Hi! I'm back with my stupid allergic guys! Happy spring!
Summary: 4.3k words. OC enemies to lovers M/M. Bellamy and Nass go camping. Both sneeze. Prince Bellamy discovers a new allergy.
TW: Sneezing fit while driving. Light mess.
My Ko-fi is linked here. If you enjoy my content and feel called to offer something, it is deeply appreciated. Either way, thank you to everyone who reads and enjoys this universe. <3
Part two will be very spicy. But for now, enjoy the buildup ;)
Authors note: Yekitiverse is a magical OC universe inspired by the culture/relationship between Spain and Morocco. It takes place akin to our early 20th century. So there are cars and technology but society is in a transitional stage.
***
“I don’t like this,” Nass complains as he helps Bellamy shove a rolled-up tent into the back of their rental car.
“Only rich people would willingly sleep outside on thin blankets,” Nass grumbles.
He rubs absently at his lower back, like his body remembers too well the years he and Marwa shared a mattress so thin it may as well have been the floor. The best their parents could afford at the time.
“I will make you like camping. I am sure of it.” Bellamy says neatly folding both of their jackets and setting it into the trunk.
“Doubtful,” Nass snorts, though he’s grinning.
“Well,” Bellamy pauses, bringing his hand to rest on the small of Nass’s back. He squeezes, his breath hot against Nass’s neck. “At the very least, I’m sure you’ll enjoy what I plan to do to you in complete privacy.”
Now that got Nass packing up the rest of the car in no time.
The university had a long weekend and for the first time in the history of them knowing each other, neither of them had anywhere to be. No royal obligations, exams, or illness. And the weather was perfect.
It was finally spring in central province, all warm wind and red weeds beginning to bloom along the highways and city streets. Bellamy had suggested a two-night camping trip in the Aylean Woods — three hours from the city, isolated enough that no one would bother them.
Nass knows Bellamy loves being in nature. The prince practically wilted if he spent too long trapped inside. And selfishly, the thought of having Bellamy entirely to himself for three uninterrupted days made Nass’s stomach flutter.
Their relationship had been going well — really well — the past few weeks.
Which honestly terrified him a little.
A few days ago, Nass had accidentally overheard Bellamy on the phone through his bedroom door.
“I sort of have a boyfriend I think,” he’d heard. “A Southerner.”
Nass had nearly dropped the tea he was holding.
“He hates the North,” Bellamy continued, deep voice muffled through his bedroom door. “It’s complicated. But he really likes me. Well, actually he says he loves me.”
Nass’s throat had gone dry at that.
There’d been a pause.
“You can’t meet him, Jorge. I c-can’t bring him to our village.” Bellamy said finally, tone flattening in that careful way it always did when he was upset. “He’d freak out.”
Nass had stood frozen in the hallway staring at the wall.
“I know it’s probably a bad idea,” Bellamy said, an air of finality to his voice. “But when has anything in my life ever been easy?”
The entire conversation had lodged itself beneath Nass’s ribs ever since. Half butterflies and half dread.
Nass had never had a boyfriend before. Just messy hookups in the back of clubs or in cramped dorm rooms.
Now he was dating the prince of Yekiti.
He wants to meet people from Bellamy’s past. He wants to see Bellamy’s home. And he sure doesn’t want to freak out or be a bad idea.
He wants to prove to Bellamy he’s easy to be with. Even if the idea of stepping foot in Northern province — hearing their language everywhere, seeing Northern soldiers like the one that killed his mother— makes nausea curl in his stomach.
And who the hell was Jorge anyway? Bellamy had never mentioned him. Or anyone from his past really.
But this weekend he’s determined to find out more.
“Did you pack your tincture for motion sickness?" Bellamy asks as he slides into the driver’s seat.
“Yeah, I packed it. And took some already.” Nass drops into the passenger seat. Being in cars, boats, trains — any form of transportation really — always made him horribly motion sick. It was incredibly embarrassing and inconvenient. “I don’t travel without itt — Hih’Gnxt’Shuu!”
The sneeze pitches him forward.
Ugh. He sniffles thickly rubbing at his tickling nose.
“And your allergy tincture?” Bellamy asks as he starts the car. “In case that continues?”
A smile tugs at Nass’s mouth. Bellamy’s concern is sweet. Ridiculously sweet.
“I have it,” he says, flipping on the radio. His hay fever is significantly worse in the early fall, but the pollen levels have been so high this week it’s affecting him even now in early spring.
Yesterday Bellamy had noticed Nass sniffling halfway through first period and had disappeared to the apothecary before lunch to buy him allergy tincture.
Bellamy notices everything.
“Good,” Bellamy pulls onto the main road as Nass settles onto a Southern radio channel.
“Where did you learn to drive?” Nass leans back into the cushiony leather seat.
He’s somehow unsurprised that Bellamy knows how to drive. He’s learned by now Bellamy knows how to do most things, despite living half his life as a prince.
Nass himself, just learned how to drive last year. Only the wealthiest Yekitians owned cars and in the South transit was still mainly camel or horse.
“I got lessons when I was a teenager,” Bellamy says, as he merges onto a main road. “I never liked my father’s staff doing things for me.”
Bellamy doesn’t seem comfortable with anyone doing anything for him, but Nass doesn’t say this.
“Why do you never speak of your friends from the North?” Nass asks, watching as Bellamy pulls sunglasses over his light eyes. “Did you not have any?”
“You really think my social skills to be so poor, Nass?” Bellamy raises an eyebrow, but Nass can tell he’s teasing.
“Of course I have friends.” Bellamy says. “You saw one of my friends in fact. Camille.”
A sharp stab of jealousy hits Nass instantly.
Camille’s hands in Bellamy’s curls flashes through his head. Bellamy kissing her under the red lights of Hookah’s Sex Lounge.
“She didn’t look like your friend that night at the sex club,” Nass says flatly.
Bellamy chuckles at Nass’s tone. “Camille is a very good friend.” He continues. “After I moved to the palace and had to go to private school, she was one of the only people who dared to socialize with me.”
“Why?” Nass frowns.
His fingers tighten slightly against the steering wheel.
“My brother did not take kindly to suddenly discovering he had a secret half sibling threatening his future throne. At school he made it very clear that speaking to me would have consequences.”
Nass feels immediate disgust crawl up his spine. Jason Velaquez being a bully as a teenager is the least surprising thing he’s heard all month.
“Camille was never afraid of him,” Bellamy continues. “Her father is a trusted palace advisor. So Jason had no real power over her. Though he certainly tried.”
“And then?” Nass presses.
Bellamy gives a small shrug. “Eventually we dated for a few years. But Camille is not a mage and has no interest in living anywhere but the North.”
He doesn’t elaborate further. He doesn’t need to.
“And your friends from before you were a prince? From the orphanage?” Nass asks. He can’t even imagine it. To Bellamy, that time must feel like a past life.
Bellamy’s jaw tightens. Nass thinks he isn’t going to answer but then he does.
“Jorge and Amira,” he finally answers. “They are more like my family.”
Jorge. The person Bellamy was speaking to on the phone.
“Jorge was born with a degenerative illness and uses a wheelchair. Amira is albino. And I have the king’s eyes,” he waves at his face. “Invalids they called us. And so, we were never adopted. Though I suppose I was technically adopted by the king.”
Something twists painfully in Nass’s chest.
“You must miss them,” Nass comments.
“Very much,” Bellamy says quietly. “I don’t see them often.”
“Why not?” Nass frowns.
Bellamy goes still.
“Because I am the prince,” he says finally, voice clipped. “And my father forbids me and my brother to associate with invalids.”
The words are so cruel Nass almost thinks he misheard them.
Bellamy sniffles softly, rubbing at his nose with the back of his wrist.
“And if anyone saw us together and word got back to the palace,” he continues, “it could make their lives… difficult. So, when I do see them I must be very discreet.”
Silence settles heavily between them.
Nass stares out the window, throat tight. He can’t imagine being forbidden from seeing Marwa. The thought alone makes him feel ill.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.
“Yeah.” Bellamy clears his throat. “Anyway. It’s hot in here.”
He presses the button for the windows. Warm spring air immediately whips through the car, tangling Nass’s braids together.
The sharp scent of pine and something sweet he can’t exactly name hits him. Nass inhales, spraying his lap with an itchy and uncovered “Hih’Ttt’Shuuyiew!”
“Bless you,” Bellamy says. “Do you want to take your allergy tincture?”
Nass rubs his face. “No. It’ll only make me sleepy.”
“It will be a three-hour drive,” Bellamy says kindly. “It’s okay if you sleep.”
“That doesn’t make me a very good c-company — “Hih-EsshHUE!”,” Nass wrenches forward with the uncharacteristically loud sneeze, his seatbelt pulling against his chest.
He clears his throat that’s beginning to itch.
“You are good company awake or asleep, Nass,” Bellamy smiles. It’s almost shy.
The sincerity in his voice makes warmth spread through Nass’s chest so quickly it almost embarrasses him.
Maybe Bellamy is right.
Besides, even with the motion sickness tincture already in his system, the rolling highway has nausea beginning to churn low in his stomach.
With a sigh, Nass reaches into his bag, retrieves the allergy tincture, and lets a few bitter drops fall beneath his tongue before washing the awful herbal taste away with water.
After another forty five minutes and half a dozen sneezes later, both tinctures start to kick in. Nass leans back in his seat, letting the steady sound of the car and the drumming of Southern music lull him to sleep.
The next thing he knows, Nass is woken up to a thunderous “hHHh’DZZSSCHh—'uH-!” echoing through the car. He startles awake, neck aching from the awkward angle he’d fallen asleep in, just in time to see Bellamy snap forward with a second uncovered and equally loud “hh! H’uh! hih! IIESHHh'YEUh!”
It sprays all over the steering wheel, the mist sparkling in the sunlight. Bellamy sniffles, face twisted in irritation.
“Skies,” Nass struggles to sit up, “Bless you.”
“Sorry to wake you,” Bellamy pants, knuckling at his nose. Nass can see that his boyfriend had removed his sunglasses, blue eyes red and watering. “Gods, I couldn’t sth! Stifle anymore… hh! — “heH’SCHEUG’Hiih-!”
The car jerks slightly as Bellamy makes a right. He gives another irritated snuffle, his eyes glassy. “Can you check if there are any tissues in here?”
Nass doesn’t think there will be tissues anywhere in a rental car, but he checks anyway.
“Nothing,” he says, poking around the center console. “And I’ve told you many times you don’t need to stifle your sneezes, Bellamy. I don’t care if it wakes me up or —”
"Heh- hH’IYSChhiuEH!!” Bellamy interrupts as if his body agrees, a loose frizzy curl flying into his eyes from the force of it.
Bellamy mutters what Nass presumes is a curse in Northern tongue.
“Bless you,” Nass says, trying not to stare.
“Sorry,” Bellamy coughs. “I can’t stop sneezing for some reason.”
“You don’t need to apologize, Bellamy,” Nass blinks, growing flustered.
“Ugh,” he gives a stuffy sounding sniffle. “I think I should blow my nose. Do you have an extra handkerchief?”
Nass flushes, all of the blood in his body rushing to his pants. He blinks, adjusts his jeans against his erection then blinks again. Fuck why is Bellamy so hot, how can he say things like this and not have a clue what it does to him —
“N-Nass?” Bellamy asks. Shit. He must’ve have zoned out for a second longer than appropriate.
“Do you have one? We’re on this highway for a while and I don’t know where I can bu! Buy —h’IEGHkSsH’hue!!”
It sprays absolutely everywhere. The steering wheel, the dashboard, Nass even feels some of the mist settle on his arm.
“No — shit — I’m sorry, yes I have an extra one,” he twists over towards the backseat, pulling the soft fabric out from the bottom of his backpack.
“Here.” He hands it out to him. “Do you want to pull over or —,”
“It’s fine,” Bellamy makes a face of brief disgust at using a handkerchief, but takes it anyway, calmly removing one hand off the wheel to blow his nose. The aftermath of the blowing wrestles another tickly sounding sneeze from him.
Bellamy groans.
“Bless you,” Nass squeezes his shoulder trying to sound normal. His erection is so stiff he’s nearly throbbing. “What’s setting you off? Hay fever?”
Bellamy always sneezes multiple times in a row so it could just be that. But his blue eyes look very red and irritated. Though as far as Nass knows, the only thing Bellamy is allergic to are cats.
“I — I don’t have hay fever,” Bellamy sniffles, sounding a little bewildered. “In fact, I spend most of the spring and summer outside.”
“You’re living in a new place,” Nass shrugs. “You could be allergic to something here that isn’t in the North. My seasonal allergies are way worse here than back home in the South.”
Bellamy shrugs at this, though he raises the crumpled handkerchief to his face to blow his nose again.
“How was your nap?” Bellamy asks, lowering the handkerchief onto his lap. He rubs at his nose with his wrist.
“Good,” Nass cracks his sore neck. “Are we almost there?”
He is suddenly very desperate to get there and take care of the… problem in his pants. Plus, he can tell they’re getting close. Huge old growth trees dot the sides of the highway, their gnarled roots woven in between flashes of bright red fireweed.
Bellamy nods at the map on the dashboard.
“In about thirty minutes,” he says with a punctuated sniff.
Nass leans back in his seat. Bellamy had changed the radio station, while he was sleeping. Soft Northern flute music blares through the speakers.
“You don’t like Southern music?” he asks, the question coming out a little defensive.
He itches to change the station back to the Southern channel, but he doesn’t. That would be incredibly rude and selfish. Besides, he started seeing a therapist a few weeks ago to work on his…issues with the North and she advised to him to stop and breathe before acting.
He takes a deep breath.
“Of course I do,” Bellamy’s answer comes out polite and diplomatic, just like everything Bellamy says.
“But I also enjoy the music of my people Nass.” Nass has spent enough time with Bellamy to hear the slight hardening in his voice.
And with that, he leans forward and increases the volume. And Nass would never say it out loud, but the Northern music isn’t so bad.
It’s good even.
He closes his eyes, listening to the sound of the flute and Bellamy humming along. He can’t tell how much time has passed, when the distinct sound of Bellamy sniffling has Nass opening his eyes at full attention again.
Bellamy’s right hand is off the steering wheel, scrubbing at the underside of his reddening nose. He has his sunglasses back on again, but Nass is willing to bet his eyes are probably just as irritated as his nose looks. He hears Bellamy take a shaky breath, then exhale.
“Bellamy,” Nass clears his throat. “You should close the windows. You’re clearly allergic to something and having the windows open is probably making it —,”
“AEHD’SSCHhy’uuh!" Bellamy gasps, splattering the steering wheel with an irritated sounding sneeze.
“Worse,” Nass says barely able to finish the word before Bellamy explodes with —
The sound tears through the car so loudly Nass’s heart lurches into his throat.
A silver car tears past them in the opposite lane, missing the driver’s side by what feels like centimetres. Nass catches a flash of terrified faces through the window.
His stomach lurches violently.
“Bellamy!” Nass shouts, lunging forward and wrenching the steering wheel back into place. The movement jolts painfully through his shoulder. “Pull over!”
Bellamy gasps out, clearly unable to say anything at all. One hand is clamped over his nose and mouth now, the other hand white-knuckling the wheel.
Nass reaches across Bellamy, nearly climbing over the center console to flick on the turn signal just as another itchy "h’IEGHkSsH’hueY!” sprays across the side of Nass’s face.
Nass jerks the steering wheel hard, pulling them out of the lane and onto the shoulder of the road. Gravel explodes beneath their wheels. Another angry horn sounds somewhere behind them.
“Brake! Brake!” Nass yells over the sound of three more strangled sneezes.
Bellamy slams on the brakes hard enough to throw both of them forward against their seatbelts. The car skids unevenly before jolting to a stop.
Nass leans over, putting the car in park with shaking hands. For a second, he doesn’t move, his heart beating wildly in his chest. He blinks against a wave of nausea.
Gods, they almost got into an accident.
This is why his father and grandmother tell him not to mess with cars. Cars are not safe, they always say. Travelling the good old fashioned way by camel or horse is much safer and —
“hh! ehh’HTSSHH’Yueuh!” Nass blinks again, finally registering that Bellamy is still sneezing his head off. A miserable stuttered gasp from his lover gets him springing into action.
He shoves open the passenger door, grabs the allergy tincture and water bottle from the backseat, then rushes around the car and yanks open the driver’s side door.
Bellamy is still trapped in the seatbelt, sunglasses discarded, handkerchief crushed to his face as relentless sneeze after sneeze wracks through him.
“—AhehDTSSS’shuh! hhH! “hhh... hhAATCHSHhh’uye!!”
“Gods,” Nass mutters, fumbling with the buckle. “Come here.”
He drags Bellamy upright by the arm. Bellamy stumbles out of the car, disoriented, eyes streaming so badly he can barely keep them open.
“Here,” Nass presses the water bottle into his hands. “Wash your face.”
Bellamy leans against the hood of the car as he unscrews the lid, not hesitating as he dumps cool water over his eyes and nose with a shaky groan. Water drips from his curls, down the sharp line of his throat, soaking into the collar of his pressed green shirt.
Bellamy glances down at the soiled handkerchief in his other hand and makes a disgusted look. Instead, he lifts the hem of his linen shirt to scrub at his wet face.
Nass is so concerned the part of his brain that would otherwise be enjoying this has gone completely silent.
Instead, he watches helplessly as Bellamy pants from the exertion, bringing the water bottle to his lips for a few desperate sips. Then his lover’s face twists again, full lips parting as he lurches to the ground with another helpless and uncovered — “hh! hhK’IISCHhh’Yue!”
Bellamy swears under his breath, eyebrows pinched together in allergic frustration.
“Here,” Nass says quickly, unscrewing the allergy tincture. “Lean your head back. I’m giving you six drops instead of three, okay?”
Bellamy answers with another strangled sneeze, though this time it’s only one. The fit must finally be slowing.
Nass moves fast, tipping the herbal drops beneath Bellamy’s tongue.
He would never say this out loud to his boyfriend, unless he wished to horrify him to no end, but Bellamy’s nose was profusely running, watery rivulets running over his lips and down his chin.
“Here,” Nass says, softer now, pulling his own handkerchief from his pocket. “Use this.”
It’s slightly used, which is pretty unhygienic, but Nass supposed they’d swapped their fair share of bodily fluids by now. And clearly Bellamy must be feeling quite desperate because he does not hesitate at all before snatching the handkerchief out of Nass’s hand, burying his abused nose in the fabric with a relieved groan.
Nass gives him some privacy as Bellamy blows his nose. When he turns back, Bellamy is leaning heavily against the hood of the car, pinching the bridge of his nose between damp fingers. He’s taking slow breaths through parted lips between careful sips of water.
Thankfully, the sneezing finally seems to be easing.
Nass approaches him cautiously, laying a hand on his arm. “Skies, bless you. Are you okay, Bellamy?”
“Yes,” Bellamy sniffles, sounding a bit dazed. “Well. Besides bmy dignity, which I fear did ndot survive that experience.”
His face is bright red down to the very tips of his ears.
“I’m so sorry for scaring you,” Bellamy dabs at his watery eyes with the edges of Nass’s soiled handkerchief.
“It’s fine,” Nass squeezes his arm. “Nothing happened. We’re fine. Are you sure you’re okay? I’ve never seen you sneeze like that before.”
Bellamy flushes even darker.
“Neither have I,” he takes a stuffy congested breath. “A-andyway, I just need a minutde. Thend we cand g-go.”
He can hear Bellamy trying to hide the lingering shock in his voice. Trying to appear calm and collected for Nass.
His stomach twists again.
“Are you crazy?” Nass stares at him. “I’m driving the rest of the way.”
“But it’ll just make you even more motion sick,” Bellamy says faintly, scrubbing at his nose with the underside of his wrist. Clearly whatever he is allergic to is still bothering him.
“Bellamy!” Nass says aghast. “I took medicine. I’ll survive. Besides, what if you start sneezing like that again? We nearly drove into incoming traffic!”
Bellamy pinches the bridge of his nose again. Closes his watery red eyes. “You’re right, of course. That must’ve been terrifying for you. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize for being a human being Bellamy,” Nass crosses his arms.
“Okay,” Bellamy swallows.
Then —
“I have no idea what set me off like that. Skies.”
Frustrated, he kicks a stone near his shoe. It goes skidding across the roadside shoulder, flattening a cluster of bright red fireweed.
There’s a brief silence.
Then Bellamy’s expression shifts.
“Nass,” he says slowly. “What are those?”
“What?”
“Those red flowers.” He points at them.
“There not flowers. You don’t have those in the North?” Nass raises an eyebrow.
Bellamy shakes his head.
“They’re weeds. Called fireweed because of their red colour.”
“I see,” Bellamy shifts. “And they grow here?”
“They grow everywhere this time of year,” Nass says, squinting against the sun.
“Right,” Bellamy nods, looking at them thoughtfully. “Okay then.”
And before Nass can tell him not too, Bellamy takes a few steps forward plucking a few fireweeds from the grass. He raises them to the underside of his nose, inhaling experimentally.
He blinks, eyelashes still damp from earlier. And maybe not less than a minute later, Bellamy chest shudders, exploding down with a violent —
“hh-hhh-HA! Hh’AEDTSSCCH’HY’ueeH!” that sprays his trousers in messy droplets.
Bellamy swears, shuddering to the left with another uncovered, equallly massive “heH’SCHEUG’HiiyUhH-!”
The fireweed tumbles from his hand.
