ilya wakes up feeling particularly sneezy. he does in fact sneeze, but just once. he waits, and then is like okay, guess the next two aren’t coming this time. but as the day goes on, he keeps sneezing only in singles. after each one, the itch lingers, but it doesn’t set off any others, just dissipates after a few seconds. shane is equally confused and also kind of bothered by it, because ilya (barring extenuating circumstances) always has three sneezes. it kind of weirdly throws off their day.
but oh well. there have been times that ilya wished he could sneeze a simple normal one sneeze and be over with it. but now that he feels like his nose is constantly tickling in the aftermath of the singles, he kind of misses his usual, maybe not-so-excessive three sneezes.
the whole thing can sort of be explained when the next day, ilya wakes up with a full blown head cold. all of his missed sneezes want out. he’s back to sneezing his triples and half the time he’s getting six or nine in a row instead of just the three. and it’s completely miserable, but at least balance has been restored.
Character A has the nagging feeling something's wrong with character B. They haven't seen each other in a few days. Both having busy schedules which kept them apart. A doesn't have any evidence for their feelings and it's probably just their over-worrying brain. Still, the nagging feeling keeps clawing at their gut and sitting heavily in their neck until A gives in and goes over to B's place.
Letying themselves in, A finds B napping on their sofa as is their habit. B loves a good late afternoon nap. Silly, really, to be so worried over nothing.
Feeling quite embarrassed, A makes to leave, hoping B hasn't noticed what an utterly ridiculous worrywart A has been.
Except... aren't B's cheeks a bit flushed? And why is B suddenly curling up under their blanket as if they are cold? Isn't B's nose a touch pink?
Stepping closer, A ever so slightly touches the back of their hand against B's forehead, finding it far too hot for their liking. B squirms and makes whimpering sounds of discomfort.
Perhaps it is good that A is such a worrywart after all.
Content Warning: Substance use, intoxication, and the three do get decently smutty at the end. (aka #nsfquo tag!)
Word Count: 5,100
Note: Thank you @hitching-hyacinth for letting me write something inspired by your fantasy snuff sneeze prompt! Essentially, these three get their hands on magical powder that makes them higher the more they sneeze. This fic plays around a lot with the dynamic of these three fools, and it’s given me such a good excuse to practice sneeze descriptions!! Oh, and of course, they start getting pretty touchy as the afternoon goes on. Maybe I’ll make a part 2 to this, but only because I adore Gulliver’s sneezes and he needs more.
Forthwind muttered to himself as he sliced red onions. This was the unseen side of a culinary graduate: prepping in your own apartment for a function at the end of the week. He had to plan two days ahead just for the sake of a good meal. Well, a good meal that his reputation depended on, at least. He was humble and hospitable, but his desperate strides for the latter often stressed him out.
The aasimar was pulled from his task at a steady rumble emanating from the kitchen island. Someone was calling him at this hour? Sighing, Forthwind paused from his julienne slices. He was sniffling wetly and rubbing at one of his teary eyes with a wrist. Damn onions, he should’ve run them under water to avoid all the waterworks. After placing his knife down, Forthwind balanced his phone between his shoulder and pointed ear.
A yawn greeted him first. Then, “Forthwind…?”
“Hey! Ryfon?” Forthwind moved a grease-sodden pan into his sink to scrub it clean. He paused, smiling at a giggle from the phone. “…Hello Ryfon! I’m doing…doing quite fine. Just finished my preparations for tomorrow’s party.”
Ryfon, the eladrin on the other end of the line, was sprawled out on his couch upside down. He was holding an expensive looking tin between his fingers, reading the labeling on the back. “Oh, perfect timing then, huh?”
“It…it depends, Ryfon,” he opened his fridge, worriedly glancing at his unfinished tasks. “What’s up?”
“Well, remember when you said to get a hold of you if I ever found a fix you might like??”
The pan was neatly hung on a brick wall amongst Forthwind’s prized knife display. “Oh..? I’m listening.”
“Yeah, I think I found it. Well—Gully found it, actually. It’s really good. Super chill, super low maintenance, according to him, just like you we’re talking about.”
Forthwind was willingly subjected to a ten-minute ramble as he cleaned up the rest of his kitchen. According to Ryfon, Gulliver had been adamant on finding a substance most suitable for Forthwind. Being an aasimar, he had quite the sturdy tolerance against non-magical things; alcohol was mostly reserved as a compliment to a fancy dinner, and cannabis would get expensive when you needed a handful of edibles to feel something. Magical substances were the logical next step, but plenty of magical substances were more trouble than they were worth if taken incorrectly. That, and getting your hands on any sort of dispell magic scrolls was also a punch to the wallet.
“No wild magic with this one, yeah?” Forthwind was obliged to ask with the topic on his mind, “last time, I was a sheep in your bathtub for three hours.”
“Not at all. It literally feels like a super strong indica. All the arcane stuff is in the…like, the activation and preservation, or whatever. Gully, is that right?? …It, yeah- okay, yes!! Mainly the activation of the snuff.”
“Oh, it's snuff?” Interesting.
“Snff—! Yeah, you could call it a snuff.”
“…so, is this an invitation?”
“It’s a summoning!!” The pitchy, nasally voice was Gulliver, listening in on speaker. “If you wanna give it a go, get over here!”
“Sure sure, give me thirty-five.” It would be worth putting prep work on hold, he had a feeling.
———
Forthwind was never off with his timing. Punctuality was a huge part of being a chef, after all. Thirty-five minutes was enough time to change into comfortable clothes, collect a small array of essentials, and catch the bus to the next district. The setting sun was perfect company on his quiet ride.
“…snff..! Snf!” On his mostly quiet ride. He was one of four passengers, two of which had been eyeing him for a couple of minutes. He was well-acclimated to their smitten expressions; it wasn’t every day an angel sat across from you on metropolitan transit. The moment he looked down to his phone, he felt a spark of a tickle fester in his nose as the pair launched into hushed conversation. He knew he was the subject of their giddy whispers, not out of an unchecked ego, but how strongly his nose was acting up. Compliments were his most potent allergy, and even the implication of them made his breath tremble. The golden hour at least did something to hide the redness.
Forthwind’s nose creased at the bridge. His lashes fluttered against his cheeks, and a hand hovered expectantly in front of his face with parting lips. Good grief, whatever they were saying, it was making his nose act up so sharply— “h-hHh! hHEEishhiiw!!”
His nose buzzed like television static. A dull tickle that was growing dormant quickly. He sniffled with dissatisfaction and shook his head, but telling by how quickly he geared up for a second sneeze, that small action hit his onlookers in the chest.
“Gesundheit,” at least one was courageous enough to offer.
By the time Forthwind was walking up the street to the apartments west of campus, he had been blowing his nose into small travel tissues. Sneezing from compliments always made his nose so drippy! The used tissues kept a faintly-glowing residue, and his bright pink nostrils hinted at the culprit.
“Snf! Eugh, snrf!! Huhh…321, 323, 325…there we go.”
No one answered the first two sets of knocking dishes out to the bulky red door labeled 327. Right as Forthwind began to question if he had the wrong apartment, the locks clicked on the other side and the door swung inward. Behind it, a goblin as tall as his hip leaned out, dreadlocks spilling over his shoulder. He had an exaggerated, animated quality about him, as if pulled out of an old technicolor film and slapped into the real world. His eyes blinked individually behind his massive, rubbery pink nose.
“Good evening, Gulliver! How have you been?
“Heyyyy, not too bad! Get in here! Take your shoes off.”
“Thank you…honestly, I think I needed to take a load off. The preparations for the function have been killing me.”
“Yo, Forthwind!” Ryfon rolled over so that he could lean over the couch and face them. A few oak leaves were fluttering down from his autumnal hair, leaving only a few maples behind. “What Gully said, take it easy! I just ordered us some pizza on Airscamper, should be here in about…2 minutes?”
“Oh nice..!” Honestly, pizza sounded so appealing after studying with complex flavor profiles all afternoon. Forthwind yearned for something simple for once! “Well, while that’s on the way, about this snuff: could I get a look at it?”
The fancy aluminum tin was tossed his way, and he flipped it to the front. ‘Hitchington’s Snuff,’ apparently from the Emporium of Wonder collection. What kind of a name was Hitchington??
“Gulliver found it at an adult circus he went to the other day, apparently it’s wacky stuff…”
“Wacky fun, I feel I should add. It’s super chill and lowkey!”
“Mmm,” The aasimar squinted at his friends, and his eyes fell onto a paragraph on the bottom of the tin. “Let’s see here: ‘Tired of old fashioned sessions? Hitchington’s Snuff is a Tabacco-Free recreational snuff infused with enchantments.’ How curious.”
“Oh, wait, is that us?” Ryfon suddenly stood, pointing outside. When the other two followed his gaze, they could make out a winged creature approaching the balcony from afar. Ryfon rushed to the screen door and yanked it open, grabbing a purple air-traffic baton hanging beside it on the wall. He clicked it on, waved it crazily, and watched as they redirected their path.
A winged tiefling cautiously landed on the porch, a pizza bag slung securely over his shoulder. Pizza was exchanged for a water bottle and high-sugar snack, which, along with a generous tip, was a common courtesy amongst Airscamper delivery workers.
Ryfon brought the pizza boxes over Gulliver’s head. Forthwind couldn’t help a tiny chuckle at the sight of Gulliver’s huge nose. The way it teetered on his face as he snuffled, following the direction the boxes moved. The way it caused him to lean forward—Forthwind was concerned for a moment that his friend would float off the ground towards Ryfon. “Snff! Snf! A large bacon and pepperoni, with garlic glaze and stuffed crust…snfff! And a small pineapple and anchovy pizza too…”
Ryfon wasted no time cracking open a box. “You say that like you didn’t make the order with me ten minutes ago, Gully!”
“Shhh shhh, let me have my moment dude!”
“Hold on, hold on,” Forthwind scowled, putting his hands out, “I’m sorry, pineapple and anchovy? Nothing else??”
“Oh, here we go again, it’s an underrated combo!! Little bit sweet, little bit salty. It’s like chocolate-covered pretzels, but tropical!”
“Are you pregnant?”
“I’m innovating the pizza-topping industry.”
Tch, this living-cartoon of a man. Forthwind rolled his eyes with a good-natured smile. Whatever floats his boat!
While the pizza was still piping hot (having flown out of the oven not ten minutes ago), Forthwind, Ryfon, and Gulliver gathered round the coffee table in varying seating. Ryfon preferred the beanbag, simply because he could sweep the leftover leaves and petals easier over the hardwood floor. Gulliver took to the tiny round ottoman by the table. Forthwind, the couch.
“Let’s see what this actually looks like, woah,” Gulliver and Forthwind leaned in as Ryfon held the fancy snuff container. The tin opened to a fine, glittery gold powder. It was as if some gold leaf had been compacted to the texture of cinnamon.
“Oh, hold on, one more thing,” Gulliver suddenly stood, and dove into a paper bag. “There’s also this! It’s an antimagic sobering flush.”
What he revealed was a small, narrow bottle, the size of his thumb. A nasal spray applicator was connected to the top, and it was all painted in gold. Forthwind squinted at the fancy cursive words.
“Hitchington’s Diss-Choo, Dispelling Nasal Spray—Gulliver, where do you find this stuff, I feel like I’m about to snort an ACME product.” Oh, why bother? At least there was an easy out if things got too chaotic, and he couldn’t complain with that at all. That’s why magical recreation was the best kind out there!
“Hey, I don’t judge,” Ryfon shrugged, already navigating a pinch of it in an oak leaf he plucked from his hair. “Bottoms up, right?”
“Sure, why not? What’s the worst that could happen?”
“You could be a sheep again,”
“Don’t manifest that, Ryfon.”
Forthwind brought some of the powder to his gentle nostrils. He was the first to try it, as he feared he’d back out if he waited any longer. The powder prickled in a way that nearly blinded Forthwind. He scrunched his nose, recoiling his head away from his hand as if it would get him away from the severe tickle in his nose. It didn’t burn, but it had this tingling effect that felt like heavy static. Every time he bumped at his nose as he sniffled and snorted, he had to fight waves upon waves of intense fuzziness under his twitching nostrils.
And here Gulliver was, practically snorting a line of it off the table! There was something objectively funny about it all, exaggeration that could only be pulled off by this clown. “Oh fuck, I got it in my eye!” He hissed.
“You got it in your everything, Gully, how much was that??”
“I dunno, but they don’t call me the Greenout Goat for nothing. Okay, first to sneeze has to get tickled.”
Both Ryfon and Forthwind instinctively went to protect themselves at the mention. Forthwind never considered himself a ticklish person until he met Gulliver years back. That, and the itch in his nose was beginning to stir up into something more productive.
“Oh gods, h-hHHh!”
“Oh already??” Ryfon laughed, pointing his way.
“My nose’s r…hHhh! Real f-fussy on a normal d—! Normal…dhHh-! hEHhh!”
Both Gulliver and Ryfon watched on as Forthwind hitched, anticipation heavy in their gaze. Why was this so embarrassing?? The feathers on his cheeks and neck were quick to puff out at all the sudden attention.
“HhHuhh…uhm- snf!! I lost it…” he sighed, relieved.
There was a pregnant beat of silence between the three. Then, suddenly—
“HhHGHh- heeEH! hHAH!!” Eyes shifted to the smallest in the room, whose big pink nose was flaring. His cartoonish physics had extra squish and stretch to them, evident in the way one of his nostrils flared almost disproportionately. Even as he grasped his reddening nose in both hands, he couldn’t stop what he’d started: “hyihHH!! hHAAB’tsshhw!!”
“Bless you,” Forthwind spoke up instinctively.
Ryfon and Forthwind watched Gulliver dazedly recover, sharing a second of silence. Ryfon then gestured expectantly to Forthwind. “Don’t just leave him there!!”
Right! He had been so focused on abating his own sneeze, he had already lost sight of the game. He hurriedly grabbed at a large, loose feather from one of his wings, poking it playfully at his side. He squirmed away quickly with a ticklish yelp, only to tumble into Ryfon’s waiting arms. His fits of laughter and wails made Forthwind grin.
“Now, Gulliver, how long does this stuff take to settle in? It makes my nose itch so badly…” Ryfon wrinkled his freckled nose with a pout.
“It’s already settled in, y…you just gotta …whew- activate it.” Gulliver panted, rubbing the tender spot on his stomach that Ryfon’s fingers had worked into him.
“What, with the spray?”
“No no, all you have to do is s-”
“h-hhHhh…sorry,” Forthwind had interrupted them with another false start, rubbing shyly at his pinkening nose.
“That’s exactly it, you just gotta sneeze a few times.” Again with the fey-like oddity that was this snuff! Who was this Hitchington guy?
“Oh, you weren’t kidding, huh?? That’s great news,” Ryfon spoke thinly, pulling a tissue from the box on the coffee table. Gulliver still sat on his lap, looking up as the eladrin elf rolled one end into a point. Or at least, he attempted to, but could hardly get halfway through the task before his nostrils twitched in warning. “It’s…s’great news be…because I’m gUH- huh—! hnk’TSCHHHhh’yiw!” He snapped his head to the side, sneezing towards the hardwood floor with a slight spray.
“Bless you!” Spoken just as enthusiastically from Forthwind again.
Ryfon lifted a finger, shaking his head. “Hh…heh! hehhHUHTtsshh’yiw!! Huhh snfff! I haven’t even tried making mysEHhsschhh’yiw!! Woah…”
“Bless you, bless you again,”
“You might wanna save your breath, Forthwind, we’re all in for plenty of sneezes.”
“Oh! Gods forbid I’m polite about it! I don’t mind…”
“Oh bless you,” Gulliver rested his cheek against his steepled hands, batting his uncharacteristically-long lashes. Forthwind choked out a laugh at the animated halo hovering above Gulliver’s stupid face. Gods, this freak of a man was too funny sober! “Whatever floats your boat, I suppose. Speaking of, how are you feeling, Ryfon?”
“I can feel something, it’s like a pleasant buzz.”
“Need some help with your…?” He wordlessly balled his fist under his nose, ghosting the motion of tickling.
“Oh, yes please,” Ryfon offered the pointed tissue towards Gulliver’s paws, “you know how to do it in a way that makes me sneeze my head off…what did you call it??”
Gulliver, straddling Ryfon’s legs with his planted feet on the beanbag, put a hand on Ryfon’s forehead to tilt it back. The question broke his focus momentarily, and he tilted his head. “Call what? Inducing?”
“Inducing, I didn’t know we were using medical terms.”
“That’s hardly medical bro, like… ‘making you sneeze’ is too much of a mouthful.”
Gulliver was quick to start, dodging potential questions like his life depended on it. He sifted around with the tissue, poking for a sweet spot, before wiggling it in place when he found one.
“I just don’t g…get why you need to sh…shHehh…heh- oh-!” He coughed with surprise, thick eyelashes fluttering wetly. “Oh goHhds deHHSCHhh’yiw!! Hehh—heHHDTSSshhh’yiw!!”
“Bless y— bless you…” Forthwind chuckled. The tissue was pulled out of Ryfon’s nose only after the sneezes were over. Even then, he only did so to quickly dive into the other one. Tears immediately came crashing down his freckled face.
“Tickles a bit?” Gulliver sneered. Forthwind could only imagine what Ryfon was feeling right now, it had him overly-curious. Just watching the two made his nose scrunch sympathetically.
“Uhh…hHhUuh…!” Ryfon’s nostrils flared, and small buttercups unfurled along his locks. That was a rarer flower Forthwind had only seen whenever Ryfon got high, so it must have been working. At last, Ryfon waved Gulliver away from him, reaching for his pestered nose. His breath trembled needily. He leaned over in the bean bag, rubbing his nose in a circular motion using his fist. That seemed to be enough to coax the sneeze out. “HhRRSSHH’yiiw!! Hhuh—USSSHhh’yiiwh!!”
“Bless you, bless you.”
“Thank you Forthw—hhHI’m n-nHh!! Not donNUSHHhhuuh!!” Ryfon pitched forward, openly spraying his own lap and Gulliver’s. When he lifted his head, it was as if he overcorrected, sending his shoulders back into the beanbag with a soft thud.
“Ahah!! How high are you right now?” Gulliver spoke brightly, taking a tissue to clean up his face.
“Like…” was all Ryfon could manage without a loose string of giggles escaping him, “sNFf! It’s…it’s like, it…ahah! Hold on—snFFf!! It’s a great start.”
“Good! Forthwind, you haven’t sneezed once since we’ve started.”
“I’m about to,” he replied hopelessly, subconsciously mimicking the rubbing Ryfon did in hopes it’d spur on the same. There was a long pause, and he felt his cheeks sting. “I…hhHh! I don’t know why it’s so much harder to sneeze when everyone’s looking at me!”
“I was just trying to see if you could sneeze on command or something!” Gulliver laughed.
“No I…I uh…hHh! I’ve had this tickle in my nose since we’ve started, I’m trying to see if I can get it out…”
Gulliver watched Forthwind sniffle delicately and begin wiggling his nose about, hands-free. Coaxing a sneeze was stubborn work on its own, but who knew that being watched made it so much harder?
“You know, Forthwind, you’re kind of surrounded with enough to make you sneeze,” Gulliver gestured to the vestigial wings that were trying to hide his face in embarrassment.
“I know, I’ve never purposely made myself sneeze with them though, it just sorta happens by accident-!”
“Here,” Gulliver grabbed the large feather he was tickled with not five minutes ago. As Ryfon finally broke into the pizza, Forthwind sat upright on the couch as if preparing for a medical exam. Gulliver climbed up onto his lap, and sat himself down with a comedic plop. “Relax, Ryfon can take it, but I’m not gonna go crazy on you like that.”
“Fuck do you mean ‘I can take it’? You’re making me sneeze, not blowing my back out,” a very affronted Ryfon retorted
“With the way you were whining and gasping a few minutes ago, it was hard to tell!” Forthwind snickered his way. When the large feather was brought up to his nose, the side brushed slowly under his nostrils and made him shiver. He wiggled his nose carefully and resisted a momentary urge to sputter. He had naturally soft feathers, but it felt so different running under his nostrils. Every time he breathed in, he felt a few wispy barbs near the quill sneak into both nostrils. They flared quickly in response, but as quick as the irritant was there, it left.
“Y’know, I think this feather’s too big to do much. Do you mind if I…?”
Forthwind’s buzzing nose would beg to differ. “If you…oh! Sure.”
Gulliver pulled away, running a claw delicately along his wings. While he was up there, he took care of a few fresh pin feathers. By the time he returned to his field of view, a much smaller feather was pinched in his claws. A fluffy downy one, no wider than his pinkie. Forthwind snuffled at the sight of it—he’d lost count of how many times he had accidentally sniffed up one of these before, and the annoying fits that followed it.
The feather entered one of his twitching nostrils. Forthwind had to fight every fibre in his being begging to sniff at the intrusive tickle. He could feel the tiny barbs, clinging to the inner walls as it was twisted in Gulliver’s fingertips.
“Oh th-hHh..!” Forthwind stammered over the rest of his sentence, breath trembling. When he gasped, he was overcome with a chilly sensation that rushed across his face and chest, lingering in his tear ducts. His nose wiggled in the brief pause. His nostrils quivered with need, and quivered more when the feather was pulled away.
“HhHheeh- hhHEESSsshhw!!” Then, warmth. A rush of warmth that started at the base of his chest and ended at the tip of his nose. When he sniffled clumsily afterwards, the warmth spread from head to toe. His senses were heightened, but the high was only momentarily—no longer than ten seconds. “Huhh..snrf!! That worked, but only a little…”
“Bless! Takes more than one to really get a buzz out of it!”
“Thank you…snffk! You sure it’s not my tolerance??”
“Nahh, trust,” Ryfon waved his hand vacantly—or at least, attempted to. In reality, he lifted it, and halfheartedly bent his wrist. “It’ll feel kinda l…kinda like, a hot rag is on your face at first, or something.”
“Damn, Ryfon, that kicked in fast for you, buddy!” Forthwind snickered. “Alright, hit me again, Gulliver.”
“Hahah! With pleasure.”
Under Gulliver’s clawed digits, Forthwind’s smile faded with growing focus. The feather returned into his field of vision—the tiny thing was half slicked with glowing mucus. A few congested sniffles confirmed his nose had been running a little. He recoiled his head away from the feather bashfully.
“Oh shit, sorry, I didn’t mean to sneeze on you…”
“I don’t care, you didn’t sneeze in my face or anything. Hold still.”
The feather continued its torment, slipping into his other nostril instead.
“H-hhHih-! How are y….yeeSHHhhww-hEEIISSsshhiiih!!”
Two at once made his whole face tingle—he had the sense to muffle them in a politely-bent elbow. The glowing spot on his sleeve made him wince with embarrassment. There was the telltale stuffiness in his lungs, that floaty feeling of intoxication coursing through his veins. His head was starting to spin, and his motions were lagging behind. “How are you so gHHh!! Good at making me snee—heeh..!”
“I’m lowkey not that great, you’re just really sensitive.”
“Ooh! Color me surprised,” Ryfon suddenly flung both arms up, flashing a sarcastic grin, “Forthwind’s sensitive?!”
“RyfoHh!!” The playfully cutting words caught him off guard, and he coughed with a giggle. He felt his cheeks prickling from a sudden dopamine rush. “Leave me alo’de, …m-m’trying to get high,”
“I’m just saying, you look like a butch lesbian and a gay twink had a kid.”
That got a belly-laugh out of Forthwind, but Gulliver seized the opportunity to tickle his nose a bit more intensely. He squeezed his eyes shut with breathy, desperate hitches, before sneezing twice more. “HhHheehshhhiihw!! Huh…hhHh- Hipp’schhhiieew!”
“Bless you twice, oh! Three!!”
“Hiisschhuw!!! Huhh…” he had such quiet sneezes, no matter how intense. It was easy to see how badly his nose tickled, and the desperate sneezes that left him sounded like they were working overtime to rid him of the tickle.
“How are we feeling, buddy?” Gulliver pulled away from his pink nose, marveling at the glowing clear and gold mucus connecting the limp feather to his nostril.
“I’m getting there, snff!! Gods, I’m such a mess…”
“Oh shush, you’re a pretty mess, Forthwind.”
“Watch yourself, Gulliver,” Ryfon’s ear flicked a few times lazily, “allergies, dude!”
“Oh right, sorr-!” Gulliver turned back to Forthwind, watching with slight awe as he tilted his head back. Both his nostrils were already pink from irritation, but the wetness gathered at their rims made them glow a comforting salmon color. Anyone with a curious bone in their body knew the gorgeous way skin and flesh illuminated against a bright light. So to see his wet nose and misty eyes do the same was mesmerizing.
