust him. Right?
The latter wasn’t responding, just staring at him blankly, though Wyatt could see the thoughts flitting around behind his eyes. And then he shrugged, sidestepped him, and continued down the corridor towards the locker room. It was like he’d flicked a switch in his mind, remembered some other place he had to be, some more important thing in his life than standing here yelling at his teammate, and calmly headed off to seek it out. Maybe he had let someone in, then, and he was off to go confide in them. It was kind of all Wyatt could hope for, that even if he couldn’t successfully be of assistance to the captain, that at least someone could.
…
“-so yeah, he wasn’t exactly grateful for the help, but hey, at least he’s not actually sick.” Wyatt concluded his debrief of the other team members who’d also noted and voiced their concerns about the captain’s less than stellar-seeming health.
“I really thought he was.” Bood mused.
“We know him better now.” Dykstra parroted what Hayes had said earlier, slightly mocking.
The goaltender rolled his eyes, “Alright, so it was a false alarm.”
“And now we look like we’re waiting for it.”
“We kind of are waiting for it, D.” Boodram nudged him. “Why’re you so cranky?”
Dykstra shrugged, not looking at him.
“He’s definitely gonna be pissed if we look like we’re hovering.” Wyatt continued, “I really don’t think he likes the coddling shit, he said something along those lines.”
“So, what, we’re just gonna yell at him next time?” Dillon asked with a smirk, “FEEL BETTER SOON CAP!”
Bood snorted, “Yeah, PUNCH THAT ILLNESS IN THE FACE, ROZ!”
They unconsciously all turned to look at Dykstra, expecting him to have an even louder rallying cry for the captain’s next hypothetical battle locked and loaded. Instead,
“hyYESCHH! hHh… huUESCHHh!”
“Bless you and bless you.”
Wyatt, not having been particularly invested in the yelling encouragement bit, still trying to puzzle out the pity issue in his head, frowned at the defenseman, still barely visible behind a bandana he’d whipped out of nowhere. “God bless, buddy. You alright?”
“You order one of whatever the captain’s just had?” Dillon tacked on, unhelpfully.
“I’m good, I’m good.” Dykstra waved them off, and then hesitated, “And if I’m not, I’ll be a hell of a lot better patient than him.”
genuine genuine question, HOW do you find the time to write as much as you do as enthusiastically as you do. i seriously want to know your process because it’s all coherent AND emotional, what’s your secret dude?!?
new favourite ask just dropped, tysm for the question! also for saying my writing is coherent? highest possible complimenttttt, I truly feel like no one knows what I’m yapping about half the time. endless rambling about my method under the cut :)
so, I kind of approach fics the same way I approach essays, like scheduling specific times to write (and I don’t have a whole lot so I have to really stick to it) and setting goals for what I want to write in that time, which might sound really clinical and boring, but I just prefer things to be super organised and specific like that (autism lol).
then I usually start with the title bc I loveee a dumb pun title, and it gives me a chance to brainstorm what sort of vibe I want for the fic, playing around with the words gives me ideas I guess? literally all my pending requests already have their weird lil titles ready to go.
and then I write out a list of scenes/moments, which is very much just a stream of consciousness of how I think the fic is going to go, like some are more like scene suggestions like [drive to the arena] and some are more dialogue-y like [hey are you good, dude]. I’ll add a bit of the one I used for this fic below so you can see the chaos. the [i] means Ilya’s pov, the Canadian flag means Shane’s, and the tick means I finished writing it.
or my personal favourite, significantly more chaotic, from this fic
once I have that I kind of follow where the inspiration takes me, I don’t write in order, I just write whatever feels the most exciting or interesting to me at the time (so I usually start with the super emotional or snzy scenes obvi) and then flesh out the rest as I go. I go back to the source material a lot, as well as stuff like edits and memes to try and keep the characters’ voices and actions consistent, and atm I’m livinggg on the HR wiki page bc I know less than nothing about the centaurs so I need every morsel of info I can get. I draw a lot of inspo from my life, but also media I watch, and of course the incredible prompts I am given.
I also waste a bunch of time on researching very very niche things, like for my last fic I spent ages looking at different kinds of beer for absolutely no reason, and before I wrote my first HR fic I watched almost every single ASG that was available online because I wanted the best content and I knew nothing about hockey. Other things I have researched for fics include- highway codes for multiple countries, glove compartment sizes in various cars, aborted takeoff protocol for fighter jets, drill procedures for aircraft carriers, types of grass in various US states, elevator stop mechanisms, common microphone malfunctions with handheld mics, and a lot of language/linguistic things. I also have 'consultants' for stuff that it’s hard to find info about online, shoutout @poetic-illness and @hurt-care ♡
I like to leave like 8 hours minimum between the last time I edit a fic and proofreading it (dissertation habit) but sometimes I post it without proofreading at all if I feel like I’m just going to keep adding to it endlessly or I’m really short on time, so I never read my stuff back because I’m always concerned I’ll find something I want to change.
so basically, I take everything way too seriously, and once I start writing I can’t stop, which is why I can’t seem to do anything under 4k :’)
also I think my secret is just audhd- I get super into media and then can’t think about anything else, so I can spend like 3 hours straight at night writing fics without it feeling exhausting/like a chore as long as I’m very very caffeinated and undisturbed.
I have to express how genuinely nothing I write will encapsulate how much I genuinely marvel at your writing. Your characterizations, plot lines, spellings, everything you wrote is genuinely gold and I eat it up every time you post! Finding your writing was like striking gold in snzblr I’m not exaggerating even a little bit. I could keep yapping for ages but like. 10/10 love everything you write <3
wowwww anon, thank you so much!!! I’m so so grateful you enjoy my writing, and so incredibly floored by the amount of people who have read and liked it, snzblr is truly the best community I could ever imagine being a part of ♡♡♡