Clearly, he has found the culprit of his allergic misery.
Bellamy blinks rapidly, blowing his nose hard on the leftover available real-estate of Nass’s handkerchief. Then, unexpectedly, he laughs. The sound is soft and a little sad around the edges.
“Maybe it’s a signd to go back to the North,” he says as he rejoins Nass against the hood of the car. “Clearly the people do not want bme here.” He sniffles. “Or the land.”
Nass stomach twists.
“Well, I want you here,” he bumps Bellamy’s shoulder. “And I enjoy your… sneezing. Not when you almost drive us into oncoming traffic. But otherwise,” Nass leans in, pressing his lips to the side of Bellamy’s temple, “I enjoy it very much.”
“Oh, I have noticed,” Bellamy sniffs again, then gives a real laugh at this. The musical sound makes Nass’s stomach flutter.
“I thought I was more discreet than that,” Nass scratches his head.
“You certainly attempbt discretion,” Bellamy turns to him with a shit eating grin. “But the sexual endergy that pours out of you, I must say, Nass, is quite loud.”
Nass blinks.
Bellamy has always been much more observant and perceptive of energies than he is. And Nass would rather eat cotton than admit it, but he fears that is exactly what makes Bellamy a far better mage — and person — than he ever will be.
Still to hear that Nass’s sexual energy is… loud? Well, that gets his cheeks warming.
“Andyway,” Bellamy clears his throat, but it does nothing to ease the congestion in his voice. “If I have to suddenly suffer spring allergies, I am at least glad it’s not wasted.”
“Definitely not wasted, Your Majesty” He can practically hear the lust in his own voice. His eyes drag over Bellamy’s tight green t-shirt. His mouth waters.
He wants to pleasure that man senseless. Even if it is in the woods in a stupid tent. It seems the sex gods have answered his deepest, darkest sexual fantasies. He has his tall, extremely sexy lover, suddenly ridden with hay fever, all to himself for three whole days.
Nass’s dick can hardly stand the thought.
“Let’s go,” he nudges Bellamy. “I am suddenly quite inpatient to get there already.”
Bellamy gives him an amused knowing look, tossing him the car keys. “I’m sure you are.”
They switch seats, Nass sliding into the driver’s side, adjusting the seat and mirrors.
“Can we stop at the next road stall to buy some tissues?” Bellamy asks, stuffing Nass’s sodden handkerchief into his pocket.
“In case…well… in case that happens again?” He rubs at his red nose.
Nass swallows hard against the thought of Bellamy doing that again.
“Of course,” He says with a laugh. “It seems that tissues are a camping necessity, Your Highness,”
And with that, he starts the engine and pulls their car back onto the road.
hear me out i had another idea. We all know that before the cottage I/lya injured his ribs a little… he slammed into a wall and S/hane even mentioned it and didn’t let him carry his bag… and its most likely bruised??? anyway, what if he’s also… sneezy? has a cold? has allergies? the first day at the cottage 👀
feel free to ignore if its not your cup of tea
combining prompts since these were fundamentally the same. and i am deeply behind on writing. sorry.
here's 3.1K of i/lya suffering! whoo! as always, there is too much Plot. these really keep getting away from me and i haven't edited this one AHA enjoy :D
“This is not a cottage,” Ilya says from the passenger seat, his gaze sweeping over it. Despite his clear surprise, another emotion tinges it. Relief, maybe? Shane isn’t quite sure.
In response, he grumbles, “It’s really not that big.” He pushes his door open, hopping out and relishing in the crunch of gravel beneath his sneakers. He shifts his weight once, twice, before continuing around to the trunk to grab Ilya’s bag. Through the back glass, Shane watches him unbuckle, then gingerly straighten as he exits the vehicle. It’s a short enough drive from the airport to the cottage. Not long enough for Ilya to need to stretch anything more than his legs. His mother was right.
His own backpack slung over his right shoulder and holding Ilya’s bag on the same side, Shane clumsily sifts through the keyring with his left hand. The car door shuts.
“I can carry my own bag,” protests Ilya, reaching for it.
Shane walks right past him. “How’re your ribs?”
Ilya, predictably, falls into step beside him as they approach the front door. “Fine. I can take my bag.”
Shane just gives him a sidelong glance, then, with the proper key outstretched, says, “Can’t believe you played with those bruised ribs.”
“Whoa, and you can’t?”
“Okay, maybe I can.”
Ilya glares at him, but keeps pace. Because of course, he does. Because he’s Ilya, and Shane is starting to realize that the Raider would probably follow him to the end of the Earth. Or, to the edges of Canada, anyway.
-
They grill. Or, rather, Shane does the grilling, because Ilya apparently has only made shashlik before and that doesn’t at all translate to making burgers.
He’d started while Ilya went to take a shower. They’d spent most of the afternoon post-arrival oscillating between cuddling and blowing each other—nothing too strenuous for Ilya’s ribs, yet, and they have so much time right now—and eventually, Shane had grown tired of his skin feeling sticky. He’ll need another one tonight, especially after standing over the grill for half an hour, but that can wait until after the bonfire. If they get to do that. He doesn’t think Ilya will fight against it, but he can be stubborn. Especially when he’s supposed to exist quietly.
Shane, from what he’s heard and guessed, is pretty sure Ilya’s done enough of that.
He glances up when Ilya emerges from the cottage, dressed in a large black T-shirt and red athletic shorts. Shane lifts the lid on the burgers to check them just as Ilya presses himself against his back, a distinct line of heat compared to the effusion from the grill. “Hey,” he greets, moving one hand to blindly pat Ilya’s hip as the other flips the first patty. Ilya’s arm snakes around his waist possessively.
“Why are you making so many burgers?” asks Ilya.
“The recipe was for eight, so…”
“Okay, you cu–hiH! Cut it in half,” Ilya says, then buries his nose into the shoulder of Shane’s flannel with urgency. He rubs it across the fabric once, twice, and then his breath hitches hard enough that Shane can feel the slight pull of air against his neck before Ilya’s head bobs forward. “nyKTSH!”
A moment passes. Ilya’s ribs jump against his spine with the effort of holding the rest of the fit back. “Come on, you’ve got at least two more,” Shane murmurs.
“eh’TSCHih–uh! TSHH’euh!”
“You done?”
“hH’KSHHyu! Oh…”
“Bless you,” Shane says, frowning when Ilya’s grip on him still doesn’t loosen, even in the aftermath of his little fit. “Ilya?”
Slowly, the arm around his middle relaxes. “Yes, sorry. I was not expecting that.” Ilya takes a step back, sniffling damply. When Shane turns to look at him, though, he’s smiling softly. “So, you can’t do math?”
Three seconds inch by while Shane reconciles Ilya’s teasing with their discussion just before he’d started sneezing, and then he pouts at him. “Leave me alone.”
“No,” comes the immediate protest, and Ilya moves forward with both arms. He presses a soft kiss to Shane’s neck, then another behind his ear as he finishes turning over the patties. They stand like that for a minute longer, Shane pushing some of his weight back into Ilya’s steady presence and savoring it. This kind of trust, for them, doesn’t exist outside of sex. There’s never been a moment to just stand together, lean, know the other will lean back.
And, it seems, they’ll never have any longer than a moment: Ilya’s quick to push himself back from Shane, making up for the absence of his body with a steadying grip on his waist, and hurriedly aims a rapid triple toward his right shoulder.
“hK’tshh–tschH’ih–tsHZ’ewh!” It’s soft and breathless from the start, the airy quality indicative of just how quickly the tickle must have snuck up on him. He really hadn’t been expecting the first fit, then. The following inhale is less restorative and more of a gasp, and Shane barely processes it before Ilya’s fingers brush against his hips as they depart en route to his face. “hH–KZSHH’uh! ihy’TSH’ue!” A muttered curse in Russian, and then a desperate, “ZSSH’euh!”
He’s not done yet. Ilya’s breath is still trapped in the rhythm of catch-and-release, hitching in tiny bursts that don’t offer anything productive. Shane turns around, worry thinning his lips when he sees the pained expression on Ilya’s face.
Before he can do anything, Ilya’s left arm goes to brace the opposite side of his ribcage, and the next set is rendered completely silent, the way llya used to. He’s not consciously stifled around Shane in nearly a year, and even then, only when instinct triggers first and he forgets that he’s allowed to not. But the double is clean, neatly contained behind the scrunch of his face and squeeze of his lips.
He sniffles in the aftermath, blinking open watery eyes. His arm doesn’t unwind.
“Bless you, wow,” Shane says, resisting the urge to reach out right away. They don’t talk about it, not really, but Ilya stifling is rarely a good sign. He grabs the blond by his free arm, rubbing a thumb over the skin comfortingly. “You alright? That was intense.”
“Fine,” Ilya replies, sniffling once more, the congestion still thin. He shifts his weight. Grimaces.
Oh, shit.
“Your ribs,” Shane realizes aloud. “Fuck, your ribs—”
“—are fine, Shane,” says Ilya.
“Obviously not. You’re crying,” Shane points out, and Ilya finally lifts his left arm to swipe a finger over his lashes. He actually looks surprised when it comes away moist.
“Oh,” he says, frowning slightly.
“How badly does it hurt?” Shane asks. Ilya doesn’t protest when his fingers ghost over the fabric of his shirt, barely applying enough pressure for Ilya to feel it against the bruises, just closes his eyes and exhales through his nose. “Hey. Ilya.”
“Not too bad. It’s… sharp, when I sneeze. But only then.”
“Alright,” Shane says. Ilya’s gaze tapers back to middle distance, and two seconds later, his shoulders are curling forward with another fit. Four, each of them less than a second apart and rendered silent but for a soft exhalation on the last one. A gasp, then another double, pinched off and followed by a violent flinch. Shane’s about to scold him for stifling when a triple finally escapes his efforts.
“nTZSHh! KTCHh’euh! hih–ihHh…?” His head is tipped back, nostrils flaring with tiny, erratic motions, more involuntary tears spilling from his eyes. “nyKZCHh’iyHh! Fuck!” he curses, forgoing his usual abuse of his nose in favor of cradling his ribs again, now with both arms. Another round of cursing, but now in Russian, and then Ilya all but tips himself toward Shane, hitting the Canadian with most of his weight.
Shane catches him easily, grabbing the dishtowel from off the grill and folding it over Ilya’s nose. “Bless you. You’re okay,” he murmurs, doing his best to wipe gently and wincing sympathetically when, of course, Ilya crumples against his chest with yet another miserable set of four, voicing his pain the entire way through. “Bless you. Jesus, Ilya, what’s going on?”
He’s getting anxious, he can tell, but does his best to stay calm for Ilya, who’s practically falling apart on him. They’re well past the realm of Ilya’s baseline sensitivity. It’s definitely not unusual for him to have these uneven clusters, but they rarely stack up this quickly, not unless Ilya’s having—
“Allergies, I think,” he replies, voice muffled slightly by the dishtowel still pressed against his face. Shane begins to lift his hand, intending to remove it, but Ilya grabs onto his wrist to keep it where it is. “Sorry.”
His voice is soft with shame. Shane’s heart clenches.
“Don’t apologize,” he whispers. “You’re not doing anything wrong.”
Ilya gives a tight, unconvinced shrug against Shane’s chest. His eyes are aimed toward the lake and he’s still hugging his ribcage, like he can hold himself together through sheer force of will. Or like an animal protecting his softest parts.
Shane decides, “Let’s get you some Claritin.”
“The burgers—”
“They need to be on for another five, at least. We have time.”
Reluctantly, Ilya peels away from him, straightening up just enough to be level with Shane again. He’s patient as Shane carefully pinches the towel around his nostrils and pulls it away slowly, trying not to set him off again. The edges of his nose have gone red with irritation, but he’s not giving any outward signs that his clothing is bothering his skin, so it’s probably safe to assume he’s not hiding any hives. Good. During their second season, Ilya had shown up to his apartment with hives so bad Shane had nearly dragged him to the ER once he’d started feeling Ilya up and found the plaques through discovery instead of Ilya telling him. Ilya had just stared at him like he was stupid for caring.
Shane guides him inside, settles him on the couch, and throws a pillow at him. Ilya catches it reflexively, furrowing his brow in confusion. “To brace with,” Shane explains. “Hug it whenever you have to sneeze. And stop stifling. It’s bad for you.”
Ilya mutters something that Shane doesn’t quite catch as he ducks into the kitchen to rummage around in the medicine drawer. There’s four bottles of ibuprofen, for some reason, and he makes a mental note to pass at least one on to Hayden; he’s constantly losing his own. He pushes a box of bandages to the side, then finally unearths the blister pack of Claritin. Shane pops out a tablet for Ilya, fills a glass of water in the sink, then goes back to the couch.
Unsurprisingly, Ilya’s sneezing through clenched teeth when he returns, whole body jerking slightly with the effort to stifle. He is holding onto the pillow, at least, but it doesn’t seem like it’s helping much; the expression on his face is pained and desperate. Ilya’s face bears all of the strain, but not a sound escapes him.
Shane entered the middle of the fit, so he’s not sure where Ilya started, but he counts seven before Ilya’s breath shudders to a stop again. “Bless you,” he murmurs, pretending not to notice the way Ilya flinches in response. They’ll deal with that in a minute. The goal right now is to make Ilya stop holding them in.
He passes Ilya the glass and pill. Ilya stares at it for a moment before tipping the tablet into his mouth and chasing it with half the water. “Thank you.”
“You don’t need to thank me,” Shane points out, perching on the end of the couch. There’s a solid three feet of space between them. “I don’t like seeing you in pain.”
“I’m not in pain.”
“You’re definitely in pain, Ilya. And it’s not a big deal.”
The Russian scoffs. “We are still hockey players, yes? We are hurt constantly, and still, we play. It’s our job.”
“You wouldn’t send a player onto the ice if their arm was broken,” counters Shane. “And you shouldn’t have been playing with bruised ribs.”
“It is barely an injury! Just bruising.”
“Oh, yeah? And now you’re having an allergy attack and feel like shit, right?”
Ilya lapses into silence. Partially angry, but silence nonetheless.
Shane moves closer. “Ilya, is it so bad that I want to take care of you? I invited you here so that we could have time together. I don’t need you to do anything but be here and be okay.”
“I am not going to waste your time, Shane,” Ilya says. He can’t twist away, so he settles for bringing an elbow up, just to hide his face, for the next triple. And then he keeps it there for the back-to-back doubles. And still as he groans in pain.
“Bless you. You’re not wasting my time, Ilya.”
“Your burgers are going to overcook.”
Shane sighs at the obvious change in topic, but stands up. It’s not like Ilya’s wrong, which is the upsetting part. He’s objectively suffering, and he’s still keeping track of things for Shane. “We’re not done.”
Ilya doesn’t respond.
He rescues the burgers from the grill as fast as possible, slipping two of them onto buns and settling the rest in a glass container with the lid on to keep in the heat. Both plates travel inside with him, and he drops them on the coffee table. Ilya’s now sitting up against the back of the couch, slightly slumped, not enough that the slouch will hurt his torso. “Happy?” he asks.
“Ecstatic. Here’s your burger.” Shane nudges his plate closer.
Ilya takes it obediently, and starts eating with the enthusiasm of someone going into work on a Monday morning. “Keep going.”
“What?”
“With your, ah, lecturing. Keep going,” Ilya says, gesturing broadly with his free hand. “You have things to say you think will be good for me to hear. Keep talking.”
“I just want you to stop hurting yourself. Whether it’s playing while you’re already hurt and making it worse or holding in your fucking sneezes. You don’t have to do the tough guy act with me, Ilya.”
“Oh, you know it’s not an act.”
“Stop trying to change the subject.”
Ilya throws up his hands and barely suppresses a wince as it jostles his torso. “Fine! Whatever! You win, I will stop, we can have a good time.”
“Ilya—”
“You get what you want, Shane. Don’t complain now.”
-
They’re going to save the bonfire for another day, once they (read: Shane) can ensure the allergy medication is actually working. So, he and Ilya end up sprawled across the bed, sweaty from sucking each other off. The tension between him and Ilya didn’t last long beneath the buzz of two weeks together, but there’s still a current of something uneasy.
Maybe it has to do with the fact that he’s not actually seen Ilya shirtless yet. He’s been very careful to not let Shane lift the fabric above his navel, and a niggling thought at the back of his mind is insistent that it’s because of his ribs. He’s more worried than he should be—he’s had bruised ribs before, and you mostly just grit your teeth and suffer through them—and doesn’t have a clue as to what to do about it.
“Oh,” Ilya says, a foot away and not staring at the ceiling the way Shane is.
“You okay?”
“I’m getting hives.”
“What?” Shane pushes himself up on his elbows so fast the room spins for a second. “How many? How bad?”
“Relax, it’s a small amount. Six, maybe seven.”
His proprioception is startling. Shane can’t identify sensation the way Ilya can, not with nearly the same degree of specificity with regard to location. Ilya can point to any square inch on his body and say this is where and not have to question himself. It’s not just him, though; Ilya’s better than pretty much anyone Shane’s ever met at knowing exactly what’s going on with his body. He doesn’t want to think about why that might be, not knowing Ilya’s family.
“Where?” he demands.
Ilya finally sits up, sniffling as the slight congestion that’s been hanging in his sinuses shifts around. “Two on my neck, three across both my arms, and I think a couple on my back. Can’t reach thoHhse ones, though. nKTzch! hy’KTZZsch!”
“Stop stifling.”
“Is barely—ehT’SCHh’uh!—stifling.”
“That one wasn’t. You’re half-suppressing the others.”
Ilya rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”
“No, Ilya—”
His breath leaves him in a sharp, frustrated sigh.
“It’s fine, Shane.”
“Stop fucking saying that!”
“What?”
“That you’re fine! You’re clearly not! If you were, the Claritin would be fucking working and you wouldn’t have fucking hives and you wouldn’t be wincing every time you sneeze because your ribs are fucking bruised, Ilya!”
“That was not very Canadian of you to say.”
He’s on his feet, pacing across the bedroom. Ilya’s leaning back on his hands casually, but his eyes are tracking his every motion.
“You don’t have to be ‘fine,’ Ilya,” he says, after a long beat of silence. “I don’t need you to be. No one does, not today. You are not Boston’s captain. You’re not even 81, or Rozanov. You’re just Ilya, and you’re with me, and I want you to be okay.” His voice is wobbly, they’re both painfully aware. Shane clears his throat awkwardly.
Eventually, Ilya murmurs, “They’re probably going to become a plaque. The–the hives on my back.”
“Do you need stronger medication?”
“No. There’s not much you can do by now. Maybe just…” He trails off, biting his lip. Shane goes back to bed, sitting next to him. Pulls Ilya’s head to his shoulder. His face is warm, and the hives on his neck lie right below his jawline on the left and next to his Adam’s apple, coloring his skin pink.
“Can you take your shirt off for me?” he asks softly, feeling Ilya tense up against him, drawing inward all at once before relaxing by degrees.
He doesn’t protest when Shane lifts the hem of his shirt, eases it off of him, and tosses it toward the hamper. Predictably, his ribs are a mottled mess of purple and red and some yellow mixed between the splotches, wide and ugly and painfully representative of a vicious check against the boards. Shane doesn’t bother hiding the wince he sucks in between his teeth, but assesses Ilya’s face in the aftermath. “Jesus…”
Ilya doesn’t say anything. Hives dot the narrow spaces between the moles on his back, forming a fucked-up kind of constellation. They’re not too bad yet, the biggest no larger than Shane’s thumbnail, but that’ll change within the hour.
“I’m sorry,” Ilya says.
“For what?”
“Being…” He gestures vaguely, and Shane can’t tell if it’s to replace a word or if Ilya’s just searching for the right thing to say.
He presses a kiss to his jawline, right next to the hive. “You’re not anything right now. That’s the point.”
or, four times I/lya R/ozanov was the most sensitive person in the room, and one time he wasn't alone. 5.6k
truly, this is just an excuse for me to get out all the sappy scenarios bouncing around my brain curtesy of all of your lovely posts. i know multiple of these are inspired by hcs of @perseaphoneaa and @sleptwithinthesun and probably more that i can't remember lol. probably slightly ooc, probably timeline mistakes, but we will just have to deal!! enjoy i/lya being a mess through the years and some people around him cleaning him up with love! with a little kink/honeymoon rhinitis s/hane at the end as a treat :)
Ottawa, 2011
Ilya really needs to start bringing his own fucking toiletries on the road. But, he’s not thinking all that hard when he packs (partly due to the fact that he’s chronically late, even on airport days), just shoving clothes and socks and shoes in his duffle before rushing out just in time to not get left behind.
And, he’s definitely not thinking all that hard after a game, a game they just had their lights knocked out of them, by the way (is that the expression?). All he’s thinking about is getting under the hot, steady stream of water in the hotel shower and washing this night off of his skin. Throughout his rookie season, he’s been mindlessly categorizing the cities he’s been through in many ways: best coffee, hottest women, most people that hate him, and best hotel showers. The hotel they stay at in Ottawa has a shower that cracks the top 3. Maybe top 2.
What he maybe needs to start making a mental list of, though, is which hotel toiletries make him the most miserable. (On second thought, maybe that needs to be a physical list.)
They’re all named stupid English shit he can barely translate or pronounce in the small text on the bottle, like Tropical Oasis or Sandalwood Breeze or Mountain Escape, so he doesn’t even know what’s in the shit that makes him so miserable. He just knows that, at any given hotel, there’s about a 25% chance that whatever tiny little bottles they have innocently sitting in the shower are going to set him off like crazy. (Alright. 33%.)