“HHh..! Hiihhss- hhHHhit’s okay, it hh—! Heh- hHeh- heEH- HESSHhhiewh!! Helps…gods, snffFF!! Huhhh… this feels odd…”
“What, you want me to keep going?” It was a lousy attempt at sarcasm, sounding more like a genuine question at best and a poorly-hidden plea at worst. Forthwind had sneezed all over Gulliver’s lap, and was clearly still recovering, sluggishly wiping slick from his upper lip.
“Let’s say, cap it at three.”
“Three compliments or three sneezes?”
“Three compliments. Snff!!”
Gulliver, placing the feather down, genuinely sat back with thought. When he did, his form suddenly went rigid as his tail pressed against the aasimar’s crotch. He lifted his hips again and looked down over his shoulder, curiosity becoming sudden flattery. “Oh, hello there…”
Forthwind’s cheeks stained bright red as he huffed. “Ssuh…sorry, I uhm…you’ve just been on my lap like that the whole time, it’s hard not to get excited! I can’t control it much…”
“Oh I’m not upset, quite the opposite, I just want you to feel good because you deserve it~!”
“FuUhck y—ihh! Hhhihh…Hisschiiew!!” The compliments were already getting to him, he could tell by the static buzz raiding both his nostrils. He was so flushed, and he couldn’t tell if it was the high or the humiliation. He melted into the couch with a vocal whine as Gulliver teasingly smothered their hips together a few times. This stupid goblin was grinding on him and it was working, how embarrassing!
“Aww, don’t be shy! I’m flattered that me making you sneeze of all things is getting you worked up. You don’t mind me doing this, right?”
He demonstrated again, watching Forthwind shake his head with a bashful huff. “This is so stupid…you’re so stupid…”
“I’ll take the compliment! Ryfon, I need you for something. Get his arms over his head.”
“Come here, pretty thiiing,” Ryfon teased as he sat beside him, bringing his wrists upward.
“Hey—hHhRRSshhw!!” Forthwind could hardly get a word out before another sneeze winded him. “Don’t th—!! Don’t think you’re slick, you only get three as well, and that was one.”
“You have to give us a cap and everything,” Ryfon nodded, rolling his eyes. “You mind if I get handsy?”
“I feel like I’m getting spoiled—yeah go right ahead, what the hell…”
“Bet I could make him finish before my third compliment,” Gulliver chittered.
“Finish??” Forthwind echoed, peeking through his vestigialwings only for the goblin rocking on his lap to shrug. He couldn’t lie, if that was Gulliver’s goal, he was closer to achieving it than Forthwind would care to admit. Something about this snuff made all of his senses incredibly fussy and hypersensitive, and that was especially true on the spot Gulliver was so eagerly dry-humping, it didn’t help that Ryfon was busy spinning his white locks around his finger and playing with his nipple.
When Forthwind would shift his hands in an attempt to rub his nose, the eladrin above him was quick to react, abandoning the tease temporarily to correct him. “Apapap! You keep these up here—hEY-!!”
Forthwind had scoffed, reaching up to tickle at Ryfon’s sides. He squirmed, too laggy to suppress a shriek of joy and a giggle. Only a momentary tease, Forthwind was, but the objective Ryfon demanded was understood and obliged.
Gulliver, quick as the wind, unzipped Forthwind’s fly for better access to his underwear. All of his work had already earned him a faintly-glowing wet spot. “I swear to the fey courts, when we’re done, I’ll be able to use your briefs to port a ship in the fog.”
Glowing sweat was beginning to bead his forehead like tiny twinkling stars.
“Real fallen—fallen angel over here,” Ryfon hummed dazedly, running his hands down his chest from above, “ff—feeling good down there?”
Forthwind tried to speak, but the warm dizziness of intoxication was making his words sluggish at best. He merely panted and nodded, leaning into Gulliver’s moving hips. Gods, what a great feeling. As he looked up, Ryfon watched him expectantly, prompting him to speak up. “Y—yeah…ffuck, I’m close…y’better have clothes I can borrow…”
“How could I not? I’ll let you…I’ll let you like, I’ll let you get in my pajamas bro, don’t even sweat it. Not like that, but like,”
“Ryfon read the room, I’m gonna bust from chucklefuck over here!!” Forthwind whimpered and lifted his knee, squirming under Gulliver again with a vocal whine. Ryfon stuck his tongue out teasingly. “So sensitive, noisy too. No wonder you got folks drooling over you all the damn time…”
A flash of betrayal ran across Forthwind’s face, quickly taken over by a few hitches. He tried his hardest to control his breath, which in itself was rendered impossible thanks to Gulliver bouncing on his stiff groin. How dare he, at his weakest moment! “Hh-hHHh! heEIISSHHhhiiw!!”
“Ohh, that was a big one for you,” Gulliver sang at the gentle sound that escaped him. It had no choice but to be completely open, sending glittery gold and glowing droplets across the front of his own shirt. “You’ve got such a delicate sneeze, it’s genuinely the best one I’ve ever heard.”
“H-hHhcahHh’t…!” He warned, but couldn’t articulate before succumbing to a trembling gasp, “hHHIISSHHhhiiwh!!” A visceral sound, at least by Forthwind’s standard. He was so faded that he couldn’t tell where he just sneezed.
The noise following it was certainly not a sneeze, but a sharp cry of pleasure that ran from his core to his extremities. Ryfon’s grip on his wrists returned as he arched his back slightly. Gulliver was lifted up almost a foot from the motion, looking down in delight as the glowing spot he was grinding on grew twice as bright. The blissful afterglow was something he’d remember for weeks.
There was so much he could say about it all. He couldn’t find the words, at least, not fast. “…where was the third compliment…?”
“Fishing for them, are we??” Gulliver laughed, “I’m saving it for a rainy day.”
“…gods, I need a slice of pizza,” Forthwind finally sighed into the air. His finger pushed Gulliver in the chest, nudging him off his lap where he then tumbled onto the couch. “After that, you’re done for, Gully…”
“Yeah, you’ve only sneezed once since we started, you’ve got a lot of catching-up to do.”
“Aheh!! I’m not opposed. I’m starving too though…”
“Fuuuck, the anchovies,” Forthwind groaned in agony, “you better take a breath mint before we get back to it, you freak.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Snickered Gulliver, “bless you, by the way.”
Also, someone else making the sickie to do that because they're just too damn stuffed up and are probably developing a nasty case of sinusitis, so the sickie is just sitting there all helpless and exposed, their face like a the most miserable sneezy little waterfall, while the caretaker is rubbing their back and perhaps supporting the bowl a bit too.
Summary: Episode 5 AU. I/lya gets sick on the way back from Russia, gets scratched from the game, and recovers at S/hane’s apartment. S/hane doesn’t get knocked out at the game that night; instead, he gets to ask I/lya to the cottage, just like he planned. (Outside of I/lya having the flu and a raging fever, of course.) Contains quite a bit of crying, sorry not sorry.
Emeto warning: One small v-word mention, nothing actually takes place in the fic.
*
I/lya considers himself to have been lucky so far.
He’s had his slip-ups over the years, sure, but he’s done relatively well when it comes to not showing vulnerability around S/hane H/ollander. He’s careful. Doesn’t flinch away from touches. Doesn’t tell the childhood stories that he had told laughingly, but that had made his teammates eye him sympathetically. Doesn’t give too much anyway.
It’s dangerous, around H/ollander. S/hane is so full of love and support and gentleness, it practically leaks out of him. I/lya can’t have any part of that. At just the thought of it, he can hear his father’s cold voice in his ear; Alexei’s shouting insults; the fading memory of his mother’s voice, which had been dull and resigned by the end. It’s just for the best if he avoids any kind of shows of weakness around S/hane. He thinks he’s doing well at it.
And then he falls apart and cries on S/hane in Tampa.
It feels like so many things in the moment. Release. Humiliation. Shame. Relief.
And he can’t take it back, afterward. Shane won’t let him—or maybe he won’t let himself. They use first names, hold hands at the beach, make tentative plans just to spend time together after their next game. It feels.. good. Terrifying, too. But he almost feels like he can settle into it, into the vulnerability.
Then he gets the call in the locker room. Alexei’s voice, cruel like always, throwing out the news of their father’s death like Ilya should’ve already known about it.
It feels like fate. Drawing him back to Russia, away from Shane, away from the emotional intimacy they were starting to build. It’s how it’s meant to be, he tells himself. Quit asking for things you’re not supposed to have. Quit wanting them.
The problem is that it seems like Shane is ready to get into an MMA fight with fate, or whatever else wants to keep them apart. He refuses to let Ilya disappear. He just… stays. In the periphery. Texting, calling, checking up on Ilya the whole time he’s in Russia. Never too much. Never too invasive. He lets Ilya draw the conversation back to FaceTime sex once he sees Shane in those glasses. He lets Ilya rant on the phone in Russian, pouring out his whole fucking heart, trusting that Shane won’t record this or translate it, because such subterfuge would never even occur to Shane.
He lets Ilya say I love you, even though admittedly he doesn’t really know that’s what’s happening. Even though they both know this could never be that.
And he calls again the night before Ilya’s return flight, just checking in. It’s a quick FaceTime call, where Ilya is mostly discussing his flight details and trying not to think about how he’s leaving Russia behind. He gave away his apartment, he cut off Alexei, he said goodbye to his mama’s grave. He may never come back here.
It hurts, but it feels like tugging at your stitches. A healing kind of hurt, maybe.
He’s still talking mindlessly about his plans when Shane interrupts him. “Are you feeling okay?”
Ilya rolls his eyes, endeared despite himself. “Yes, Hollander, you ask me this everyday.” He lies or talks around an answer most of the time, but no point in revealing that.
“No, I mean… you just sound weird, is all. Kind of congested. Are you feeling sick?” Shane sounds unsure of himself, hesitant to prod as ever, but being brave and doing it anyway.
Ilya blinks in surprise. “I’m fine, is just cold and snowing outside,” he says, not stopping to think about it. He bulldozes past Shane’s concern out of habit, bringing the conversation back to hockey in a way that he knows will entice Shane into letting it go.
That night though, in bed, he finds himself cataloguing a growing list of complaints. His throat feels a little sore, in a way that drinking a glass of water doesn’t touch. His skin aches. His face feels tight, the way it does when his sinuses are about to work overtime.
He tosses and turns, catches a couple of hours of poor sleep, and groans when his alarm wakes him for his stupid-early flight to Canada. He’d timed it perfectly, so he’ll get there a couple hours before the game with Montreal. It means leaving Svetlana behind, but she’ll catch her own flight home, and she’d known better than to protest at how little time he took off for his father’s death.
He drags himself to the airport, his suitcase somewhat heavier than it was, with everything he’s taken from his apartment and his father’s home. Mostly things to remind him of his mother. It’s very little—not enough—but it’s things he couldn’t leave behind, especially if he’s never coming back.
He’s feeling increasingly like he’s never coming back. Dread and relief sit equally heavy in his stomach at the thought of never seeing Russia again. But what’s left for him here, anyway?
By the time he gets to his gate in the airport, he’s got a cough and he can’t quit sniffling, and his throat feels like he’s been gargling glass. Whatever he’s caught decided to hit in full force during the little sleep he managed to get in the night. He buys a travel pack of tissues at a store by his gate, along with a Gatorade for hydration, and settles back to listen to music until his flight is called.
The FaceTime from Shane surprises him, about ten minutes before boarding. Ilya doesn’t even know what time it must be, back in Canada. He could do the math but that sounds exhausting. He looks around cautiously, but it’s still so early that the airport is fairly empty, and he has his earbuds in. He turns so that his back is to a wall, to ensure nobody peers over his shoulders, and answers.
“What are you doing up?” he asks, as soon as Shane’s face appears on his screen, and then he cringes when he hears himself. His voice sounds thick and heavy now, the congestion audible. In the little square on his screen, he can see himself, bundled up against the cold with weary eyes and pale skin.
Shane doesn’t point it out out loud, but anyone with eyes could see the concern on his face. “It’s not even eleven at night,” he protests easily. “I haven’t even gone to bed yet. It’s, what, 5AM there? What made you book such an early flight?”
“Wanted plenty of time to get to Montreal,” Ilya says, rubbing at his nose absently. “Will get there a couple hours before our game, as long as everything goes smoothly.”
“You’re going to play,” Shane says flatly. “After a transatlantic flight, and with a—with the week you’ve had.”
“Yes? I am not just there to sit and look pretty,” Ilya says. He can tease no matter how shitty he feels, it’s a gift. “That’s your job.”
“We’re going to beat your asses,” Shane retorts with a smile, but he still eyes Ilya with poorly-concealed worry. “Just… take it easy, okay?”
Ilya summons up every skill he’s honed over the years to avoid showing any weakness around others. It’s failed him lately, but he needs it now. “Relax, Hollander. I will sleep on plane, eat whatever horrible meal they feed me, show up just in time to beat you soundly.”
Shane’s smile is soft, illuminated by his bedside lamp, where he must be getting ready for bed. “It’s Shane, Ilya. Remember?”
Aaaand that instinct fails him once again, because he can’t deny Shane when he looks so sweet. “Okay, Shane.”
“Just… text me, okay? Let me know how your flight goes, layovers, stuff like that.”
His nose prickles, but he resists the urge to rub it again. Not while he’s still on FaceTime, anyway. He repeats himself, “Okay, Shane. They are boarding now, I go, okay?”
“Okay. Bye.”
“Bye.” Ilya hangs up, a little annoyed with how relieved he is to be off-camera so he can scrub at his face to chase away the approaching tickle. He doesn’t do a very good job, and he fumbles to open the travel pack of tissues he bought so he can muffle a sneeze into a handful of them. “huhh… huksshhtt!”
An older woman nearby blesses him, and he thanks her, still sniffling into the tissues. He doesn’t feel like blowing—it’s too loud, and it would only trigger more sneezing, thanks to his thrice-broken nose’s irritating hypersensitivity—so he just rubs his nose through the tissues until the lingering tickle subsides.
His plane boards. The flight is tedious, long, freezing in spite of the layers he made himself wear. He tries to focus on the in-flight movies, but even that doesn’t provide much distraction from his symptoms, which only intensify over their hours in the air. The light cough turns heavier, more insistent, and his nose fills with congestion that only feels worse with the changes in air pressure. He tries to hold back his coughs—nobody wants to be that person on a long plane ride—but it gets harder and harder over time. He sniffles thickly, more and more frequently over the course of the flight, cringing each time the people seated near him turn to look at him.
Ilya ends up catching some sleep toward the end of the flight, but it isn’t very restful, and he finds himself half-waking up several times to cough or hold back a sneeze. Eventually the congestion gets annoying enough that he stumbles his way out of his seat and toward the plane’s lavatory, where he grabs handfuls of the provided tissues—thin, dry, scratchy and harsh on his nose. Even the mere touch of the tissues is enough to provoke his sinuses at this point. The second he brings them to his face, his breath is hitching, and the sneezes come so quickly that he can’t even try to hold them back. “hh’tsshhmphh! heh’schhmphh! heh… heh’EHHTTshhh!”
Muffled into the tissues, they’re quiet enough that he’s only a little embarrassed. He forces himself to blow his nose, knowing that he needs it, and winces when it shifts the congestion in his sinuses around. His nose tingles again, overwhelming and too sudden for him to stop it, and he helplessly muffles another sneeze. “hmphhsshh!”
He blows his nose again, thick and honking, and bullies his nostrils into submission by swiping at them harshly with a fresh handful of tissues. It keeps him from sneezing again, but his nose and upper lip are stinging and raw when he washes his hands and makes his way back to his seat.
Eventually, he settles enough again to drift back to sleep. His dreams are hazy and disconnected, hard to make sense of, but he knows his mother is part of it. His father, too, voice harsh and cold. Not confused and childlike, how he was by the end. Ilya’s chest hurts, from the memory and from the coughs he holds back in his sleep.
He wakes up to enormous pressure in his sinuses, and realizes they’re landing. The whole flight seems to have been simultaneously endless and shorter than he expected, and his vision swims. Probably the start of a fever. He curses to himself and tries to get ready for deplaning, but the stabbing pain in his sinuses from the air pressure change can’t be ignored or relieved. He ends up sitting completely still, fingers pressed to the sides of his nose and cheeks, trying to simply bear the pressure until they’ve landed.
Time passes—he has no idea how long—and when the pain finally fades enough for him to relax a little, the row in front of him is standing up and gathering their things. He scrambles to get his stuff and follows, praying he hasn’t left anything behind. He grabs at the seats in front of him in a dazed attempt to keep himself balanced as he moves toward the front of the plane.
Once he’s in the airport, the crowds surrounding him keep him feeling overwhelmed, plus confused and hazy. Definitely a fever. He groans and rubs at his face, taking a second to try to ground himself, then goes to get his luggage and call for a car to get him to the rink.
He doesn’t call Shane again from the cab. There’s no way he’d be able to hide the congestion and rasp in his voice, and the thick feeling in his throat only worsens when he imagines Shane fussing over him. Instead, he shoots off a quick text. Landed. See you at face-off.
Within seconds, he gets a text back. How was your flight?
He hesitates over the response. Long. Meet at your place after the game?
Sure. But then Shane sends him a new address.
Ilya: What happened to fuck apartment?
Shane: Don’t call it that. This is the address for my actual apartment. Let’s meet there tonight.
Ilya feels oddly touched. Maybe Shane was serious about all the things he said in Tampa about caring about him, about how he had shown up for Ilya even when he was a continent away while Ilya struggled in Russia. He lingers over the text, not sure what to respond with. “Thanks”? “Can we just do the fuck apartment, I’m uncomfortable with being cared for”? A crying emoji?
In the end, he doesn’t respond with anything. He just likes the message and puts his phone away.
But then not even an hour before the game, he gets scratched. Fucking Evan, the team doctor, hears him coughing in the locker room and pulls him aside for a checkup. “Your swab just came back positive for flu B. Although, I’m worried that cough sounds like it’s turning into bronchitis,” Evan tells him in the sick bay, scribbling into a clipboard and eyeing Ilya with obvious concern. “You’ve got a sinus infection, for sure, and the bronchitis is too soon to tell but I really think it’s going that way. I can’t believe you flew transatlantic like this.”
“Did not want to miss game,” Ilya says, ducking into his elbow with a round of harsh, scraping coughs that won’t back down.
“Well,” Evan says, the unsaid that’s what’s gonna happen obvious in his tone. “I don’t know if I want you going back to the hotel room alone. You could stay here with me until after the game, and I can check on you in the night. Our flight’s in the morning, though I’m not sure if you’ll be able to fly in your current condition. You and I might have a little layover here in Montreal until you’re cleared for it.”
Jesus Christ, no. He likes Evan—though not very much right now, when he’s getting denied his chance to play, the only potential escape he’s had from the stress of the last few days—but he doesn’t want to spend hours or possibly days with the guy fussing over him. “Ah, no. I have, um. Girlfriend? Kind of? In town. I can call her, go to her place.” He waits for Evan to nod and leave the room to tell Coach, then texts Shane.
Ilya: I have news. Don’t be mad.
Shane: Are you ditching me tonight?
Ilya: Scratched. They are saying flu, sinus infection.
Technically, they also said probably-bronchitis, but he doesn’t want to get in the details of that. Flu sounds a bit easier to manage, maybe.
Shane: And you flew like that?! I knew you sounded rough on the call.
Ilya: Was not so bad this morning.
Shane: Liar. Okay, what now?
Ilya: I told doctor I would go stay at my girlfriend’s place. Figure I will sleep it off in the hotel room. Sorry. I wanted—
He erases the last two words. Best not to get into what he wanted.
Ilya: Sorry to cancel on tonight.
His phone is silent for a moment, and he watches Shane type and erase repeatedly. Shane is probably busy getting ready, putting on his gear, maybe doing pre-game media.
Shane: No one’s canceling. You can go to my apartment. I’ll text you the codes.
He doesn’t have time to respond before his phone buzzes again.
Shane: I really want to see you tonight. And I don’t want you sick by yourself in a hotel room. Please.
Ah, fuck. He can just envision Shane with those Hollander puppy dog eyes, all big and brown and sweet.
Ilya: You are that horny, you want me over even with the flu?
Shane: Main door code 1221, front door code 8124. Try and sleep. I’ll bring you some medicine when I get home. There’s soup in the pantry I think.
Shane doesn’t take the bait, the way he normally would, which leaves Ilya feeling a little off-kilter without his chance to banter. If he’s being honest, though, he doesn’t really feel up to his normal level of bantering. He likes the message and doesn’t respond—starting to become a habit for him—just in time for Evan to come back with Coach in tow.
“We’ll miss having you out there tonight, Rozanov,” Coach tells him gruffly. “I’m sorry you’re having such a shitty month.”
Ilya shrugs and nods. What can you do? He doesn’t say anything; his throat’s feeling too sore at this point to make him much of a conversationalist.
Coach leaves after wishing for him to feel better soon, and Evan prescribes him a heavy-duty cough syrup and an antiviral. “Hear back from your girlfriend?”
“I am to take cab to her place,” he rasps out. “And let her take care of me upon pain of death. My Jane is stubborn.” His mouth ticks up in a smile, fond despite himself.
Evan laughs a little. “Lucky for you, these prescriptions should be ready quick. You should be able to pick them up on the way. Feel better, okay, Roz? Message me if things get worse, and go to the ER if you have trouble breathing or your fever spikes.”
He agrees, more to get away quicker than anything else, and stumbles out into the freezing Canadian spring air to get to his cab once Evan finally lets him go. He didn’t even have time to stop by the hotel earlier, so at least he still has his luggage to take with him and doesn’t need an extra stop. The cab driver recognizes him but is pretty nice about it for an obvious Montreal fan, clearly a bit gleeful now that the news has hit the airwaves that Ilya got scratched just before the game.
Ilya finds himself holding back sneezes all throughout the drive, hitching and pressing his gloves to his nose to fight off the insistent tickle. He convinces the driver to stop at the pharmacy, where his prescriptions are in fact ready, and then has the driver drop him off a block away from Shane’s apartment. Normally, he would do even farther, but he’s worried his lungs won’t let him manage any longer of a walk.
The door codes work just fine—and he snickers at 8124, belatedly realizing the meaning as he types it in—and he staggers into the apartment just as the long-threatened sneezing fit finally hits.
“hh’DSSCHhhwww! hah—HAHHDT’sshheww!” He sneezes into his gloves in the doorway, thanking God that Shane has this floor all to himself, so no neighbors in the hallway can recognize him and/or show concern over his fucked-up nose. He sniffles, which only forces out yet another horribly wet, throat-tearing explosion. “HAAHhh’DTTsshhieww! …guh. Fuck.”
Half-blind from the tears in his eyes that are streaming down his face, he takes a few unsteady steps into the living room, where he sees the faintly recognizable shape of a tissue box on the coffee table. He grabs at it with the hand that isn’t currently pressed to his face—which he would swear is holding him together while his brain tries to escape through his nose—and gathers a bouquet of tissues to bury his nose in.
He blows, long and loud, grateful that for the first time today he’s completely alone to be as loud as he needs. The sound and vibration hurt a little, and it makes him sneeze again, but the relief of having almost-cleared sinuses is worth it, for the whole two minutes that it lasts.
Once he recovers himself, he texts Shane, already knowing that the game has started and Shane won’t have his phone on him. He keeps it simple: Here. Good luck tonight.
He grabs a can of Coke from the fridge—does Hollander normally have Coke, or did he stock it for Ilya in preparation for tonight, he wonders with a thrill—and settles on the couch to watch the game. He watches the face-off, and the first couple of minutes, and then unintentionally sacks out.
When he drifts back into awareness, he’s curled up in a ball on the couch with drool on the cushion under his head, and the TV screen says it’s just after the second period. His sinuses feel heavy, and he can feel the congestion and swelling in his nose, built up with no way to escape. He groans and stretches, rubbing at his eyes that feel like they weight twenty pounds each.
He checks his phone. There’s a text from Evan asking if he got the prescriptions okay, and Ilya thumbs up the message. He should probably take the medicine, he can see it in sitting in a bag on the kitchen counter where he’d left it, but he can’t bring himself to get up. He manages to grab at the can of Coke on the coffee table, taking a sip to try to ease his sore throat that’s only been aggravated by the snoring he’s sure he’s been doing, but the carbonation only burns the whole way down, and he sets it aside with a groan.
There’s a text from Shane, too, and he must be keeping his phone near the bench, which Canadian good boy extraordinaire Shane Hollander would never normally do. Are you feeling okay? Is there anything special you want from the store before I get home?
Ilya watches the highlight reel for a few minutes, which shows Shane scoring a fantastic goal in the first period. Montreal’s going to win this one. He wonders if the team is mad at him, for missing tonight’s game when he’s already been gone a week, but the logical part of his brain knows they won’t be. Marly will probably be texting him as soon as they finish the game, to make sure he isn’t drowned in his own snot if nothing else.
Nice goal, he texts back. I am okay. Team doctor prescribed me some medicine that will fix me.
He tries to watch the rest of the game. Tries to wait for Shane to text him back. But he already knows it’s a losing fight. He barely manages to move a throw pillow under his head before his eyes are dragged closed again and he falls back asleep.
When he wakes up a second time, an indeterminate amount of time later, everything is dreamlike and hazy, and he immediately knows that something is different. Wrong. Everything hurts, and his sinuses are pounding, just like they had back on the plane. He doesn’t really know where he is. His vision is swimming, and he has that heavy painful feeling in his chest that could be the probably-bronchitis, or just as likely could be the way he knows he dreamed about his mother again. And his father, yelling, always yelling. Always with the cold voice and the harsh words and the cruel touch.
“Ilya,” he hears, the voice sounding muffled and distant but familiar, “Ilya, hey, English please. Okay? I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
He’s babbling, quiet and in Russian, and the realization that he’s doing so has him shutting up instantly. A hand brushes his hair back from his forehead, damp and hot with sweat, and he looks up.
Shane. Shane, here, looking tired and beautiful and with such concern in his big brown doe eyes, so sweet and perfect that Ilya wants to cry.
“Oh, hey,” Shane murmurs, swiping a thumb under Ilya’s eye and smearing liquid.
Fuck, he is actually crying, isn’t he? He swallows and tries to apologize, but he can’t find the word in English for a too-long second. “Sorry,” he finally says hoarsely, and the word catches in his throat, doubling him over with a coughing fit.
Shane is seated on the edge of the couch, by Ilya’s hip, and he helps Ilya sit up a little. He hands Ilya tissues, for wiping away his tears and for him to cough into. “It’s okay,” Shane says once the coughing has stopped. He rests a comforting hand on the back of Ilya’s neck and winces at the heat he must feel there. “God, you are burning up, Ilya. When’s the last time you took your medicine?”
Ilya only stares at him blankly. Shane is—is here. (Wherever here is.) With him. Looking so pretty and worried and tired from the game, but still here with Ilya.
After a moment, Shane gives him a patient smile and pats his knee and stands up, wandering off to the kitchen before Ilya can think of what to say to stop him from walking away. He’s not sure right now what the words would be in English, anyway.
Shane comes back holding the prescription cough syrup, the antiviral, and an unfamiliar painkiller bottle that must be from his own supply. “You didn’t even take anything, the cough syrup’s still unopened,” Shane says, and the words are scolding but his tone is endlessly gentle. “Medicine now, okay? We need to get your fever down, baby.”
The endearment has Ilya biting his lip to hold off more tears, and he nods unsteadily. Shane leaves him for the kitchen again and returns with a water bottle and a Gatorade. Then he disappears, further into the apartment than Ilya had dared explore before he fell asleep, and comes back with a thermometer and a wet washcloth.
“Come here,” Shane says softly, when Ilya doesn’t take the initiative, and Shane cups his jaw so carefully. Ilya’s mouth opens obediently when Shane’s thumb prods at it, and Shane slips the thermometer under his tongue. “Give that a minute,” Shane says, turning to measure out a dose of the cough syrup.
“Who won?” Ilya croaks out, once he’s reasonably sure those are the right words. His head feels so thick, like fog has taken up all the real estate in his brain, and his thoughts are treading water instead of swimming. He feels like a confused child, tongue clumsy in his mouth. English hasn’t been this hard for him in years. At least he remembers where he is now.
Shane gives him an amused look and points at the thermometer. “Don’t talk with that in your mouth. And, I did. Your team put up a good fight, though. You should be proud of them.”
Ilya nods, feeling his eyes slip shut. It’s too much effort to hold them open. He sinks back against the couch, abruptly feeling too heavy to hold himself upright anymore.
A hand cups his forehead, and Shane removes the thermometer. He sucks in air against his teeth once he’s read it. “Jeez, Ilya. Your brain is on fire. Should you call your team doctor?”
He shakes his head frantically, not even sure why the thought is so disconcerting, but he knows he doesn’t want to leave here. “No—no, no Evan. Please. Want to stay with you. Please.”
Shane is quiet for a second, then gives him a somewhat pleased look, though the worry is still clear in the furrowed line in his brow. “Okay. But if this gets any higher, we’re in emergency room territory, all right?”
Ilya can’t put some of those words together to make sense of them in his head, but he nods anyway. Whatever Shane wants. He obediently swallows the cough syrup and antiviral and Tylenol that Shane gives him. He drinks the water that Shane holds for him, since his hands are shaking too much to avoid spilling. He lets Shane put the wet washcloth on the back of his neck, and the cold feeling of it is so relieving that he moans quietly, unable to help himself.
“Did you sleep okay?” Shane asks him, wrapping an arm gently around Ilya’s back. He guides Ilya back to rest against the cushions, braced against Shane’s side. The TV blares on, showing footage of some other game, and Shane casually picks up the remote and lowers the volume without dislodging Ilya at all.
This is the most comfortable he’s felt since the Tampa hotel room, even with this horrible fever clouding his brain and making everything hurt. He shrugs and melts into Shane’s side, soaking in the wonderful, secure feeling of it like a sponge. He’s a little bigger than Shane, but right now he feels almost tiny in Shane’s hold. “Bad dream,” he says roughly, reaching up to swipe at his nose, like he sometimes does when he’s uncomfortable or feeling vulnerable.
Unfortunately, that habit of his works against him, now that his face is so sensitive, and even this casual touch sets him off. He hitches once, twice, then jolts away from Shane’s arm toward the other side of the couch to sneeze. He doesn’t have the coordination or forethought right now to aim it his elbow. He barely manages to bring up a hand in time to cover his nose and mouth with a cupped palm, before the fit bursts out of him, desperate and needy.
He pants afterward, still feeling his nostrils flaring and twitching against his hand, which feels slick and damp with spray. He cringes at the feeling. He had tried to stifle, or at least muffle, but… well. Obviously his sinuses have had enough and are making their feelings known, because he was only somewhat successful.
After a long moment of Ilya breathing hard into his cupped hand, Shane exhales with what sounds like a repressed laugh. “Bless you,” he says, wrapping an arm around Ilya and reeling him back toward his side. “Need a tissue?”
Ilya nods, too embarrassed to speak aloud when he knows any words would come out unintelligible with congestion. Shane passes him a good handful of tissues, and he wipes fruitlessly at his nostrils for a few minutes. The sniffles keep coming out of him, thick and useless, and he finds it mortifying but he can’t stop. It’s like all the congestion in his head can’t decide whether it’s staying or going, so it’s doing both at once.
After a few minutes of this, Shane presses him gently. “You don’t need to blow your nose?”
Ilya can feel his cheeks heating under the weight of Shane’s calm, focused attention. He shrugs, most of his face still buried in the tissues.
Shane seems to get the hint. He detaches himself from Ilya and gets up. “I’ll make you some tea and give you a minute, okay? I think I just have green tea, but I’ll check.”
He disappears into the kitchen. It’s a mostly open floor plan, but the columns and partial walls create a concealing illusion, enough that Ilya feels comfortable giving a few soft blows into the tissues.
As always, that starts up a tingling sensation in his sinuses, too buzzy and ticklish to be ignored. He shudders into the tissues with a half-muffled, desperately wet sneeze, too eager for relief to even try to stop it. “hh’shhhhww!”
He manages to blow again afterward, finally clearing away the overflowing congestion for the time being without triggering any more sneezing. He glances around, feeling mildly more coherent and awake, and doesn’t see any trash cans nearby. Sensing that his legs will collapse like jelly if he stands, he contents himself with balling up the ruined tissues in one hand.
Shane returns from the kitchen with a steaming mug of tea. “Feeling better? Oh, let me have those,” Shane says, reaching for the tissues and plucking them out of Ilya’s grasp before he can protest or shy away. “I’ll throw them away. Hang on.”
He wanders back into the kitchen, and this time he’s only gone for a second. When he comes back, Ilya is relieved to note that Shane at least seems to be rubbing hand sanitizer into his hands. Shane is thorough in this like in everything else, scrubbing at his nails and the webbing between his fingers.
“I’mb gross,” Ilya says, and he’s briefly thrown off by how utterly blocked his nose sounds when he speaks. He sniffles uselessly. “You should ndot have to do that. Are you sure you wandt mbe here, with mby germbs?” He means for the words to come out lighthearted, his usual joking tone, but instead he sounds pathetically sad and needy.
Shane visibly softens and sits down beside him, pulling him close again. “I want you to stay,” he says into Ilya’s hair, and then he presses a kiss there. “We agreed, remember?”
Hesitantly, Ilya nods. He isn’t sure he technically agreed, but right now he definitely doesn’t want to argue. Doesn’t want to give Shane any reason to change his mind and make Ilya leave.
After a minute, Shane kisses the top of his head again and rubs his back, then sits up a little more. “You should drink your tea. I found the sleepytime kind, and I put some honey in it. It should be good for your throat,” he rambles awkwardly.
That makes Ilya feel like they’re closer to their normal footing, and he smiles fondly. “Thangk you,” he says hoarsely, taking the mug that Shane hands him. He blows on it at Shane’s urging and then sips. He can’t taste anything with his sinuses so blocked, but he nods anyway as if it tastes good. It slides down his throat easily, at least, and the heat of it is a comfort.
Shane watches him, like a hawk observing her chicks in the nest, or how Ilya imagines that would look anyway. Once Ilya’s drank most of the tea, for the soothing warmth of it on his throat if nothing else, Shane straightens and nods to himself. “Time for bed, I think?” he suggests. “Do you need anything else? Are you hungry?”
Ilya shakes his head, the thought of food making his stomach lurch with disgust. Probably the fever causing that. “Ndo, thangk you,” he rasps out.
“Save your voice,” Shane laughs, helping him to stand up with an arm wrapped around his waist. “You’re very polite when your brain is overheating, huh?”
He ignores his father’s voice in his head. Be polite, Ilya. Where are your manners. So lazy. “Mmb.”
He expects Shane to lead him to a guest room—surely, in an apartment this size, he must have one or two—but Shane guides him into a bedroom that’s clearly lived-in. The bed is immaculately made, and Shane peels back the covers one-handed so he can keep supporting Ilya.
Ilya almost protests that he can hold himself up, but there’s no way that’s true.
Shane forces him to sit on the bed, then kneels down to take Ilya’s shoes and socks off. He helps Ilya wriggle out of his pants and shirt, leaving him in only his underwear. The whole process takes far longer than it should, on account of Ilya struggling and sweating through each step even with Shane’s assistance. After that, Shane keeps him sitting upright so he can try to clear out his nose with handful after handful of tissues, which has Ilya blushing hard to have to do so in front of Shane.
Eventually, though, Shane lets Ilya collapse into the pillows. He drags the comforter up to Ilya’s chest and tucks it in like one would with a child. “I’ll be right back,” Shane says quietly, and he returns with more tea, plus the other drinks, the medicines, and the thermometer. He disappears again, and comes back with a fresh cool washcloth, draping it over Ilya’s forehead.
Ilya snickers, genuinely amused but also feeling somewhat loopy. What was in that cough syrup? He didn’t even think to check. But Shane would have, because Shane is responsible, and Shane wouldn’t let him take anything bad for him. “You are so… nursemaid,” he says, flapping his hand around when he can’t find the right words. He’s pleased to find that he doesn’t sound nearly as congested as before, for the moment at least. “Is cute.”
Shane turns pink. “I want you to feel better,” he says earnestly, which leaves Ilya with nothing to say, staring at him in heart eyes and mild shock. Shane doesn’t react to this, only smiling and propping him up against the pillows. “Drink more tea for me, okay? Liquids are good when you’re sick.”
Ilya ends up drinking another cup of tea, and half of the Gatorade, before Shane lets him lie down. Shane changes into sweatpants and lays next to him, whole body curled around Ilya, and plays with their entwined fingers. Long minutes pass in silence while Ilya tries to figure out what to say next.
“Thank you,” he finally manages. “Sorry I… ruined our night. I know we had plans.”
Shane shushes him and tucks an errant curl behind his ear. “It’s okay. Although…” He ducks his head down and blushes again. “I had this whole plan, you know, to ask you something.”
Normally, the very thought of that sentence would cause Ilya dread. Right now, though, he feels buoyed and lightheaded from the fever—and, fine, a little high on the cough syrup—so all he does is making an inquiring noise.
“So, I have this cottage,” Shane says. “It’s out by the lake, like two hours from here, and it’s beautiful. Very private, no neighbors for miles.”
“Mm.” Ilya shifts, his face buried in Shane’s side, and breathes deep. He can’t smell anything, but he knows Shane’s scent well enough to imagine it. He knows the cottage Shane is talking about, has watched that documentary enough times that Svetlana banned it from her home. It’s soothing, though he’d never admit that out loud.
“And I was thinking, for this summer. Maybe you could come? Instead of going to Russia,” Shane says. The rising panic is evident in his tone, and he quickly starts babbling. “I just, I know you were just there, and maybe you want to keep going back, but it seemed like maybe… you didn’t. Anyway, the cottage is super private, no one would know we were there, and there’s a lot of fun things to do. Like swimming, or grilling, or video games. Or resting. Whatever you want. We could just… be. Like, alone together. We could be together. And we could have a week, or maybe even two if we can both get that much time off after the playoffs—”
“Hollander,” Ilya says, because his brain is starting to swim with all this information. He knows what not-stoned-off-cold-medicine-him would say right now. Something noncommittal. Maybe something rude or risqué, to change the subject and make Shane refocus on calling him an asshole. But right now, he’s floating, and he can feel sleep tugging at him. “I like your cottage,” he mumbles, eyes closing, and he nestles into Shane’s side without further thought. “Watch the show a lot.”
“Oh,” Shane says. His hand moves in circles over Ilya’s back, long sweeping motions, soothing. There’s warmth in his voice when he speaks again. “Yeah? Well… Maybe we can talk about it more later. When you’re feeling better.”
“Mm,” Ilya agrees, dropping off to sleep without a second thought.
He wakes sometime in the night, feeling hot and wrong again. The time passes in quick flashes, everything seeming to change each time he opens his eyes, like a strobe light in a shitty club. He vaguely remembers more cold cloths, draped over his forehead and wedged in his armpits. He remembers someone holding more pills to his mouth and helping him drink water. Hazily, he recalls the sensation of coughing until he almost throws up, with that same someone bracing a trash can in front of him. He doesn’t think he actually vomited, small comfort.
He remembers a soft voice, quiet and familiar, murmuring gentle words to him in French. He remembers cold, steady hands, keeping him upright and guiding him into a cool shower. The water feels freezing, and his teeth chatter, but the moment is there and gone in another flash. When he blinks again, he’s been toweled dry and put back to bed, cuddled up against someone. It feels like even more time has passed without him being aware of it, and he has no sense of what time it must be, other than “the middle of the night.”
By the time his brain clears enough to let him make sense of where he is and who he’s with, Ilya feels so utterly drained and miserable that all he can do is continue to rest a hot cheek against Shane’s chest and let his hair be petted.
“Hey. I know,” Shane soothes, when he seems to notice that Ilya’s a little more aware of his surroundings. “That wasn’t fun, huh?”
The words are sympathetic, comforting, the way one would speak to a very sick person or a child, and abruptly he thinks of his mother again. She’s never very far from his mind when he’s feeling unwell. The way she would hold him and kiss him and reassure him. Always with the gentlest touches and tones of voice. The way she would cradle him to her chest like her baby, no matter how big he got, and call him her Ilyushenka.
The tears spill out of him helplessly, hot and streaming, and he can feel them puddling onto Shane’s chest under his cheek. He half-expects Shane to panic, to sit them up and fuss over his temperature again, but maybe Shane has been all panicked out by the events of earlier. Instead, Shane keeps a steady hand pressed to Ilya’s back, grounding him, while he uses the other hand to keep carding through Ilya’s hair. “I’m here,” Shane says softly, not sounding fazed at all. “It’s okay. I’m here, baby.”
His brain, stupid overheated thing, keeps flashing back to Tampa, to how he’s crying on Shane again. Instead of being charming and hot and sexy, like he’d intended to be to make up for Tampa, tonight he’s just been a wet, pathetic, feverish, sneezy mess. With fucking bronchitis, probably. Ilya lets a quiet sob escape him, muffled into Shane’s skin, and feels more tears drip down onto Shane’s chest.
Shane’s touch is cool and comforting, and Ilya only cries for a minute or two before the tears run dry. He has the vague worry that maybe he’s cried himself out so quickly because his fever is boiling him from the inside out, evaporating his tears. Then—and this worry seems more possible, not to mention absolutely mortifying—he has the thought that perhaps he’s already cried on Shane many times tonight, and the fever keeps wiping the memory from his head, only for him to do it all over again. He blinks up at Shane, trying to discern if they’ve done this already tonight.
Shane looks down at him, smiling even though he looks physically tired as hell, like he’s been up half the night caring for a feverish Russian after playing a full hockey game. There’s no frustration in his expression, though, like how Ilya might expect if they were repeating the same teary scenario over and over tonight. His hand leaves Ilya’s hair, and he drags a finger under Ilya’s left eye to wipe away the last of the tear tracks. “Feel a little better?”
Ilya sniffles and nods. The sniffle, plus the pressure of Shane’s finger pad against his face, pushes his sinuses into an uproar, and he flinches toward his arm with a sudden sneeze he can’t possibly hope to contain. He sprays across his forearm, not even managing to keep the damage out of Shane’s sight.
“hrsshh’SHHIEWW!” he sneezes, tickly and not nearly satisfying enough to keep him from immediately ducking back toward his arm for another outburst or two. They come out loud and wet, and much more vocal than he’s used to. “hahh… HAASSCHHEWW! hah’ASSHHHoohh!”
Another mortifying few seconds pass, where he’s all too aware of the spray drying on his skin and Shane’s eyes on him. Focused. Taking everything in.
Then, Shane is holding a tissue up to his nose. “Here, sweetheart,” Shane murmurs. He cups it around Ilya’s nose, seemingly unbothered by the mess, and rubs.
For a second, Ilya tries to resist. But he’s so fucking exhausted. And at no point in his plan has he actually succeeded recently in not showing vulnerability around Shane Hollander. And his arms hurt too much with feverish body aches to even think of lifting a hand to take the tissue.
So Shane Hollander wipes his nose for him, and presses it there for him while he blows, and holds him when Ilya builds up to another, much more quiet but just as wet, “heht’sshheww!” Shane just murmurs a bless you and wipes his nose dry again. The touch is exceedingly gentle, Shane being wary of the sensitive skin at Ilya’s nostrils and Cupid’s bow.
By the time Shane tosses the crumpled, sodden tissue onto the nightstand, Ilya can feel his eyes drooping. “Sorry,” he mutters, letting his cheek drop onto Shane’s chest again. His skin doesn’t feel burning hot against Shane’s anymore, at least. “Keep sndeezing ond you and falling asleep ond you.”
Shane laughs, the sound loose and a little wild from lack of sleep. “I think that’s just how being sick goes. It’s okay, I don’t mind. Rest, mon coeur.”
The hand on Ilya’s back is moving in slow, steady circles, and his nose is finally a little bit clearer, and his head aches from crying and coughing and fever. And he’s being cradled in Shane Hollander’s arms. He falls asleep before he even realizes his eyes are closing.
When he wakes up again, he feels less out of control. More rested. His body still feels out of whack, and he can tell that his temperature and sinuses are still screwed up, but it’s undeniably better. His internal clock is working again and says that it’s early morning, and he’s sleeping sprawled out on the bed and not on top of Shane, so Shane must already be up.
He’s content to keep dozing like this, but his body gets the memo that he’s awake. He drags himself half-upright to cough into an elbow, and that shifts the built-up congestion around. The tickle strikes him before he can even think to pinch it back, and he gasps helplessly before crumpling forward with an urgent, vocal sneeze.
“hih’DSSCHHHhh!”
He fumbles for a tissue, grabbing some from the box on the nightstand, and blows his nose, the sound productive and thick. Fuck, he’s definitely got a sinus infection. The long flight yesterday and the changes in air pressure probably didn’t help matters.
“Good morning,” he hears, a fond voice. “And bless you.”
When he’s able to pull himself away from the tissues, thanking God that blowing his nose didn’t set off another fit for once, he finds Shane in the doorway. Shane is dressing in his running gear, a little damp with sweat from his morning exercise, and he’s sipping at a smoothie that looks absolutely disgusting.
“Good mbording,” he says, cringing at his voice. He sounds absolutely wrecked, snotty and hoarse and like he cried all night long. He vaguely remembers crying and starts to panic. Did he actually cry on Shane all night long? Shit. Shit shit shit.
Some of the panic must show on his face, because Shane draws closer, a reassuring look on his face. “You had a little bit of a rough night,” he says, voice calm, “and your fever spiked around 3am, but I think the Tylenol finally got it down. Do you remember?”
Ilya nods. “Sombe,” he says cautiously, and sniffles. “Sorry.”
Shane shakes his head. “No more sorries,” he says firmly. “I told you that last night and I meant it. I want you here. I want to take care of you.”
God. Shane has been—is—so brave, ever since Tampa. Ilya could never say such things. Even the thought of it has his father’s voice—
Well. He elects to ignore his father’s voice inside his head. He’s already given up on Russia and fallen in love with his sworn rival. He is already an embarrassment to his family and a traitor to his country’s ideals, not that he particularly cares about either of those things.
Maybe…. Well. Maybe he wants Hollander to say those things. Maybe he wants to hear them, even say them back one day. Maybe, one day, he’ll even be able to say I love you to Shane in a language he’ll understand.
Ilya scrubs at his nose and nods. “Thangk you, thend,” he offers, slightly embarrassed, and Shane nods. “I kndow I amb ndot… easy to deal with, whend I amb sick.”
Shane sits on the edge of the bed. “You’re not at all hard to take care of, Ilya,” he says seriously. “I mean it. Even at 3am, carrying you into a cold shower to get your fever down, you were nothing but sweet. I think you were more worried about sneezing on me than you were about your brain cooking. Which, obviously the wrong priorities, but I appreciate it anyway.”
Helpless, Ilya barks out a laugh. It scrapes at his throat, and he coughs into his soaked tissues until it stops. “Okay,” he finally agrees, unsure what else to say. “Ndow what?”
“Well, you’re still pretty sick,” Shane says. He takes a water bottle from the nightstand and forces it into Ilya’s hands until he drinks some of it. “Your fever’s down, but it’s hanging around. Your team flies out in like an hour, you’re definitely missing that. Your team doctor messaged you earlier, I texted him back from your phone and told him you were with, uh, Jane. You can fly back to Boston in a couple days when you feel better, or meet them on the road if it takes longer than that. I’ve got a couple days before I fly out again, so no rush there. You stay here as long as you need.”
Shane is so beautifully, obsessively thorough. Ilya loves that about him. But his mind can’t process all of that, so he drags a hand down Shane’s chest. “Sooo… fever sex?” he teases. “Since we did not get to do last night?”
Shane frowns and pushes him off. “Ha ha,” he says. “No. You’re going to have something to eat and take a nap. And then we’ll see how you’re feeling.”
“Shaaaane,” he whines, collapsing against the pillows from Shane’s halfhearted push. “I did not get my kisses last night. You cannot deny me this.”
“You got plenty of kisses last night,” Shane snorts. “You just don’t remember them all because your brain was trying to cook itself.”
Well, now he has a vendetta against his brain and his immune system, because how dare he not remember getting kisses from Shane? If he focuses, he still can recall those strobe light flashes of memory. A cold shower, snuggles, crying on Shane’s chest. The memory is a little embarrassing, but mostly warm and nice. He remembers being held, feeling comforted.
For the first time since he was twelve, the thought of that isn’t completely terrifying. It almost feels like something he can have.
He gives in, the way he always does when Shane’s puppy eyes come into play. He eats oatmeal and drinks tea and naps. He wakes up, watches a little boring TV, drinks soup and Gatorade, and bugs Shane into reading aloud from his boring hockey book.
Eventually, Shane also gives in, because he always does that too when it comes to Ilya. Fever sex, Ilya is surprised to note, is kind of like being high. His fever is much lower than last night, but it’s left his skin feeling incredibly hypersensitive. It’s like the opposite of an out-of-body experience. He is so firmly in his body like this, so aware of every touch, burning up and freezing at the same time. Shane holds him until he comes, wipes him off with a clean cloth, and hand-feeds him Tylenol in the afterglow.
It’s possibly the slowest, gentlest sex they’ve ever had, and it still leaves Ilya feeling like a wrung out ragdoll afterward. He collapses back into the bed, sneezes another harsh, surprisingly loud, “ehttSSHHIEWW!” into the blankets, and sniffles until Shane hands him more tissues and feels his forehead again.
They don’t talk about the cottage. Ilya half-remembers the conversation from last night, the speech that Shane had obviously practiced—which is, God, just so endearing—but he doesn’t know how to approach it. No matter how much he wants it, how can he say yes? No matter how impossible it is, how could he say no?