And, hey. A 25% 33% chance isn’t all that bad considering how badly he feels the need to wash the sweat and grime of the game off his body. And, honestly, it hadn’t happened in a while. Maybe he should’ve taken that as a sign that his luck was running out.
About 45 seconds after Ilya pops the small cap open and starts rubbing the bubbly body wash across his skin, he feels that tell-tale prickle high in his left nostril. The sensation is so sudden, it forces a suprised cough from his lungs as his eyes start to squint shut and his nose scrunches up of it’s own accord.
Somehow, though the echoing sound of himself bouncing around the ceramic walls of the shower, he hears muffled rustling outside the bathroom door.
“Fucking hell, again, Roz?”
Ilya has the sense through this fit to roll his eyes at this. (And then promptly sneeze again.) Cliff has, unfortunately (and embarrassingly) been there for many of Ilya’s nose’s tantrums, especially considering they’re always rooming together on the road.
As mortifying as it can be (like in this moment), Ilya’s grateful it’s him. Marlow’s always been kind to him, seeking him out to start conversation, and always seeming to have a sense of when Ilya’s not quite understanding something. He doesn’t make a big deal of it, which Ilya appreciates. With Marlow’s boisterous, loud kindness, they’ve started a friendship fairly quickly.
“Ah, yes, SehhH?! H’JYSZZCHH! Serenity Mist. Of c-course, I know I am ahH! ahH’yIISHhhuU! snf! allergic to thing named Serenity Mist. How could I forget?” Ilya yells out sarcastically, his accent reverberating across the bathroom. Well, he hoped the sarcasm came across through the non-stop sneezing.
“That’s why you look at the ingredients on the back, rook!”
Ilya does not have the time, energy, or breath at this moment to explain to Cliff that one, he was not thinking hard enough to remember that; two, he’d be lucky if he knew one English word on that ingredient list; and three, he doesn’t even know what the hell’s in this shit that he’s allergic to. So, he just sneezes in response.
A knock at the bathroom door cuts through the noise of his sneezing and the running water. He hears the door crack open and blinks his tears away to see Marlow’s large arm sticking through, holding a white bar of soap.
They’ve done this exact music and dance (he knows he’s not using that one right) so many times, it’s routine. Ilya thinks at this point, Marlow probably brings an extra bar of soap just for him. He’s not going to think too deeply into the warmth that idea spreads through his chest.
Scrubbing roughly at his nose with one hand, his other hand opens the shower door, letting a fresh, cool breeze of air in to scatter goosebumps across his skin. Ilya steps out carefully, droplets of water skittering down his body, leaving little puddles as he pads towards the door.
His nose just can’t help itself, though, especially with the new addition of cold air making his sinuses shiver. “ehH? hiH’JZZSHHuU! hh! DSHHhU!--ehH-EH’TZZSHHuu!” His head snaps down as he shudders through a desperate trio of sneezes, pointedly directed away from Marlow’s arm outstretched in front of him.
“If that was your snot on my arm, Roz, I’m going to kill you,”
“Fuck off. Is not snot. Just water. And Serenity Mist soap, maybe”
He hears Marlow’s deep, booming laugh over the sound of the still-running water. “Fuckin’ Serenity Mist. I’m starting a list so you don’t forget, that’s goin’ at the top,”
Ilya rolls his eyes. Marlow himself will forget to even start said list, he’s sure. “snf! Thanks,” Ilya lets out, grabbing the bar from his hand.
“Gotcha, man. Got Claritin, medicine out here for you, too, once you’re done,”
“I do not--”
“--Take pills, I know. It’s the liquid kind. Figured I should find some after the last time you decided to suffer through a 12-hour allergy attack instead of taking any meds,”
Ilya doesn’t know how to respond in a way that doesn’t reveal that Marlow’s simple gesture is just about the nicest thing someone other than Svetlana’s done for him in a long time. Good thing his nose takes over for him.
“EH! yYISSHHhhUU!”
“Jeeesus, rook, I get it. Go wash all that stuff off, quick, you’re hogging the good water,”
What Marlow means by ‘the good water’, Ilya’s got no idea. And he doesn’t think this is an weird English thing, he thinks it’s a weird Marlow thing.
“Yes, fine, going,” He huffs out, shutting the door and shuffling back in the shower. And, if he’s not as much bothered by all the sneezing after that, well, maybe he’s learned he just needs a good Marlow to take care of him help him out during these reactions to make him feel a tiny bit better.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
2. Sochi, 2014
He’d really tried to be alone. Really, really tried his best. He was pissed, in the worst mood, and just wanted to wallow. Because, really, Latvia? His father was right, it was a disgrace.
Oh, and on top of everything? Losing to Latvia, being a disgrace to his country, yelling at Shane Hollander, and being berated by his father? Ilya was sick. Of course. Maybe it was karma. For failing his country. For being an asshole. He did start to feel that congestion seeping in only one day after their loss.
But, for some reason, Svetlana didn’t want to let him be alone. He tried to tell her not to come around him, that he’d get her sick, that he didn’t want any company. Tried to be an asshole (he felt like he was getting pretty good at that recently). Considering his pounding head was propped up against her side, both of their legs stretched out across her hotel bed…He definitely wasn’t enough of an asshole. Or, he was, and Sveta just didn’t care. Probably that one.
“Damn, Canada is on fire. They’re about to get another power play. No way the U.S. gets through it without Hollander scoring. Maybe twice.”
Ilya groans against her side, muffled by the cotton of her shirt, eyes still squeezed shut. “Sveta, stop talking about-” Shane fucking Hollander. “-hockey. Do we have to watch this?” The Russian consonants fall easily from his lips, even muddled by his congestion.
“Your eyes have been closed the whole time, you’re not even watching.”
“I feel like I am with your constant announcing,”
“I deserve to watch some beautiful hockey when you’re laying there sniffling your germs all over my bed,”
Ilya’s jaw and eyes pop open, squinting against the glow of the TV, shocked expression pointing up at his best friend. “You must be kidding. You practically forced me over here, and now you’re complaining about it?” He can’t help but to sniffle against the congestion building, even knowing he’s proving her point.
A laugh that reminds Ilya of wind chimes falls from her lips. “I wouldn’t mind so much if you actually watched with me. You’re my favorite person to watch hockey with,”
The compliment makes chest feel warm. Or, maybe that’s a fever. “Sveta, take two seconds and imagine why I wouldn’t want to watch Olympic hockey right now,”
“Ilyusha, you’re sick. We always watch hockey when you’re sick,” She points out. And while she’s not wrong…
“Well, I’ve never been sick and lost to the worst fucking country in the Olympics at the same time. This is new territory,”
“Exactly. I figured you’d want to watch some good hockey, since you hadn’t seen any yourself in the past few days,”
The grin across her lips, reserved for when she’s purposefully pushing his buttons, catches his eye. And, he is sick, but hasn’t lost all his reflexes yet.
He swiftly pushes up, rolling himself over her and capturing her wrists in his hands. He shakes her with each word he says, and that wind-chime laugh is already in his ears. “Too far, Sveta, too far! You know I am the best hockey player in the world, admit it!”
“You are, factually, not the best hockey player in the world! Once this game is over, we are going to see which country the best hockey player in the world is from, but he is not from Russia,” Svetlana nods at the television, which Ilya just knows is showing Shane Hollander right now, so he can not turn around. Again, karma is not on his side.
And he knows this for absolute certain because now is when his nose decides it has had enough quiet time.
“Hh? heEH! nNGgtt!--nnGgkT! hh! nNGT’tshh!” He ducks off to the side, stifling three sneezes in quick succession as best he can hands-free. Ilya rolls off Svetlana, scrubbing at his nose in the aftermath, and pointedly not looking at her.
“Ilya,” Fuck, he knows that tone. “Don’t do that,”
He rolls his eyes, grumbling softly. “You were right there. What, you wanted me to sneeze all over y- hhn! nGKT’Chh! -snf! you?”
She swiftly ignores his excuse. “I thought we stopped doing that.”
A scoff leaves the back of his throat, and he ignores how just that slight vibration felt sore on the way up. “We? I did not know you, too, had a nose that was broken a million times and can not stop sneezing at every little thing,”
His attempts at distracting and baiting her are obviously not working. “I have not heard you do that in a long time, Ilyusha. Since you were a teenager, around your father,”
He groans, obviously not escaping this conversation. And, she is trying to be sweet. He knows this, even if his melting-fever-brain is telling him that she’s simply being annoying and overreacting about holding in his sneezing of all things. “It’s just…Being back here. You know. Around everything. I guess just makes me think I have to…go back to that,”
She hums softly, and he can feel her eyes on him, even though he’s deliberately avoiding hers. “You know you do not ever. Have to go back to that, yes?”
And, with his nose and brain already clogged, he can not start to release everything right now, that he does have to be tied here in some way, in some way, because of his mother’s grave, his father’s illness, his Russian passport and citizenship, his niece…He already feels pressure behind his eyes just at the thought of it all.
So, instead, he goes with: “Yes, I know. I know, Sveta,” Finally, his eyes meet hers.
Another set of wide eyes scan across his face, full lips pressed together. With a soft breath, she hooks an arm around his shoulders, tugging him down to lay in her lap. He maneuvers his body with her, his head instinctively nuzzling deeper into the comfort of her warm legs as her lithe fingers tangle in his hair.
Of course, the change of direction has his sinuses protesting yet again. His swimming brain doesn’t notice until he’s hitched a few times, the bridge of his nose crinkling tight. His instinct is to bring two fingers up to his nose, but he only makes it a few inches before he feels a soft, warm hand against his arm.
“Ilya,” And it’s all she has to say.
“hhiH! EH! dJJSHHhh! ehH’TSHhh! hh! yyISHhhhUU!” He still brings his elbow up, but more to try to save Sveta’s legs from the spray than to try to hold in the expulsions.
“Bless you,” She hums. And, maybe as a little reward for letting go (of more things than just his sneezes, she thinks), she hands him the remote for the TV.
He’ll be asleep in minutes anyway, and then she can go back to watching her hockey.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
3. Ottawa, 2018
He blames Shane not being here. If Shane had been here, he’d be the one insisting to man the sauce pan and stir. Ilya’s been told one too many times he over-mixes. Or, at the very least, he’d have had some brain to maybe inch Ilya away while adding the spices.
Maybe he’s just pissy because he knows if Shane were here watching this all go down, he’d get to see those sprinkled freckled cheeks turn adorably red. And, if he was lucky, see Shane’s little eyebrows do their little motion as he tried to think of a valid excuse to drag Ilya back to his room and kiss the shit out of him.
Either way, definitely not Shane’s fault. He does wish he was here to see it, though.
“ehH?! eHH’DJJSHHhuU!”
It’s really Ilya’s obliviousness’ fault at this point. He knows his nose well enough, he should’ve known to make himself scarce when Yuna had mentioned she was adding the spices. But, to be fair, it usually wasn’t this bad. Or, was it? And he was just remembering wrong?
He was 75% sure it wasn’t usually this bad.
“heH! hH’DZZSHH! ehH’TSZHHhuU!!”
Blinking through streaming eyes, he tries to pull himself back together. But, his lashes are fluttering shut again within a few moments. Whatever steam that was rising from the pan, mixing all those spice particles and throwing them up at him had his nostrils prickling and his eyes squinting in irritation. Fuck, he hates that this had to happen around…
“God, sweetheart, you sound like you’re going for the record! Come on, sit, sit,”
Yuna.
He absently feels a small hand against his back, gentle pressure urging him towards what he can only imagine is the kitchen table. His eyes are apparently just as irritated as his nose.
The hands move to his shoulders, pushing him down against a hard chair in the kitchen. He wants to tell her she shouldn’t be so close, that he’s really fine, but, again.
“I-- iiH! yyIZZSSHhhU!”
Hard to do while your immune system is attacking itself. He coughs irritatedly when he finally gets a damn breath that doesn’t immediately feel like an incoming sneeze, wincing as he feels Yuna’s presence still hovering. Two fingers instinctively raise, and he pauses half-way to his face with a roll of his red, watering eyes.
And that, that, is something he can actually blame Shane for. And Svetlana. Making him feel all safe, all comfortable to be imperfect, to show his ‘emotions’ and ‘feelings’. Insisting he just ‘lets it all out’ - sneezes included.
Assholes, the both of them. He was pretty sure even if he wanted to hold in his sneezes like he used to, he wouldn’t be able to. Without significant effort. Those motherfuckers Pavloved him. (He’d been proud using that term for the first time to Shane).
“Bless you, honey,”
Fuck, he’d forgotten about Yuna. His frame twitches with surprise as he feels paper in his free hand. Thankfully, the one not attached to the elbow he’s been sneezing into for dear life.
Blindly, he fumbles to press the bundle of tissues to his nose, mopping up moisture he doesn’t want to think about the origins of…Eyes or nose…? Just pretending it’s all from the eyes.
“Yuna, I’m so- soHH! ahH’DJJSSHhuU! snf!“
“No need to apologize, Ilya, I promise,” Magic mom intuition apparently knew where he was going with that one. “Just blow when you can to get all that stuff out,”
At this point, Ilya isn’t sure if the flush high on his cheekbones is from the embarrassment of this happening in front of Shane’s mother of all people, or from exertion from sneezing so much. He starts feeling that itch in his chest, that he needs to hold it in, needs to just not be so fucking disgusting--
“No, no, I cannoht--eHG’TZSHHhhU! I shhhould just go outside for a s-sehH! second, clean--”
She cuts him off swiftly with a hand on his shoulder. “Ilya, honey, I don’t trust you could make it outside with your eyes watering like that. It’s not going to get better unless you blow,”
In the end, it’s not really fully his choice. A particularly desperate double has him crunching down into the tissues tented over two hands, burying his overactive nose in the folds. The sneezes have him him sniffling frantically in the aftermath, feeling wetness snaking through every part of his sinuses. He feels the need to blow just to clear that sensation, immediately.
And, loathe as he was to do that with Yuna right there (close enough she was touching his back, by the way), the next breath he takes in post-nose blow is the clearest breath he’s taken in minutes. Shit, did the Hollander genetics just have it written in that they had to be right all the time?
After double, triple checking that he was sufficiently clean, he finally lowered the tissues from his nose with a sniffle, chancing a watery glance up at Yuna. And with that soft, fond smile she was giving him, well, no one could blame him if he saw a glimmer of Irina. Or if he had some water in his eyes having nothing to do with the spices.
Yuna chuckled gently, dragging her hand across the side of his cheek, smoothing down the curls by his ear. “Maybe we find a new kitchen job for you, huh? At least while I’m finishing up this part,” She suggests, kindness and a little amusement in her tone.
“Or, maybe…You know, because I am so helpful and I do the worst job that you do not want to do…snff! I go help David finish his puzzle,”
A bright laugh escapes her lips. “God, yes please. He’s too close, you know he’s not going to want to come until he’s finished--”
“--And, then we will be having dinner at 9:30pm. Yes, yes, I will go save family dinner from puzzle master,” Ilya stands, shoving a few clean tissues in his pocket, just in case, as he begins walking to the other room.
“This is why you’re my favorite son!” Yuna calls out after him.
“I am telling your least favorite son you said this!” He calls back, over his shoulder. At the domesticity of it all, feels a sofy, mushy feeling in his chest, something he’s come to learn almost feels like healing.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
4. Ottawa, 2021
“So, it’s already recording, we’ll edit down all the content later, all you’ve gotta worry about is making sure the guys are in frame, audible, and making good content. Which, really, is never much of a problem with this grou--”
“Hey, what’s going on with them?”
Harris looked up and blinked, obviously too engrossed in his explanation. Or, maybe he was just too good at drowning the sound of his idiots out, at this point. It was his new social media assistant’s first day, hired to help take the load off of him with all the content and PR needs the Centaurs had. Well, it looked like she’d be starting off with a bang.
“That’s two! And, looks like we’re headed for--”
“hiEH?! ehH’TSZHHUU! hUH! DJjjSHH--EH’YISHhhUU!”
“Three! Fou--Five!”
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Harris muttered, unable to keep a lick of fond exasperation out of his tone. “They have this thing--”
“snf!! oh- aH! dyY’ISHHhhuU! kH! hh’TZSHHUUu!”
“Oh, and boys, the gloves are coming off! If we’ve learned anything this season, if the gloves come off, it’s at least another four to go!” Wyatt’s voice rung out, obviously emulating one of the many announcers they’d heard throughout their years in the league.
“ShhuuH! uH’DJJZHH-uu! Shut the hell uuHP’IISCHHhU!, ugh--Hazy,”
And, sure enough, at the middle of the ice, was Ilya Rozanov, shaking out his hands to send his gloves flying. All the while, sneezing his fucking head off, bringing his newly freed fingers to scrub viciously at his nose.
Harris shook his head, glancing back at his new partner-in-crime. “They’ve got this thing, with Ilya and his sneezing. Something about being out in the cold on the ice for this long sets him off, and every time he starts going off like this, they start counting to see if he’ll beat the record,”
He receives a raised brow. “And, what’s the record?”
“Ladies and gentleman, the Russian cursing has emerged! We’re in the home stretch! Will tonight be the night Mr. Rozanov beats his previously set record?”
“Who’s keeping count?” Bood asks, glancing around before clapping Luca on the back, watching the rookie tick one more finger up each time Roz--
“ehH’JJSHhhhuh! snff! Ohh, and you all like to have biih! iH’TShhhUU!-ngh, big ego about being kindest team in the league, so-called ‘good guys’, what will f-ahH! hH’ATTSHhh! fuck! What will fans do -snf! When they know their team is full of ahhAH! adD’JJSHhhUU! assholes?”
The players are all huddled around laughing, but Harris’s eyes drift to Troy (maybe they’ve been on him the whole time, unconsciously). He watches on as Luca, still diligently counting on his fingers, leans over and mutters something to Troy, which promptly makes him cackle so hard, Harris thinks he might double over. He isn’t surprised, Luca is sneaky-funny.
The group's collective attention splits to Troy for the moment, a few eyes still glancing back at Ilya as he continues sneezing and sniffling. It takes Troy a few moments to spit out what’s making him laugh so hard, Luca innocently standing beside him with a knowing smile.
“He’s mic’d up today--!”
The realization that this whole interaction is being recorded with the little microphone attached to Ilya’s jersey causes the guys to fall into hysterics, all thoughts of counting for the record tabled.
Harris can’t help but to chuckle himself, watching as, of course, Rozanov’s watery, blinking eyes flit around to land on him.
Skating, sneezing, and ripping off a hot mic all at the same time was pretty impressive, in Harris’ book, even if said hot mic was getting shoved back into his hand by a very large, very sneezy hockey player.
“Harris, I promise, if I see that shihH!--shit on Instagram...hhUH! uH’DJJSHhUU! --or Twitter or whatever Centaur page, I will make your PR life living hell. I will Tweet about favorite sex position, and comment on stupid American political posts I don’t uhh!--understand… ehH’JJZSHHuUU! and post not-classy ‘thirst trap’ of me with ‘too much skin’ and ‘too low angle’--”
Now, that last part, was a direct quote from Harris. He really didn’t think he’d be at a point in his life where he was vetting hockey player thirst traps. “You already do half of those things!”
“I can make it worse,” Ilya threatened, with not too much success considering the sniffling and the pawing at his red nose was cutting through his intimidation. It was making the Russian look, for lack of a better term, adorable.
“I saw extra tissues in the supply cabinet if you’re out in your locker,” Harris sighed, ignoring the captain’s empty threats, switching off the tiny mic in his hands and sitting it on the table. He’d seen this happen enough times to know how to handle Ilya in the aftermath.
As if he wasn’t still recovering from an all-intensive sneeze-attack, Ilya gave an enthusiastic nod at Harris, pounding him on the back thankfully before ducking forwards with another sneeze. “snff--Thank you!”
Harris shook his head fondly, glancing back out at the guys still on the ice, still laughing and shoving each other around. And, if some clips of that video made it into Ilya’s birthday post that year, well…It was Troy’s idea.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
+1. Montreal, 2016
Shane stumbles into the bathroom, feeling all-too lightheaded to do anything more than just go through the motions. Grab paper towels, turn sink on, run towels under cold water, press on face…
A shaky breath escapes his chest. The cloud in his mind is slowly dispersing, allowing more thoughts in full sentences. God, he thinks, flipping the paper towels and pressing the cool side to the back of his neck, of course this would happen. He’s either severely angered some god looking down on him, or he’s their favorite human on the planet. He really can’t tell which one, because--
“hyEH! EH’DJJZHHhhU!! hh! TSHHhhhyUUU!”
Because that. Shane shifts his eyes up to look through the mirror, the door behind him swinging open to reveal a familiar blonde Russian. Of course.
“hh-hiH! yyYIZSSHHUUu!”
A sneezing, familiar blonde Russian.
Shane feels that same stream of heat he’s been trying so hard to ignore for the length of the shoot trickle low in his stomach. He sighs out a flustered frustrated breath.
Maybe Shane should be Ilya’s manager, because he’s positive that he could’ve told the man this would be a bad idea. Even in his fairly limited in-person interactions with Ilya in the past seven years, Shane had quickly picked up on the fact that the man’s nose was overly sensitive. To seemingly everything.