The day passes in a haze of bed and couch, couch and bed, and eventually his fever lowers enough that he feels human enough to shower properly. Shane joins him, gets him off again but won’t let Ilya do the same for him because of how shoddy his balance still is, and washes his hair. Ilya tries not to cry at the sensation of being so fucking cared for. He’s pretty sure he fails, and he has been such a waterfall this week which is embarrassing, but at least the shower water helps cover up the tears this time.
Shane babies him and half-carries him to bed when the steam makes him dizzy again. It’s humiliating and makes his throat tight. He kind of loves it.
When the fever spikes again that night, Shane’s patient and calm. He holds Ilya tight and rubs his back and cleans his face for him with tissue after tissue when his nose won’t stop running and his eyes won’t stop leaking. Ilya can feel his brain overheating, and probably this isn’t the moment, but he can’t help it. If he isn’t brave now, he worries he never will be.
“Shane,” he croaks, face buried in Shane’s neck, during a quieter moment when he’s not crying and Shane’s not absorbed in shushing him and trying futilely to make it all better.
Shane strokes a hand up and down his spine. “Yeah?”
“The cottage. Do you still want?”
Shane’s hand goes stiff on his back, before ultra-casually resuming the same motion as before. “I do,” he says quietly. “And… and you?”
The hope and tension in Shane’s voice is impossible to ignore. How could he ever have even imagined disappointing this man? Ilya presses a kiss to the side of Shane’s throat at a known delicate spot, delighting in the shiver it causes. “I want,” he says, the words thick in his throat from fear. “I am terrified, but I want. Okay?”
“Okay,” Shane breathes, holding him tighter. He presses kisses to Ilya’s temples like he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it. “Then we’ll figure it out. We’ll make it work.”
The joy in Shane’s body language, the grin in his voice, is enough to put Ilya back to sleep with a matching smile on his face.
*
Author’s Note: And then Shane catches the flu and then they both get knocked out of the playoffs and then they watch The Kiss and then they go to the cottage with EVEN MORE hope and security in their relationship. It takes Ilya about two hours into the trip to say “I love you” in English, instead of two days. And then they live happily ever after with many more cold and flu incidents THE END.
Summary: Episode 5 AU. I/lya gets sick on the way back from Russia, gets scratched from the game, and recovers at S/hane’s apartment. S/hane doesn’t get knocked out at the game that night; instead, he gets to ask I/lya to the cottage, just like he planned. (Outside of I/lya having the flu and a raging fever, of course.) Contains quite a bit of crying, sorry not sorry.
Emeto warning: One small v-word mention, nothing actually takes place in the fic.
*
I/lya considers himself to have been lucky so far.
He’s had his slip-ups over the years, sure, but he’s done relatively well when it comes to not showing vulnerability around S/hane H/ollander. He’s careful. Doesn’t flinch away from touches. Doesn’t tell the childhood stories that he had told laughingly, but that had made his teammates eye him sympathetically. Doesn’t give too much anyway.
It’s dangerous, around H/ollander. S/hane is so full of love and support and gentleness, it practically leaks out of him. I/lya can’t have any part of that. At just the thought of it, he can hear his father’s cold voice in his ear; Alexei’s shouting insults; the fading memory of his mother’s voice, which had been dull and resigned by the end. It’s just for the best if he avoids any kind of shows of weakness around S/hane. He thinks he’s doing well at it.
And then he falls apart and cries on S/hane in Tampa.
It feels like so many things in the moment. Release. Humiliation. Shame. Relief.
And he can’t take it back, afterward. Shane won’t let him—or maybe he won’t let himself. They use first names, hold hands at the beach, make tentative plans just to spend time together after their next game. It feels.. good. Terrifying, too. But he almost feels like he can settle into it, into the vulnerability.
Then he gets the call in the locker room. Alexei’s voice, cruel like always, throwing out the news of their father’s death like Ilya should’ve already known about it.
It feels like fate. Drawing him back to Russia, away from Shane, away from the emotional intimacy they were starting to build. It’s how it’s meant to be, he tells himself. Quit asking for things you’re not supposed to have. Quit wanting them.
The problem is that it seems like Shane is ready to get into an MMA fight with fate, or whatever else wants to keep them apart. He refuses to let Ilya disappear. He just… stays. In the periphery. Texting, calling, checking up on Ilya the whole time he’s in Russia. Never too much. Never too invasive. He lets Ilya draw the conversation back to FaceTime sex once he sees Shane in those glasses. He lets Ilya rant on the phone in Russian, pouring out his whole fucking heart, trusting that Shane won’t record this or translate it, because such subterfuge would never even occur to Shane.
He lets Ilya say I love you, even though admittedly he doesn’t really know that’s what’s happening. Even though they both know this could never be that.
And he calls again the night before Ilya’s return flight, just checking in. It’s a quick FaceTime call, where Ilya is mostly discussing his flight details and trying not to think about how he’s leaving Russia behind. He gave away his apartment, he cut off Alexei, he said goodbye to his mama’s grave. He may never come back here.
It hurts, but it feels like tugging at your stitches. A healing kind of hurt, maybe.
He’s still talking mindlessly about his plans when Shane interrupts him. “Are you feeling okay?”
Ilya rolls his eyes, endeared despite himself. “Yes, Hollander, you ask me this everyday.” He lies or talks around an answer most of the time, but no point in revealing that.
“No, I mean… you just sound weird, is all. Kind of congested. Are you feeling sick?” Shane sounds unsure of himself, hesitant to prod as ever, but being brave and doing it anyway.
Ilya blinks in surprise. “I’m fine, is just cold and snowing outside,” he says, not stopping to think about it. He bulldozes past Shane’s concern out of habit, bringing the conversation back to hockey in a way that he knows will entice Shane into letting it go.
That night though, in bed, he finds himself cataloguing a growing list of complaints. His throat feels a little sore, in a way that drinking a glass of water doesn’t touch. His skin aches. His face feels tight, the way it does when his sinuses are about to work overtime.
He tosses and turns, catches a couple of hours of poor sleep, and groans when his alarm wakes him for his stupid-early flight to Canada. He’d timed it perfectly, so he’ll get there a couple hours before the game with Montreal. It means leaving Svetlana behind, but she’ll catch her own flight home, and she’d known better than to protest at how little time he took off for his father’s death.
He drags himself to the airport, his suitcase somewhat heavier than it was, with everything he’s taken from his apartment and his father’s home. Mostly things to remind him of his mother. It’s very little—not enough—but it’s things he couldn’t leave behind, especially if he’s never coming back.
He’s feeling increasingly like he’s never coming back. Dread and relief sit equally heavy in his stomach at the thought of never seeing Russia again. But what’s left for him here, anyway?
By the time he gets to his gate in the airport, he’s got a cough and he can’t quit sniffling, and his throat feels like he’s been gargling glass. Whatever he’s caught decided to hit in full force during the little sleep he managed to get in the night. He buys a travel pack of tissues at a store by his gate, along with a Gatorade for hydration, and settles back to listen to music until his flight is called.
The FaceTime from Shane surprises him, about ten minutes before boarding. Ilya doesn’t even know what time it must be, back in Canada. He could do the math but that sounds exhausting. He looks around cautiously, but it’s still so early that the airport is fairly empty, and he has his earbuds in. He turns so that his back is to a wall, to ensure nobody peers over his shoulders, and answers.
“What are you doing up?” he asks, as soon as Shane’s face appears on his screen, and then he cringes when he hears himself. His voice sounds thick and heavy now, the congestion audible. In the little square on his screen, he can see himself, bundled up against the cold with weary eyes and pale skin.
Shane doesn’t point it out out loud, but anyone with eyes could see the concern on his face. “It’s not even eleven at night,” he protests easily. “I haven’t even gone to bed yet. It’s, what, 5AM there? What made you book such an early flight?”
“Wanted plenty of time to get to Montreal,” Ilya says, rubbing at his nose absently. “Will get there a couple hours before our game, as long as everything goes smoothly.”
“You’re going to play,” Shane says flatly. “After a transatlantic flight, and with a—with the week you’ve had.”
“Yes? I am not just there to sit and look pretty,” Ilya says. He can tease no matter how shitty he feels, it’s a gift. “That’s your job.”
“We’re going to beat your asses,” Shane retorts with a smile, but he still eyes Ilya with poorly-concealed worry. “Just… take it easy, okay?”
Ilya summons up every skill he’s honed over the years to avoid showing any weakness around others. It’s failed him lately, but he needs it now. “Relax, Hollander. I will sleep on plane, eat whatever horrible meal they feed me, show up just in time to beat you soundly.”
Shane’s smile is soft, illuminated by his bedside lamp, where he must be getting ready for bed. “It’s Shane, Ilya. Remember?”
Aaaand that instinct fails him once again, because he can’t deny Shane when he looks so sweet. “Okay, Shane.”
“Just… text me, okay? Let me know how your flight goes, layovers, stuff like that.”
His nose prickles, but he resists the urge to rub it again. Not while he’s still on FaceTime, anyway. He repeats himself, “Okay, Shane. They are boarding now, I go, okay?”
“Okay. Bye.”
“Bye.” Ilya hangs up, a little annoyed with how relieved he is to be off-camera so he can scrub at his face to chase away the approaching tickle. He doesn’t do a very good job, and he fumbles to open the travel pack of tissues he bought so he can muffle a sneeze into a handful of them. “huhh… huksshhtt!”
An older woman nearby blesses him, and he thanks her, still sniffling into the tissues. He doesn’t feel like blowing—it’s too loud, and it would only trigger more sneezing, thanks to his thrice-broken nose’s irritating hypersensitivity—so he just rubs his nose through the tissues until the lingering tickle subsides.
His plane boards. The flight is tedious, long, freezing in spite of the layers he made himself wear. He tries to focus on the in-flight movies, but even that doesn’t provide much distraction from his symptoms, which only intensify over their hours in the air. The light cough turns heavier, more insistent, and his nose fills with congestion that only feels worse with the changes in air pressure. He tries to hold back his coughs—nobody wants to be that person on a long plane ride—but it gets harder and harder over time. He sniffles thickly, more and more frequently over the course of the flight, cringing each time the people seated near him turn to look at him.
Ilya ends up catching some sleep toward the end of the flight, but it isn’t very restful, and he finds himself half-waking up several times to cough or hold back a sneeze. Eventually the congestion gets annoying enough that he stumbles his way out of his seat and toward the plane’s lavatory, where he grabs handfuls of the provided tissues—thin, dry, scratchy and harsh on his nose. Even the mere touch of the tissues is enough to provoke his sinuses at this point. The second he brings them to his face, his breath is hitching, and the sneezes come so quickly that he can’t even try to hold them back. “hh’tsshhmphh! heh’schhmphh! heh… heh’EHHTTshhh!”
Muffled into the tissues, they’re quiet enough that he’s only a little embarrassed. He forces himself to blow his nose, knowing that he needs it, and winces when it shifts the congestion in his sinuses around. His nose tingles again, overwhelming and too sudden for him to stop it, and he helplessly muffles another sneeze. “hmphhsshh!”
He blows his nose again, thick and honking, and bullies his nostrils into submission by swiping at them harshly with a fresh handful of tissues. It keeps him from sneezing again, but his nose and upper lip are stinging and raw when he washes his hands and makes his way back to his seat.
Eventually, he settles enough again to drift back to sleep. His dreams are hazy and disconnected, hard to make sense of, but he knows his mother is part of it. His father, too, voice harsh and cold. Not confused and childlike, how he was by the end. Ilya’s chest hurts, from the memory and from the coughs he holds back in his sleep.
He wakes up to enormous pressure in his sinuses, and realizes they’re landing. The whole flight seems to have been simultaneously endless and shorter than he expected, and his vision swims. Probably the start of a fever. He curses to himself and tries to get ready for deplaning, but the stabbing pain in his sinuses from the air pressure change can’t be ignored or relieved. He ends up sitting completely still, fingers pressed to the sides of his nose and cheeks, trying to simply bear the pressure until they’ve landed.
Time passes—he has no idea how long—and when the pain finally fades enough for him to relax a little, the row in front of him is standing up and gathering their things. He scrambles to get his stuff and follows, praying he hasn’t left anything behind. He grabs at the seats in front of him in a dazed attempt to keep himself balanced as he moves toward the front of the plane.
Once he’s in the airport, the crowds surrounding him keep him feeling overwhelmed, plus confused and hazy. Definitely a fever. He groans and rubs at his face, taking a second to try to ground himself, then goes to get his luggage and call for a car to get him to the rink.
He doesn’t call Shane again from the cab. There’s no way he’d be able to hide the congestion and rasp in his voice, and the thick feeling in his throat only worsens when he imagines Shane fussing over him. Instead, he shoots off a quick text. Landed. See you at face-off.
Within seconds, he gets a text back. How was your flight?
He hesitates over the response. Long. Meet at your place after the game?
Sure. But then Shane sends him a new address.
Ilya: What happened to fuck apartment?
Shane: Don’t call it that. This is the address for my actual apartment. Let’s meet there tonight.
Ilya feels oddly touched. Maybe Shane was serious about all the things he said in Tampa about caring about him, about how he had shown up for Ilya even when he was a continent away while Ilya struggled in Russia. He lingers over the text, not sure what to respond with. “Thanks”? “Can we just do the fuck apartment, I’m uncomfortable with being cared for”? A crying emoji?
In the end, he doesn’t respond with anything. He just likes the message and puts his phone away.
But then not even an hour before the game, he gets scratched. Fucking Evan, the team doctor, hears him coughing in the locker room and pulls him aside for a checkup. “Your swab just came back positive for flu B. Although, I’m worried that cough sounds like it’s turning into bronchitis,” Evan tells him in the sick bay, scribbling into a clipboard and eyeing Ilya with obvious concern. “You’ve got a sinus infection, for sure, and the bronchitis is too soon to tell but I really think it’s going that way. I can’t believe you flew transatlantic like this.”
“Did not want to miss game,” Ilya says, ducking into his elbow with a round of harsh, scraping coughs that won’t back down.
“Well,” Evan says, the unsaid that’s what’s gonna happen obvious in his tone. “I don’t know if I want you going back to the hotel room alone. You could stay here with me until after the game, and I can check on you in the night. Our flight’s in the morning, though I’m not sure if you’ll be able to fly in your current condition. You and I might have a little layover here in Montreal until you’re cleared for it.”
Jesus Christ, no. He likes Evan—though not very much right now, when he’s getting denied his chance to play, the only potential escape he’s had from the stress of the last few days—but he doesn’t want to spend hours or possibly days with the guy fussing over him. “Ah, no. I have, um. Girlfriend? Kind of? In town. I can call her, go to her place.” He waits for Evan to nod and leave the room to tell Coach, then texts Shane.
Ilya: I have news. Don’t be mad.
Shane: Are you ditching me tonight?
Ilya: Scratched. They are saying flu, sinus infection.
Technically, they also said probably-bronchitis, but he doesn’t want to get in the details of that. Flu sounds a bit easier to manage, maybe.
Shane: And you flew like that?! I knew you sounded rough on the call.
Ilya: Was not so bad this morning.
Shane: Liar. Okay, what now?
Ilya: I told doctor I would go stay at my girlfriend’s place. Figure I will sleep it off in the hotel room. Sorry. I wanted—
He erases the last two words. Best not to get into what he wanted.
Ilya: Sorry to cancel on tonight.
His phone is silent for a moment, and he watches Shane type and erase repeatedly. Shane is probably busy getting ready, putting on his gear, maybe doing pre-game media.
Shane: No one’s canceling. You can go to my apartment. I’ll text you the codes.
He doesn’t have time to respond before his phone buzzes again.
Shane: I really want to see you tonight. And I don’t want you sick by yourself in a hotel room. Please.
Ah, fuck. He can just envision Shane with those Hollander puppy dog eyes, all big and brown and sweet.
Ilya: You are that horny, you want me over even with the flu?
Shane: Main door code 1221, front door code 8124. Try and sleep. I’ll bring you some medicine when I get home. There’s soup in the pantry I think.
Shane doesn’t take the bait, the way he normally would, which leaves Ilya feeling a little off-kilter without his chance to banter. If he’s being honest, though, he doesn’t really feel up to his normal level of bantering. He likes the message and doesn’t respond—starting to become a habit for him—just in time for Evan to come back with Coach in tow.
“We’ll miss having you out there tonight, Rozanov,” Coach tells him gruffly. “I’m sorry you’re having such a shitty month.”
Ilya shrugs and nods. What can you do? He doesn’t say anything; his throat’s feeling too sore at this point to make him much of a conversationalist.
Coach leaves after wishing for him to feel better soon, and Evan prescribes him a heavy-duty cough syrup and an antiviral. “Hear back from your girlfriend?”
“I am to take cab to her place,” he rasps out. “And let her take care of me upon pain of death. My Jane is stubborn.” His mouth ticks up in a smile, fond despite himself.
Evan laughs a little. “Lucky for you, these prescriptions should be ready quick. You should be able to pick them up on the way. Feel better, okay, Roz? Message me if things get worse, and go to the ER if you have trouble breathing or your fever spikes.”
He agrees, more to get away quicker than anything else, and stumbles out into the freezing Canadian spring air to get to his cab once Evan finally lets him go. He didn’t even have time to stop by the hotel earlier, so at least he still has his luggage to take with him and doesn’t need an extra stop. The cab driver recognizes him but is pretty nice about it for an obvious Montreal fan, clearly a bit gleeful now that the news has hit the airwaves that Ilya got scratched just before the game.
Ilya finds himself holding back sneezes all throughout the drive, hitching and pressing his gloves to his nose to fight off the insistent tickle. He convinces the driver to stop at the pharmacy, where his prescriptions are in fact ready, and then has the driver drop him off a block away from Shane’s apartment. Normally, he would do even farther, but he’s worried his lungs won’t let him manage any longer of a walk.
The door codes work just fine—and he snickers at 8124, belatedly realizing the meaning as he types it in—and he staggers into the apartment just as the long-threatened sneezing fit finally hits.
“hh’DSSCHhhwww! hah—HAHHDT’sshheww!” He sneezes into his gloves in the doorway, thanking God that Shane has this floor all to himself, so no neighbors in the hallway can recognize him and/or show concern over his fucked-up nose. He sniffles, which only forces out yet another horribly wet, throat-tearing explosion. “HAAHhh’DTTsshhieww! …guh. Fuck.”
Half-blind from the tears in his eyes that are streaming down his face, he takes a few unsteady steps into the living room, where he sees the faintly recognizable shape of a tissue box on the coffee table. He grabs at it with the hand that isn’t currently pressed to his face—which he would swear is holding him together while his brain tries to escape through his nose—and gathers a bouquet of tissues to bury his nose in.
He blows, long and loud, grateful that for the first time today he’s completely alone to be as loud as he needs. The sound and vibration hurt a little, and it makes him sneeze again, but the relief of having almost-cleared sinuses is worth it, for the whole two minutes that it lasts.
Once he recovers himself, he texts Shane, already knowing that the game has started and Shane won’t have his phone on him. He keeps it simple: Here. Good luck tonight.
He grabs a can of Coke from the fridge—does Hollander normally have Coke, or did he stock it for Ilya in preparation for tonight, he wonders with a thrill—and settles on the couch to watch the game. He watches the face-off, and the first couple of minutes, and then unintentionally sacks out.
When he drifts back into awareness, he’s curled up in a ball on the couch with drool on the cushion under his head, and the TV screen says it’s just after the second period. His sinuses feel heavy, and he can feel the congestion and swelling in his nose, built up with no way to escape. He groans and stretches, rubbing at his eyes that feel like they weight twenty pounds each.
He checks his phone. There’s a text from Evan asking if he got the prescriptions okay, and Ilya thumbs up the message. He should probably take the medicine, he can see it in sitting in a bag on the kitchen counter where he’d left it, but he can’t bring himself to get up. He manages to grab at the can of Coke on the coffee table, taking a sip to try to ease his sore throat that’s only been aggravated by the snoring he’s sure he’s been doing, but the carbonation only burns the whole way down, and he sets it aside with a groan.
There’s a text from Shane, too, and he must be keeping his phone near the bench, which Canadian good boy extraordinaire Shane Hollander would never normally do. Are you feeling okay? Is there anything special you want from the store before I get home?
Ilya watches the highlight reel for a few minutes, which shows Shane scoring a fantastic goal in the first period. Montreal’s going to win this one. He wonders if the team is mad at him, for missing tonight’s game when he’s already been gone a week, but the logical part of his brain knows they won’t be. Marly will probably be texting him as soon as they finish the game, to make sure he isn’t drowned in his own snot if nothing else.
Nice goal, he texts back. I am okay. Team doctor prescribed me some medicine that will fix me.
He tries to watch the rest of the game. Tries to wait for Shane to text him back. But he already knows it’s a losing fight. He barely manages to move a throw pillow under his head before his eyes are dragged closed again and he falls back asleep.
When he wakes up a second time, an indeterminate amount of time later, everything is dreamlike and hazy, and he immediately knows that something is different. Wrong. Everything hurts, and his sinuses are pounding, just like they had back on the plane. He doesn’t really know where he is. His vision is swimming, and he has that heavy painful feeling in his chest that could be the probably-bronchitis, or just as likely could be the way he knows he dreamed about his mother again. And his father, yelling, always yelling. Always with the cold voice and the harsh words and the cruel touch.
“Ilya,” he hears, the voice sounding muffled and distant but familiar, “Ilya, hey, English please. Okay? I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
He’s babbling, quiet and in Russian, and the realization that he’s doing so has him shutting up instantly. A hand brushes his hair back from his forehead, damp and hot with sweat, and he looks up.
Shane. Shane, here, looking tired and beautiful and with such concern in his big brown doe eyes, so sweet and perfect that Ilya wants to cry.
“Oh, hey,” Shane murmurs, swiping a thumb under Ilya’s eye and smearing liquid.
Fuck, he is actually crying, isn’t he? He swallows and tries to apologize, but he can’t find the word in English for a too-long second. “Sorry,” he finally says hoarsely, and the word catches in his throat, doubling him over with a coughing fit.
Shane is seated on the edge of the couch, by Ilya’s hip, and he helps Ilya sit up a little. He hands Ilya tissues, for wiping away his tears and for him to cough into. “It’s okay,” Shane says once the coughing has stopped. He rests a comforting hand on the back of Ilya’s neck and winces at the heat he must feel there. “God, you are burning up, Ilya. When’s the last time you took your medicine?”
Ilya only stares at him blankly. Shane is—is here. (Wherever here is.) With him. Looking so pretty and worried and tired from the game, but still here with Ilya.
After a moment, Shane gives him a patient smile and pats his knee and stands up, wandering off to the kitchen before Ilya can think of what to say to stop him from walking away. He’s not sure right now what the words would be in English, anyway.
Shane comes back holding the prescription cough syrup, the antiviral, and an unfamiliar painkiller bottle that must be from his own supply. “You didn’t even take anything, the cough syrup’s still unopened,” Shane says, and the words are scolding but his tone is endlessly gentle. “Medicine now, okay? We need to get your fever down, baby.”
The endearment has Ilya biting his lip to hold off more tears, and he nods unsteadily. Shane leaves him for the kitchen again and returns with a water bottle and a Gatorade. Then he disappears, further into the apartment than Ilya had dared explore before he fell asleep, and comes back with a thermometer and a wet washcloth.
“Come here,” Shane says softly, when Ilya doesn’t take the initiative, and Shane cups his jaw so carefully. Ilya’s mouth opens obediently when Shane’s thumb prods at it, and Shane slips the thermometer under his tongue. “Give that a minute,” Shane says, turning to measure out a dose of the cough syrup.
“Who won?” Ilya croaks out, once he’s reasonably sure those are the right words. His head feels so thick, like fog has taken up all the real estate in his brain, and his thoughts are treading water instead of swimming. He feels like a confused child, tongue clumsy in his mouth. English hasn’t been this hard for him in years. At least he remembers where he is now.
Shane gives him an amused look and points at the thermometer. “Don’t talk with that in your mouth. And, I did. Your team put up a good fight, though. You should be proud of them.”
Ilya nods, feeling his eyes slip shut. It’s too much effort to hold them open. He sinks back against the couch, abruptly feeling too heavy to hold himself upright anymore.
A hand cups his forehead, and Shane removes the thermometer. He sucks in air against his teeth once he’s read it. “Jeez, Ilya. Your brain is on fire. Should you call your team doctor?”
He shakes his head frantically, not even sure why the thought is so disconcerting, but he knows he doesn’t want to leave here. “No—no, no Evan. Please. Want to stay with you. Please.”
Shane is quiet for a second, then gives him a somewhat pleased look, though the worry is still clear in the furrowed line in his brow. “Okay. But if this gets any higher, we’re in emergency room territory, all right?”
Ilya can’t put some of those words together to make sense of them in his head, but he nods anyway. Whatever Shane wants. He obediently swallows the cough syrup and antiviral and Tylenol that Shane gives him. He drinks the water that Shane holds for him, since his hands are shaking too much to avoid spilling. He lets Shane put the wet washcloth on the back of his neck, and the cold feeling of it is so relieving that he moans quietly, unable to help himself.
“Did you sleep okay?” Shane asks him, wrapping an arm gently around Ilya’s back. He guides Ilya back to rest against the cushions, braced against Shane’s side. The TV blares on, showing footage of some other game, and Shane casually picks up the remote and lowers the volume without dislodging Ilya at all.
This is the most comfortable he’s felt since the Tampa hotel room, even with this horrible fever clouding his brain and making everything hurt. He shrugs and melts into Shane’s side, soaking in the wonderful, secure feeling of it like a sponge. He’s a little bigger than Shane, but right now he feels almost tiny in Shane’s hold. “Bad dream,” he says roughly, reaching up to swipe at his nose, like he sometimes does when he’s uncomfortable or feeling vulnerable.
Unfortunately, that habit of his works against him, now that his face is so sensitive, and even this casual touch sets him off. He hitches once, twice, then jolts away from Shane’s arm toward the other side of the couch to sneeze. He doesn’t have the coordination or forethought right now to aim it his elbow. He barely manages to bring up a hand in time to cover his nose and mouth with a cupped palm, before the fit bursts out of him, desperate and needy.
He pants afterward, still feeling his nostrils flaring and twitching against his hand, which feels slick and damp with spray. He cringes at the feeling. He had tried to stifle, or at least muffle, but… well. Obviously his sinuses have had enough and are making their feelings known, because he was only somewhat successful.
After a long moment of Ilya breathing hard into his cupped hand, Shane exhales with what sounds like a repressed laugh. “Bless you,” he says, wrapping an arm around Ilya and reeling him back toward his side. “Need a tissue?”
Ilya nods, too embarrassed to speak aloud when he knows any words would come out unintelligible with congestion. Shane passes him a good handful of tissues, and he wipes fruitlessly at his nostrils for a few minutes. The sniffles keep coming out of him, thick and useless, and he finds it mortifying but he can’t stop. It’s like all the congestion in his head can’t decide whether it’s staying or going, so it’s doing both at once.
After a few minutes of this, Shane presses him gently. “You don’t need to blow your nose?”
Ilya can feel his cheeks heating under the weight of Shane’s calm, focused attention. He shrugs, most of his face still buried in the tissues.
Shane seems to get the hint. He detaches himself from Ilya and gets up. “I’ll make you some tea and give you a minute, okay? I think I just have green tea, but I’ll check.”
He disappears into the kitchen. It’s a mostly open floor plan, but the columns and partial walls create a concealing illusion, enough that Ilya feels comfortable giving a few soft blows into the tissues.
As always, that starts up a tingling sensation in his sinuses, too buzzy and ticklish to be ignored. He shudders into the tissues with a half-muffled, desperately wet sneeze, too eager for relief to even try to stop it. “hh’shhhhww!”
He manages to blow again afterward, finally clearing away the overflowing congestion for the time being without triggering any more sneezing. He glances around, feeling mildly more coherent and awake, and doesn’t see any trash cans nearby. Sensing that his legs will collapse like jelly if he stands, he contents himself with balling up the ruined tissues in one hand.
Shane returns from the kitchen with a steaming mug of tea. “Feeling better? Oh, let me have those,” Shane says, reaching for the tissues and plucking them out of Ilya’s grasp before he can protest or shy away. “I’ll throw them away. Hang on.”
He wanders back into the kitchen, and this time he’s only gone for a second. When he comes back, Ilya is relieved to note that Shane at least seems to be rubbing hand sanitizer into his hands. Shane is thorough in this like in everything else, scrubbing at his nails and the webbing between his fingers.
“I’mb gross,” Ilya says, and he’s briefly thrown off by how utterly blocked his nose sounds when he speaks. He sniffles uselessly. “You should ndot have to do that. Are you sure you wandt mbe here, with mby germbs?” He means for the words to come out lighthearted, his usual joking tone, but instead he sounds pathetically sad and needy.
Shane visibly softens and sits down beside him, pulling him close again. “I want you to stay,” he says into Ilya’s hair, and then he presses a kiss there. “We agreed, remember?”
Hesitantly, Ilya nods. He isn’t sure he technically agreed, but right now he definitely doesn’t want to argue. Doesn’t want to give Shane any reason to change his mind and make Ilya leave.
After a minute, Shane kisses the top of his head again and rubs his back, then sits up a little more. “You should drink your tea. I found the sleepytime kind, and I put some honey in it. It should be good for your throat,” he rambles awkwardly.
That makes Ilya feel like they’re closer to their normal footing, and he smiles fondly. “Thangk you,” he says hoarsely, taking the mug that Shane hands him. He blows on it at Shane’s urging and then sips. He can’t taste anything with his sinuses so blocked, but he nods anyway as if it tastes good. It slides down his throat easily, at least, and the heat of it is a comfort.
Shane watches him, like a hawk observing her chicks in the nest, or how Ilya imagines that would look anyway. Once Ilya’s drank most of the tea, for the soothing warmth of it on his throat if nothing else, Shane straightens and nods to himself. “Time for bed, I think?” he suggests. “Do you need anything else? Are you hungry?”
Ilya shakes his head, the thought of food making his stomach lurch with disgust. Probably the fever causing that. “Ndo, thangk you,” he rasps out.
“Save your voice,” Shane laughs, helping him to stand up with an arm wrapped around his waist. “You’re very polite when your brain is overheating, huh?”
He ignores his father’s voice in his head. Be polite, Ilya. Where are your manners. So lazy. “Mmb.”
He expects Shane to lead him to a guest room—surely, in an apartment this size, he must have one or two—but Shane guides him into a bedroom that’s clearly lived-in. The bed is immaculately made, and Shane peels back the covers one-handed so he can keep supporting Ilya.
Ilya almost protests that he can hold himself up, but there’s no way that’s true.
Shane forces him to sit on the bed, then kneels down to take Ilya’s shoes and socks off. He helps Ilya wriggle out of his pants and shirt, leaving him in only his underwear. The whole process takes far longer than it should, on account of Ilya struggling and sweating through each step even with Shane’s assistance. After that, Shane keeps him sitting upright so he can try to clear out his nose with handful after handful of tissues, which has Ilya blushing hard to have to do so in front of Shane.
Eventually, though, Shane lets Ilya collapse into the pillows. He drags the comforter up to Ilya’s chest and tucks it in like one would with a child. “I’ll be right back,” Shane says quietly, and he returns with more tea, plus the other drinks, the medicines, and the thermometer. He disappears again, and comes back with a fresh cool washcloth, draping it over Ilya’s forehead.
Ilya snickers, genuinely amused but also feeling somewhat loopy. What was in that cough syrup? He didn’t even think to check. But Shane would have, because Shane is responsible, and Shane wouldn’t let him take anything bad for him. “You are so… nursemaid,” he says, flapping his hand around when he can’t find the right words. He’s pleased to find that he doesn’t sound nearly as congested as before, for the moment at least. “Is cute.”
Shane turns pink. “I want you to feel better,” he says earnestly, which leaves Ilya with nothing to say, staring at him in heart eyes and mild shock. Shane doesn’t react to this, only smiling and propping him up against the pillows. “Drink more tea for me, okay? Liquids are good when you’re sick.”
Ilya ends up drinking another cup of tea, and half of the Gatorade, before Shane lets him lie down. Shane changes into sweatpants and lays next to him, whole body curled around Ilya, and plays with their entwined fingers. Long minutes pass in silence while Ilya tries to figure out what to say next.
“Thank you,” he finally manages. “Sorry I… ruined our night. I know we had plans.”
Shane shushes him and tucks an errant curl behind his ear. “It’s okay. Although…” He ducks his head down and blushes again. “I had this whole plan, you know, to ask you something.”
Normally, the very thought of that sentence would cause Ilya dread. Right now, though, he feels buoyed and lightheaded from the fever—and, fine, a little high on the cough syrup—so all he does is making an inquiring noise.
“So, I have this cottage,” Shane says. “It’s out by the lake, like two hours from here, and it’s beautiful. Very private, no neighbors for miles.”
“Mm.” Ilya shifts, his face buried in Shane’s side, and breathes deep. He can’t smell anything, but he knows Shane’s scent well enough to imagine it. He knows the cottage Shane is talking about, has watched that documentary enough times that Svetlana banned it from her home. It’s soothing, though he’d never admit that out loud.
“And I was thinking, for this summer. Maybe you could come? Instead of going to Russia,” Shane says. The rising panic is evident in his tone, and he quickly starts babbling. “I just, I know you were just there, and maybe you want to keep going back, but it seemed like maybe… you didn’t. Anyway, the cottage is super private, no one would know we were there, and there’s a lot of fun things to do. Like swimming, or grilling, or video games. Or resting. Whatever you want. We could just… be. Like, alone together. We could be together. And we could have a week, or maybe even two if we can both get that much time off after the playoffs—”
“Hollander,” Ilya says, because his brain is starting to swim with all this information. He knows what not-stoned-off-cold-medicine-him would say right now. Something noncommittal. Maybe something rude or risqué, to change the subject and make Shane refocus on calling him an asshole. But right now, he’s floating, and he can feel sleep tugging at him. “I like your cottage,” he mumbles, eyes closing, and he nestles into Shane’s side without further thought. “Watch the show a lot.”
“Oh,” Shane says. His hand moves in circles over Ilya’s back, long sweeping motions, soothing. There’s warmth in his voice when he speaks again. “Yeah? Well… Maybe we can talk about it more later. When you’re feeling better.”
“Mm,” Ilya agrees, dropping off to sleep without a second thought.
He wakes sometime in the night, feeling hot and wrong again. The time passes in quick flashes, everything seeming to change each time he opens his eyes, like a strobe light in a shitty club. He vaguely remembers more cold cloths, draped over his forehead and wedged in his armpits. He remembers someone holding more pills to his mouth and helping him drink water. Hazily, he recalls the sensation of coughing until he almost throws up, with that same someone bracing a trash can in front of him. He doesn’t think he actually vomited, small comfort.
He remembers a soft voice, quiet and familiar, murmuring gentle words to him in French. He remembers cold, steady hands, keeping him upright and guiding him into a cool shower. The water feels freezing, and his teeth chatter, but the moment is there and gone in another flash. When he blinks again, he’s been toweled dry and put back to bed, cuddled up against someone. It feels like even more time has passed without him being aware of it, and he has no sense of what time it must be, other than “the middle of the night.”
By the time his brain clears enough to let him make sense of where he is and who he’s with, Ilya feels so utterly drained and miserable that all he can do is continue to rest a hot cheek against Shane’s chest and let his hair be petted.
“Hey. I know,” Shane soothes, when he seems to notice that Ilya’s a little more aware of his surroundings. “That wasn’t fun, huh?”
The words are sympathetic, comforting, the way one would speak to a very sick person or a child, and abruptly he thinks of his mother again. She’s never very far from his mind when he’s feeling unwell. The way she would hold him and kiss him and reassure him. Always with the gentlest touches and tones of voice. The way she would cradle him to her chest like her baby, no matter how big he got, and call him her Ilyushenka.
The tears spill out of him helplessly, hot and streaming, and he can feel them puddling onto Shane’s chest under his cheek. He half-expects Shane to panic, to sit them up and fuss over his temperature again, but maybe Shane has been all panicked out by the events of earlier. Instead, Shane keeps a steady hand pressed to Ilya’s back, grounding him, while he uses the other hand to keep carding through Ilya’s hair. “I’m here,” Shane says softly, not sounding fazed at all. “It’s okay. I’m here, baby.”
His brain, stupid overheated thing, keeps flashing back to Tampa, to how he’s crying on Shane again. Instead of being charming and hot and sexy, like he’d intended to be to make up for Tampa, tonight he’s just been a wet, pathetic, feverish, sneezy mess. With fucking bronchitis, probably. Ilya lets a quiet sob escape him, muffled into Shane’s skin, and feels more tears drip down onto Shane’s chest.
Shane’s touch is cool and comforting, and Ilya only cries for a minute or two before the tears run dry. He has the vague worry that maybe he’s cried himself out so quickly because his fever is boiling him from the inside out, evaporating his tears. Then—and this worry seems more possible, not to mention absolutely mortifying—he has the thought that perhaps he’s already cried on Shane many times tonight, and the fever keeps wiping the memory from his head, only for him to do it all over again. He blinks up at Shane, trying to discern if they’ve done this already tonight.
Shane looks down at him, smiling even though he looks physically tired as hell, like he’s been up half the night caring for a feverish Russian after playing a full hockey game. There’s no frustration in his expression, though, like how Ilya might expect if they were repeating the same teary scenario over and over tonight. His hand leaves Ilya’s hair, and he drags a finger under Ilya’s left eye to wipe away the last of the tear tracks. “Feel a little better?”
Ilya sniffles and nods. The sniffle, plus the pressure of Shane’s finger pad against his face, pushes his sinuses into an uproar, and he flinches toward his arm with a sudden sneeze he can’t possibly hope to contain. He sprays across his forearm, not even managing to keep the damage out of Shane’s sight.
“hrsshh’SHHIEWW!” he sneezes, tickly and not nearly satisfying enough to keep him from immediately ducking back toward his arm for another outburst or two. They come out loud and wet, and much more vocal than he’s used to. “hahh… HAASSCHHEWW! hah’ASSHHHoohh!”
Another mortifying few seconds pass, where he’s all too aware of the spray drying on his skin and Shane’s eyes on him. Focused. Taking everything in.
Then, Shane is holding a tissue up to his nose. “Here, sweetheart,” Shane murmurs. He cups it around Ilya’s nose, seemingly unbothered by the mess, and rubs.
For a second, Ilya tries to resist. But he’s so fucking exhausted. And at no point in his plan has he actually succeeded recently in not showing vulnerability around Shane Hollander. And his arms hurt too much with feverish body aches to even think of lifting a hand to take the tissue.
So Shane Hollander wipes his nose for him, and presses it there for him while he blows, and holds him when Ilya builds up to another, much more quiet but just as wet, “heht’sshheww!” Shane just murmurs a bless you and wipes his nose dry again. The touch is exceedingly gentle, Shane being wary of the sensitive skin at Ilya’s nostrils and Cupid’s bow.
By the time Shane tosses the crumpled, sodden tissue onto the nightstand, Ilya can feel his eyes drooping. “Sorry,” he mutters, letting his cheek drop onto Shane’s chest again. His skin doesn’t feel burning hot against Shane’s anymore, at least. “Keep sndeezing ond you and falling asleep ond you.”
Shane laughs, the sound loose and a little wild from lack of sleep. “I think that’s just how being sick goes. It’s okay, I don’t mind. Rest, mon coeur.”
The hand on Ilya’s back is moving in slow, steady circles, and his nose is finally a little bit clearer, and his head aches from crying and coughing and fever. And he’s being cradled in Shane Hollander’s arms. He falls asleep before he even realizes his eyes are closing.
When he wakes up again, he feels less out of control. More rested. His body still feels out of whack, and he can tell that his temperature and sinuses are still screwed up, but it’s undeniably better. His internal clock is working again and says that it’s early morning, and he’s sleeping sprawled out on the bed and not on top of Shane, so Shane must already be up.
He’s content to keep dozing like this, but his body gets the memo that he’s awake. He drags himself half-upright to cough into an elbow, and that shifts the built-up congestion around. The tickle strikes him before he can even think to pinch it back, and he gasps helplessly before crumpling forward with an urgent, vocal sneeze.
“hih’DSSCHHHhh!”
He fumbles for a tissue, grabbing some from the box on the nightstand, and blows his nose, the sound productive and thick. Fuck, he’s definitely got a sinus infection. The long flight yesterday and the changes in air pressure probably didn’t help matters.
“Good morning,” he hears, a fond voice. “And bless you.”
When he’s able to pull himself away from the tissues, thanking God that blowing his nose didn’t set off another fit for once, he finds Shane in the doorway. Shane is dressing in his running gear, a little damp with sweat from his morning exercise, and he’s sipping at a smoothie that looks absolutely disgusting.
“Good mbording,” he says, cringing at his voice. He sounds absolutely wrecked, snotty and hoarse and like he cried all night long. He vaguely remembers crying and starts to panic. Did he actually cry on Shane all night long? Shit. Shit shit shit.
Some of the panic must show on his face, because Shane draws closer, a reassuring look on his face. “You had a little bit of a rough night,” he says, voice calm, “and your fever spiked around 3am, but I think the Tylenol finally got it down. Do you remember?”
Ilya nods. “Sombe,” he says cautiously, and sniffles. “Sorry.”
Shane shakes his head. “No more sorries,” he says firmly. “I told you that last night and I meant it. I want you here. I want to take care of you.”
God. Shane has been—is—so brave, ever since Tampa. Ilya could never say such things. Even the thought of it has his father’s voice—
Well. He elects to ignore his father’s voice inside his head. He’s already given up on Russia and fallen in love with his sworn rival. He is already an embarrassment to his family and a traitor to his country’s ideals, not that he particularly cares about either of those things.
Maybe…. Well. Maybe he wants Hollander to say those things. Maybe he wants to hear them, even say them back one day. Maybe, one day, he’ll even be able to say I love you to Shane in a language he’ll understand.
Ilya scrubs at his nose and nods. “Thangk you, thend,” he offers, slightly embarrassed, and Shane nods. “I kndow I amb ndot… easy to deal with, whend I amb sick.”
Shane sits on the edge of the bed. “You’re not at all hard to take care of, Ilya,” he says seriously. “I mean it. Even at 3am, carrying you into a cold shower to get your fever down, you were nothing but sweet. I think you were more worried about sneezing on me than you were about your brain cooking. Which, obviously the wrong priorities, but I appreciate it anyway.”
Helpless, Ilya barks out a laugh. It scrapes at his throat, and he coughs into his soaked tissues until it stops. “Okay,” he finally agrees, unsure what else to say. “Ndow what?”
“Well, you’re still pretty sick,” Shane says. He takes a water bottle from the nightstand and forces it into Ilya’s hands until he drinks some of it. “Your fever’s down, but it’s hanging around. Your team flies out in like an hour, you’re definitely missing that. Your team doctor messaged you earlier, I texted him back from your phone and told him you were with, uh, Jane. You can fly back to Boston in a couple days when you feel better, or meet them on the road if it takes longer than that. I’ve got a couple days before I fly out again, so no rush there. You stay here as long as you need.”
Shane is so beautifully, obsessively thorough. Ilya loves that about him. But his mind can’t process all of that, so he drags a hand down Shane’s chest. “Sooo… fever sex?” he teases. “Since we did not get to do last night?”
Shane frowns and pushes him off. “Ha ha,” he says. “No. You’re going to have something to eat and take a nap. And then we’ll see how you’re feeling.”
“Shaaaane,” he whines, collapsing against the pillows from Shane’s halfhearted push. “I did not get my kisses last night. You cannot deny me this.”
“You got plenty of kisses last night,” Shane snorts. “You just don’t remember them all because your brain was trying to cook itself.”
Well, now he has a vendetta against his brain and his immune system, because how dare he not remember getting kisses from Shane? If he focuses, he still can recall those strobe light flashes of memory. A cold shower, snuggles, crying on Shane’s chest. The memory is a little embarrassing, but mostly warm and nice. He remembers being held, feeling comforted.
For the first time since he was twelve, the thought of that isn’t completely terrifying. It almost feels like something he can have.
He gives in, the way he always does when Shane’s puppy eyes come into play. He eats oatmeal and drinks tea and naps. He wakes up, watches a little boring TV, drinks soup and Gatorade, and bugs Shane into reading aloud from his boring hockey book.
Eventually, Shane also gives in, because he always does that too when it comes to Ilya. Fever sex, Ilya is surprised to note, is kind of like being high. His fever is much lower than last night, but it’s left his skin feeling incredibly hypersensitive. It’s like the opposite of an out-of-body experience. He is so firmly in his body like this, so aware of every touch, burning up and freezing at the same time. Shane holds him until he comes, wipes him off with a clean cloth, and hand-feeds him Tylenol in the afterglow.
It’s possibly the slowest, gentlest sex they’ve ever had, and it still leaves Ilya feeling like a wrung out ragdoll afterward. He collapses back into the bed, sneezes another harsh, surprisingly loud, “ehttSSHHIEWW!” into the blankets, and sniffles until Shane hands him more tissues and feels his forehead again.
They don’t talk about the cottage. Ilya half-remembers the conversation from last night, the speech that Shane had obviously practiced—which is, God, just so endearing—but he doesn’t know how to approach it. No matter how much he wants it, how can he say yes? No matter how impossible it is, how could he say no?
The day passes in a haze of bed and couch, couch and bed, and eventually his fever lowers enough that he feels human enough to shower properly. Shane joins him, gets him off again but won’t let Ilya do the same for him because of how shoddy his balance still is, and washes his hair. Ilya tries not to cry at the sensation of being so fucking cared for. He’s pretty sure he fails, and he has been such a waterfall this week which is embarrassing, but at least the shower water helps cover up the tears this time.
Shane babies him and half-carries him to bed when the steam makes him dizzy again. It’s humiliating and makes his throat tight. He kind of loves it.
When the fever spikes again that night, Shane’s patient and calm. He holds Ilya tight and rubs his back and cleans his face for him with tissue after tissue when his nose won’t stop running and his eyes won’t stop leaking. Ilya can feel his brain overheating, and probably this isn’t the moment, but he can’t help it. If he isn’t brave now, he worries he never will be.
“Shane,” he croaks, face buried in Shane’s neck, during a quieter moment when he’s not crying and Shane’s not absorbed in shushing him and trying futilely to make it all better.
Shane strokes a hand up and down his spine. “Yeah?”
“The cottage. Do you still want?”
Shane’s hand goes stiff on his back, before ultra-casually resuming the same motion as before. “I do,” he says quietly. “And… and you?”
The hope and tension in Shane’s voice is impossible to ignore. How could he ever have even imagined disappointing this man? Ilya presses a kiss to the side of Shane’s throat at a known delicate spot, delighting in the shiver it causes. “I want,” he says, the words thick in his throat from fear. “I am terrified, but I want. Okay?”
“Okay,” Shane breathes, holding him tighter. He presses kisses to Ilya’s temples like he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it. “Then we’ll figure it out. We’ll make it work.”
The joy in Shane’s body language, the grin in his voice, is enough to put Ilya back to sleep with a matching smile on his face.
*
Author’s Note: And then Shane catches the flu and then they both get knocked out of the playoffs and then they watch The Kiss and then they go to the cottage with EVEN MORE hope and security in their relationship. It takes Ilya about two hours into the trip to say “I love you” in English, instead of two days. And then they live happily ever after with many more cold and flu incidents THE END.
Somebody who can tell their partner must be getting sick because they're suddenly trying to hold back their sneezes. They wouldn't normally care about sneezing in front of their partner, but they're obviously trying to avoid it. Almost as though they're trying to hide something...
Thinking about a man who isn't used to being taken care of coming down with an awful cold. He can't stop sneezing and coughing, he's got a fever, he's absolutely miserable, but he's still got work that needs to be done and others needs to put before his own. Eventually, someone (maybe a work crush/lover 👀) gently cups his cheeks and coos sympathetically, telling him that he should be in bed. He insists that he's alright, but can't help but lean into their touch. Crush/lover decides to just let him keep working, not wanting to push him too far out of his comfort zone, but offers cups of tea, tissues, medicine, and a bit of physical affection throughout the day. They convince him to let them take him home, and give him the most gentle care he's ever had; a warm bath, a soothing massage, some soup and tea, and of course, plentiful cuddles. He falls asleep to the sound of their steady heartbeat and their fingers in his hair, relieved to finally have someone who will help him even when he's sure he doesn't truly need it
Summary: Luise's job as the Royal Stoker has less to do with keeping a boiler lit and more to do with managing the melodrama of a sneezy dragon
Contents: Sick dragon, fire sneezes, nose scratches, stuck sneeze, one instance of inducing, probably an annoying amount of worldbuilding lol
Bad, because it meant they'd been waiting for her. A theory proven by a faint tremor rumbling up through her ice caked boots, only just enough to clock if one were already on the alert.
That the servants door opened on her second knock was both good and bad news for Luise: good, because it meant she was quickly able to escape the bitter morning freeze that bit at her face and fingers, ushered quickly into a kitchen large enough to feed several hundred, and already warmed from hearth fires preparing to do just that.
The kitchen boy who'd opened the door for her was a new one, his face twisted in worry as he helped her untangle the bundles of her scarf, shawl, and thick coat. Luise's skin puckered with gooseflesh with the loss of trapped heat, but it did nothing to quell the warm smile she sent his way. "He's been in a bad way today, eh?"