The cold air of the rink, the pollen in Canada, the cleaning products used in hotels, and yes, what seemed like anything scented. So, why Ilya thought doing a cologne ad with 3 other hockey players was a good idea, Shane had no clue. He must’ve known it would end up like this. With him sneezing his head off throughout the shoot, and Shane attempting to not look like he was getting harder and harder with each and every sneeze.
Well, hopefully he didn’t know that second part. But, that first part, Ilya must’ve known.
“snf! I do not think you are so much of a polite Canadian, after all,” Shane blinks in surprise, glancing up at Ilya though the mirror as he spoke his first true words since entering the bathroom. Even through the reflection in the mirror, he must see the confusion written across Shane’s expression, because Ilya takes his pause to continue.
“I have sneeze attack for whole shoot, sneeze ten, twenty, thirty times, and do not hear one bless you from Shane Hollander,” Big, brown eyes can’t help but to track large Ilya’s hand as he brings it up to scrub at his nose, sniffling uselessly before he continues. “Heard from all the other players, from nice producers and camera people…Is polite for at least one ‘bless you’, if you did not want to bless for the other twenty-nine,”
Shane’s breath hitches deep in his throat, cheekbones rosy as he turns around to face his ‘rival’, the marble countertop of the sink cool against his back. It’s about the only part of him that feels cool right now. Since he can’t think straight, instinctive words he never has to think about fall out of his mouth without permission: “Fuck off, Rozanov,”
And, right on time, Ilya ducks forwards with another triplet of sneezes, aiming towards his arm. Shane is decidedly not noticing that he half-misses his arm, and can see the evidence of that in the air between them…Fuck, he’s noticing, he’s definitely noticing, and he feels a pulse of energy between his legs. And a matching prickle high in his sinuses. No, no, they were not about to do this here.
Ilya is sniffling wetly, blinking through irritation, his eyes falling on Shane again, flitting across his expression. God, is it possible that this allergic irritation makes his eyes look even more mesmerizing? “What, you are…What is it called? When you are scared of germs?”
“...Germaphobic?”
Ilya nods. “Ah, yes, you are germaphobic?” The way he says it, all stretched out and broken up, makes it sound like he’s pronouncing each sound alone, making sure he’s repeating it just as Shane told him.
“Wha-no!” He’s getting whiplash from this conversation, more to do with the incessant sneezing from the Russian than any type of language barrier.
Shane’s gaze trails from Ilya’s eyes to his nose, twitching and flaring seemingly of its own accord, definitely without Ilya’s permission. Shane takes a short sniffle in himself, wrenching his nose to the side instinctively.
“So, then, if you are not germaphobic,” his accent sounds smoother this time across the unfamiliar word, “thehh…thEH! eEH’DJJZHHHUUuu! snf! Hoo…‘bless me’,” Ilya blesses himself in an expecting tone, brows raised and gazing over at Shane like he was waiting for him to do the same. Of course, leave it to Ilya Rozanov to turn this into some kind of power-play dynamic. He didn’t even know what he was getting himself into.
At Rozanov’s low words, Shane gives another sharp, irritated sniffle before answering. He could do this, he could get a handle on it and do it without setting off that godforsaken reflex. “hh! Bl…Bless you--hh’TSHh--iIH’HTSHhh! oh--ehh’SHhh!--uhh…”
Fuck.
Slowly straightening up from where he had ducked into his wrist, Shane’s eyes rise to meet Rozanov’s face. Hell, and of course Rozanov’s looking at him all confused, because the only times the man has heard him sneeze like that were when…
“...What, you are coming now? Untouched?” The ‘again’ is unspoken, but implied.
Cheeks dusted pink, thumbing shyly at his nose, Shane replies with a shake of his head and a roll of his eyes. He can feel the pink turning into red, fast, and promptly ignores it. “No! Fuck off,” How eloquent, Shane.
Ilya raises a brow. “Well, you are not feeling scared or phobic, that is for sure. Opposite, maybe,” He’s looking curious now, which isn’t a good thing for either of them. For Shane, mostly. A large frame and blonde curls move closer into Shane’s space, bright eyes boring into his. Shane can feel warm breath against his skin, and he shakes his head needlessly.
“We can’t. Not here,” Shane insists.
“Hollander. Shoot is over. Everyone is leaving,” Shane can feel his skin vibrating where Ilya’s body is ghosting over his skin, seemingly just getting closer and closer.
“N-Not everyone, half the crew is probably still here!” He watches Ilya rolls his eyes, and Shane knows he’s probably about to call him boring again--
“Half the c-crew is ehh! exaggeration, and anyway, I locked the bathroom d…door on my my! iIH! iiH’DJJZHHUU! hHEH’EHHJJZZHuU!”
Shane tries. He really tries not to, but with Ilya so close he can practically feel the sneezes reverberating through his frame, Shane’s really got no choice in the matter. He feels his cock twitch, and his nose twitch in tandem.
“hhN! nN’TSCHh!--iiHTSHh! iiH! ih’TSHhhh!!--ngh…”
Ilya blinks up at Shane with a sniffle, straightening back to full height in the aftermath of his own sneezes. Understanding smooths out his features, and Shane mutters a curse under his breath.
“...Oh, it is this! Is my sneezing that is making you…Well. Sneezy, too,”
Fuck. Within their first two times together, Ilya had quickly put together that Shane couldn’t help but to sneeze when he was turned on. To be fair, it was a little hard not to put that together when he was a sneezy mess every time he came in front of Ilya.
What Shane was carefully sure that Ilya hadn’t put together in all of their rendezvous was…The other part. The…kink of it all. And, he’d been doing a fine job at it so far, he thought! But, with Rozanov sneezing so desperately like that, inches away from him…Shane’s own nose obviously felt the need to betray his true feelings on the matter.
Shane scrunches his eyes shut, letting out a shaky breath and dropping his forehead to clunk against his blonde counterpart’s shoulder. “Oh god…” Aaand, the lightheadedness is back.
His reaction is apparently enough to confirm Ilya’s thoughts, and to his credit, he really only takes what feels like a few moments to blink in surprise down at Shane before he springs into action.
“No, no, do not overthink, is perfect, actually,” Large, callused hands grip at Shane’s face, gently guiding him out from his hiding spot against Ilya’s own shoulder. “This is probably easiest way I could ever turn you on. Is adorable, really,”
Shane blinks, cheeks blazing. “I-It is not adorable,” And, because he can’t help himself, “And you doing it over and over again is not helping,”
His lips twitch up with a soft shrug, as if to say ‘I can’t help it!’, his smirk dangerously attractive. “It is adorable, Hollander. And, you know, kind of works out. snf! I was going to throw all these stupid cologne samples away after the shoot, but…” The Russian trails off with a tilt of his head, eyes boring into Shane’s.
“I think I will keep them around. The scent is kind of growing on me,”
📯🦵: Especially because S/hane is polite and Canadian lol or or or!!! Hear me out they are on a family vacation and I/lyas allergies are insane and Yuna and David keeps blessing him and S/hane is fidgeting so hard he has to excuse himself and I/lya eventually follows him to the bathroom 😏
Ohh anon your brain is so amazing! I think it’s such a good idea, I can literally see it, maybe even Y/una and D/avid are confused because S/hane is usually so polite and nice to people, and it’s I/lya who has sneezed about 20 times in 5 minutes and S/hane hadn’t blessed him ONCE!
But S/hane is also literally red in the face and blushing and trying to act very casual as I/lya stifles another double into his shoulder
Okay this wouldn't leave me alone. May I present, fresh off the keyboard, 0% proofread, my first fic in a decade (1/probably 2):
The four of them are having breakfast at a cafe on Yuna's list to try, just a few blocks from their hotel. Ilya angles himself away from Yuna and David again, aiming over his right shoulder. "hh'NNtsch! ngxt!" A quivery inhale, then his customary third. "ahh?-kNGTch'huhh!"
By Shane's count, that makes seven since they were seated three minutes ago. Ilya had been fine the first couple days they'd been here, but something must have bloomed, or maybe the direction of the wind had changed, because the sneezing started yesterday afternoon and hasn't stopped since.
"Bless you!" Yuna says, David a half second behind.
"Spasibo," Ilya murmurs, then sniffles wetly and roughly scrubs at his nose with a loose fist. Shane, sitting shoulder to shoulder with his boyfriend, is close enough to hear the resulting squelches and clicks. His open hand on Ilya's thigh clenches into a fist and his face feels hot. His mom is giving him a Look, clearly expecting Shane to chime in, but he can't. He can barely bless Ilya when it's just the two of them. In public? In front of his parents? Jesus Christ.
"Honey, are you sure you're all right?" Yuna asks, expression concerned.
"Is just allergies," Ilya says dismissively, "I will be fine. Shane takes good care of me." He starts to flash Shane a slightly wicked smile, but in what feels like slow motion to Shane, Ilya's gaze turns hazy, his lips part, and he pitches forward towards Shane.
"hhdjsschmpf!" It's not so much stifled as much as muffled into Shane's shoulder, which tells Shane that this sneeze was stronger than Ilya had expected. "ehh'TSCHHxtt!" A pause, a few hitching breaths. Shane's quads start quivering without his permission. "hhh? hhah! aHHh-! ...nngt'kTSCH-kNTschh-zZCHhhiew! " The force of them resonates through Shane's body and he can feel the effort Ilya's putting in to partially suppress them.
Ilya presses his face into Shane's trap, mouth moving in what Shane guesses is an unvoiced "fuck me," before he straightens with a few damp sniffs. Shane clenches and unclenches his toes inside his sneakers.
"God bless you!" Yuna says, stressing the 'bless,' and overlapping with David's plain but no less heartfelt, "Bless you." Shane, meanwhile, digs a couple tissues from his pockets and puts them into Ilya's hand (because if he knows his boyfriend -- and he does -- Ilya doesn't have any). At least he can do that without spontaneously combusting, as long as he stares at the table the whole time.
The sound of Ilya softly blowing his nose tips Shane's restless energy over the edge and he stands without thinking.
"Uh, excuse me," he blurts, face probably on fire, and makes for the bathroom.
h/eated r/ivalry fic oh yeah. this is a fill of prompt three from this ask:
i've definitely taken some creative liberty with i/lya's first year playing for the MLH and went overboard with the plot-to-snz ratio, so. whoops ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ actually, please take the keyboard away from me.
anyway! here is 4.2K of i/lya being allergic to canada and not really knowing what to do about that, and c/liff being (rightfully) concerned. it's definitely unrealistic, but i couldn't stop writing the last scene once i'd started it, so :)
Canada, in Ilya’s opinion, is a terrible country.
It is boring, for one. Ilya will easily say the people in America are more exciting, particularly in the larger cities. Canadians, in contrast, are too polite. Their temperaments are probably as soft as the mattress in the Raiders’ hotel in St. Paul, and they keep smiling at him, even though they do not know him. He cannot understand why they act like they do.
(He is mostly over the culture shock. America had been an adjustment, but he does think he handled it well. Boston is a rowdy city, and they love him. You’re a Masshole at heart, one of his teammates had told him with a grin. You’ll fit right in, Rozanov.
Ilya did not want to ask him what he meant by “Masshole.” He could guess at it, sure, but it still did not make sense. Marleau had seen the confusion on his face, and leaned over to quietly explain it to him. Ilya would consider that to be the beginning of their friendship.)
The other awful thing about Canada is the pollen. When he was in the country for both Prospect tournaments, it was late December. Everything that could have bloomed was dead. But they are deep into March, and Ilya wrinkles his nose the second he steps off the team bus that brought them to the hotel.
“Not to your liking?” Marleau, three steps ahead of him, raises an eyebrow.
Ilya grunts in response, slinging a duffel bag over his shoulder. His gear, along with everyone else’s, is being transported to the rink for tomorrow’s practice and evening game, and the bag would be inaccessible until morning. Ilya had discovered that at their first away game of the season, and Marleau had taken pity on him and started explaining how the Raiders worked. And while Ilya does not enjoy being coddled like a child, he appreciates Marleau’s assistance too much to ask him to stop.
“Toronto’s nice,” Marleau goes on, oblivious to Ilya’s lack of interest. “Very multicultural.” He gestures vaguely at the surrounding area, then to Ilya, who suppresses a wince. It definitely is not unusual for international hockey players to get scooped into North American leagues, but the reminder is not necessary. His chest tightens further with displacement.
Thankfully, Marleau seems to get the hint, and just claps him on the back instead of saying anything more. Ilya continues not flinching.
As usual, they end up rooming together. While the MLH has a lot of money, they do not seem to have an endless amount, and the easiest way to solve that is, apparently, having them share hotel rooms. Ilya does not trust his team quite yet—their number is greater than his team back at home, and they all speak English at him, often too quickly for his still-developing skill to keep up with—but Marleau is patient. And does not care when Ilya takes a moment to translate his speech back to Russian in his head, come up with a response, and then translate that over to English before opening his mouth. That, in his opinion, is a good sign. He has spent more than enough time around impatient men.
So, he does not protest when Marleau claims the bed closest to the door, even though he will not sleep well if he is vulnerable in the room. He crosses behind the elder, puts his bag on the ground next to the farther bed, and rubs at his nose. Then, he casts a glance to Marleau for guidance, because he still doesn’t know what to do with himself if they’re not in an arena.
Marleau laughs. The sound would likely startle Ilya if he was not looking directly at him. “Come on, Rozanov,” he says. “Let’s go find dinner.”
-
Taking Rozanov out for a meal is always interesting. Cliff’s been following his career since the International Prospect Cup in 2008, right when he started playing for the Raiders at the ripe old age of twenty-five. Two years later, he’s thrilled that the Raiders actually managed to draft him. Letting a rookie play as the starting center is probably the best decision the franchise made in a long time.
Plus, he definitely acts like it in the public eye. Brazen and blunt and brilliant, Rozanov can attract attention as easily as a moth flies to a flame. It’s a good reputation to have, honestly, because when he chooses to withdraw, he’s unrecognizable.
Cliff is, admittedly, worried about the kid. For all the shit Rozanov can talk on the ice, he’s quiet in the locker room unless someone expects something from him. Which, to be fair, is most of the time, so Cliff is pretty sure he’s the only one on the Raiders who realizes how quiet Ilya can be. For example, now; they’re practically sitting knee-to-knee at a bartop table outside, enjoying the sunlight while it lasts and hoping to have some privacy. Rozanov’s eyes are flicking over the menu, his brow furrowed with confusion that he definitely doesn’t realize he’s showing.
“What’re you thinking?” Cliff asks. Rozanov glances up, his expression shuttering back to something neutral. Cliff sighs internally.
“The wings,” he replies.
Rozanov’s had them once before, if Cliff remembers correctly. Vic and Brad had dragged the kid out after their first win of the season, since he’d scored two of their three goals. Rozanov had been thrilled, eagerly joshing and shoving at the rest of the team and picking food off of their plates instead of ordering for himself. No one had protested, obviously—it’s commonplace, and they usually cut the international guys some slack in the beginning anyway—but Cliff’s pretty sure it’s because Rozanov’s only been in North America for a few months; he probably still can’t understand half the menu.
But, fair enough. Why is their burger called “The Gobbfather”? They’re in Canada.
“Regular or spicy?”
“Uh—” Rozanov pauses, rubbing at his nose. His gaze unfocuses, and Cliff’s about to ask if he’s okay when he twists, hiking a shoulder up, and his whole torso jerks downward. “nNTsc’hyh!” His breath hitches again, and Cliff watches as his eyes pinch shut with another three spasms in quick succession as he gets his elbow up, relaxes for a moment, and then shudders with a final double.
“Bless you,” he says. “Times, what, six?”
Predictably, Rozanov ignores him. Except, it’s not just to not acknowledge it, it’s so that he can stay facing away from Cliff, as if he’s unsure if he’s done.
Fascinating. Surely not what Cliff would have bet on being his weakness.
Finally, the kid opens his eyes again. There’s apprehension in his gaze for half a second, but it dissipates when he catches on Cliff. He sits up straight, clears his throat, and says, “Sorry.”
Cliff waves a hand. “Roz, if you think that’s worth apologizing for, then you have no idea how North American hockey works.”
That wins him a little smile. “We were not very sanitary back in Russia, either,” he says.
“I’m sure you weren’t,” Cliff responds, then drops the topic. “Back to your wings. Spicy? You have spice in Russia, right? Like, in the—borscht?” He cringes at himself. Probably should have done some research beforehand…
Christ have mercy, Rozanov actually seems amused. “We have spice, yes, but Russians do not really…” he gestures vaguely, “make use of it. Borscht is, uh, tangy? Like…”
“Sour?”
“Yes, sour.” Rozanov’s face scrunches as he says it, like it’s still not the word he wants, but Cliff isn’t a mindreader.
“Wings’ll be tangy,” he says, and Rozanov nods. The server arrives to take their order less than a minute later, and most of their meal passes in silence.
-
Ilya wakes just as the sun is beginning to filter through the curtains to an unbearable itch crawling around his sinuses. He barely has time to sit up and cup his hands around his face before he’s juddering into them, touching the tip of his tongue against his front teeth and stifling the first seven in sudden succession. He gasps, throwing his head back as his breath catches once, twice, and then he dives back into his palms for the next… one? No, there’s the second, and the consecutive triple. Balance restored.
He can never tell where it’s going to end up. He’s never sneezed just one time in his life, but the patterning switches between groups of three to four, though they rarely cluster together in a manner that is easy for him to predict. His father hated it, and Ilya does not want to know what Marleau will think if he sees the true severity.
Oh. And the itch rises again. Ilya presses his tongue against the roof of his mouth to try and hold it back, but his breath hitches regardless of the effort. He barely has enough time to lift the comforter before he’s sneezing again. It is far too early, and he cannot muster the willpower to stifle them fully.
“ngt’CHh–tsZCH’yh! nTCHshh’eu! N–nuh! iHhy’KTtch!” He can’t help the whine that slips into the last one, nor the way it nearly escapes his fragile control. Ilya curses into the fabric, wiping at his nose with it before pulling away and sniffling wetly. Eugh.
“Shit, bless you.” Marleau’s voice is groggy, but he has definitely been awake for longer than Ilya. He is sitting up in his bed when Ilya looks at him, book in hand, eyes pinched.
Ilya freezes.
His chest lurches with fear, and before he can process it, he tosses the comforter aside to bolt for the bathroom. The door shuts behind him with a violence Ilya does not allow himself to display off the ice. A part of him is waiting for Marleau to burst in and berate him, even though he is not in Russia. His brain is aware of that fact, but his body refuses to relax.
A minute passes, and Marleau is quiet. From what Ilya can hear, he is still in bed.
He is better than many of his teammates, in that way.
Ilya gathers his composure enough to blow his nose with some of the toilet roll and check on the hives that must have started developing overnight. There are only a few of them, clusters of bumps on his stomach and shoulders and one on his back. They are manageable in their current state, but it will not take long before they spread.
He sighs, dropping his shirt. He will deal with them later. He rubs at his nose once more to try and kill the prickle lurking there.
Finally opening the door earns him a bottle to the chest, and Ilya almost misses it through his flinch. Marleau nods at it, and Ilya turns it over to look at the label. Allegra, it reads.
“What is this?” he asks.
“Antihistamine. It’ll help with your symptoms, since you’re apparently allergic to Canada.”
Ilya shakes the bottle, then his head. “I do not take pills.”
“It won’t do anything but help you. This isn’t the drowsy kind.”
“I do not take pills,” Ilya says again, and tosses the bottle back to him.
“Christ, Rozanov, they don’t make this in a kid’s syrup or whatever shit you’d prefer,” Marleau groans. “Just take the medicine.”
Ilya sets his jaw. “No.”
He glares back at Marleau when the older player tries to stare him into submission, and eventually, he gives up. “Fine! Whatever. Don’t complain when Coach makes you take it later.”
Ilya opens his mouth to protest, only to have to turn away. It is thankfully just a triple, and with Marleau right in front of him, he squashes them all into painful silence.
“And don’t hold them in. You’re going to rupture an eardrum.”
Ilya’s eyebrows narrow further, and Marleau puts his hands up in mock-surrender. But even then, his gaze tracks Ilya around the room as he gathers his clothing, and eventually, Ilya goes into the bathroom again to change. He does not need Marleau seeing the hives and forcing the pills down his throat.
-
The game ends at 3–2 in favor of Boston, and despite being inside for most of the day, Ilya’s sinuses feel about ready to explode. They’re stuffier than they should be, after how much he was sneezing on the ice. Granted, he was stifling—he did not want the cameras to pick up the sight of him rendered so helpless—but Marleau kept looking at him and whispering to whichever teammates had noticed how badly he was playing when they were on the bench together.
To anyone else, he might have just seemed tired. A bit slower than usual, a bit sloppier. It is not as if he forgot how to play hockey; the sport is branded into his body. But he was not playing like Ilya Rozanov, and he can already hear the commentary in his head:
And let’s discuss Rozanov’s performance tonight! Talk about a lack of discipline; Rozanov clearly needs to spend more time on the ice.
He’s definitely not showing himself to be worthy of starting. We were told he was lazy, and maybe he’s finally given up on disproving the idea.
Maybe he should have just stayed in Russia. After all, Hollander’s beating him in goals.
Marleau catches up to him in the tunnel. Ilya’s helmet is still on, visor down, hoping that it is enough to hide the slight puffiness of his eyes. “Are you holding up alright?”
Ilya keeps his gaze trained straight ahead.
“Rozanov, I’m not trying to—I’m just worried,” Marleau goes on, grabbing Ilya’s shoulder to stop him from continuing after the rest of their teammates. Ilya comes to a dead stop. “Listen, kid, you’re having a bad reaction. Seriously, if you’re not going to take the meds, please let me check on you.”