The boy nodded, dark hair flopping over his eyes. Her friendliness loosened his tongue a mite. "...mam says it'll knock the whole castle in, way it carries on."
Gossiping cooks. Luise blew a dismissive raspberry with her tongue, the boy's head lifting in surprise at such an unexpected sound. "Bunk. He may act the grump, but he's nothing but a big pussycat, never mind your mum." She hung her winter clothes over a broad, bare shoulder, offering the boy a conspiratorial wink. "But I'll have a word with him, yeah? The castle won't come down this day if I have any say in it."
Luise snagged a steaming roll off a nearby platter before weaving her way through a throng of frantic cooks fretting over the day's first meal as though the worry were part of the routine. She offered waves of greeting to those she was friendly with, noting with humour the naked relief in their eyes. A level of composure settled over the kitchen at her presence, something she found flattering and ridiculous in equal parts; cooks were a fussy, superstitious lot, and their proximity to her coworker made them antsy. She wasnt even certain the way they conspicuously avoided coming within arms reach of the iron door between the massive stone fireplaces was intentional, or just within their nature. People tended to avoid predators, after all.
Luise rolled her eyes fondly at them as she pushed through the iron door and descended the narrow stone staircase beyond.
The descent was long, lit only by the occasional sconce, and she took the stairs two at a time, eagerly seeking the wafts of warm air brushing her bare arms. The temperature rose, beating back the winter with every step until she'd gone from chilled, to cozy, to glistening with a thin layer of sweat.
The bottom of the staircase widened, then opened into a massive stone room big enough for the entire village to hold a fete if King Doran had any inclination to let them. The ceiling stretched to blackness before Luise could begin to make out details, sounds echoing eerily as they bounced off stone and the elaborate weave of giant metal pipes that burst from seemingly every surface, twisting and rolling in their organized tangle to converge near the back of the room.
Once, her predecessor had told her, this room had been a dungeon demanded by a wicked king forgotten by history, built large enough to hold his many foes. Later, another king with far fewer foes ordered a famous architect and inventor to fit the space with an enormous boiler and giant pipes to bring heat to every corner of the sprawling castle during the cold seasons. As much as Luise figured, the theory had been sound, but the project was abandoned after calculating how many resources it would require to stoke a boiler so large, the cost of fuel to burn and the manpower to burn it too excessive for a king who had already spent much of the royal treasury on piping. For a long time the project sat useless and abandoned, until King Doran's grandfather struck a bargain with their current boiler.
At the back of the room, the stonework had been dismantled to create an opening larger than a house, a series of natural caves visible beyond. The idea had been to install the boiler in the gap between the two, using the cave passage to recieve fuel deliveries and vent dangerous pressure in case of emergency. As such, all the pipes hung close to this area, waiting patiently to be attached to a machine that would never exist, and in the midst of these pipes lay a massive red dragon.
He was an elegant thing, beautiful in his awesome power, with sinuous muscles that rolled at the base of his wings as he shifted position, and beneath his long neck when he shook his head like a dog. Water arced off like crystals with the movement, more making languid trails down his spiral horns and scarlet scales to pool on the stone beneath him. Claws long as swords scored new marks along countless others in the floor, throwing up sparks in his restlessness. Thin tendrils of black smoke curled up from nostrils nearly as tall as Luise herself, jaw slightly parted to reveal enough teeth to rend a village into paste without so much as a blink of his yellow everflame eyes.
Those eyes locked on Luise in an instant, a low growling sound beginning in his deep chest and rising until it filled the room with his displeasure.
She grinned. "Bad today, huh Snuff?"
The growl gradually grew more vocal, and by the time Luise reached her workstation it had morphed into a long, tortured groan. "I fear, dear Luise, that I am not long for this world. What a cruel twist of fate that a creature so magnificent as I should bravely battle the elements, risking life and wing against blizzard and blaze alike, only to die here underground, as if he were a common lizard."
"Cold's no better, eh?"
"It feels as though I have inhaled a cotton field and am attempting to irrigate it with mucus."
Luise managed to add a sympathetic note to her laughter as she swapped her coat for her soot-blacked apron, giving the row of temperature dials leading from each pipe an initial check. "One of the kitchen boys was convinced you'd bring the walls down."
Snuff gave an irritated huff, jetting out more black smoke. "If this bloody ailment lasts much longer, I just may anyway out of pure rage."
"Of course," she soothed indulgently. Suneffessoat had been the castle's boiler for longer than she'd been alive, and regardless of his physical health he'd never make a move against the castle so long as the royal agreement remained intact: the exchange of heat for food and a salary (and a captive audience for his dramatics) was far too good a deal. "How's the snoot, you coot?"
She nearly felt the air shift with his powerful sniff, which he then released on a wavery sigh. "Primed and reh... r-ready, as always. Never let it be said that I am not a prepahh... prepared professional." He worked the muscles of said snoot, nostrils blowing wide enough in the process that Luise could've fit through without turning her shoulders.
She peered over her shoulder towards a slim tube tucked next to the temperature dials, the end feeding out into a shallow, empty tray. Having worked this job for so long, she could normally track the incoming delivery of a request slip even through Snuff's insistently vocal sneezes, but the tube remained silent of its telltale hiss. "Judging by how you were shaking the ground, I suppose you're not far off?"
Indeed, his neck was beginning to pull back into a swanlike curve, chuffing breaths losing their rhythm while his flaring nose picked up the beat. "Clohhhhhser e-ehh... every minuhhhhhHH--"
Now she heard the swish of an incoming request, and from the way Snuff bit back on the rising urge she knew he had too. "Ach, you can vent that one. The way you're winding up, the next one will be along before the fire's even out your mouth."
"I resehhhhh... I reseeEHHHHH... HH! HuuhhhHHHHH--" From the base of his throat grew a red-hot glow, and even in the throes of a sneeze he swung his head round to bury his explosive snout into a low-set pipe. "HRUUHHH-X'SHUUUHH!"
Luise retrieved the request from the tray, slipping a tightly rolled scrap of parchment out of the sleeve. She turned back in time to see Snuff give another shake of his head, narrowed eyes unfocused. The next sneeze worked his chest like a bellows and set the smoke from his nose rolling in great black clouds. He didn't have long.
She read neat, looping script written on the slip of parchment. "Next one goes to the guest apartments." The Countess Iris was visiting from the southern kingdoms, and if her frequent requests were any indication, she had some strong feelings about the weather. "Can probably give her the one after, too, she's a delicate sort."
Snuff, in no state to respond, hazily twisted towards the correct pipe just as his sneeze crossed from "urgent" to "immediate". "Hh-HRRUAHHHSHOOO!!" He then settled, sated for the moment, tension bleeding from the lines of his shoulders and the base of his wings.
Luise turned to pin the parchment to her order board, but she caught the deliberately innocent slide of Snuff's attention in her direction. Behind her, he snorted. And then again, louder, just in case she hadn't heard the first.
She rolled her eyes good naturedly. Working together for decades, and still, heaven forbid he ever ask for help directly.
When she didn't instantly turn to acknowledge his discomfort, a chorus of little self-pitying moans joined the sporadic snorts and snuffles. Luise would put a day's wages on the fact that he were flexing his nostrils theatrically all the while, and she'd win that bet. "Is something the matter?"
A heaved sigh, heavy enough to move the hair on the back of her neck. "Nothing to concern yourself with. After all, dragons have proudly and steadfastedly withstood far worse than a maddeningly itchy nose."
He couldn't quite look away fast enough as she turned to prop a hip against her station, angling his head up and away from her. 'No, I wasnt looking at you, of course not, how dare you imply such!' "Truly, a hardship," she played along benevolently. "Is there any way a powerless human such as myself could assist in this travesty?"
Snuff held to his haughty aloofness for an entire second before eagerly snaking his head in her direction, smooth scales nearly skimming the floor. "I don't suppose you could take time out of your busy day to give me the tiniest scratch?"
She laughed, thick wire brush already in hand. "Just don't sneeze on me."
"I would never!"
Despite his affronted claim, Luise knew well the map of his muzzle, taught to her in serious, cautionary detail by her mentor: do not cross the threshold where the sturdy pebbled scales of his face smoothed into the plush pink interior of his nostrils. Use extra force on the septum, lest his body decides to register a tickle instead of a scratch. And above all, never stand directly in front of his nose.
When she described her job to friends, many of them thought she was sick in the head (though most of them rescinded the thought once she hinted at her salary). Admittedly, it had its struggles. But as she leaned her weight into each long stroke of the brush, Snuff's eyes drifting closed and contented hum rumbling where her body pressed against him, she thought again what an honour it was to work with such a magnificent creature so intimately.
She scratched the spots she knew he liked; just behind the hood of his nostrils, along the length nearly to his cheek, standing on tiptoe to rub tight circles on the crest of his snout like she would groom a horse. These were not things taught to her, and sometimes she wondered if her mentor had viewed Snuff as more of a beast of burden and less of a companion, never bothering to learn his preferences and habits and quirks beyond what was needed to perform the job. Once they'd gotten comfortable around each other, Luise never needed to heed the warning about standing in front of his nose, because she could always tell when he was getting tickly by the way his inner nostril began to shiver and tic, the pink flesh growing steadily flushed until it nearly matched the shade of his scales.
Like now, for example.
He whined as she pulled away, chasing her until his snout bumped against her stomach again. No amount of shoving could move his giant head if he didn't want it to, so her cursory attempt ended in an affectionate pat. "Alright, you baby, nose in the air. You gotta sneeze."
"Do not," he grumbled, purposefully ignorant of how his nose twitched as though it had life of its own. A long tremor agitated the length of both nostrils from tip to depth like a wave.
Luise noted a crease like a snarl form in his scales. "It'll be a double, send them to the baths."
"S-smuhhhhhg bastard." For all his pouting, he followed instructions and unloaded two giant sneezes into the baths pipe. "HhhHHH'XHOOO-!! HAAH-SHOOO!!"
The day continued as such: orders delivered by way of parchment and tube, then executed through Luise's guidance and Snuff's unforgiving cold. His dramatics aside, it truly seemed like a bad one this time. Occasionally on high demand days, Luise would need to dump a wheelbarrow of coal or two into his open mouth to help stoke his inner flame. Today, her arms were already black with coal dust and soot from how many trips she'd made from the coal pile to Snuff, and still as the end of the day drew near, he was tiring.
Not that he'd ever admit it, of course. But she saw it in the hang of his head, the way his internal flame flickered at his throat, too low to properly reach his nose. The sneeze reflex and the flame were intrinsically linked, he'd told her once, and the lower the flame, the harder it would be to reach satisfaction.
"Hhh-! HUHHT-- rrrgh... hhaH-HAAH-- HADT-!!"
Judging by his stuttering half-sneezes and ticklish false starts, Snuff must've been feeling very low indeed.
At the next sneezes to fizzle away, Snuff let out a frustrated sound between a growl and a roar, thrashing in place. At this point his little tantrum was probably warranted. "Blast this nose, blast this cold, I must sneeze! HEAHHHH--" for a moment it seemed like he would finally get his wish, maw agape and nostrils blown nearly wider than his muzzle. "HEEAAHHHHHH--!!"
And then, tragically, nothing, the elusive sneeze teasing at his nose before darting mischievously away, heedless of its host's desperation.
Enough was enough.
Reaching down her shirt, Luise retrieved a key kept on a leather cord around her neck and knelt beneath her table to unlock a hidden cabinet. It was near empty of contents anyone could have considered valuable, but the two items held within were far more dangerous than the king's entire army.
On the right, a small selection of long, brown primary feathers pilfered from the rookery.
On the left, sealed tightly, a tiny jar of glowing golden powder.
Luise worked from the floor, blocked by the cabinet door. More than once Snuff's sensitive nose had been set off by the mere sight of these implements, and the general rule of thumb in dragonfire and pixie dust both was 'a little goes a long way'.
Careful not to get any on her hands, Luise opened the jar as though she were handling explosives. Using a sturdy feather, she gave the jar's rim a quick swipe. The few grains that caught the light as she twisted the feather in her fingertips would be more than sufficient. On went the lid, back went the jar, locked went the cabinet, hidden went the key. Safe again.
Snuff's wobbly hitches stuck high in his chest, eyes rolled to the ceiling. He didnt look round as she approached, weapon tucked behind the bib of her apron. "Head down please, Snuff."
Even in his all consuming battle with his stuck sneeze, he complied, resting his chin against the stone and snorting against the tickle in his nose. So violently did it twitch and flare and shudder that Luise didnt dare lay a hand on it. Other things, however, were free game.
She adjusted her grip on the feather shaft, coming to stand directly beside his right nostril. "Alright, big guy, give me a nice big sniff."
The feather flicked forward, drawing a long, slow line along the division between tough scale and tortured membrane a split second before Snuff obeyed. The feather and its payload vanished down the dark wind tunnel of his nose, trailing a vibrant red flush in its wake.
Luise took several very large steps backwards.
For a tense second, Snuff went completely still save for the rapid fluttering of his eyelids.
"Hhhhhhhhhhaauhhhhhh..." So great was the urge to sneeze that he couldn't even move his head for his first true, unsteady hitch: while his chin remained solidly on the stone, his volcanic nose tilted towards the ceiling as his jaws creaked open, scaly lips ticking up to flash gleaming teeth.
He sniffed HARD, long neck arcing into the air. His nose danced at the end of his muzzle like a leaf in the breeze, and Luise could almost see the feather's leisurely path down his sinuses based on what sections shivered with sensation. Only a slice of yellow remained visible beneath his hooded eyes. "HhaaaAAAahhhhhh..."
How much it must have tickled! Snuff, by his own proclamation, was rather sensitive to the effects of pixie dust (though experience suggested he far undersold how much it affected him). Such a tiny but potent irritant, on such a delicate and wispy vessel, gently brushing and caressing and stroking nasal passages stripped of any defenses by illness. Was it any wonder why his jaw went slack, wings rising slightly as if to brace against the oncoming storm.
Everything picked up speed as the feather continued its journey, spurred on by his rapid reflexive sniffles. "Hh! Huh... huuhh... HH-HUUHHH--" His voice plummeted as his fire rose, throat glowing with the promise of release. Huge, gasping breaths stoked his internal flame, his nostrils and mouth gaping so widely Luise could see soft embers flickering in their depths.
As he didnt seem to be of the mind to take instructions at the moment, she didnt offer a pipe suggestion to put this sneeze through. Honestly, she didnt even know if they'd be able to withstand it.
Finally the feather did its job. The fiery gradient of his neck surged upwards just as Snuff threw his head forward. "HRRRUUUUUAAHHHH-T'CZHOOOOOOOO!!"
Flame shot from his mouth and nostrils in a deadly torrent, spanning the entire length of the room and splitting into starbursting jets upon hitting the far wall. Louise shielded her eyes until his sneeze ran its course, light twisting eerily in every shadowed corner of the room, exposed skin buffeted by waves of intense, rebounding heat.
After the blaze flickered out, she gave a low whistle at the giant scorch mark he left behind, coating the far wall and a twenty foot streak on the floor with black soot. A strange smell filled the room, the subtle scent of burnt rock. "You want to aim for the vent pipe next time, mate?"
Snuff's head hung low, eyes hooded and mouth slightly open as he caught his breath. One final, searching sniff saw his nose to relieved satisfaction. "If you think I was not perfectly in control through that entire ordeal, you would be most sorely mistaken. I'd sooner bite my own leg off than kill you, you're hardly more than a morsel and it would be an inefficient waste of fire."
She heard the apology for what it was and waved it away with a hand. "Feeling any better now?"
His voiced sigh was the clearest it had been all day, repeated nose-clearing sneezes having burnt away the bemoaned morning congestion. "All this dreary awfulness today has served its purpose, I suppose." So, yes, despite the extra throaty growl on the edges of his words. Another huff, and he shifted his great body to curl around himself, pointedly resting his head near his haunches and away from her. Suneffessoat had officially clocked out.
Which meant it was time for her to follow suit. Luise smiled affectionately at the back of his head, trading dirty apron for dirty coat. "See you tomorrow for more dreary awfulness."
He didnt look round. "Your dying in the cold would inconvenience me severely, so do try to be considerate."
She skipped over the scorch mark bisecting the room, leaving boot tracks behind in the soot. Just before she started up the stairs, she sent a last cheeky, "I'll miss you too!" over her shoulder, ascending back to the dark and the cold as her bright, warm companion spluttered indignities behind her.
just havin a little thought about how frequently some people need to blow their nose. like, they have to or else they Cannot continue, or concentrate on anything. maybe they even get kinda bitchy or mopey if they don't. it doesn't matter that it's a temporary reprieve. it just has to happen either way. :')
Well, that was closer to the writing timeline I expected. In my defense I was in Canada for a few weeks. I would like to thank the H/abs for doing their best, even though the one time I was in the Bell Centre was game 4 against the Canes. I believe in you, we'll try again next year.
As usual, @snzivore is an amazing beta reader. Thanks for putting up with my hockey rambling, this thing would be 50% less hot and 80% less in character without you. Ilya and Shane's suffering was partly inspired by this post.
* * *
As ordered, Shane was leaving early to see the team doctor. Hayden offered to go with him, but was curtly rebuffed. He couldn’t even blame Shane for being crabby; his cold had gone from annoying to straight up nasty. His voice was raspy, on the verge of properly hoarse. His nose was simultaneously clogged and running nonstop, with a post-nasal drip that had him coughing every few minutes. His sneezes were frequent and, frankly, kind of disgusting.
“Damn, I hope the doc gives you the good drugs. You sound really rough,” Hayden said sympathetically.
“S’just a cold, Hayd. Head hurts a bit, my throat is sore, but mostly I’m just, uh…snffl! Snnrfff! Hehhd’ISSSSHh’huhh!”
The sneeze left his nose streaming once again, completely soaking the tissue he barely managed to cover with. Shane cringed as he swapped it out with a fresh one from his pocket and blew his nose productively. He folded both tissues in half twice before dropping them into the trash can.
“Bless you. Again. Now go get high on Sudafed.”
“I won’t get high—“
“Dude, relax, I know. Breathing through your nose doesn’t count as performance enhancing, I checked.”
“Fuck off.”
Shane’s response was half-hearted, but he still wasn’t looking at Hayden. His eyes were watering, and his upper lip was already glistening with more moisture. It kind of looked like he was crying, but Hayden knew that any time he caught a bug, Shane’s whole face turned into a leaky faucet. He also knew that Shane absolutely hated both the sensation and the loss of control.
Despite all of it, pissy, overstimulated Shane was replaced by Captain Hollander the moment he got his shoes on. Hayden had seen the transformation hundreds of times over the years, but it still gave him the heebie-jeebies sometimes.
“Right, I’m gonna go,” Shane said flatly. He still sounded undeniably sick.
“Feel better, snot monster. I hope you manage to turn back into a human by the time we meet up.”
Hayden rolled in to the stadium an hour later, but Shane wasn’t in the dressing room. He was immediately cornered by a concerned J.J.
“Pikey! Où est notre capitaine?”
“Probably in medical still. Surprise, he’s sick,” Hayden shrugged.
“Crisse, sa pa ka fèt,” J.J. swore, but he looked more worried than angry.
“Shit, really?” Andropov looked up from taping his shin guards. “He seemed fine this morning.”
“Of course it had to happen in Boston,” Comeau grumbled, seeming more concerned about the game than his teammate.
“I didn’t know cap could get sick,” Schneider, their rookie, marveled. “He’s never missed a game in his whole career. I thought he just ordered his immune system to wait for the off season.”
“Guys, chill. He’s not that sick,” Hayden reassured them. “He just has to get cleared for the game and take some meds.”
That seemed to do the trick, and the anxious tension in the room dissipated. Hayden awarded himself a point on his internal ‘nailing the alternate captain thing’ scoreboard.
“At least is not just us with a sick capitaine, eh? You hear about Rozanov?” J.J. commented. Hayden had no idea where J.J. picked up his real-time gossip, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“Is that confirmed? I was pretty sure we heard him sneezing in the background on ESPN,” Hayden speculated.
“Might not mean anything. That asshole is always sneezing all over the place, I remember from Russian junior team,” Andropov snickered.
“Whatever. I hope he’s too sick to skate straight,” Hayden said. “I’m gonna go find Hollzy and see what’s taking so long.”
With that, Hayden made an about-face and left the rest of them to gossip in the dressing room. As expected, he found Shane in the medical clinic. Unfortunately, he looked just as bad as he had an hour ago. At least someone had found him a tissue box; he was holding on to it like a life raft.
“Dude, I thought I told you to do drugs,” Hayden teased with an undercurrent of concern.
“Hi, Hayd. I didn’t take anything yet, doc wants to time the meds so they last through the game,” Shane said tiredly, his voice raspier than before.
“So, what, you’ll sit in all the pre-scout sessions with your brain leaking out of your nose?” Hayden asked skeptically. “You hate when anything messes up your routine.”
“I’ll be fine. S’just a cold, my…hihhh! my brain isn’t going aehhhhnywhere except—hhh!—my s-skull— Ihhhh’DJSSHhhuuhh!”
As usual for Shane, the sneeze was a fucking mess, soaking the tissue he’d covered with. Hayden watched with morbid fascination as Shane pulled at least four tissues from the box and swapped them with the ruined one, then gave a sopping wet nose blow. He didn’t even bother folding them before dropping them in the trash can.
“Bless you. Should I tell the equipment guys to have tissues on standby?” Hayden was only half joking.
“Fuck you,” Shane replied automatically. “I’ll be fine when we get on the ice.”
“Okay, okay. I guess we don’t want to jinx it,” Hayden conceded.
“Right,” Shane said curtly, then coughed lightly into his elbow.
There was a knock on the open door of the clinic. Matt McCann, one of the assistant coaches, poked his head in.
“Oh, good, you’re both here. Hollzy, doc says you’re a bit under the weather?”
Shane looked like he’d rather be anywhere else, but he squared his shoulders. “Yeah, just a bit. I’m fine, really—heehh-kZSCH’ssshh! ehhh’khTJSshoou!”
Hayden winced. Two in a row, forceful and crackling with loose congestion, they sounded undeniably sick. Shane’s body was perfectly still as he mechanically wiped under his nose with a tissue, then folded it neatly into quarters and dropped it in the trash.
“Excuse me,” Shane said, voice devoid of emotion.
“Gesundheit,” McCann said jovially. “That looks like a hell of a cold. Theriault is not gonna be happy.”
“Is he ever happy?” Hayden wondered. “We won the fucking cup last year, he barely cracked a smile.”
McCann’s lips twitched upward, but he didn’t comment. Shane coughed again, then sat up straighter.
“It’s not that bad. Doc will give me something before the game. He said I’m good to play as long as I stay hydrated,” Shane’s voice was hoarse but steady, and audibly congested.
“Good, good. I’ll talk to Theriault about managing your minutes—don’t argue, Hollander,” McCann gave him a look born of years of experience with hockey players’ stubbornness. “It’s Boston, LeClaire’s gonna hard match you, there’s no point in wearing you out against their second line when you’re not at 100%. We’ll save you for Rozanov.”
Shane looked like he was about to correct what McCann was saying, but he bit his tongue at the last second. Something wasn’t adding up. As far as Hayden could tell, McCann was probably right about the line matching. Was this about the Rozanov illness rumors? What did Shane know that McCann didn’t, and why was he keeping it to himself?
* * *
On a hunch, Cliff decided to show up early at the arena and stop by medical. Not that Roz didn’t know his own body, but he had a wicked stubborn streak. Case in point.
“Rozanov, how many times are we gonna have this argument? Take the goddamn decongestant,” Doug’s exasperated voice echoed down the hallway. The team doctor was a veteran of years’ worth of arguments on the topic.
“Dod’t d’eed it. Is od’ly id’ by d’oze, I play like this all the tibe id sprid’g,” Rozanov said stonily, so congested that Cliff had a hard time making out the words from outside the room.
“And every time you do it’s a bad idea,” Doug said matter-of-factly. “Seriously, Rozanov, why do you hate your own sinuses this much?”
“Is other way aroudd. By siduses are traitors that hate mb’e,” Roz grumbled, half a register lower than normal, just as Cliff reached the door of the clinic.
“I had a feeling we’d be doing this again,” Cliff said, standing in the doorway.
“And I was hoping you’d show up.” Doug looked genuinely happy to see him. “You’re better at convincing him.”
Roz glared at both of them. Cliff was unimpressed. Getting into a staring contest with Roz was usually a bad idea, but in this case his cold was on Cliff’s side. It didn’t take long before Roz’s scowl cracked, replaced by pure, irritated need.
He crunched forward over his lap, face obscured behind yet another t-shirt-turned-snot-rag. The sneezes sounded so painfully clogged up that Cliff felt phantom pressure behind his own eyes. Roz followed it up with an attempt at blowing his nose, but the pathetically choked-off sound made it clear that the gunk in his head wasn’t budging. God, his sinuses must feel like a lead brick. Cliff couldn’t for the life of him think of a reason to willingly spend any more time in that condition, let alone go out and play three periods of hockey.
“Those were wicked gnarly, even for you,” Cliff commented. “Why do you put yourself through the ringer like this, Roz? That can’t be comfortable.”
“Do I look fuckigg cob’fortable?” Roz snapped.
“No. But you will be if you take the goddamn pills,” Doug prodded.
“I do nd’ot—“ Roz started, but was interrupted by Cliff and Doug completing him in unison: “take pills.”
The stony expression was back on Roz’s face. Whatever issue he had with pills made him obstinate to the point of stupidity, but Cliff could never get him to talk about it.
“I would give you a nasal spray, but we all know it’ll just make you sneeze your head off,” Doug continued. “So unless your nose has magically gotten cooperative, you’re stuck with the pills.”
“Or I cad suffer ad’d suck it up,” Roz shrugged entirely too casually.
Doug groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “And get another sinus infection in the process.”
“B’aybe,” Roz conceded, but he didn’t look too concerned. Cliff wanted to slap him.
“What about the actual game we’re playing tonight? You really want to drop two points to Montreal because you can’t breathe through your nose?”
Roz had the nerve to smirk. “Ah, but is d’ot just mb’e. Hollad’der is also sick, reb’ember?”
“We don’t actually know that—“
Cliff was interrupted by someone knocking on the door of the clinic.
“Doug, you there? I have a request for a medication from the Metros’ doc.” The unfamiliar woman’s voice was muffled by the door, but it sounded strained. Doug opened the door a crack, not letting her see inside.
“Sure thing, what do you need?” Doug was equally short. The league mandated that medical staff share resources when needed, but it could get awkward. Doug was probably eager to send her on her way before she got any intel on Roz.
“Just Sudafed,” the woman said, impatient.
Cliff exchanged a glance with a smug Roz as Doug busied himself fulfilling her request. The medication in question was already right in front of him, so it didn’t take long.
The silence stretched after she left, broken only by Roz’s sniffling. The three of them looked at each other. Cliff spoke first.
“Okay, so Hollander is sick, but he’s a big boy who takes his medicine,” Cliff taunted.
Roz bristled, but didn’t manage a retort before his cold spoke for him.
The sneezes sounded like they’d gotten trapped in his swollen sinuses before they could fully escape. They were followed by another honking nose blow, which ended in a defeated sigh.
“Fide. Give mb’e the fuckigg pills.”
* * *
Look, Hayden got that Shane was self-conscious about being sick in front of the guys, but this was getting ridiculous.
“Buddy, you planning on hiding in here until the team meeting?” Hayden pestered, trying to keep his voice light. “You’re not gonna have time to do your weird yoga stretches.”
That seemed to get through. Apparently, the thought of playing with tight ligaments was more horrifying than being seen with a runny nose. Shane sat up straighter, rolling his shoulders like he was trying to shrug off his anxiety.
“You’re right, Hayd, m’sorry. I just really hate…this,” Shane said weakly, gesturing vaguely at his face. “Especially in front of the guys.”
“It’ll be fine,” Hayden said dismissively. “I keep telling you, we’re all hockey players. Dealing with gross teammates is part of the job description, why else would I put up with Comeau’s B.O.?”
Shane wrinkled his nose in agreement, which seemed to set him off. He managed to grab a handful of tissues from the nearly-empty box, in time to bury his face in them.
“Hehh’dZZS’sshhhhh! Ihhh-djCH’sshoouh!! Fug’ck!”
They were still uncharacteristically harsh, instantly soaking through the tissues. Shane dropped the soggy bundle in the trash, swapping it out for another handful.
“Ugh, I feel like a leaky faucet,” Shane griped as he mopped up the remaining mess on his upper lip, wincing as the tissues brushed his chapped nostrils.
“Yeah, I’m gonna go ask for another one of those,” Hayden gestured at the tissue box, which was now empty.
With the critical supplies acquired, Hayden and Shane made their way back to the dressing room.
“Capitaine! You live!” J.J. called out from across the room.
“I wasn’t dying. It’s just a cold,” Shane said flatly, his illness as audible as ever.
“Well, your cold has shitty timing,” Comeau complained. “Did you have to get sick right before a game?”
“Shut up, Comey. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s the middle of the season. We’re always right before a game,” Hayden retorted, earning a few snickers.
“It doesn’t matter,” Shane said firmly. “I’m cleared, and it won’t affect how I play. If coach makes any adjustments, we’ll discuss it in the meetings.”
Shane turned sharply to face his stall, putting his back to the room like the matter was closed. But Hayden was right next to him and yeah, no, he could see the real story. Shane was just trying to hide his face as his nose overflowed again.
No one on the team seemed eager to question Shane further. Messing with another guy’s rituals was taboo anyway, but doubly so when it came to their captain, who had his routine timed to the exact second. Shane seemed relieved to be left alone, keeping his back to the room as he wiped the mess off his upper lip yet again. Hayden had a feeling that the new tissue box was not long for this world.
It was probably best to let Shane do his thing for now. Hayden grabbed a protein bar from his bag, then joined Andropov and J.J.’s recounting of the previous night’s exploits. Apparently Schneider had managed to leave the club with a girl, but refused to share any details.
Hayden glanced over to check on Shane, who had completely zoned out the room as he stood on one foot, his other leg bent into an improbable position. Hayden was just in time to watch him almost lose his balance in his haste to grab a tissue.
“Hehh- yhH’DTSSSHhhooo! IHH’DZZSsshuhhh!”
Glances were exchanged around the room as the team collectively decided to look the other way. Definitely the right call. Shane hated to be interrupted when he was trying to lock in, and he’d basically told them to drop it.
Theriault, who chose that moment to walk in early, apparently hadn’t gotten the memo.
“À tes souhaits. Again,” the head coach said, looking Shane over with a critical eye. He huffed in displeasure. “That’s unfortunate.”
Shane’s face was impassive, his posture perfectly straight.
“It’s not ideal, but I can play,” Shane still sounded like his vocal cords were in a battle with a river of snot, but his tone didn’t betray even a hint of discomfort. Still, he had to be pretty miserable. Whatever timing the doc was attempting, Hayden hoped he wouldn’t hold off on the meds for much longer.
“Of course you can. You’re not the type to be a little bitch about a head cold,” Theriault said gruffly. From him, that was almost a compliment. The head coach sighed again. “It had to be Boston.”
* * *
Cliff was seriously contemplating strangling Roz. Which would be a shame, considering all the work he’d put in to ensure that bastard could breathe during the game.
“Fuck off! It’s my turn, we listen to Skrillex. End of the story,” St-Simon said angrily.
“If I wad’t to liste’d to dial-up ind’terdet, I go back to 2005,” Roz drawled, his blasé tone at odds with the painfully distorted consonants.
“You have listened to this song every day last week,” St-Simon argued.
“That was before mb’y head feels like is full of wet cod’crete,” Roz retorted, a bit more snappish this time.
“Fine,” St-Simon threw up his hands in exasperation. “I’ll give the aux to Sebb, but next time we listen to the whole of Bangarang.”
Roz leaned his head back against his stall and closed his eyes without bothering to acknowledge the compromise. Cliff glanced at his watch to check how long ago Roz had taken the pills – just ten minutes. He was pretty sure Doug had said they had half an hour to wait. This was going to be a long twenty minutes.
Sebbin, now in possession of the aux cable, put on a flat out boring pop song. Cliff had definitely heard it multiple times, but he didn’t remember a single lyric.
“…Better.” Roz still had his eyes squeezed shut.
The peace lasted exactly ten seconds.
“Still terrible.”
“You just said it was better!” Sebbin protested.
“Yes, I said better. Did d’ot say good,” Roz clarified without opening his eyes.
Sebbin shot him a fearful glance, then wordlessly passed the cable to Feller. Cliff wished that he’d picked literally anyone else, but he kept his face-palm internal. Sure enough, a country song started playing. Half the room immediately groaned.
“Seryozno?” Varkov ribbed his defensive partner.
“It’s one song!” Feller said petulantly.
“It’s the same one as this morning,” Cliff felt obliged to open his mouth, but he immediately regretted feeding the fire.
Their captain’s triple sneezes were background noise at this point, and the team usually ignored it. This time, he sounded so obviously sick that the whole room stopped to look at him. He was doubled over his lap, face buried in another spare t-shirt. Eyes closed, he made an attempt at blowing his nose, but only managed a grating squeak. He peeled open his eyes and scowled.
“What are you all lookigg at?”
“Nothing,” Sebbin blurted out, at the same time as Cliff quipped: “Just want to see if any concrete comes out.”
Roz rolled his eyes. “You have nd’ever heard of mb’etafora? They do d’ot teach id’ Ab’ericad’ school?”
“I’m Canadian,” Cliff retorted.
Roz waved a hand dismissively as he pinched the bridge of his nose. Cliff glanced at his watch again – seventeen more minutes. Nobody spoke for a few seconds, leaving the country song to play in the background.
The silence was broken by Varkov. “Marly’s right, it is same song from this morning. Always singing about trucks.”
The sneezes were, impossibly, even more pathetically congested. Roz stayed hunched over for a few seconds and let out a low groan, before straightening and tilting his head back. It hit the side of his stall with a soft thunk.
“Jesus Christ, bless you,” Connors said uneasily, exchanging a glance with Cliff. Cliff shook his head slightly, hoping it came off as reassuring.
“I dod’t thig’k he approves of b’y lifestyle,” Roz said tiredly, then pointed at Feller. “You do d’ot deserve mb’usic choice. Give to sobeod’e else.”
Without waiting for acknowledgement, Roz closed his eyes again and raised both hands to his face, massaging his cheekbones. Feller looked at Cliff, arms raised in a ‘what should I do?’ gesture. Cliff shrugged, which Feller apparently interpreted as a request for the aux cord. Well, it would probably be better if Roz directed his ire at the A, rather than the kids. He scrolled through his playlists, deciding on a hard rock mix that he knew Roz worked out to sometimes.
As soon as he heard the opening riff of Seven Nation Army, Roz opened his eyes and looked around the room accusingly. “Who has aux nd’ow?”
“Me,” Cliff said, crossing his arms.
“…Really?” Roz scoffed, the rolled R coming out stronger than usual.
“What?” Cliff asked neutrally, inviting the challenge.
“I expeg’cted better,” Roz narrowed his eyes. It was probably supposed to be threatening, but his flaring nostrils made it clear that he was actually holding off more sneezes.
“I’ve known you for five years,” Cliff narrowed his eyes right back, biting his tongue to stop himself from laying into Roz.
“Ad’d you’ve disappoid’ted—hhh!—m’be for f-faaahive—haA’KGHDJ’ttsch!- yGHXDT’Chh!-kGXDTT’xhjj!! huhh- ekh’GXDZZ’xheu!! HYEH’DGJXXZ’TChh!!”
The sneezes must have scraped something on the way out, because they immediately transitioned to a fit of hacking coughs. Fuck, that sounded wicked rough. Cliff was still annoyed, but he straight-up winced looking at the guy. The fit left Roz panting, t-shirt held over his lower face. He spat something into it, then pressed the palm of one hand into his eye socket. Finally, he looked up and met Cliff’s eyes.
Cliff raised one eyebrow, trying his best not to look concerned. Roz responded better to being chirped than to being babied.
“Roz. That soundtrack is flat out worse than anything we could put on the speaker. Go hang out in the showers, get some steam, come back when you can breathe.”
They stared each other down for a few seconds. Roz was usually a stone wall in a stare-down, but he lost it when he had to duck his head and cough into his shoulder. For a split second, he looked dead on his feet. But then his face remembered that he was supposed to be an asshole, and went right back to pouting.
“So cruel, sed’digg ill captaid’n to exile. N’dow who will save aux cord frob’ your terrible b’usic?” Roz tried to make it seem like Cliff was twisting his arm, but when he stood up his feet were already pointed toward the showers.
* * *
To the surprise of literally no-one, the Metros’ coaching staff had thrown a wrench in the line matching strategy. Shane had done his best to maintain that he was just ‘a little under the weather’. Hayden didn’t know who he thought he was kidding. Everyone already assumed the forwards would be called in for a last-minute extra meeting.
As a veteran, Hayden knew what to expect. It was too late to make any in-depth tactical changes, but the coaches could decide who to send out on the ice at any given time. Shane would be playing fewer minutes, which meant other lines would be getting more ice time than usual. The question was which of the Raiders’ lines they would be facing, and most importantly – who would have the pleasure of taking face-offs against Rozanov.
The twelve forwards settled on the benches in the dressing room. The atmosphere was mostly boisterous and competitive, but Hayden noted an undercurrent of anxiety. He could only hope that Theriault’s buzzkill attitude wouldn’t drag the whole room down. Shane usually left the hype work to his alternates, so the damage control would be Hayden’s problem. He was already mentally prepping a speech for after the meeting. He was relieved to see McCann walk in.
“Alright, boys, here’s the deal,” the assistant coach clapped his hands and rubbed them together, as chipper as ever. “LeClaire loves to hard match, and he’s been trying to contain our top line for years. Thing is, Hollzy is a beast.”
Hayden glanced at Shane, who had a tear leaking from one eye and a wad of tissues pressed under his nose. He looked about as far from a beast as a human could get. Well, maybe some kind of creature that got dragged out of a swamp. McCann was either completely blind, or, more likely, just playing dumb to give Shane some privacy.
“Normally, we let LeClaire have his fun,” McCann said with some satisfaction. “He rolls the Carmichael line against our first line more than we’d like, but you three still find ways to score on them.”
Hayden made a face at the reminder. Rozanov would always be his number-one headache in Boston games, but the Raiders’ second line was a close second. Carmichael was one of the best shutdown centers in the league; trying for a zone exit with that guy on the ice was just a massive pain in the ass.
He glanced at Shane again to catch his reaction, and found him completely distracted. His eyes were squeezed shut, tears leaking from the outer corners, and his nose was pinched in a vise-like grip through the tissues.
“Either way, Hollzy has enough minutes in him that there’s enough left to deal with Rozanov when we really need it—“
McCann was interrupted when Shane lost his battle with his nose. He pitched forward into the tissues with two miserably wet sneezes. Hayden was pretty sure only he heard the soft groan that followed.
“Bud’ zdorov,” Andropov said, sounding both sympathetic and grossed-out.
Shane, who was in the process of swapping out his soaked tissues with a fresh handful, froze. Hayden was close enough to see the flush creeping up his neck.
“What he said,” McCann added, still either ignoring or happily oblivious to his star center’s embarrassment. “Hollzy, I know you don’t want to hear this, but there’s no way you’re logging twenty-five minutes tonight.”
Shane scowled, but he didn’t argue. Or maybe he just wanted McCann’s attention off of him so he could tend to his nose in peace. Now that he’d lowered the tissues, Hayden could see that the rosy, chafed hue had spread from his nostrils to his philtrum and upper lip. That had to be painful, and it was the exact sort of discomfort that drove Shane up the wall. Hayden was pretty sure he would rather skate on a broken ankle than irritate his skin.
Hayden felt a sudden flash of irritation at Boston Lily for making Shane so miserable, but he immediately felt like a jerk. It wasn’t her fault, and she was probably suffering just as much as Shane right now. He needed to save the hate for the real enemy – the Boston Raiders in general and Ilya Rozanov in particular.
His train of thought was interrupted by McCann. “We have to manage your ice time, so when you’re out there, it needs to count. Here’s how the rest of you guys are gonna pick up the slack. ”
The changes were straightforward. No double shifts on the power play, fewer defensive zone starts, replacement on the penalty kill as needed. It all seemed pretty reasonable, so Hayden had no idea why Shane was chewing his lip like that. His musings were interrupted by a woman’s voice outside the dressing room.
“Are you all decent? I have good news and bad news.” Hayden recognized the voice as one of the newer trainers.
“Lovely,” McCann called back. “We’re good, come on in.”
The trainer entered and unceremoniously shoved two pills and a water bottle at Shane. “Enjoy breathing through your nose.”
“That does sound nice,” Shane said hoarsely. “Thanks.”
She nodded in acknowledgment, then turned to McCann. “So, the bad news: the Raiders definitely know about Hollander.”
“Goddamnit,” McCann swore. “I was hoping to keep LeClaire in the dark at least until puck drop.”
Shane’s eyes narrowed; he looked pissed. Which seemed a little ridiculous, honestly, because there was zero chance they were keeping his cold a secret. His nose was so red that any Raiders player who came within ten feet of him would immediately figure it out.
“You haven’t heard the good news yet,” the trainer grinned. “Rozanov is also sick. Actually, he sounded worse than Hollander.”
McCann actually laughed. Shane looked…nervous? Hayden wasn’t sure why. As far as he was concerned, anything that slowed Rozanov down was the opposite of nerve-wracking.
“Oh, excellent,” McCann said, still laughing. “I swear, it’s like nature wants to keep the rivalry even.”
“I think is just karma,” Andropov shrugged. “Rozanov sleeps with a different girl each night, while half the city is sick. Is not surprising.”
“Then what happened to Hollzy? He never leaves his fucking house.” Comeau sounded like he was joking, but his tone rubbed Hayden the wrong way. Shane would probably shrug it off, but Hayden wasn’t gonna let it go. He knew exactly what had happened to Shane, so he could tell everyone Comeau was talking straight out of his ass.
“Maybe not his house, but he definitely leaves the hotel sometimes,” Hayden smirked, elbowing Shane in the ribs. Big mistake. Hayden winced as the contact triggered a fit of wet coughing.
“Shut up,” Shane croaked, red-faced and glaring at Hayden. It would have been intimidating if Shane’s nose hadn’t chosen that moment to start running again, forcing him to look away as he buried his lower face in yet another tissue.
“Alright, you can discuss Hollzy’s love life later,” McCann cut in, now a bit exasperated. “Piker, do us a favor and try not to kill your linemate.”
“Sorry,” Hayden said, meaning it. “So, Rozanov is sick. I’m guessing that changes things?”
“Yes, and no,” Shane piped up, hoarse but suddenly energized. Were the meds already working? Hayden was pretty sure that should take longer than two minutes.
“I don’t like it, coach, but you’re right. The way you’re deploying me makes sense regardless of Rozanov. But since he’s also sick, the math changes. They have more defensive depth, so I’m guessing they pulled him off the PK completely. That means that even if you only give me one look on the PP, our conversion rate goes up. Plus, if they’re protecting him with heavy O-zone starts it actually works in our favor. It means I won’t be taking as many draws against him in our end, and he won’t be leaning on me all night.”
Shane’s words spilled out in a flood of precise analysis. His voice was steady but sounded like sandpaper, his gaze fixed on the air to the left of McCann’s head. Hayden glanced around the room and saw that everyone was staring at him, their assistant coach included. Shane, completely in his own world, just kept right on rolling.
“Of course, if they know I’m sick, they have ways to fuck with us. Their forecheck is nasty even without Rozanov, so they’ll dump and chase heavy to force board battles below the dots. They might try to get me to take more face-offs, but that would gas Rozanov just as fast. If it looks like he’s slowing down we could try driving down the middle lane on zone entries, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Our best bet is east-west plays. He’ll bite and chase the puck every time because it usually works, but tonight it’ll wear him out. Oh, and pressure Varkov on the breakout, he usually ices the puck if you force him onto his backhand.”
By the time he’d finished, Shane’s voice was basically hanging on by a thread. He gave a tiny shake of his head, eyes snapping back into focus and darting around the room. Everyone was still dead silent, staring at him.
“Respectfully, cap, what the fuck?” Schneider, their rookie right winger, said incredulously.
“I, uh—hihhh-!”
Hayden saw the disaster unfolding before it happened. Shane had been completely checked-out, distracted by the scouting report he’d apparently managed to do in his head in real time. He hadn’t noticed the tickle in his nose until it was too late.
“Hehh-dJZZ’SSSSHhhhuh! Ehhd’TSCH’ZSSssshhh!!”
At the last second, Shane managed to get his hands up in front of his face. The pair of sneezes barreled out of him, forceful and audibly pretty messy. His hands did nothing to absorb it, but at the dozen or so people staring at him were spared the sight of snot spewing from his nose. Hayden winced. Even by hockey hygiene standards, that was kind of gross. Shane’s face was as red as it had been after Lily had called earlier.
The silence stretched, so Hayden decided to break the tension. “Bless you, man. Maybe, uh, go take a break?”
Shane nodded behind his cupped hands, then fled in the direction of the bathroom. McCann cleared his throat.
“Right. Good to know Hollzy’s IQ is still the best in the league, even if the rest of him isn’t at 100%,” McCann’s cheerfulness sounded a bit forced, but Hayden appreciated the effort.
“Is that what’s going on in his brain? All the time?” Schneider said, sounding slightly awed.
“Yup. He’s just like that,” Hayden grinned. “That’s why we’re going back to back this year.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” McCann rebuked them. “We still have a game to win.”
* * *
Roz returned just as the boys were filing into the meeting room, and Cliff craned to get a look at him. The sounds that had echoed out of the showers after he’d left were kind of nasty. For his own sanity, Cliff had done everything in his power to tune them out. Hopefully all that sneezing, hacking and nose-blowing was a sign of the meds working to break up the congestion and not a preview for the rest of the night.
Cliff caught only a brief glimpse of Rozy’s face before LeClaire pulled him aside, clearly trying to see if he could actually go tonight. It seemed to be a mixed bag. His nose still looked like it had been to war, but the glassy, dead-eyed stare was gone. Cliff could only hope his attitude had cleared up in tandem with his sinuses.
Apparently satisfied, LeClaire clapped Roz on the back and headed to the front of the room. Roz took his customary seat between Cliff and Connors in the first row.
“So, how are you liking the benefits of modern medicine?” Cliff needled him.
“Go fuck yourself,” Roz replied, but his earlier spitefulness was gone. He lowered his voice as he continued. “You were maybe kind of right. Is nice not to feel like my face will explode.”
Yeah, he sounded much less stuffed up, and he was actually, if grudgingly, conceding an argument. They might make it through tonight after all.
“Glad to hear it, man. Really,” Cliff said earnestly. Sincerity wasn’t their usual style, but neither was Roz folding on an issue like this.
Roz looked at him for a long moment, then smirked. “Of course you are. Is first and only time you will ehhh-ver w-win ahhh!-argumehhnt—Huhh’DJZSH’EUuh! yHH’DTZCH’SHUue! Haahh-PJZSCHhihh!”
Roz twisted away from Cliff at the last second, bending over double in his seat to sneeze openly at the ground. Well, it would be too much to hope that the meds would completely eliminate any sign of Roz’s cold. Especially his sneezes; Cliff kind of doubted that any drug in existence could do that. At least they didn’t sound like they had to punch through a brick wall on the way out.
“Well, that sounds like a sign that we should get started,” LeClaire said dryly, but his voice carried enough to get the attention of the twenty unruly hockey players filling the room. “There have been some developments.”
The room stilled completely. “Rozy, please tell us you’re still cleared,” Connors begged. St-Simon nodded vigorously beside him.
“Yes, yes, Doug is smart man, he says I can handle tiny cold,” Roz said airily. Cliff kept his mouth shut about the half-dozen other warnings the doc had tacked on to that sentence. The important part was true.
“He did say that. He also said you’re getting less ice time, but you knew that already.” LeClaire said amiably, holding up one hand to forestall Roz’s objections. “Enough, Roz. We need you rested for the road trip next week more than we need you to pull double shifts tonight. Besides, you already got us a consolation prize.”
Cliff grinned in anticipation. Roz’s mutinous expression melted into a small, private smile.
“Are you talking about Hollander?” Connors asked excitedly. “Cap, what did you do? I thought you were joking about the biological warfare thing.”
“Yes, Connie. I invite captain of Metros to my house so I can sneeze on him and infect him with illness I did not know I have,” Roz said, dead-pan.
Connors laughed delightedly. Cliff snorted, marveling at Roz’s ability to say the most ridiculous things with a completely straight face. Although, come to think of it, if Roz had actually hooked up with his Montreal girl last night, that was exactly what had happened to her. Wherever she was now, Cliff hoped she wasn’t too pissed off at Roz.
LeClaire pinched the bridge of his nose. “What I meant to say is that Roz and Marly got us accidental intel. But yes, Hollander is also sick.”
“Great,” Carmichael said, for once not even slightly sarcastic. “I was not looking forward to taking extra face-offs against him.”
“Too bad, you’re still taking them,” LeClaire declared with a resigned determination. Sure enough, Carmichael and Roz objected simultaneously.
“But shouldn’t we save Roz for—“
“There is no need, I can take Hollander—”
“I said enough!” LeClaire barked, banging on the table to shut them up. He shot an annoyed look at Roz. “You’re getting less ice time, and so is Hollander. Theriault will avoid starting him in their defensive zone so he can focus on scoring. Which is exactly what I’m going to do with you. Mikey is perfectly capable of shutting down the Hollander line, that’s what we pay him for.”