“Marleau,” Ilya says, then coughs to clear his throat. He tugs off his helmet and tucks it underneath his right arm. “I am fine. Stop worrying.”
“I have to worry about you, since you’re clearly not doing it.”
“Why does everybody insist on caring about me?” Ilya snaps, shrugging Marleau’s hand off his shoulder and striding down the hallway.
Marleau walks after him, of course. It is his locker room, too. “Because, Rozanov. You—you’re worth caring about.”
Ilya snorts derisively. The action causes his nose to spasm with the oncoming itch, and he just gets his left elbow to his face before folding in half and stifling a sneeze. Then another. And a third, fourth, and fifth, tripping over each other. The sixth and seventh thin the congestion in his sinuses, and by the ninth, his nose is dripping onto his sleeve. The next three only make the matter worse, and by the time he is finished, he does not want to lower his arm.
“Christ, kid,” Marleau comments. He pauses in the corridor so that he does not pass Ilya when his arm stays up, peeking over his elbow. “Rozanov?”
“I, um, need the… little face paper,” he mumbles. He’s embarrassed, and English is slipping through his fingers with the stress. “The—serviette. Napkin. Fuck.”
Marleau cringes. “Alright, come on.”
He guides Ilya to the locker room by the elbow. Any protests Ilya might have had dissolve in his mouth with the threat of another sneezing fit, and he focuses his attention on suppressing the urge instead of the surprised gazes of his teammates as he allows Marleau to drag him past. Marleau stops at their lockers, reaching into the overhead cabinet and pulling out a box of tissues, right. He plucks a handful out and shoves them into Ilya’s unoccupied hand.
“Are you going to live if I leave you alone for three minutes?” he asks. Ilya nods, then waits for him to leave before lowering his arm and wiping at his nose before quietly blowing it into the already-damp wad. He grabs another couple, folds them over, and wipes at the sleeve of his jersey next. It is enough for now; the jersey needs to go into the wash anyway.
Now that he is off the ice, Ilya can feel the full effect of the allergic reaction he is having. His eyes are starting to swell, the back of his throat aches, and his nose has not stopped dripping since morning practice.
He glares at Feller, who is still looking at him with wide eyes, and the older goalie just gives him a pitying glance that only makes Ilya more upset at the whole situation. What is it with these Americans and their unnecessary concern? Ilya turns his back on the rest of the room, methodically pulling off his gear until he is down to his athletic shirt and compression pants. Then, he strips out of his shirt, gritting his teeth against the sensation of the snug fabric brushing against his inflamed skin. The sight is as he expected; mottled patches of angry pink are raised all over his torso, and there are more he cannot see on his back. The worst one, winding across his right side, is nearly half as long as his forearm and wraps around the majority of his ribcage.
Ilya sighs. He cannot even say he is surprised.
-
“Holy shit, Rozanov,” Lukas swears from across the locker room, audibly horrified. “Jesus Christ. Are you going to live? Vic, get a fucking EpiPen—”
Cliff glances back over to the kid, his concern spiking again from the fear in Lucas’s voice even before he catches sight of the massive wheals stretching across Ilya’s shoulders, chest, back, and it seems like they’re descending past his hips, too. And, yeah, holy fucking shit isn’t nearly enough to cover it.
The kid is utterly covered in hives. More of his skin is colored a vivid red and swollen than isn’t. Cliff didn’t even know they could get that big, or that one person’s body could sustain that many without going into anaphylactic shock, or something. Rozanov’s back alone is painful to look at, and Cliff’s breath hisses through his teeth when Ilya twists around to glare at Lukas, pulling the irritated skin tight. The worst of them is nearly eight inches long and stencils across his ribcage, but the rest of them aren’t much better.
The entire locker room is staring at Ilya. Most of their mouths have dropped in horror, because there really isn’t anything that can prepare you to see your teammate in such a state.
“Whh–at the fuck is an EpiPen?” Ilya demands, breaking the spell.
Victor springs into action at the reminder, darting out of the locker room, presumably to find the trainer. The rest of them launch into “fix-it” mode, as they’re wont to do when one of their teammates is injured or struggling after a rough game. Brad grabs a clean towel and beelines to the sink to run water over it; Connor, three inches taller and forty pounds heavier than Ilya, fishes a loose T-shirt out of his bag; Kellen somehow produces calamine lotion from his locker; and Cliff steps into the meter and a half of distance between them and gently, gently pushes Ilya down until he’s sitting on the bench.
His skin is warm beneath Cliff’s hands, and he’s careful not to touch any of the hives. “Told you,” he whispers, hoping to provoke anything but the wounded, deer-in-headlights look Ilya’s wearing right now. Lukas meets Cliff’s eyes when he glances up at his teammates, and gestures to their star rookie’s hunched figure with a questioning head tilt. Cliff shrugs, accepts the towel Brad passes him, and tries to figure out where to put it.
“Drape it over his back,” Isaac suggests, already preparing another one. “And don’t move it once it’s down. We don’t want to irritate his skin any further.”
Cliff obliges. Ilya’s breath hitches when the fabric touches him, but mercifully, he doesn’t raise any protests. He doesn’t look any more at ease, but he lets Cliff touch him again without flinching away, so Cliff mentally files away a point for himself. Isaac wrings out the next towel before walking over, and kneels next to Ilya. He’s thirty-two, one of the most senior players on the Raiders, and Cliff steps out of the way to let him deal with the teenager in front of them. Yes, Ilya will be nineteen in December, but still. Christ.
“Rozanov,” Isaac says, and Rozanov raises his gaze to him. His eyes are teary and scared. “What’s going on?”
Ilya replies in Russian, but the second word—“allergii”—is obvious enough.
“English if you can, Roz. I know you’re stressed.”
Ilya hunches in on himself, ducking his head again. He swallows once before saying, “Allergic reaction. It is… common.”
Isaac’s lips twist unhappily, and he glances back at Cliff.
“He wouldn’t take antihistamines this morning; I didn’t realize it was this bad.”
“Roz…”
“No pills,” Ilya says, but his firmness from that morning is gone, replaced by pleading. His breath catches, and he sniffles.
“Alright,” Isaac concedes. Vic returns, empty-handed. “Vic? The EpiPen?”
“They said if he’s not going into anaphylaxis, we can’t use it. I got cream, though.” Vic holds up a three-ounce tube of hydrocortisone, as if it’ll make a dent.
“What is… EpiPen?” Ilya asks, forcing himself to sit up so Isaac can put the other towel across the hives on his chest. His eyes are red in the corners.
“It’s an epinephrine auto-injector,” Cliff says. “Dilates your blood vessels. You don’t have them in Russia?”
Ilya shakes his head. Then gasps, lifts a hand, and pinches his nose shut before juddering forward. He must be exhausted; Cliff’s seen him stifle fits before with no assistance. The first double makes itself known with a head bob, and then another before Ilya has time to fully recover, and the towel on his front peels away and drops to his lap. The rest of the fit squeaks out despite the vicelike grip he’s using. “–ngKT-kht-chsh! nNGT’sh! TSCH’h! nHh… tsCHhyk!”
“Bless you,” Cliff says. Most of the team chorus.
“Let’s not do that,” Isaac says at the same time. Ilya sniffles miserably, and tears—either born of effort or embarrassment—well in his eyes. “Can I ask you to take an antihistamine?”
Ilya’s silent for a long while, long enough that Vic steps closer to the bench, having taken Kellen’s bottle of lotion as well. The rest of the team is mostly just watching, concern evident in all of their gazes. Rozanov’s never shown even a sliver of weakness before, and although Cliff is probably the closest to him, he’s still being thrown off. He doesn’t really know how Isaac’s handling the kid right now.
Wordlessly, Vic opens the lotion and pours some into his palm, then rests the pink bottle on the bench next to Ilya and dips two fingers from the opposite hand into it. Carefully, he starts applying it to the biggest welt on Ilya’s shoulder, covering his clavicle and the side of his throat. Brad sits him up, then puts the first towel on his chest again.
“…Okay,” Ilya concedes, his voice so quiet Cliff barely hears it. But Isaac nods; Cliff passes him Ilya’s water bottle and Kellen steps forward with a blister pack of Benadryl. Yeah, knocking the kid out is probably the best call.
Isaac pops the pills out. Ilya’s hand is shaking when he accepts the medication. They all pretend not to notice it.
The next few minutes are quiet. Their collective focus is on their rookie, careful fingers swiping calamine lotion and hydrocortisone over his skin, then drowning him in Connor’s shirt, loose enough that it hopefully won’t stick to the drying cream, since Ilya’s clearly sick of them looking at him. He must be drained, because he starts wilting five minutes after taking the meds, eyelids drooping and muscles slowly unbunching. Lukas begs off to let Coach Reilly know what’s going on, since they’re playing a series and are getting on a plane tomorrow morning.
Cliff eventually takes over for Isaac, giving the goalie a break to look up Ilya’s symptoms and if they need to do anything more. Ilya’s eyes are unfocused, aimed somewhere at the floor.
“Hey,” Cliff murmurs. “You doing alright?”
Ilya nods. His nose twitches, and he brings up a sluggish hand to rub at it. He misses, brushes against the hive next to his throat, and sucks in a reflexive breath between his teeth.
Cliff shifts over as Ilya’s breath hitches, and doesn’t say a word as he just sneezes openly toward the ground. In his current state, Ilya could punch Cliff, and he simply wouldn’t have the heart to hold it against him.
“aHhTZS’chh! hih’iH… htZ’SCHh–chshh!” His eyes are still glassy, mouth half-open as his tongue pokes out between his teeth. Ilya gasps again, and his head jerks down with a final “eh’TSCH! ngh…”
“Bless you,” Cliff says, copied by Isaac, Vic, and Kellen, who’ve remained in the vicinity.
Ilya sniffles. “Sorry.”
“Nothing to apologize for,” Isaac reassures. “We’re going to take care of you.”
Ilya blinks, like no one’s said that to him in a long time. Then, he gives a weary nod, and goes back to staring at the floor until they have to convince him up so they can take the bus back to the hotel. The entire way, Ilya doesn’t bother trying to pretend that he’s alright, and something in Cliff’s chest loosens at the realization that he might be starting to trust them.
Summary: S/hane and I/lya do a press conference together where I/lya has an allergic reaction. Afterward, they hook up and discover he’s also allergic to S/hane’s cologne. Kink!S/hane has a wild evening. Set pretty early in their situationship. NSFW!
*
R/ozanov is sniffling.
This isn’t unusual; in the months that S/hane has known him, he seems to always be sniffling. Or touching his eyes, or rubbing his nose, or doing those little allergic coughs that sound way too tiny and cute to be from I/lya R/ozanov, aggressive star center of the Raiders.
Shane grimaces a little as he makes his way up the stage to sit at the table in front of the press. Half of the grimace is from the thought of dealing with the press; the other half is that he can hardly believe he just thought of Rozanov as “cute”. Hot, sure, sexy, yeah, but “cute”? Rozanov would probably kick his ass if he heard that. And Shane much prefers the other things Rozanov does to his ass, thanks very much.
He wipes the grimace off his face quickly, though, because he doesn’t want the press to think he’s unhappy to be there, even if he is. He can already hear his mother on the phone later, lecturing him for not controlling his face. She had called earlier, reminding him to mention the cologne that’s recently started sponsoring him. He can’t even remember the brand name; something fancy and expensive. Shane prefers something a little more understated, but he had reluctantly dabbed some on his wrists and neck, if only so he can reassure his mom that he did so when she calls again tomorrow.
Shane gives Rozanov a nod as he takes his seat. He can already hear the press whispering, trying to decipher the meaning behind that little gesture. Is there real respect between the famed rivals, or is it just a show for the cameras and they loathe each other behind closed doors? Neither, he thinks, just a little friendly ass play in discreet hotel rooms. But of course he could never say that out loud.
Rozanov nods back, seeming distracted as he rubs the bridge of his nose with the center of his palm. “We get started, yes?” he asks shortly.
Shane shifts uncomfortably in his seat as he watches Rozanov rub at his pink, irritated nose. It’s already hard enough to be around Rozanov, without thinking about… that. He just hopes Ilya doesn’t start—
“hh’KNXSHTT!”
Shane flinches, unable to help himself from a visible reaction to Ilya’s first sneeze. It’s crushed into Ilya’s knuckles, painfully stifled.
It’s kind of funny. He’s never seen Ilya try to stifle before. On the ice, he usually just aims off to the side. Same with when they’re having sex afterward. Luckily, Shane having a boner isn’t very out of place when they’re having sex and Ilya starts sneezing. When they’re on the ice, on the other hand…
Shane resists the urge to cross his legs and reminds himself that the tablecloth is covering him from the reporters’ hungry eyes. “Bless you,” he mumbles, wildly uncomfortable just saying the words out loud.
Ilya waves a hand—the hand he’d just stifled against—dismissively. “Not dyig. Just allergic.” He sniffles and rubs at his nose again. The tip of it is starting to turn pink even under the makeup, Shane notices, swallowing hard.
“What are you allergic to, Ilya?” A brave reporter calls out. The mics must be picking up their words.
Ilya glares, seemingly unaware of all the cameras and reporters taking in his every microexpression. Or, more likely, he just doesn’t care. “Canada, apparently,” he says, with a waving gesture to encompass the entire nation.
The crowd of reporters obediently lets out a rumbling laugh, but Ilya doesn’t look like he’s kidding. His nose twitches, and he looks like he barely has time to shield his face before he’s ducking back into his knuckles with two barely-stifled, much wetter-sounding sneezes. “hh’GNXXSHHT! heh’DSSHHHT!”
Shane can feel the tips of his ears burning red. Is he blushing? God, he hopes not. He needs to take control of the conversation and redirect it. “The birch in Canada isn’t for the faint of heart,” he says with the fakest laugh he’s ever done. Maybe that will be enough to get the press to be satisfied and move on, he hopes.
Instead, one reporter calls out to Ilya, “Think all that sneezing will distract you from the game? Are you worried about winning tomorrow?”
Ilya is rubbing at his nose fiercely, but he manages to wink at the reporters in a way that seems effortless. “No, I never worry about beating Montreal,” he says lightly.
“Maybe you should, given how Boston’s been doing against us lately,” Shane bites out. His eyes lock onto the way Ilya is rubbing at his nostrils, all red and shiny and irritated. He can’t help himself from looking for a too-long second, before he finally is able to drop his eyes.
The reporters “ooh” obediently at the chirp and start asking Shane a question about his prep for tomorrow’s game. It’s easy enough to answer. He’s heard the same questions a dozen times before.
But he can’t keep himself from noticing the way that Ilya is watching him, from the corner of his eye. Like Ilya is studying him. Seeing the things that Shane would rather keep hidden.
*
After the press interview, Shane almost holds out. Almost resists the urge.
“Almost.” Who’s he kidding? He books it for Ilya’s hotel room, which had been texted to him this morning, as soon as he can. He doesn’t even change out of his suit first. The idea of Ilya tearing it off him has major appeal, anyway.
Ilya is slow to open the door, looking hazy and itchy. For once, Shane doesn’t scold him for making him wait in the hallway, too absorbed in studying the delicious discomfort that’s obvious on Ilya’s face. Now that the makeup is scrubbed off, it’s obvious that he’s been rubbing his nose nonstop all day. It’s all red and irritated-looking, and he can’t stop scrunching his nose as if to fight off a tickle.
“Couldn’t wait, no?” Ilya teases dryly, a hint of congestion in his voice.
Shane is on him like a puck bunny going after a clueless rookie. Ilya makes a surprised noise into Shane’s mouth mid-kiss, then cups the back of his neck and licks into his mouth. Their hands are everywhere, rubbing, squeezing, touching, impossible to keep track.
Shane finds his hands drifting upward, and he cups the other man’s face. He strokes a thumb across Ilya’s left cheek.
Ilya breaks the kiss and tears away from Shane, his face twitching. He starts to say something, breaks off with an insistent hitch, and sneezes violently into hastily-cupped palms. “hih’HETSSCHH!”
The sneeze sounds harsh and itchy. Shane swallows hard and steps closer. “Bless you,” he offers up, tentative. He can feel his face burning.
Ilya waves a hand at him dismissively, eyes watering as he continues to hitch. “S-sorry… s’just… fuck,” he stumbles over his words. Before he can say anything else, he sneezes two more times into his hands, both sounding as rough and unsatisfying as the first one. “Hh’ESSCHHHTT! heh… heh’IISSCHHTT’uhh!”
After a few seconds of sniffling, Ilya looks up at Shane awkwardly. “Sorry. This, um… ‘birch’ thing is killing my nose. Is not so sexy, right?” he cracks a self-deprecating smile.
Shane feels like his brain is broken. His dick is fine, though. He steps closer and, taking one of Ilya’s damp hands, presses it to the tent in his pants. “I really need you to fuck me right now,” he says earnestly.
Ilya grins.
Within seconds, he’s got Ilya undressed, barely resisting the need to get down on his knees and blow him. It’s very tempting, but he’s holding out. Still, he can’t resist licking a wide stripe on his palm so he can wrap a hand around Ilya’s cock and start to pump it, slow and agonizing.
Ilya barks out a laugh, half from sheer surprise and half from lust, and tips his head forward into the crook of Shane’s neck, enjoying the lazy handjob. “You are… enjoying my torture this evening,” he says, the words coming slow in English. “I like it.”
“Do you?” Shane murmurs. He feels overdressed, still in full suit and tie, but there’s something unusual in him being fully clothed while Ilya is naked. A change in their power dynamic that he’s very open to, tonight.
Ilya makes a noise of assent, then sniffles into Shane’s neck. “Gah, you smell different,” he says, but he doesn’t sound annoyed. “Like… trees?”
“Some kind of cologne deal my mom made,” Shane says, wanting to address any topic involving his mother as quickly as possible while he has his hand on another man’s dick. “I don’t remember the… oh.”
Ilya’s sniffles have progressed into heavy, unsteady breathing, and he rubs his nose side-to-side in Shane’s neck. “Itches,” he mumbles, but he doesn’t lift his hands off Shane’s hips, content to use Shane’s skin as his tissue. “Sorry, I… hih! I need…”
Shane tries frantically to think of what a normal person would do or say in his situation, instead of moaning over Ilya’s perfect, beautiful red nose. “Um, are you okay? Do you need, like, a Benadryl or something—?”
His question gets cut off by Ilya’s sharp inhale, and then Ilya is trying desperately to back away. Their bodies are tangled together, though, and Shane doesn’t catch up quickly enough to let go of Ilya. Ilya’s hands come up to cover, a hair too late, and he sneezes helplessly, openly, over Shane’s chest. “huhh… hhrr’IISSSHHH’uhh!”
The spray is sparkling in the hotel room lamplight, and Shane feels a cool dampness on his jaw. He feels himself freeze a little with shock, before abruptly coming back to himself with Ilya’s next loud hitch.
Desperate to cover, Ilya lurches forward and buries his nose into Shane’s tie, the closest thing available, before he can stop himself. With a needy hitch, he lets out a wet, strong, uncontrolled sneeze into the fabric. “hh’DJSSCHHH!”
Shane’s heart abruptly stops, then starts pounding in his chest again.
Ilya rears back and scrubs at his nose, trying to push back the next explosion, but Shane can already tell that that will be a failure. He looks too needy, too desperate. It’s driving Shane fucking wild. His hands drop from Ilya’s back and dick, and he brings them up to—what? He doesn’t even know.
He ends up pulling Ilya’s hands away from his face, and Ilya squints at him through watery eyes, breathing uneven. “What?” he asks, sounding annoyed. “Stop, I… heh! I don’t want to sn—” He doubles over, spraying a thick, wet sneeze toward the carpet to avoid getting Shane. “hh’DSSSCHHHTT! Ugh. Fuck! I don’t want to sndeeze on you againd, Hollander.”
His last name sounds so congested coming out of Ilya’s mouth.
Shane’s mouth is so dry. He keeps Ilya’s hands trapped in his own, stepping forward into Ilya’s space where he can’t duck away. “Don’t worry about it.”
Ilya gives him an “are you crazy” look and sniffles, barely damming back the encroaching explosion. “S’gross. Can’t stop fucking sndeehh—snf! Sndeezing.”
“Really not a problem right now,” Shane says, too turned on to be worried about how he’s presenting himself right now. “I want you so bad. You are so fucking hot tonight.”
Ilya’s eyes dip down, caught on the tent in Shane’s dress pants. His eyebrow raises for half a second, then he sniffles again, catching Shane’s eyes. “You like this?”
“…I like you,” Shane says eventually, not sure how to answer that. “Even when you’re gross. Can we fuck now, please?”
Ilya smiles, a little unsurely, then nods his head down at their joined hands. “Will need my hands, yes?”
Shane lets go of Ilya’s hands, feeling embarrassed for some reason. “Sorry. Are you like… okay?” he says, feeling like he should ask. “Do you need a break? A tissue?”
Ilya lets out a hoarse laugh, then takes the opportunity to scrub at his face. His nose looks so irritated. It makes Shane want to… what? Take care of him? Ridiculous. Not to mention impossible.
“No tissue, no break,” Ilya says after a moment of rubbing his face. “Will not help. Besides, I have your tie, yes? Is good tissue.”
Shane’s face goes hot. He looks down at his tie, visibly wet from its stint as a tissue, then looks back up at Ilya. He lets out a slow breath, and goes for cool. “Depends. Are you gonna keep me standing here, fully dressed, all night?”
Ilya makes a face, unimpressed. “Smooth. Get over here and let me rip your clothes off.”
And he does, rough with tearing off Shane’s suit in a way that Shane loves. Ilya is still sniffling a little, his nostrils flaring, but he doesn’t seem on the edge of a fit anymore. He’s too focused on getting Shane naked.
Once the suit has been laid carefully over the back of a chair—he may be out of his mind with need, but Shane is still a creature of order and habit—Ilya throws him onto the bed, then crawls in after.
The sheets are already messed up, and Shane finds himself wondering if Ilya took a nap here before the press interview. Were his allergies already bothering him? Did he stifle a fit into the pillows, rub his nose against the comforter? He swallows hard at the imagery.
“You were hot for me in the interview,” Ilya murmurs lowly. “Yes?”
Shane rolls his eyes. “Enough teasing, just fucking, please.”
Ilya taps a finger into Shane’s chest. “Impatient.”
“Yes!” Shane steals a kiss, ducking in and out before Ilya can stop him. “So hurry up!”
Ilya laughs and gets to work.
Within a few minutes, they’re laying on their sides. Ilya is inside Shane, rocking slow and steady while they get used to the rhythm. For all his desperation earlier, Shane feels content like this, in no rush to orgasm. Once they’re done, he’ll be expected to leave Ilya’s hotel room and pretend this never happened. He’s not really ready for that yet.
Ilya hooks his chin over Shane’s shoulder, so that they can almost make eye contact. His front is plastered to Shane’s back, firm and sweaty and perfect. He strokes his fingertips over Shane’s dick, teasing, and laughs when Shane curses at him for it. “Okay?”
“Yes, god, okay. You?”
“Yes,” Ilya says. He ducks his head down and rubs his nose into Shane’s shoulder. “I think, though, this cologne your mother picked out. It does not agree with me so much.”
Shane groans and thrusts himself backward onto Ilya’s cock. “I’ll throw it out! Please, Jesus, just fuck me already.”
“I will think about it,” Ilya says mockingly, but his movements speed up, both of them ready for the endgame now. He fists Shane’s dick, the way Shane likes it, and presses open-mouthed kisses to the side of Shane’s neck.
After a moment, the two of them are both close, moaning and whimpering in a way that has Shane wondering who Ilya’s hotel neighbors are tonight. It’s probably fine. Normally he would never allow for sex in a hotel room, they’re too loud, but tonight he feels out of control, burning up from the inside out with the way that Ilya’s breathing staggers with every tickle.
Ilya takes his hand off Shane’s dick, and Shane whines, low and needy. “Sorry, sorry, I…” Ilya sniffles and rubs his nose against the back of his hand. “Is itchy again.”
“Rozanov, put it back or so help me God—” Shane arches into a thrust and groans. “I will never let you fuck me again!”
Ilya puts his hand back and strokes Shane’s dick. In the light, Shane catches a glimpse of wetness on the back of Ilya’s hand, and it drives him fucking crazy. He fucks himself back onto Ilya’s cock, crying out. “Rozy, I’m gonna come I’m gonna come I’m—!”
Ilya’s rapidly hitching breath stops him short, and Ilya only has a second to decide what to do before he buries his face into Shane’s shoulder to sneeze. The sneezes come muffled and quieter, but undeniably strong, wet against Shane’s skin.
Shane almost screams when he comes. A second later, Ilya groans and goes boneless behind him.
Ilya sniffles through the aftershocks, rubbing his nose helplessly into Shane’s back and neck. His hands remain at Shane’s sides, holding on for dear life even though they’ve both orgasmed. Still, his nails dig into Shane’s skin as he holds back another sneeze.
Eventually, Shane’s haze lifts enough that he can sense what’s going on. “Just sneeze already,” he murmurs, bringing a hand back to cup Ilya’s curls. The angle is uncomfortable but worth it. “S’not like I mind.”
Ilya chuckles, and something about that must loosen the tickle, because he ducks into Shane’s back with a sudden, loud, “hh’IISSHHOOHHH!”
“Bless you,” Shane says. He can feel a smug smile forming on his face. “Feel better?”
“It’s not hers, it’s a product endorsement contract—“
“hh’ESSSHHH’uhh!”
The sneeze is cool and wet on Shane’s skin, and he shivers a little. He turns over in Ilya’s arms to face him. Ilya looks itchy, still pink-faced especially around the nose, but content. Like the orgasm drove the urgency out of him when it came to sneezing.
Shane brings up a hand and drags his thumb over Ilya’s cheek. The movement makes Ilya sniffle, but that’s all. “So sensitive. It’s kind of cute,” he says with a low laugh.
“I am not cute. Russians, we do not do this,” Ilya says with a growl, but it’s teasing, and he kisses Shane, fierce and needy.
Shane breaks off the kiss, still panting a little from the sex, and digs his fingers into Ilya’s curls. “Very cute. Especially when you’re allergic.”
Ilya lets out an irritated sigh and ducks his head under Shane’s chin, cuddling into his chest. “Is very annoying. I sneeze ever since plane touches down this morning. Is like burning in my face and it will not go away. Very frustrating.”
Shane cups the back of Ilya’s head and resists the urge to kiss the crown of his forehead. That’s not something they do. “Poor baby,” he teases. “Want me to kiss it, make it better?”
“If you kiss my nose, will definitely end with me sneezing on you.”
“Again.”
Ilya groans and buries his face into Shane’s chest. His hands come up to cup Shane’s tits, one of his favorite spots to hold. “Embarrassing.”
“You don’t get embarrassed,” Shane says. “A few weeks ago I watched you sneeze all over the ice in the second period. Like you didn’t even notice.”
Ilya shakes his head, rubbing his face into Shane’s chest. “Is not the same. You are not ice. You are pretty, pretty man with freckles who does not want to be human tissue.”
Shane laughs. “I don’t know about that.”
He’s too loose from the experience to care about his words, about Ilya learning way too much about him from this encounter. And so what if Ilya knows about his… more unusual tastes? They already can’t tell anyone about this. It’s as safe as it can ever get.
Ilya snuffles into Shane’s chest, inhaling sharply before abruptly sneezing and muttering a curse in Russian. “hh’ISSSHH’uhh!”
“Come on,” Shane says fondly. His smile is hurting his face. “Let’s take a shower. Get all that cologne and pollen off of you.”
Ilya groans and squeezes Shane tighter. “Five more minutes.”
ayooo! here’s my first h/eated rivalry fic i wrote the first half at 3 am in the airporttt. few house keeping items: i absolutely desecrate the timeline bc i cannot keep it straight so if it’s wrong, mind ur business (LOLLLL), i know nothing about hockey so if i called it a touch-down take a moment to remember i studied musical theater (FGSHDHL), last but not least, i am american (sorry lmao) so also apologies for that as well. okay, now that i have apologized for everything ever, enjoy 3.4k of me slapping my dick around about ilya’s nose.
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OCTOBER 18TH, 2016 — MONTREAL
Chanting shakes the boards, rattling the entire arena from the battle cry of eager fans. The sound is like a shaken soda can, waiting to burst. It’s invigorating.
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COMMENTATOR ONE: Tonight, I expect the Metros to make smart decisions in the defensive zone and be above the puck for the back check.
COMMENTATOR TWO: Opening face off tonight, sponsored by the Spinelli Toyota Pointe-Claire dealership, we have Ilya Rozanov with his game face on, and Shane Hollander in his home arena. And we’re off, boys!
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Routine is important to Shane. He always eats the same steamed rice and a bowl of vegetables before each game to maximize his performance. He always takes the time to peel the old tape off of his hockey stick and re-wrap it in a way that will improve his game day. He always texts Ilya before the game. It’s a habit, now embedded into his pre-game ritual.
Routine is important. It is crucial for reducing stress, boosting productivity and creating a sense of structure.
Tonight, Ilya does not text him. Shane waits and waits to receive a hotel number, or a taunt, or a picture of Ilya in nothing but his breezers (though the last time Ilya sent a photo like that, Shane played terribly) but he receives nothing.
It’s abnormal. In the last five months, they’ve played seven games against one another. Ilya always texts first. Shane sets his phone in his locker and shuts the door. The entire team is gathered around, watching him expectantly for his pre-game speech. He really doesn’t have anything to say.
He opens his locker.
JANE (6:53): Good luck out there tonight. You’ll need it.
It’s read immediately.
He gets no response.
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COMMENTATOR ONE: How about the last two games for the Raiders? They have been nuts! Ilya Rozanov has been cleaning house against the last two teams, scoring a total of 9 goals alone on average. I have never seen a streak of hat tricks like this before.
COMMENTATOR TWO: He has been on fire lately, even more than usual! But it doesn’t seem sustainable. I think he would benefit from leaning on his team a little. He apparently does not play well with others. He will run himself and his team into the ground, if he isn’t careful.
COMMENTATOR ONE: Especially against Shane Hollander. Rozanov’s going to get a run for his money tonight, folks. Maybe he’ll learn to share the puck with the rest of his team.
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Shane skates to meet Ilya at the center line. Ilya skates slowly—stiff and carefully like he hasn’t warmed up. Ilya knows better than that though, he always prepares himself for a game.
They stop in front of one another, crouched over their stick while the referee joins them. Shane waits for Ilya to meet his eyes. He never looks up.
Shane knocks their sticks together.
Ilya sets his jaw, glaring at the ice and knocks their sticks together, harder.
“Did I do something wrong?” Shane whispers. It seems to catch Ilya off guard, making his head snap to meet Shane with a bewildered look.
Oh. His eyes…
They are glassy and dark, a stormy blue. His vision remains unfocused and hazy even as he tries to get them to steady on Shane. There is faint purple bruising underneath, indicative of little sleep.
He looks terrible.
“Focus on the game, Holladnder.”
Ilya is all sharp teeth and cold evasion most days, but especially today.
Ilya typically basks in the warmth of the camera flashes. He preens in his pre-game interview where he can gloat, and threaten the opposing team until they're too intimidated to play anymore. Ilya is good at mind games.
It’s a particular poison that Shane has been spared for the last few months. Ilya isn’t cruel to him anymore. He’s callous, sure, and naturally aloof but he hasn’t been cruel for weeks now.
Ilya skipped his pre-game interview today. Shane can imagine why. His voice is a mess. Garbled with congestion which shifts his consonants from one sound into another and thickens his accent in an endearing way. He sounds like someone is plugging his nose shut. He must feel awful.
Ilya glares at Shane and crouches in a readied position.
He is being cruel now.
The ref squats, holds up two fingers and then slips the whistle into his mouth.
Shane smacks his stick on the floor, shedding his worry for Ilya in favor of the game.
Ilya straightens suddenly, which causes the ref to step back a bit and Shane to straighten too. Ilya twists his upper body, gripping his stick for balance. “hH’yIZSSSHht!”
He folds over himself, a fine sheen of spray dusting the ice. Ilya presses the back of his hand to his nose, and curses in Russian, sniffling twice (thick and clogged) and rights himself with a great deal of strength.
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COMMENTATOR TWO: Gesundheit!
COMMENTATOR ONE: Looks like Rozanov’s intimidation tactic today is…sneezing…at the opposing team?
COMMENTATOR TWO: He is not looking good tonight. Think the coach will bench him?
COMMENTATOR ONE: Not against Hollander, if they know what’s good for them. Definitely not if they want a chance at the Stanley Cup.
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The ref drops the puck and on the ice. The game starts fast and ends just as quickly. Ilya scores the first shot, and it’s the last shot the Raiders make all night.
It is a total massacre.
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COMMENTATOR ONE: The Metros absolutely destroyed the Raiders, for everyone watching at home, and honestly I feel bad for the Raiders. That was a swift and brutal defeat.
COMMENTATOR TWO: Ilya Rozanov was too preoccupied sneezing to actually play the game. The real fight here is clearly between him and his immune system, man. And the rest of the team seems lost without him. Is that a sign of a good leader or a lazy team?
COMMENTATOR ONE: I don’t know but Rozanov is definitely going to need some NyQuil and an ice pack for his bruised ego.
COMMENTATOR TWO: I second that. Well, that’s all from us tonight folks. Get home safely, get your flu shot, and have a good night.
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Shane misses Ilya on his way out of the building, but luckily the rest of the team clears out quickly too.
“We’re headed to the pub down the street,” Hayden shoves his balled-up pair of socks into his locker and slams the door before the landslide of dirty laundry comes falling down. It smells like cheese-whiz and dreams gone to die. Shane tries and fails to hide his grimace. “You should come celebrate our victory, Captain!”
Shane folds his undershirt, and tucks it into his gym bag so he can take it home and wash it. “I’m actually going to turn in early tonight.”
Hayden groans. “C’mon Shane, you never come and get drinks with us.”
“That’s why we keep winning,” Shane says and tucks his sweaty socks into his bag because he is not a heathen. “Look, next time, okay?”
“You always say that!”
“Seriously! Seriously, next game—regardless of if we win or lose—I’ll come out and have a drink with you. Okay?”
Hayden holds out a hand and Shane claps him on it, giving it a firm shake. “Next time.”
Once Hayden leaves the locker room, Shane opens his locker and grabs his phone.
Shane dials Lily’s number and holds the phone to his ear while checking over his shoulder to make sure he is truly alone.
It rings once, before it is sent to voicemail.
Shane frowns, and ends the call.
JANE (9:55 pm): Answer the phone.
LILY (9:55 pm): no.
LILY (9:56 pm): do not call me.
Shane rolls his eyes. He presses Lily’s number and tucks the phone to his ear again.
“You are usually good at following orders,” Ilya sniffles around an occlusion of muck in his head. His breath crackles, whistling in and out of his swollen sinuses. His head must feel like it’s drowning, because he sounds like he’s congested up to his eyes. He takes a labored breath, noisy and through his mouth.
Shane ignores the way it makes his face heat, both the comment and his voice. It’s huskier than usual, the way Shane imagines his morning voice—not that he’s imagining his morning voice…
“You’re sick,” says Shane, albeit shakily because he isn’t sure about this. He isn’t sure about them, or what they are. He doesn’t know if he’s allowed to care or worry because he doesn’t know what to call them. There is no routine or rules. All he knows is he probably shouldn’t be calling the captain of another team, especially not in the locker room. He shuts his locker and grabs his bag.
“You are obvious. Did you call me to say obvious things, like sky is blue? Or Montreal sucks. Or that you cry when you come?” It sounds like he’s smiling. Shane’s stomach swoops, tripping over itself in a swell of affection. He rubs his hand over his face, feeling disoriented by the flood of conflicting emotions.
“Fuck you,” Shane snaps, habitually.
Ilya chuckles, which quickly breaks into a crackling cough. There is a rustling on the other end and the coughing grows further away like he’s setting the phone down. A paper tears and Shane can make out the faint sound of Ilya blowing his nose.
Ilya sniffles a few times as he puts the phone to his ear again.
“Why are you calling me, Hollander? A practice in humiliation?”
“A humiliation ritual.”
“However you call it. Is that what this is?”
“No! No, I was just…” Shane can’t bring himself to say worried, so he lets the unspoken settle over them like a blanket. He clears his throat and tries again, reverting to their most comfortable dynamic. “Come over. To my high rise. Downtown.”
Ilya is quiet for a second, then hums low in the back of his throat. It rumbles like a purr of a very big, very pleased cat. “I am surprised by this, Hollander. You are never so forward.”
“I am forward—!”
“Eh, you mostly blush and tremble in the corner like school girl.”
Shane’s entire face warms and he is dizzy with charm.
“Fuck off,” he giggles. “I do not tremble.”
His hands shake terribly. To steady them, Shane closes his locker, and slings his gym bag over his shoulder. He checks around the locker room again and everything is still so he figures it is clear to exit the building without interruption. He flips the lights off on his way out, walking briskly to his Jeep.
“You tremble.” Ilya argues, then pulls the phone away to cough. “You want me to fuck you like this? I have tissue shoved up my nose and I feel like my lungs are made of—uh, блядь,“ Ilya curses. “—garbage, and you want me to come over?”
Shane throws his bag into the back of his car. He grips the door for strength because his legs feel like they might give out from beneath him.
“Just—come over, okay?”
Ilya sighs, which crackles into a cough. “Yeah, okay, Hollander.”
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COMMENTATOR ONE: I think it is officially cold and flu season this week, folks. A nasty cold seems to be making its way through the NHL because Scott Hunter looks like he does not feel well tonight.
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The bedroom is steam-hazy post shower. Shane wipes his hoodie sleeve along the cloudy screen of the television. The camera zooms in on Scott on the bench, flushed and panting. Yikes. He really does look like he feels bad. Shane mentally adds vitamin C tablets to his grocery list.
He turns the volume low, but leaves the Admirals game for light ambiance.
Shane shuffles to the kitchen. The bags of his impromptu grocery haul wait for him on the counter. He begins to unpack, setting a three pack of artificially “blue” flavored Gatorade in his fridge along with a carton of orange juice. It’s not Shane’s favorite flavor but he’s noticed Ilya drinking it on the bench across from him and sometimes it leaves his lips tinted blue during a game.
He pays far too much attention to Ilya and his mouth. Even thinking about it is embarrassing.
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COMMENTATOR ONE: —this guy is good with his stick. This is some of the most fantastic stick work I’ve seen in years.
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Agh.
He fishes a pot from the cabinet above the stove and sets it on the burner. He opens the container of tomato and basil soup and dumps it into the pot. It’s his personal favorite meal when he’s sick, so he hopes it soothes Ilya in a similar way.
A knock at the door draws his attention immediately and makes his heartbeat rocket up anxiously.
He’s actually a little surprised that Ilya shows up after all. He partially expected Ilya to bail, and Shane would have to nurse a cold that he didn’t have with tomato soup and Gatorade that he didn’t buy for himself.
He turns down the stove to simmer and shuffles to the door.
He peeks out of the peephole, just out of curiosity. Ilya’s face is covered by his ducked head and hood, but the tips of his golden curls stick out in a telltale way. He wears a pair of black joggers with a white stripe down the hip and plasticy slides like he couldn’t even be bothered to put a real pair of shoes on.
He’s so cute…
Shane opens the door and steps aside so Ilya can step in. “Hey…”
Ilya nods at him and treads into the apartment, hugging his arms around himself protectively. His posture is slouched, heavy with congestion and the chill that the cold brings. He seems softer like this, less angry at the world, less larger than life.
Shane shuts the door softly with a decisive click.
Instantly, Ilya grips the bottom of his hoodie and starts to pull it over the top of his head. Shane makes a small, punched out noise as the air rushes out of him.
Ilya stops, frowning. He tilts his head slightly, in a curious but nonjudgmental manner. “An orgasm is good for congestion. You read the same article as me, yeah? That’s why you called me here?”
Shane sputters, floundering speechlessly for a few agonizing seconds. He’s never heard the claim that an orgasm has any correlation to congestion but it feels far fetched. Ilya somehow assuming that Shane’s idea of nursing a cold is a blowjob is even more mortifying.
Shane hides behind his hands. “God! Ilya, no. I just…want to take care of you!”
He realizes belatedly that maybe offering to suck his dick might’ve been less mortifying than that.
Ilya stops, his smile fading gradually. He pulls his hoodie back on and smoothes it down. He suddenly looks uncomfortable and far too large in the room, despite how he’s hunched over.
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COMMENTATOR TWO: Tensions are rising on the ice. Penalty in the neutral zone! The refs are taking a moment to debrief.
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“Why?”
“I don’t know,” says Shane. Because I care. Because I’m worried about you. Because I think I'm starting to love you. Because it’s kind. “Because you deserve it.”
Ilya is quiet for a long time. He regards Shane with this cold analysis, eyebrows puckered like he is waiting for Shane to deliver the punchline to a joke. Like Shane said something unorthodox. Very quickly, his eyes shine and it looks like he might cry but it’s gone before Shane can parse the facial expression.
“I really want to kiss you right now.” Ilya finally decides, and he pouts dramatically. “But I do not want you to have this.”
Ilya guides them safely out of the danger zone, back to a neutral territory. Maybe one day they will be candid with one another, but clearly it is not tonight. Shane laughs breathlessly.
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COMMENTATOR TWO: He’s coming in hard and fast—from behind in the defense zone—and Hunter shoots…AND HE SCORES!
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Shane feels his breath return as the tension gives way to something lighter. He crosses to Ilya and cups his neck, feeling a penetrating heat radiating from Ilya. Shane hums thoughtfully and pulls Ilya’s head to him and presses a kiss to his forehead. Ilya melts like butter in his hands, wrapping his arms around Shane’s waist and resting his forehead against his collarbone.
Shane kisses across his hairline to his temple. Ilya flinches with an unhappy noise when Shane kisses his earlobe.
“Ack,” Ilya complains. Shane laughs and kisses below his ear.
Ilya lifts his head from Shane’s shoulder, squinting at him oddly. His lips fall open, like he is going to speak but he doesn’t. Shane cups his face, but before he can ask if he’s alright, Ilya ducks towards his chest, sneezing in the space between them.
“idjZSSSHht!”
Ilya pries Shane’s hands off of his cheeks and holds them tightly, turning over his shoulder to direct the next sneeze into the air. “hH’yISSSHh-yhh! Fucking hell.”