It was mostly true. LeClaire’s current game plan against Montreal’s top line was to let Hollander and Roz have at it in the first period. In the second, he’d use the combined power of Carmichael and the long change to trap them in their zone and cycle them to death. That usually left them gassed and less dangerous by the third. It would be less effective without Roz out there to stir up shit, but not a total disaster.
Carmichael looked a bit more compliant now that he’d had his tires pumped. Roz was still mutinous as he scrubbed his knuckles roughly under his nose. He closed his eyes for a beat, swallowing whatever complaint he had left, then shoved his game face back on.
“Is not bad idea, but there is one problem,” Roz said thoughtfully, his voice still a gravelly baritone. “If they know about me, then Hollander will expect this. Mikey slows down the game, is how he makes life hard for players who use speed for attack. Hollander will not do this tonight. If you give him space to think, he will play chess with Mikey. Is low-event game, but he is good at chess.”
LeClaire was still a bit ticked off, but he was listening. “Do you have a different idea?”
“Yes. We do not give him space to think. Hollander hates being sick, will be easy to annoy him. When he gets comfortable, send us out to rile him up, then let him waste energy on Mikey.”
Roz’s face settled back into his trademark heavy-lidded stare. Combined with his accent in that low, guttural voice, he sounded like a movie villain laying out his master plan. The whole tough-guy image was immediately ruined when he scrunched up his nose and scrubbed it against the back of his hand like a toddler.
LeClaire gave Roz another long look. He seemed impressed that the guy’s brain was still firing on all cylinders, but Cliff could see the edge of concern in the coach’s eyes. “I’ll consider it. Moving on, we can’t know exactly how this will affect the Metros’ game plan. We put our heads together with the analytics guys to come up with a baseline. Let’s start with—“
“haA’kGXTJ’SHeuhh!”
Roz pitched forward with another sneeze. Thankfully, it was the normal loud kind and not the wicked blocked-up ones that sounded like they rattled his teeth. He drew a few nervous glances from the kids, but was mostly ignored. LeClaire, who was used to that particular disruption, just kept talking.
“—their forwards. We expect them—“
“Huhh’PTXZSCHhh-eu!”
“—to shelter the Hollander line, which means Comeau—“
“Ihh’kGHX’SCHuhh!”
“—is going to swallow up more hard minutes and d-zone draws. That’s good news for you three,” LeClaire, still ignoring the interruption, nodded toward Cliff, Roz and Connors.
Cliff exchanged a satisfied look with Connors over a bent-double Roz, who had yet to look up after his latest sneeze. Cliff was definitely looking forward to running over Montreal’s fourth line. The Raiders had no qualms about playing a heavy, greasy game. But those three idiots took it too far, and it was galling to watch the Metros escape with their choirboy reputation intact every time. Cliff blamed Hollander and his picture-perfect media-trained captaincy.
Of course, LeClaire wouldn’t let him have too much fun. “Marly, keep your nose clean tonight. No stupid penalties. I can’t have you in the box when we’re already down one of our best penalty killers.”
Several guys jeered, and Roz briefly stopped bullying his nose to blow a loud raspberry. LeClaire was obviously fighting a smile as he kept going.
“Speaking of the PK, we’re not entirely sure what we’re up against. Their PP1 has Hollander running the point, so he can try to win with his brain instead of his legs. He won’t cycle down low, but he can still pick us apart from the blue line if—“
“yhH’KGDHx’schueh!”
“—we give him time. Pressure him up top, make him skate. He—“
“Huhh-PdTX’SSHhh!”
“—wants to log the full two minutes, but if we make him work he’s going to—“
“Aah’GDHXxt’SHIIIh!!”
“—gas out early, bless you. Bottom line, they’re still dangerous. We’ll get more detailed in the PK meeting.”
The sneezes drew more attention this time after LeClaire’s offhanded blessing, but everyone looked away before Roz could catch them. As Roz righted himself, Cliff nudged him and raised his eyebrows in a silent ‘you good?’
Roz rolled his eyes and flicked his wrist carelessly, then scrubbed his knuckles roughly under his nose. That was probably Roz-speak for ‘leave me alone, you should be used to this by now.’ Fair enough, as long as he stayed that way for the next four hours.
* * *
Author’s notes:
Shane wants the ground to swallow him whole, and that was before his teammate blessed him in Russian. Ilya plans to do more than just annoy him.
Ilya would rather piss everyone off than experience a single moment of emotional vulnerability. This is an airtight plan and Shane will definitely not disrupt it by existing in his general vicinity.
Hockey analysis - I wrote my best attempt at analyzing how each team’s tactics would adjust to this situation. I’m just a hockey fan without personal experience so my knowledge is limited, hopefully some of it makes sense. There’s maybe too much jargon, but I erred on the side of keeping the discussion in character. Both coaches are doing fairly standard stuff, but with slightly different emphasis. McCann is focused on load management, LeClaire is playing chess with match-ups. Shane is being autistic detail-oriented about his special interest, Ilya is engaging in psychological warfare.
ESL speakers - Ilya isn’t the only one. Varkov and Andropov are Russian, so they’re gonna drop articles and use weird prepositions. Victor St-Simon is the most Quebecois name ever. He definitely grew up speaking French, he’s been speaking English for a while but he messes up verb tenses and idioms sometimes. J.J. is Haitian-Canadian, so he’s also a francophone. Plus he can swear in a combination of Haitian creole and Quebecois sacres, which is fun. I made a whole meta of where I think players are from based on their names, if anyone’s interested I can post it.
Nicknames - around their team, hockey players almost never refer to each other by their full surnames. The lack of nicknames in canon bugs me almost as much as the lack of Russian diminutives. Hockey nicknames usually have 1 or 2 syllables, based on the player’s last name with an ‘s’, ‘y’ or ‘er’ suffix. Sometimes it’s an inside joke or a reference to a distinctive attribute (a redhead could be Red or Rusty, a tall player could be Tiny, etc.) For the sake of clarity I went with the boring options here, but I love the silly ones. My irl favorite is A/rber X/hekaj, nicknamed WiFi because his surname looks like a default password you would find on the back of a router.
Timing - a hockey game lasts 2.5 to 3 hours. Ilya took meds about two hours before the game. Shane took meds about an hour before the game, so they would kick in when he gets on the ice for warmups. Sudafed wears off after 4 to 6 hours, faster if you’re playing the most high intensity sport ever. The math is not working out in their favor.
Tags/Warnings: male sneezes, domestic fluff, m/m romance
Summary: Oliver and Rupert are baking brownies when there is a mishap with the icing sugar.
Brownies
The following afternoon, the apartment smelled considerably safer.
No candles.
No air fresheners.
Oliver had jokingly declared the kitchen an 'allergy-neutral zone,' and Rupert had laughed, insisting he was perfectly fine now.
"Besides," Rupert said, tying on an apron. "After last night, I think I deserve brownies."
"I wasn't going to argue with that, baby," Oliver said as he flashed him a grin.
They worked side by side, measuring ingredients and stealing bits of chocolate whenever the other wasn't looking.
"I saw that," Oliver said as Rupert popped another chocolate chip into his mouth.
"You have no proof, Ollie."
"I literally watched you."
Rupert shrugged innocently.
"Circumstantial evidence."
Oliver rolled his eyes, laughing.
When it came time to add the icing sugar, Rupert picked up the sifter.
"I've got this."
"You sure?"
"I survived the scented candles."
"Fair enough."
Rupert spooned the sugar into the sifter and began shaking it gently over the mixing bowl.
A fine white cloud drifted into the air.
Oliver frowned.
"Maybe don't shake it quite so—"
Too late.
Rupert suddenly froze.
His nose wrinkled.
"...Uh-oh," Oliver murmured.
Rupert blinked rapidly.
"Huh..."
His nostrils fluttered.
"Hih..."
Oliver immediately recognized the look.
"Oh no."
Rupert held the sifter away from himself.
"Hih... huhhh..."
His breathing hitched again.
Oliver quickly grabbed the bowl before Rupert accidentally dropped sugar everywhere.
"Just sneeze, Rue."
"I'm t-tr—hih... Hih..."
Rupert's head tipped back.
"HAAAH... HISHOO!"
The sneeze burst out so suddenly that the sifter jerked in his hand, sending another puff of powdered sugar into the air.
Unfortunately, that only made things worse.
"Hih! HISHOO! HAH-ISHOO!"
"Oh, honey..."
Oliver gently took the sifter from him before it could decorate the entire kitchen. He set it on the counter, and wrapped his arms around Rupert's waist.
Rupert pinched his nose, eyes watering.
"I'b fide..."
Oliver raised an eyebrow.
"You don't sound fine."
"Hih... HISHOO!"
Another sneeze escaped into the crook of Rupert's elbow. Oliver couldn't help smiling.
"I shouldn't laugh."
"But you are laughing."
"A little."
Rupert gave him a dramatically offended look.
"Is my suffering amusing to you, Oliver?"
"You've got powdered sugar all over your face."
Rupert paused.
"...I do?"
Oliver nodded, trying—and failing—not to giggle.
There was a dusting of white across Rupert's nose, cheeks, and even his eyelashes.
"You look like you lost a fight with a snowstorm."
Rupert sighed.
"I hate you."
"No, you don't."
"I really don't."
Oliver reached up and brushed some of the sugar off Rupert's nose with his thumb.
The touch made Rupert's nostrils twitch again.
"Oh, don't—hiihh..."
Oliver quickly grabbed a clean kitchen towel and held it out.
"Here."
Rupert barely managed to snatch it.
"Hah... HIIIISHH! HUUURRMPH!"
The towel muffled the sneezes nicely.
"Bless you."
Rupert gave his nose a thorough blow into the towel before letting out a relieved sigh.
"I think that's finally it."
Oliver looked hopefully toward the mixing bowl.
"The brownies survived."
Rupert peered into it.
"They'd better have."
Oliver inspected the counter. Sugar covered almost everything.
"The kitchen, on the other hand..."
Rupert followed his gaze and groaned.
"There is powdered sugar literally everywhere."
"It looks like Christmas."
"In July."
Oliver laughed again.
"You know what? Finish mixing. I'll clean up."
Rupert smiled sheepishly.
"You sure?"
"Absolutely."
He leaned over and kissed Rupert on the forehead.
"But next time..."
"Hm?"
"I'm sifting the sugar."
Rupert chuckled.
"Probably for the best, babe."
A minute later, as Oliver wiped the counter, he glanced over just in time to see Rupert's nose twitch once more.
"...Rue?"
Rupert held up one finger. His nose stopped twitching.
"False alarm..."
A beat passed.
"...Hih..."
Oliver sighed with exaggerated patience and silently reached for the towel again.
Rupert burst into laughter before he could even sneeze, the tickle disappearing completely.
"I think you scared it away."
Oliver grinned.
"Good. I'd like at least one batch of brownies today without them being seasoned with sneezes."
Rupert laughed, bumping his shoulder affectionately against Oliver's.
"Deal, babe. But if I do sneeze again, you know you're finishing the recipe."
"Gladly," Oliver said, smiling. "You just focus on staying out of trouble."
"I make no promises."
"Somehow," Oliver said with a fond shake of his head. "I knew you'd say that."
Hey everyone! This time I’m posting, at the request of some of you, a few big wet sneezes. Unfortunately, I’m not very good at it, and it quickly gave me a headache, so it doesn’t last very long. At the end, I blow my nose once, so if you don’t want to hear that, don’t watch all the way to the end. I also made several cuts because, as I said, it made me dizzy several times and completely wore me out lol 🥲
Ilya didn't think that this was how his week off with Shane would turn out. The men had been extremely busy with their careers for months, only meeting for sexual endeavours twice in the span of six months.
After both losing the cup to Florida, they both had enough free time for themselves. Luck had a wicked sense of humor, because unfortunately, Shane had come down with a nasty cold on what was supposed to be their first day of vacation at his cottage.
They had done the same last year and, of course, been caught by David. Maybe the cottage was cursed?
After three days of holding Shane over steam to help with his congestion, bathing Shane, and making sure that Shane was comfortable, it was obvious to Ilya that the other man was becoming.. jittery.
It started off with small gestures. Ilya would be taking Shane's temperature with an oral thermometer, instead having to halt the process because Shane was too busy trying to catch one of Ilya's fingers in his mouth. It would be waking up to warmth, a feverish Shane nuzzling at his neck, pressing little kisses to it. Extremely improper for his usually preserved boyfriend.
"How're you feeling? Any better?" Ilya asked after successfully pulling away from Shane's kisses to stand up from bed, something he's never had to do. Shane wouldn't be so jolly if Ilya got sick too.
Shane just whined in response, blinking over at Ilya from his side of the bed. From the look in Shane's eyes, Ilya could tell he was still feverish without even having to feel his forehead. Shane reached for Ilya's wrist, pulling him closer to the bed.
Ilya couldn't help but smile, kneeling back on the bed. "What is it, малыш? You need your medicine. Up."
"N'do," Shane frowned, shifting as he held Ilya's wrist. Shane was on his back, kicking off the sheets so he could spread out his legs with his knees bent. "Just — quickly? 5 m'bi'dnutes?"
Ilya stared, eyebrows shooting up. The sight of his Shane splayed out was certainly doing something for him. Fuck, it was so unethical. Shane was just feverish. This wasn't normal behaviour.
"Shane," Ilya sighed, trying to free his wrist from Shane's primal grip. "When you are better, yes? Not now. I've told you this."
Shane furrowed his brows, knees lowering slightly. He couldn't make sense of Ilya's rejection. Or multiple rejections, per se. "Why.. what? Did I do som'bethin'gh wrong?"
Ilya cocked his head at the question, silently cooing at how congested his boyfriend sounded. Ilya put his free hand on Shane's far knee, moving it to connect with his other to close his legs. "You can barely stand to shower, sick boy."
Shane made a weak sound of frustration in the back of his swollen throat, head falling down onto his pillow. Shane's expression of anger crumpled into one of desperation as Ilya watched Shane grab for his bedside tissues.
"Huh-tshhuh! Huhh'ts—NGGkxShhuh!" Shane had his little tissue grasped over his nose, thighs jolting open with each sneeze. Shane brought the now soaked tissue away from his nose, straining his waist to throw it in the trash can at the side of his bed that Ilya placed there for necessity.
Ilya hummed, perching next to Shane. "God bless," said Ilya, tone slightly marred with arrogance. Shane was clearly too sick for any erotic activity, he just proved it himself.
Shane made a crude sniffle, relaxing back into his prior position. "I tried to pre'bp — sndff! — while you sle'bpt. It'll be good, I pro'bmise.. I'm war'bmer inside. The fever," Shane rambled, subtly shifting his hips to rut against their sheets, catching a bit of the fabric between the solid muscle of his thighs.
"Fuck, Shane," Ilya breathed, voice coming out weak as he attempted not to let Shane's feverish confession nest inside of his brain. "I told you to rest last night."
"I k'dnow," Shane frowned, continuing to desperately rut against the useless bit of duvet between his thighs. "— and I did! I sle'bpt. But I needed to —"
"No," Ilya grabbed the duvet from between Shane's thighs, tossing it away from the boy. "You need to take medicine, that's it. Nothing else. Not this," Ilya made a vague gesture to Shane's dick. "— whatever this is."
Shane let out a dry sob of frustration, turning over with uncharacteristically sloppy movements so his face was now jammed against his pillow, ass up. It didn't help that Shane was only dressed in a pair of boxers.
It was so foreign to see Shane's movements be anything out of the little box he made himself, performed with thought and precision. On and off the ice.
"You're being ridiculous," Ilya hissed, his patience being tested. The teasing was getting to him, but Shane was so fucked up. Ilya could barely recognise this side of Shane. It was terrifying. It was exciting. "Get up."
"N'do!" Shane spat into his pillow, speech muffled by the thick cotton.
Ilya let out a big sigh. His right hand came up, delivering a swat to the exposed fat of Shane's ass. Shane jolted into their bed as if Ilya had physically thrust something into him, a broken moan leaving him.
Ilya furrowed his brow. Of course Shane liked that.
"Shane, you're being crazy," Ilya mumbled, putting his face in his hands. What would a mentally healthy person do given his current situation? Would they call someone? Shut this down completely? Probably.
"I'm no'dt crazy for wa'dnting to be fucked!" Shane cried into his pillow, adjusting his hips. His knees were probably already getting tired, for Christ sakes. Shane wouldn't be able to handle any physical activity.
"You're fucking sick, Shane," Ilya continued to mumble, patting Shane's calf that was visibly strained, arms shaking from where he held himself up on his elbows.
Shane made a little grunt into his pillow. "I'm no'dt crazy nor sick! You're sick!" the boy spat.
The words hit Ilya wrong. Sick? Ilya wasn't sick. Was that a jab at his mental health?
In a swift movement, Ilya got himself onto his knees behind Shane, positioning himself to loom over him. "Don't you ever call me sick."
Shane sniffled, bringing his head up for air, shaking his head to break the string of snot that was connected to his pillow from his nose. "Mmh.. Ilya, I didn't mea'dn —"
"Stop. You've done enough this morning," Ilya spat, subtly shaking his head. Was he being too mean?
Shane made a sad little hum, reaching back to tug down his boxers. The flesh of his ass was now visible for Ilya.
Ilya sighed, head down so he could see. "You don't deserve anything. I was going to, but. You're no good to me like this," Ilya said, lying through his teeth. Ilya's hands shoved Shane sideways, watching as the Canadian tipped with it.
Shane sniffled, getting himself back up on his elbows, ass jutted out once more. "No — no, please. I'm war'bm! Fever — please. Inside. I'll be good..! I'm good li'gke this," Shane rambled, pressing his ass back into Ilya.
Ilya held Shane's hips, giving his glutes a little squeeze. Sigh. Ilya's hands pulled down his own sweatpants, the material pooling at his calves.
"Yesyesyes," Shane sighed, sensing the movement behind him. "Fi'dnally."
Ilya hummed, taking in how sweet Shane was now that he was about to get exactly what he wanted. Ilya's hand halted, feeling the weight of his own dick in his hand as he finally got himself free. Fuck, the lube. They ran out of it from their last stay.
"I need to get lube, да? I think there's some, ehh.. in the couch somewhere," Ilya went to stand, his thigh getting grabbed instead.
"Don't leave!" Shane hissed, eyes wide as his head whipped right to look at Ilya. "Need you n'dow. Fuck, right n'dow. Fuck the lube."
Ilya grimaced, matching Shane's expression of shock. "Shane, that's.. not how sex works. You aren't woman, we need it."
"N'do," Shane whined. A word Ilya was coming to hear a lot today.
"Do you want sex or not, пчелка?" Ilya asked, attempting to maintain patience. Shane was making no sense.
"Use spit or somethin'gh," the other boy said, head ducking back down into his pillow.
Ilya sighed for the 50th time that morning, his hands rubbing up from Shane's ass to his spine, feeling Shane's ribs start to swell and deflate frantically under his hands.
"Hh.. hh.. hih.."
Before the idea could even become concrete in Ilya's mind, he was acting on it. Ilya grabbed Shane by the top of his hair, forcing Shane to bare his neck to his bed frame. Ilya cupped his hand over the lower half of Shane's face before any lube could be wasted.
"Hah'ktSHH! tTSHHXX! In'gsh! Ip'tsShhww.." Shane practically baptized Ilya's palm, head ducking down with each one. Ilya gave Shane's nose a squeeze, wringing him off and shoving the boys head back down before taking his hand back.
Ilya wasted no time, slathering the yellow gunk from his hand onto his dick. Ilya gave his dick an experimental stroke, using the leftover mucus to introduce his finger into Shane's hole. Ilya carefully worked his fingers into Shane one by one until the ring of muscles became relaxed, Shane's squeaks melting into comfortable moans.
Shane quietly whined with impatience under Ilya, his walls already fluttering under the pads of Ilya's fingers.
"Deep breath," ordered Ilya, lining himself up with careful precision.
Shane obeyed as usual, taking a deep breath. His lungs crackled with the inhale, his hole relaxing to completion. Ilya inserted his tip, and then his whole length at once.
"Oh, fuck, Shane.." Ilya breathed, finally understanding what Shane meant. The warmth of his boyfriend felt utterly different, a type of bliss he'd never felt before. Shane had always felt better than any of the girls Ilya had fucked, but this? This was elation in the form of a man. "So fucking warm, жук.."
Shane whined into his pillow, the flesh of his ass quaking with each thrust. The sensitivity that the fever brought naturally felt ten times more intense than it usually did for Shane.
Shane arched his back as his hips wiggled down a little, feeling Ilya in his lower abdomen. "Fu-u-u-u'gck! Fu'gck!"
Ilya felt a smile paint his face at Shane's broken curses, hitting the boy's prostate over and over again. Ilya groaned as he felt his balls grow tight, his orgasm coming faster than he had hoped. Ilya pulled out gently, painting Shane's back with the result of his pleasure. "Ah, Shane! Ooh.."
Shane crumpled at the same time, ruining the sheets beneath him as he spilled over them as he did his own stomach. Shane toppled into the bed as it was over, his body left trembling. Post orgasm bliss mixed well with a spiking fever.
Ilya panted, falling back on his knees as he recollected himself. "Fuck, that was good. You did good, Shanya," Ilya mumbled, leaning down to lick his mess off Shane's back. The temperature beneath his tongue surprised him. Ilya's hands rubbed at Shane's waist, massaging the dips.
"Let's get you in the bath, hmm? Да?" Ilya whispered against Shane's back, hands continuing their comfort.
Shane nodded into the sheets, producing a stuffy sniffle. "Mmh.. dirty.."
"Dirty," Ilya parroted in agreement, pressing kisses to Shane's back. "Dirty boy. Come, up."
Shane turned himself over, sitting himself up with little coughs. He winced as he felt lube slide out of him, lifting his thigh out of the way to see. He was sat beneath a little puddle of white and yellow.
"Wha'dt is tha'dt?" Shane rubbed at one eye, moving back to see the residue better. "Why's'it yellow?"
Ilya hummed, standing from the bed to stretch. "Lube. Come, bath."
"Where — I thought we ra'dn ou'dt," Shane babbled, eyes closing momentarily.
"Shh. Bath," Ilya explained, gathering some clean clothes for Shane out of his wardrobe. Ilya helped Shane wobble to his bathroom, sitting him down on the closed toilet seat.
Ilya ran the bath, pouring some dettol in that Shane kept in his cabinets.
"Need'a pee.." Shane mumbled, head down as he rocked himself on the toilet seat. Shane grabbed some of the toilet paper at his side, snagging some to his nose to produce a weak blow that sounded more like a baby elephant that was just realizing it had a trunk.
Ilya cooed quietly, drying off his hands in a towel. "Okay, up. I'll hold you?"
Shane nodded, moving to stand as he lifted the toilet seat up and shuffled down his sweats and underwear. His legs were still a little shaky.
Ilya came up behind Shane, taking Shane's tissue to wipe his boyfriend's nose himself. After disposing the tissue in the toilet bowl, Ilya snaked an arm around Shane's waist, resting his head on Shane's shoulder.
Shane relieved his bladder, leaning against Ilya as he weakly held his dick in one hand to direct the stream into the toilet bowl. "Mm, than'gk you. Real n'dice."
Ilya nibbled on Shane's shoulder, giving it a kiss. "Get naked, да? Bath."
Shane got himself undressed, weakly folding his clothes just to put them in the laundry basket anyway. He held onto Ilya's arm to step into the bath, lowering himself down.
Ilya crouched on the floor next to the tub, wiping Shane's back with a rag doused in soap.
"Cold," Shane complained, his features scrunched up.
"You have a fever, малыш. Is necessary for you right now," Ilya replied, wiping down Shane's bicep.
y'all know the red eyeliner w/anderer has... i usually subscribe to the idea that it's just permanently painted onto him but. right now i am very much enjoying the idea of it being something he puts on himself every day for one main reason only;
the concept of him sneezing so much that he's smudged his eyeliner due to how many times he's wiped sneeze induced tears away from his eyes, and later he's trying to pretend that he's fine (and totally wasn't hiding in a corner snzing earlier) but the others can tell something is wrong because his eyeliner is never messy like that...
Angry sneezes. Harsh, throat tearing outbursts. Furrowed brows, flushed, red-hot nostrils. A curse after each release.
Sad sneezes. Runny and stuffy noses. Weepy eyes, a mouth pulled into a frown as it hitches sluggishly towards a sneeze. Wet, dribbled releases that make a person tired.
Happy sneezes. Befuddled, dopey smiles as yet another sneeze builds. Smiling as they hitch, eyes fluttering, nostrils ticking like a pulse. A laugh that interrupts a build-up.
Whump&Snz-lover @dont-know-what-to-post - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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