It really is a spectacle to watch. Ilya is a carefully crafted character that feels untouchable most days. Shane forgets that he falls victim to illness or fatigue because he is an infalliable, paramount of hockey. It's almost nice to see a ruffled version of him. Even during sex, Ilya owns his control. He knows how to caress Shane, how to hold him and push or pull him. He can elicit thoughts and feelings and—fuck, sounds—from Shane that he couldn’t even get from himself.
But in the privacy of Shane’s kitchen, Ilya is coming undone and it is arousing.
“Bless you, bless you,” he laughs.
Ilya, presently riled, takes a huge stuttering gasp as he turns entirely away from Shane. His hands fly up to his face, cupping over his mouth and nose. “yHhZSCHHT!—Hhh…”
Shane fumbles the comfort, awkwardly rubbing small circles on Ilya’s shoulder. He breathes, “Jesus.”
Ilya wipes his nose on the back of his wrist, catching the lingering dampness on the cuff of his hoodie. He sniffles, rubs at the side of his nose ferociously enough that Shane worries he's going to relocate it, and then sniffles again. Shane bought two boxes of tissues during his store trip, but he’s concerned that he should’ve bought another.
“Let’s get you to bed.”
Shane gives Ilya an encouraging nudge in the direction of the bedroom. Ilya’s lip curls up in distaste, and he grunts. Shane’s pace wanes and he lingers in the doorway of his bedroom.
Ilya frowns. “This is boring. You have made me…iHjz’SCHHh!…boring. It is contagious, like flu—DZSSHH’yhh!”
Shane watches in a nauseating mix of affection and horror as Ilya pulls the neck of his hoodie wider and sneezes twice vaguely into the collar, misting his chest generously. It makes him all the more fond of him.
“We can do something fun when you’re feeling better.” There’s a small, traitorous part of Shane that daydreams that one day they will do something fun together without it being in secret. One day they could visit the museum together, or take a jog in the park. One day, it’ll be more than a late night rendezvous. One day, it’ll be a drink on the rooftop of an exclusive bar and Shane can ask Ilya about Russia. He daydreams of routine with Ilya, about habits and chaos and making it work for them both. He rubs the back of his warm neck. “Do—uh, oh God—do orgasms actually help with congestion?”
Ilya’s smile is devilish. He pinches the wetness around his nostrils between his thumb and forefinger. “Let’s test it.”
“Maybe after you eat,” Shane inclines his head towards the bedroom. Ilya follows him, pausing briefly to frown at the Admirals game on the TV. “I picked up some tomato soup. I hope you like it.”
Ilya crawls up the bed, stretching himself wide in the center. He turns his head to face Shane. “I get dinner and a blowjob? I will become sick more often, Hollander.”
The mattress dips as Shane presses a knee beside Ilya’s head. He kisses his cheek through a chuckle, then twists to meet his lips. Ilya kisses him twice before he pulls away, tucking a cough into the elbow of his hoodie.
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COMMENTATOR ONE: That was a solid game out there tonight. Defenses were at an all time high and it had a rocky start but an overall victory in my book. Thank you, and goodnight!
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a/n: comprehensive list of things i googled while i wrote this:
Thanks to everyone who HC’d that Ilya Rozanov gets hayfever in Canada I so agree and also I love all of you, I’m an allergy whore through and through unfortunately. 2k words
———
Shane’s facetime request gets answered on the second to last ring. It’s later in the morning in Ottawa, but very early in LA where Shane is, still lying in bed in his hotel room as if unable to get started with his day until he’s able to catch at least a glimpse of his boyfriend’s face.
“Hi,” he greets, when Ilya pops into view. He’s wearing a black Montreal Voyagers crewneck that definitely belongs to Shane, one that is about a size too big on Shane’s frame but seems to hug Ilya’s body quite perfectly. He looks so cozy.
“Hi,” Ilya parrots. His phone shakes for a bit, then stabilizes likely after being set on the kitchen counter. “I have tripod now,” he says, then winks. “For you.”
Shane chuckles. Whenever they’re apart like this, they’ve been video calling a lot, sometimes to put on a show for each other that keeps both of their hands occupied. “Yeah, me too. It’s somewhere in my bag. I just wanted to see your face though. And hear your voice.”
“I am just making coffee,” Ilya says. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping still? Game day today.”
“Yeah, well. I missed you.”
“I miss you so much, moy lyubovnik.” Shane’s heart clenches at Ilya’s candid sincerity. “One more week.”
“I know,” Shane wines. “Too fucking long.”
Ilya plates his breakfast — a home-cooked meal from the looks of it rather than the nasty McDonalds sandwiches he sometimes likes to eat, much to Shane’s pleasure — and then starts opening and closing cabinets noisily, clearly searching for something.
“What are you looking for?” Shane asks after the third cupboard slam.
“I am going to eat outside. I need your… um, plate warming thing for the coffee.” He rubs aggressively under his nose with a few fingers, sniffling roughly once against his hand. He straightens his bent posture and opens another cabinet up above.
“My mug warmer?” Shane frowns. Ilya had taken a liking to Shane’s random yet useful purchase last summer at the cottage. “You mean you got yourself one too?”
“No. Stole yours.” He seems to find what he’s looking for and he waves a black and blue patterned mug warmer in front of the phone for just a second, but it’s enough for Shane to recognize it.
“Huh?” Shame exclaims. “That’s literally mine! How did you even get that?”
Ilya holds up a finger, as if to shush him, and Shane is about to be enraged until he sees Ilya’s eyes flutter shut and lips part, and the next second he’s doubling over with two quick sneezes. “h’tchSSHHkh! ah’djSZHhuh!”
Oh, Shane thinks. “Bless you,” he says, automatic, watching as Ilya wipes the corner of his mouth with his hand and blinks moisture out of his eyes. He let the sneezes out completely uncovered like the unhygienic menace he is, but Shane barely spares a thought to that right now given the much bigger issue at hand. “Did you fucking take that from my cottage?”
“Yes. What I said.” Ilya knuckles the side of his nose and sniffles.
“You’re such an asshole. What else did you steal, huh? You wear my clothes, use all my things…”
“Da. I am your soon to be husband, yes? Is my things too.”
Ilya gives him one of those lopsided grins, and Shane rolls his eyes. His lips twitch involuntarily, and there is no real trace of annoyance behind his tone when he grumbles, "thievery."
Shane watches a shaky feed of Ilya bringing all his things to the table outside on the patio, but seems to pause before he sits down. Then he catches Ilya’s body double forward at the waist in the corner of the frame as he sneezes again, violently. “aH’djyIZSSHHhew!”
“Woah.” Shane can’t help from jump from the sheer volume, even as it reverbates through the phone. “That was a big sneeze.”
Ilya rubs his nose with a fist, sniffling, moving a little more into the frame. Shane waits for another sneeze or two to follow, as that’s how it usually goes with him, but Ilya’s pinched expression rights itself within another second and he simply sniffles, plopping down into the patio chair. “I know. Been like this all morning.”
“Really? Are you getting sick?”
Ilya shakes his head. “Is just all the…” he waves around a hand, expression going hazy again as he squints at nothing in particular. Even like this, on the verge of sneezing with a ridiculous expression, Ilya still manages to be so beautiful. He blinks rapidly a few times. “Um, Canadian grass and shit,” he spits out, before lifting up the collar of his—Shane’s— sweatshirt over the bottom half of his face and directing another harsh sneeze toward his chest.
“h’djSSZHhuh!” He stays hidden behind the sweatshirt, eyes squeezed shut until he jerks forward again. “h’tchZSSHT’h!”
“Bless you!” Shane laughs a bit when Ilya finally shows his face. “Hayfever, huh?”
Ilya grimaces at the word, as if personally offended by the idea of having allergies. “Maybe. Only in Canada. Stupid country.”
Shane hadn’t given much thought to the fact over the last few summers they spent together in Ottawa—as they had spent most of their time preoccupied with other activites—but now that he thinks back, he can recall a few times that he had noticed signs of the other’s allergies that hadn’t been so prevalent during the rest of the year.
Shane smiles. “Yeah, sure. You’ll have to get used to it, hot shot. You’re stuck with me here.”
Ilya blows a raspberry, feigning exasperation. The late morning sunlight catches in his hair, smoothening his sharp features and making him look extra soft. God, Shane will never get over how stunning his boyfriend is, and he wishes he could just teleport over there to be in his arms. He really missed him so much, painfully so, and seeing his face like this seems to only intensify the feeling of longing. Ilya clears his throat softly, leaning back in his chair. “How is LA?”
“Fine. Good weather I guess, so I might go for a run soon. Although, it seems like Ottawa’s pretty sunny today too.” He eyes Ilya, who is just sitting there with his hands in his lap, occasionally moving only to rub at his irritated nose. Shane hasn’t seen him take a single bite out of his breakfast. “Are you not eating?”
Ilya raises a brow at the question. “I am waiting. I don’t think I am done sneezing yet.” He rubs under his nose again, mumbling something in Russian that sounds like cursing. “I feel more coming, you know?”
He says it so casually, but the admission makes Shane’s heart race and heat rise to his cheeks, for whatever reason. Shane doesn’t think he’d be able to admit something like that so quickly and carelessly, too embarrassed even though he knows he probably shouldn’t be, especially not in front of the person who’s seen him in much worse situations. But Ilya’s always been a very shameless and blunt person when it comes to things like that, and it’s always been something Shane admires about him… despite how often it tends to catch him off guard, like now. “Oh,” he says, eloquently.
“So tell me more about how you are going to destroy the LA players tonight. Talk dirty to me.” Ilya smirks.
“Who taught you that phrase?” Shane laughs.
“You.”
So Shane talks a bit about his past week and upcoming game, though barely ten seconds in, Ilya interrupts with a loud sneeze, one that he just lets out into the air in front of him. Shane falters a bit, but Ilya just nods for him to continue as he blinks the newly formed moisture out of his eyes. Another ten seconds later again, he sneezes again with his head ducked toward his chest, leaning impossibly back in his chair, and then another 30 seconds later he’s in the middle of aggressively scrubbing his nose and sneezes again straight into the fist already at his face.
And at this point Shane can’t ignore it anymore and just barks out a laugh. “Jesus Chris, Ilya!”
Ilya shrugs, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “I think I am having an allergy attack.”
Shane laughs harder. “You think? Maybe you should go inside.”
Ilya shakes his head, grinning. “But is so nice out!”
“Dude.” Shane wrinkles his nose in a weird mixture of disapproval and fondness. “You’re barely able to talk or eat.”
“I will. It will go away,” Ilya insists, punctuating it with a small sniffle.
Eventually the sneezing does seem to calm down, and as Shane is in the middle of telling him some story from the locker rooms, Ilya starts eating his food. His peace doesn’t last long, though.
Ilya heads back inside to drop his plate in the sink, and as he’s walking over, he lets out a row of desperate sneezes, one after the other, separated by sharp gasping inhales.
“ih’djSCHh’h!”
“Bless y—”
“h’dtJSZHh’iu!”
“Bless you.”
“hit’dSSZHh’uh!”
Shane keeps his mouth shut.
“ih’tchSSHhuh!”
The camera angle is low as Ilya holds his phone near his chest, and Shane is kind of forced to witness the most close-up sneezing he’ll likely ever see, every part of Ilya’s expression crumpling with need, tightening with release, and relaxing ever so slightly, before the process starts up all over again. His entire face is in the view, since he sneezes completely uncovered and is barely able to open his eyes during the whole thing to even angle the camera away (though Shane isn’t sure the man cares enough to do so) even if he could. It’s a bit… arousing. His expression is not so different from one he wears when he’s experiencing a different kind of release. Shane doesn’t know what to do with this information.
When he’s done and can breathe again, Ilya wipes his nose with his sweatshirt sleeve. Shane tries not to grimace— there is practically no part of that sweatshirt that isn’t covered by Ilya’s germs by now.
“Jesus,” Shane breathes at last. “Any more?”
It’s kind of interesting seeing Ilya be so unashamed even while a right mess like this. If it was Shane having a full blown fit while on video call, he’d probably be mortified and neither his video nor audio would remain on for long. Shane isn’t sure how exactly to react here— should he just ignore it like Ilya’s been doing himself? That feels kind of wrong. He feels like he shouldn’t be watching this happen at all.
“Hold on. One minute,” Ilya says and then drops his phone on what is likely the kitchen counter, and Shane is left to stare at the ceiling. He hears some distant sounds of noseblowing, before another half-muffled sneeze. Shane huffs a laugh to himself as he waits. He really doesn’t think he should be finding this as endearing as he is.
Ilya once again grabs the phone and walks back outside, plopping back down in the patio chair, sniffling thickly. He drives a knuckle into his left nostril, closing it completely shut, and sniffles noisily through the other one. Then he suddenly chuckles, a little watery and hoarse, and says, “Sorry. I am not so sexy right now.”
As fucking if. Ilya’s voice has taken a bit of a rougher, congested edge, but Shane actually finds it incredibly sexy— almost more than usual. Shane himself may not be able to pull off freely being a mess like this, but he’d be lying if he said he isn’t thoroughly endeared by Ilya coming apart like this. Besides, he doesn’t need Ilya to be sexy every time he sees him (however impossible that may be since Ilya is truly breathtaking practically all the fucking time), as long as he’s able to just see him at all.
“This is the hottest you’ve ever been,” Shane deadpans.
Ilya waggles his brows. “Oh yeah? Maybe I will go back inside then. To the bedroom.”
Hearing those words in Ilya’s hayfever-rough voice definitely does something to Shane that he may not be proud of. “Mm, I do need a proper wake up, you know.”
“All the loud sneezing not enough for you?”
Shane cracks a smile. “I can think of a few other things.”
Ilya stands, grabs his phone and likely the tripod as well, and heads back inside. As Shane begins pulling off his shirt per Ilya’s quick and flustered instruction, he vaguely recalls reading somewhere that orgasm can be a decongestant…
sometimes i can't believe that multiple sneezes/fits are actually a real thing that happens to people. what do you mean it itches so bad that 1, or 3, or even 5 sneezes weren't enough? people sneeze in the double digits even?? sounds like something my horny brain would invent. i'm shocked and aroused
Hi! I'm back with my OC's! Pics of them here if you're curious!
Summary: 4.5k words. OC m/m. Nass is really sick. Prince Bellamy to the rescue. Bellamy's POV.
TW: Alcohol, and violence mentioned. Whump. Magical illness. Hospital setting.
*Yekitiverse is a magical world based on North Africa but I imagine it to take place sort of akin to our 1920's - 1930's. So there are cars and radio, but no phones.*
I have created a Ko-fi that I am going to link here. It is absolutely not necessary. But truthfully, I have been unemployed for many months lol. Creating the Yekitiverse has been a huge part of coping with that stress. Anyway, if you enjoy my content and feel called to offer something, it is deeply appreciated. Either way, thank you to everyone who reads and enjoys this universe. <3
Read the rest of their stories here.
***
In the end it was Bellamy who suggested they see other people.
After having sex with Nass in the Hookah Lounge, he’d laid in bed more angry than he’s ever been in his life, the scent of smoke still on his skin. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw red light, velvet, Nass’s mouth — the sobering truth curdling any form of sleep.
Nass will always see him as a Northerner. Even if they have feelings for each other — Nass still feels ashamed of it. Ashamed that he wants Bellamy.
And Bellamy doesn’t blame him. His father murdered his mother. Torched Southern land and stole all their resources. No wonder he feels guilty liking him.
Bellamy doesn’t want Nass to hate himself. He cares about him far too much for that.
“We can never be together,” Nass had said in the winter, while they stood in the hallway during their evaluation. “My ancestors would roll in their graves.”
Bellamy doesn’t want to make any Southern spirits roll in their graves. The Velazquez family has done enough to the South. And besides, if his father ever, gods forbid, found out he was seeing a Southerner — Bellamy could be flogged. Nass could be killed.
And so, he decided the best thing to do would be to remove himself from the situation.
When he suggested to Nass that they stop seeing each other, Nass had looked a little shocked. Then of course, because its Nass, shock turned almost instantly to anger.
“Is this because of what I said to my friends?” he’d said, face paling. “I said I was sorry, Bellamy. You made me walk through campus nearly half-naked.”
“That’s not why,” Bellamy had said, everything in him fighting to stay calm. “It’s for your safety, Nass — the king could come after you.”
“Let him!” Nass half shouted. “I’m one of the best fire mages in the country!”
Bellamy had nearly given in at that.
“It’s in your best interest to see other people,” he continued. “You’re ashamed to be with me. You hate yourself for it — I see it killing you. I’m doing this for you, Nass.”
Nass had trembled at that.
Bellamy had swallowed every urge in his body to touch him and said instead,
“I understand. My family has done unspeakable things to yours. I don’t want to make you choose between your village and me. We don’t need to stop being friends. But I think you’d be better off being with a Southerner.”
He had touched Nass’s arm at that — and Nass immediately ripped it away.
“Fine!” Nass had shouted. “I will.”
“I care about you, Nass,” Bellamy said quietly. “More than anyone. And I want you to be safe and happy. Even if it’s not with me.”
Nass had stalked away — and that was over a month and a half ago.
Days later, Nass immediately started seeing an underclassman — Raul.
The quick turn around time hurt.
Especially because Raul’s everything Bellamy is not. Southern. A fire mage. Dark, wild beauty that makes Bellamy stare at his own stupid blue eyes in the mirror and wonder why Nass ever liked him at all.
But besides his new boyfriend, Nass has not been handling their (breakup?) well. And Bellamy is worried.
Marwa told him on the weekends he spends his time in bars and clubs with Raul and hardly sleeps.
“You have to do something, Bellamy,” she had said. “Anha and I are going on exchange for two weeks and I’m worried to leave him.”
“I’ll keep an eye on Nass,” Bellamy had promised her before she left. “But he refuses to speak to me.”
Nass barely goes to class — which is alarming, since he’s already on academic probation. Three days ago, he showed up to their meditation class at 9 in the morning with a black eye, piss drunk. It was so bad that Master Khandro had personally escorted him back to his room.
Bellamy doesn’t know what to do. Nass won’t speak to him, makes out with Raul whenever Bellamy is within eyesight, and has basically decided Bellamy does not exist.
It looks like anger, but Bellamy knows it’s disguised as grief.
And gods, Bellamy misses him.
He misses Nass’s teasing, their tutoring sessions, their arguments — fucking him. He misses the way Nass treats him like a regular person, demands he be human instead of a prince.
But Bellamy needs to keep it together. That has always been his job.
But between missing Nass and getting ready to travel the South with his father next week, Bellamy has hardly been sleeping.
And that is why, at three a.m., in the middle of studying from his Kureesh textbook, he is awake to hear a very angry knock at his dorm door.
His stomach plummets. It must be Nass. Only Nass knocks like that.
Half alarmed, half hopeful, Bellamy drags himself upright, rubbing at his heavy eyes. He straightens his shirt and opens the door — only to freeze.
Not Nass.
Raul.
For a heartbeat, Bellamy’s brain stalls. Raul’s stands in front of him, jaw tight, hand curled into a fist, expression caught somewhere between fury and restraint.
“Raul,” Bellamy manages, reining in his shock and forcing his face into neutrality — an automatic habit beaten into him by years of royal training.“Is there something I can help you with at this hour?”
His tone is polite, measured — but he can feel the grief tightening in his throat. Three days ago, he’d walked into lunch to see Raul’s tongue down Nass’s throat. The image still stings like acid.
He wonders, despite himself, if Nass prefers Raul’s kiss to his.
“Your Highness,” Raul says flatly. “Sorry to wake you.”
The words drip with contempt.
Bellamy resists the instinct to flinch. Raul hates him — probably for a dozen reasons. Maybe he’s here to scream about the Kureesh ban. Maybe about the North in general. Maybe about how Bellamy used to fuck his boyfriend.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” Bellamy says, folding his arms. “And please. Just call me Bellamy.”
Raul’s Adam’s apple bobs. He looks somewhere between upset and furious.
“It’s Nass,” he finally gets out.
A cold rush of alarm floods Bellamy.
“What about him?” he asks, the neutrality in his voice already starting to crack.
“He’s really sick,” Raul says.
“Oh,” Bellamy blinks. He isn’t surprised, not with the way Nass has been burning himself down lately. “I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m sure I’m the last person he wants to see. You’re his boyfriend. Have you been with him?”
“I’ve been with him all night,” Raul snaps. “His fever’s really high. He should probably go to emergency down in the city.”
Bellamy stares at him. He can feel the vein in his forehead start to twitch.
“So,” he says slowly, every word dipped in ice, “why aren’t you doing that, then? Why are you wasting time standing here talking to me?”
Raul’s glare hardens. “Because,” he spits, “he’s been in and out of sleep — half delirious — and started calling your name instead of mine.”
Bellamy’s mouth goes dry.
Nass has been calling for him?
Raul steps back, fury radiating off him. “So here I am. Since he clearly wants you so fucking badly — he can be your problem. You take him to emergency. I’m out.”
He turns and stalks down the hallway toward the underclassmen dorms, the slam of the stairwell door echoing like a gunshot.
The sound jolts Bellamy out of his shock. Then instinct takes over.
He snatches his jacket, slides into his shoes, and bolts down the corridor — his heart pounding.
Raul’s left the door open; it hangs slightly ajar.
Bellamy shoves the door hard— and the smell hits him first.
Liquor. Sweat. Stale smoke.
The dorm is chaos. Clothes, books, and papers cover every surface. The floor’s littered with bottles and crumpled cigarette packs. The whole place looks like a bomb went off.
And there, on the bed, lies Nass.
He’s sprawled half sideways on top of the sheets, sweat-soaked, shivering, shirt twisted around his torso. His chest rises and falls in uneven, shallow breaths. His skin is the wrong color — flushed scarlet across his cheekbones, pale everywhere else.
Bellamy’s breath catches. His anger he’s felt towards Nass for the past month and a half evaporates.
“Raul,” Nass rasps, head rolling across his bed. His voice is a rasped, ragged, sound, like he’s gargled marbles. “M’sorry — m’sorry — ”
Bellamy’s breath catches.
“Nass,” he says quietly, stepping closer. “It’s me.”
No response which sends every nerve in Bellamy’s body alight with panic. He crosses the room in three strides and crouches at the bedside. The heat radiating off Nass’s skin hits him before he even touches him.
“Gods,” Bellamy mutters under his breath, pressing a hand to his slick forehead. He’s burning up.
Nass stirs faintly, blinking through half-lidded eyes. His lips part, cracked and dry.
“B’lamy?” he slurs, voice hoarse and broken, jerking forward with a "hh’hhh’tsschh!”
The sound is soft, broken, more air than voice and Bellamy winces at the noise of pain Nass makes from the sneeze.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “Bless you. I’m here, Nass.”
Nass lets out something between a laugh and a groan. “Missed you,” he breathes, a raw, delirious sound. “Fuck. Missed you… a lotd.”
Bellamy freezes. His heart starts pounding so hard he thinks it might crack his ribs.
“You need water.” he swallows, glancing around for a cloth, a glass, anything. “Gods, how long have you been like this? I’m taking your temperature. Now.”
He finds a thermometer half-buried under rolling papers and slips it between Nass’s lips. Nass blinks at him, dark eyes glassy, fever-bright.
Then Bellamy stands, dumps a half-drunk glass of whiskey, and fills it with water. He returns to the bed, hauling Nass gently upright — his back slick, shirt clinging, every muscle trembling with effort.
The thermometer beeps. Bellamy pulls it out, stomach dropping at the number.
40 degrees.
No wonder he’s delirious.
“You need to drink,” Bellamy says, attempting to raise the glass it to his lips. “You’re severely dehydrated.”
Nass shakes his head, sagging sideways, too weak to hold himself up.
“Hurtds too drink,” he rasps. “I — hh’iiisSCH’yue!”
Nass moans in the aftermath, dark eyebrows twisting in agony.
Bellamy’s gaze flicks down to Nass’s throat and chest. The skin there is blotched and red, his lymph nodes swollen and puffy.
Gods.
Fire lung.
The realization drops like lead in his stomach — a highly contagious infection that makes speaking, swallowing, even breathing feel like fire.
He’s only had it once himself — fire lung — back when he was a small child still living in the orphanage in his northern village. He remembers the burn that crawled down his throat like swallowing embers, the way his fever shimmered behind the eyes until the world swam.
Bellamy swears in Northern tongue.
“We’re going to emergency in the city,” Bellamy says. “You need antibiotics.”
“Ndo,” Nass coughs, throat tearing raw. “So…far.”
Action. Right. Doing things. He is very good at doing things. And now he has to do a very big thing of bringing Nass all the way down to the city port and into a cab.
“You can sleep on the gondola down,” Bellamy stands. “Promise.”
He doesn’t wait for a response. He yanks open Nass’s wardrobe, finds the warmest fleece jacket and brings it back.
“All right,” he murmurs. “Up we go.”
Nass mumbles something incoherent but doesn’t fight him. He guides Nass’s arms through the sleeves, fingers fumbling with the zipper. Heat radiates through the fabric, blistering. Nass’s head lolls against his shoulder, breath wheezing shallow and fast.
Bellamy moves faster. He slides on Nass’s shoes then wraps his own arm around his back, hoisting him out of his bed and half-carrying him toward the door.
“Hh’ISHh’hew!” His nose presses into the side of Bellamy’s neck, the sneeze dampening his skin. The force of the expulsion makes Nass stumble on the threshold of his room, knees buckling. Bellamy grip tightens on him instantly.
“Woah. Bless you. Hey Nass —look at me.”
Nass blinks up at him, pupils blown wide.
“Can you walk for me? As much as you can?” Bellamy works his voice into calm. “Just to the gondola?” His hand comes up, brushing the damp hair from Nass’s forehead, thumb tracing the sweat at his temple. “You’re going to feel so much better when we get emergency.”
“Kay,” Nass’s teeth chatter. The shivering is so violent it rocks them both.
They move down the hall in slow, uneven steps, Bellamy half-dragging, half-holding him upright. The old wooden floors creak beneath their feet. Nass mutters under his breath —fragments of apologies, words in Kureesh Bellamy doesn’t recognize but dearly wished he did.
It takes him nearly twenty minutes just to get outside the university. When the night air hits them, Nass gasps like he’s been dunked in icy water, then starts shaking again, violent and uncontrollable. Bellamy pulls him in closer, arm banded tight across his blistering chest.
“Almost there,” he murmurs.
He half-drags him across the cobblestone courtyard to the cliffside station. The 24-hour gondola hums quietly on its rails, swaying slightly in the wind. Below them, across the sea, the entire city glitters faintly — lights flickering like a constellation.
Bellamy presses the call button. The glass doors hiss open, spilling out a rush of metal-and-salt air.
“Come on,” he whispers, more to himself than to Nass. “You can lie down.”
He half-carries, half-guides Nass inside, who immediately doubles over coughing — a raw, tearing sound that shakes his whole frame. Bellamy steadies him by the shoulders, lowering him onto the cushioned bench as gently as he can.
The gondola lurches once, then begins its slow descent — a creaking, humming slide down the cliff face. The sound of the cables groaning above mixes with the wind howling through the vents.
Bellamy sits down beside him, gently lifting Nass’s head onto his lap. The heat pouring off him is scalding. Sweat sticks his straight black hair; his pulse thruming wildly against Bellamy’s thigh. He rubs Nass’s arms in a futile effort to stop the shivering.
“B’lamy,” Nass moans, voice shredded, barely more than air. His head rolls weakly, pressing into Bellamy’s stomach. His chest seizes in another fit of shallow breaths that break into a hoarse, breathless “hH’ITSHh-!” —hh’k’tschhh!” — spraying helplessly across Bellamy’s shirt.
Bellamy doesn’t even flinch.
“M’sorry for everything,” Nass gasps, shoulders trembling, face crumpling in exhaustion and pain.
“Shh.” Bellamy looks down at him, fingers curling in his hair. “Don’t speak. I know it hurts.”
“No,” Nass croaks, shaking his head weakly. His eyes, glassy with fever, brim with tears. “Please. I…wantd to.”
Nass raises a shaking hand, fingers curling into Bellamy’s with surprising strength — like if he doesn’t hold on, he’ll drift right out of the gondola and into the sea.
It feels achingly familiar. The contact burns through Bellamy’s chest, grounding him. He tightens his grip around Nass’s hand, thumb stroking slow circles over his knuckles.
“Don’t…” Nass rasps, voice catching on a cough. His throat bobs painfully. “Want to be with andyone else.”
His voice is barely above a whisper. But Bellamy hears him loud and clear as if Nass has shouted it.
Before he can speak, Nass’s breath hitches — and then he starts to cry. Real tears. Big, hot drops rolling down his fevered cheeks.
Bellamy freezes. He’s never seen Nass cry.
Never seen Nass really be anything other than teasing or angry.
“Not…Raul….you.” Nass hiccups, curling tighter into Bellamy’s jacket. His voice breaks entirely on the last word.
Bellamy’s left hand moves instinctively, thumbing away the tears even as new ones spill over.
“Nass, I—” he starts, not sure where the words are even supposed to go.
“I —,” Nass’s squeezes his eyes shut. Then opens them. “I…love you Bellamy.”
Bellamy’s heart nearly jumps out his ribcage. For a moment, the gondola and the cliffs and the sea below just disappear.
Then Nass’s body jerks with a loud sob, wracking his fever-slick frame. “I love you,” he gets out between ragged breaths. “Want… to… make it work.”
His face twists in pain, violent coughs finally overtaking anything else he wants to say.
“It’s okay, Nass,” Bellamy swallows. His hand rub circles pressing on a nervous system point between Nass’s shoulder blades. “It’s okay. We will make it work.”
It’s not just an empty promise to get him to stop crying. The statement rings true in every fibre of Bellamy’s being. He, as much as Nass, wants to make it work.
Nass loves him. No one, except his mother, who died for his existence, ever loved him in his life.
And maybe, Bellamy loves him too. Not that he can say it right now.
But he thinks he does.
Nass is still crying when the gondola docks at the base of the cliff. The whole cabin creaks with a low, metallic groan. Bellamy barely waits for the doors to open before he’s moving—his arm locked around Nass’s waist, steering him out onto the damp stone platform.
The air down here is thick and wet with sea fog. The port lamps burn low and orange, halos of light flickering across the cobblestones. The streets are mostly empty except for a few late workers and a drunk sailor arguing with his reflection in a puddle.
Nass coughs once, a low, chesty sound that makes Bellamy’s stomach twist.
“Hold on, Nass,” Bellamy murmurs, tightening his hold. “Almost there.”
He flags down the closest cab, trying his best to ignore the drivers look of absolute shock at picking up the prince of Yekiti at four in the morning.
He manages to get Nass into the car, who, too weak to sit up, immediately curls into Bellamy’s lap, spraying the bare skin on his wrist with a breathless hh’k’tschhh!”
“To Melera Urgent care please,” he tells the driver, who mercifully just nods and begins to drive.
Nass is still hitching out breaths in his lap, face twisted in pain. Bellamy winces, bringing the sleeve of his jacket to cover Nass’s nose just as he jerks into him with a muffled “hh! hEHSHHh’iueh!”
It tears out of him, dampening Bellamy’s sleeve immediately and wrenching a small, pained sound from Nass’s throat.
Bellamy’s stomach turns over.
“Bless you,” he murmurs, removing his sleeve from Nass's face and rubbing slow circles at Nass’s temple. “You’re going to feel better within the hour. Promise.”
Nass groans in response.
The streets blur past, dark and silent. Thankfully, at this hour, the roads are empty, and in no time they’re pulling up to the glowing front doors of Melera Urgent Care.
Bellamy pays the driver and hauls Nass upright, tightening his grip as he guides him through the glass doors and into the waiting room.
The chatter in the room dies instantly. Gasps ripple through the twenty or so people sitting in plastic chairs. Every head turns toward him — even the healers at the front desk.
The air changes—goes tight and small. Bellamy feels it immediately: the eyes, the recognition, the way every breath in the room seems to hold itself. His stomach goes cold. He’s been here before—different rooms, same silence.
He swallows the wave of anxiety that ripples through him.
Any time he is in a public place it is a toss up as to whether people will be polite or spit in his face. His father has never been popular but nowadays things are at all time low.
He feels their stares like stones against his back, the kind that bruise even when he pretends it doesn’t.
“You will command any room if you are to be a Velaquez,” was one of the first things the king ever said to a terrified twelve-year old Bellamy. “You will show no emotion. Be able to control any situation you enter. This is what it means to be a royal. Now stop shaking boy.”
The words slide back into his head uninvited, sharp and metallic. Show no emotion.
Bellamy swallows hard. He tightens his grip on Nass—small, fever-hot, trembling against him—and forces his shoulders straight.
He knows what the room needs to see: composure. Authority. A prince.
He lifts his chin, voice ringing clear and authoritative through the stillness:
“My friend is very sick and requires a private room immediately.”
***
Ten minutes later, Bellamy and a healer named Mari, stand in a modest private room of the urgent care.
Mari had taken one look at Nass before immediately settling him down into the bed and hooking him up to an IV.
“Your Majesty,” Mari says, rummaging through her pockets. She pulls out a mask, handing it to him. “You should wear a mask. Fire lung is extremely contagious.”
“Thank you,” Bellamy says politely, taking the mask from her and putting it over his mouth and nose.
His fingers tremble as he loops the elastic behind his ears, but he forces the motion smooth. He doesn’t tell her that he’s probably already doomed.
He’s due to travel south with his father in eight days — dozens of village elders to meet, speeches to give in Kureesh. His father’s expectations. His own rising panic. All of it burns behind his ribs, something he cannot afford to think about. Not now.
Right now, Nass is breathing easier. That’s the only thing that matters.
“You were right to bring him in,” Mari nods at Nass who is staring up at the ceiling, doped on painkillers. “Fire lung usually goes away in three days or so with antibiotics. But he really needs sleep. The painkiller should help.”
“Fuck — fuck,” Nass rasps out behind his blue mask. “Fuck my throat hurrrtsssss.”
“I’ll hold him until morning,” she says. “You can go, Your Highness.” She gives him a smile behind her own mask. “You must be tired.”
“I’ll wait until you discharge him,” Bellamy says. “And bring him home.”
It’s Tuesday, which means he has class at 9 am that he probably will be missing at this rate.
“He’s myyyyyy boyfriend,” Nass laughs, which quickly turns into a cough. “Okay — sort of.” He clears his throat. “But I loveeeeee him….so he… should…. be mby….boyfriend. And he’s realllyyyyyyyy good at sex — hh’hhh’tsschhh!”
Nass snaps weakly into his mask.
Bellamy looks at the floor, heat flooding into his cheeks. His ears are burning.
It’s absurd, the way Nass can still unmake him even in a hospital bed.
Mari swallows a sound that sounds like a laugh.
“I will leave you two alone,” she says, dimming the bright lights. “Please ring me if you need anything.”
***
Nass is dead asleep only minutes after Mari leaves the room.
Bellamy settles down in the uncomfortable plastic chair at the end of the bed and watches the slow rise and fall of Nass’s chest. He keeps counting the breaths, again and again, until the rhythm steadies something inside him.
By nearly six am Bellamy is satisfied. He shuts the door to Nass’s bedroom quietly, exits the urgent care and back onto the street.
Sea fog drapes over the rooftops, the sky tinted pale amber. Bellamy’s coat smells like antiseptic and fever-sweat, but he can’t bring himself to care.
He always struggles with mornings. As an insomniac, he definitely prefers the quiet of the night.
But today, he enjoys watching the city of Mellila wake up.
He wanders through the narrow cobbled streets, past bakeries that smell of freshly baked bread, past shop owners opening their stores for the day. He ignores the stares of early morning commuters, and smiles at passing children heading to school.
After an hour of wandering, he is very hungry and ducks into a local café to order eggs dipped in tomato sauce — a typical breakfast in central Yekiti. The sharp spice jolts him awake. He takes a bite and thinks, absurdly, of the North — lavender bread and fruit — and feels tears sting his eyes.
He blinks them away before anyone can notice.
There are no Northern restaurants or bakeries in central Yekiti. Most of the country likes to pretend the North and its people don’t exist. And besides, so few Northerners ever leave that a Northern business wouldn’t do well here anyway.
So, Bellamy swallows his eggs, drinks two shots of sharp espresso before realizing food would probably be a good idea for Nass. He pays and wanders the streets again, able to trail his way back to the Southern restaurant where Nass had taken him in the winter, back when he was in the throes of a terrible head cold.
The employees look a little shocked to see him but hide it well. Bellamy explains the state of Nass and ten minutes later, leaves the restaurant with a takeaway cup of Southern tea and broth Southerners often eat when ill.
The spiced smell is so foreign and strange to Bellamy that holding the takeaway bag nearly makes him gag.
But still, he ignores his body’s response and carries it all the way back to the urgent care, pulling on his mask and slipping back into Nass’s dark room.
He must not have opened the door as quietly as he thought because he hears a raspy voice murmur — “Bellamy?” Then harsh coughing.
Bellamy immediately turns on the lights, sets the food down, and moves towards the bed.
“Easy,” he says, helping Nass sit up. He grabs the warm cup of Southern tea, pulling Nass’s mask down from his face. “Drink this.”
Nass obeys, taking small gulps. His throat works visibly as he swallows, eyes fluttering shut with relief.
Bellamy can feel just through Nass’s energy that his fever has gone down. He feels more with it, eyes more focused, and can say, “you’re the best sort of boyfriend ever.”
“You remember that?” Bellamy says, smirking despite himself. He sits slowly sits on the edge of Nass’s bed, squeezing the bottom of Nass’s feet.
“Yes,” Nass coughs. “Though I think I might be the worst boyfriend ever.” He rubs his throat. “Is Raul mad?”
“Well,” Bellamy purses his lips together. “You did call someone else’s name in your feverish delirium.”
He leans forward, pressing the back of his hand to Nass’s clammy skin.
“Hm,” he nods, relief flooding him. “Still feverish a little. But certainly less delirious. Are you hungry?”
Nass gives a weak nod.
Bellamy climbs to his feet to grab the broth, forcing the words out while his back is still turned.
“Do you remember anything else from last night?”
“You mean, telling you I loved you?” Nass coughs, snapping into his elbow. “Yes.”
“Hm,” Bellamy hands him the cup of broth. “I see.”
“I meantd it, Bellamy,” Nass rasps.
A heavy silence descends upon the room. Bellamy’s throat tightens.
“If you haven’t noticed,” Nass croaks out, motioning to his sickly appearance and his left eye that’s still faintly bruised. “I have not been handling our distance w-well.”
His barely their voice cracks on the last word. He begins to cough so hard that Bellamy is forced to grab the cup of broth, so it doesn’t spill.
Nass pulls his mask back over his face as he continues to cough, face whitening at the obvious pain in his throat.
“Ow,” Nass rasps as he finally catches his breath.
“Easy,” Bellamy says. “Save your voice. We don’t need to speak.”
Gods, Nass’s cough sounds horrid. They can talk about what this all means later, in a few days when Nass recovers.
“Thank you for bringing mbe here, Bellamy” Nass croaks, ignoring his suggestion.
As always.
“You’re welcome,” Bellamy says.
“I’m really sorry if I give this to you… hh! hhh’tsschhh’iyue!” Nass snaps into his mask with a miserable sounding sneeze.
Bellamy stamps down the urge to pick his fingernails — a nervous tic his tutors had spent years beating out of him. If he catches fire lung before he is due to travel the South he is royally fucked.
His father might kill him.
Not to mention that this is the first time in the entire history of Yekiti, that a Northern royal will speak with Southerners in Southern language.
But he doesn’t tell Nass any of that.
Instead, he smiles, patting the top of Nass’s knee.
“I’m just glad you’re okay.” He hands Nass a box of tissues on the bedside table. “Bless you.”
And he is. Dragging a delirious, sobbing Nass all the way down to the city in the middle of the night scared the shit out of him.
“Confessing my feelings for you while sobbing and sneezing all over you in the gondola is not how I wanted things to go,” Nass says as he blows his nose. His brown cheeks go a little red.
One of the rare times he’s ever seen Nass embarrassed.
“Well,” Bellamy shrugs, looking at the window down into the city streets of Mellila beneath them.
-One moment... Stepping aside without explanation, maybe raising a finger, right before sneezing. Those few seconds of waiting, where their face subtly transforms before letting out a polite, restrained sneeze.
And if they end up not sneezing — a false alarm — they smile and apologize, creating a moment of tenderness. — there’s something endearingly human about that.
-Putting their glasses back on after sneezing.
-Sneezing behind a trusted person’s shoulder to stay out of sight.
-Whispering or saying the onomatopoeia “achoo,” pronounced deliberately, as if to prepare the body for the sneeze, right before actually sneezing.
-Rolling up a tissue or kitchen paper in their hand before sneezing into it.
-X goes to get some tissues, and you can hear their sneeze from afar on the way there.
-“Empty” sneezes that provide no relief or release, but aren’t false starts either. Something “in between” that leaves you desperate to sneeze again (which usually happens almost instantly).
-A very, VERY faint, breathless “excuse me” in the middle of a sneeze.
-A is washing the dishes while B dries them before putting them away. Suddenly, A feels the unstoppable urge to sneeze, but their hands are wet under the running water, so they’re forced (with their back to B) to deliberately sneeze uncovered, down toward the floor.
-The different ways people around you react to a sneeze fit depending on how you sneeze: a loud, explosive sneezing fit usually brings laughter and a funny moment. But a stifled, discreet, muffled sneezing fit — where the person clearly doesn’t want to draw attention but can’t stop — can instead draw concern, small comforting gestures from others, etc.
-Nodding or answering a question mid–build-up with a pre-sneeze expression.
-Details that make someone look sneezy: a slightly redder nose than usual (not very noticeable, but clear if you know the person well); touching or wrinkling their nose more often; blinking or swallowing more frequently; pressing the bridge or underside of the nose; sometimes zoning out or squinting more often; clearing their throat.
-Triple, breathless sneeze. That’s it.
-STIFLED SNEEZE FIT RAPID: “Hh’nxgt! Ugh… Ngt’Chhu! Uh… H’xhh-hh’nhgsch!” — leaving you completely breathless and tired.
-Being forced to justify your sneezes.
Trying to act normal, but there have been too many already…
A shy laugh — “I’m sorry, I’m so sick” — said casually, without drama.
-Sneezing with your whole body: your head and shoulders shake with the sneeze, and you’re forced to bend forward.
-Sneezes that sound soft but tear through the throat.
-Feverish no-cover. The person is too ill and feverish to even lift a hand or arm to cover, so they end up sneezing to the side or downward, arms close to their body, gently and with barely any strength — maybe followed by a mumbled apology.
-Sneezing repeatedly and not knowing WHEN to breathe because exhalations and sneezes blend together.
-A congested exhale after a very strong stifled sneeze.
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