I cannot express how deeply in love I am with you Hollanov writing. I love the patterns and characterisations you have sent up. Ilya’s really distinctive sneeze pattern, Shane always taking the tissue and folding it first - it makes it so real and easy to picture. I can’t wait for the next part of the 3 + 1 + epilogue (how did we get so lucky, I can hardly believe it). I feel for Shane to my absolute core - being sick around my parents is my legitimate nightmare, I would already be up and cancelled with some completely unrelated excuse, he is way braver than me.
I was also wondering, in your unexpected interference part 2 (you have the best names by the way) there is a line: “A memory conveniently appeared in his mind, Shane with a miserable cold, trying to be quiet while Ilya fucked him in his hotel room, one thin wall separating them from the Russian’s teammate” and is there any chance you would expand on this memory? I love stifle Shane and this is the dream.
Thank you again for all your writing - it is beyond incredible.
Only Sweat with Silence
hi anonnnn, thank you sooo much for the kind words!! I'm so sorry for the wait, I literally had three requests to write this scene, so I hope I have done all three of you justice! as I mentioned here this does not take place in the same universe as my other HR stuff so s/hane doesn't have the kink (which is tragic because this would be a dream scenario for him) but all the relationships are essentially the same.
I hope you enjoy! ♡
fandom: h/eated r/ivalry
word count: 8.1k (ayy IR81)
cw: sneezing, general illness, contagion, mess, everything nsfw, seriously this is one long sex scene, domsub dynamics kind of?
“Hey.” Hollander offered the same stupid, awkward greeting he did practically every time the hotel room door swung shut behind him, eyes darting around the small room in the dim light, trying to acclimate himself. He was wearing a mock-vintage Metros t-shirt that the team had put out a couple of years ago. It was one of his favorites. Ilya wasn’t completely sure why he knew that, but the moment he’d caught sight of it his brain had offered up the words ‘favorite’ and ‘soft’ so apparently it was something they’d discussed before.
The blond looked him over silently, with the gaze of a starved man contemplating an endless buffet. Starving man would not bother with niceties. He stepped closer, head tilting as he contemplated where to begin.
“I can’t…uh I can’t stay.”
“What?” The Russian’s trance was broken for a second. He never stayed anyway, and with the Raiders’ early start the next morning, plus the Metros’ rookie back at Shane’s place, he’d hardly thought there was a need to clarify how long this would take. They’d literally done this exact thing last week, and he hadn’t needed to state how long he’d been there before he started pushing him against the wall as they kissed.
“I just thought I should tell you in person. I want to… you know,” He nodded towards the bed, “But I can’t.”
So, what, he’d come here just to tease him? Show him what he wasn’t going to get that evening? Was he mad about the loss still? Or… did he want to be talked out of leaving? People were so stupidly complicated sometimes.
“You want, I want, so you stay. Simple.” Confident that he’d solved the situation, Ilya pulled off his own shirt.
Hollander looked pissed, pointedly avoiding eye contact with the blond’s bared torso. “Sometimes it’s not that simple, Rozanov. Sometimes it’s not just about what people w-” He paused, pressing his lips together into a thin line, discomfort appearing to suddenly mount.
Ilya tipped his head to one side, analysing him. His thoughts flitted from some mortal injury he’d somehow missed being inflicted on the Canadian at one of his last few games, to something along the lines of a chastity belt that his own nudity had suddenly made extremely uncomfortable for the brunet, to… the completely opposite possibility.
“You have plug in or something?”
“What?” The question broke Hollander’s focus, and Ilya was treated to one singular second of those wide, startled eyes that he so loved to provoke before they were slamming shut and the brunet was ducking in on himself, pinching his nose between finger and thumb. “hNGT! heHNGT!”
The sneezes made barely any noise, but what little of them was audible, was telling. There was an insistent force behind them that savored of multitudes more having preceded the double, and the Canadian’s voice squeaked with the small vocalisation, strain showing itself.
“God bless you.” The blond watched him straighten hesitantly, with a soft sniffle.
“Excuse me.” The strain persisted, and Hollander cleared his throat, gaze directed awkwardly at the carpet beneath his feet. “Thanks.”
“You are okay?” As always, making this inquiry caused the brunet to stand up slightly straighter, squaring his shoulders in a close to imperceptible demonstration of defiant strength. But Ilya had the advantage here, and they both knew it.
“Something in the air, I guess.”
“Is your fucking city, Hollander. Only thing in air is your germs.”
This assertion seemed to spark surprise-apparently they hadn’t both known that Ilya had the advantage, did he really think he was doing that good of a job of hiding his illness?- and then annoyance again, “Fine, I’m leaving. I said I was leaving, so-”
“You are not leaving.” The Russian responded impassively, taking the indignant player’s chin between finger and thumb and tilting his head back to examine his face as though assessing it’s suitability for inserting his dick into, in its current state. Unsympathetic, single-minded, salacious…. simple. This was supposed to be simple.
Ilya, distracted by his train of thought diverting, apparently tipped the brunet’s head back too far. Hollander made an interesting spluttering noise and stepped back, slamming into the door. The blond winced-at the noise, definitely not because he thought it might have hurt- triggering a brief apologetic expression as the stricken man ducked back into the safety between his finger and thumb.
“hehNGT! EhNGT!”
“G-” He began, expecting that to have been the end of it.
“hEHNGTchh!” It wasn’t. “hTSHh!” The brunet struggled to maintain control, the sneeze bursting out of his mouth despite his strong grip on his nose.
Eyebrows raised so high they were considering becoming part of his hairline, Ilya watched him gear up for another one, and, barely thinking, offered him the t-shirt he was still holding in one hand.
“Wha-ahh-t the fuck? N-hh-no. hheHTDShh!”
“Hollander.” The Russian deadpanned. “I am in charge tonight. You are making mess all over hands, and I have plans for hands later. So-.”
There was neither room nor time for argument, as Ilya manoeuvred the item of clothing into his grip, the Canadian’s eyes already shutting, and breath spiralling irreversibly, “hTDSHhew!”
“Budʹzdorov.”
“Sorry.” Hollander croaked vacantly, fabric still pressed to his face, the single word causing him to dissolve into a coughing fit that he folded in on himself and crushed the shirt over his mouth to muffle, torso shaking as he fought for air. It took him slightly too long to regain his composure, subtly wiping his nose and mouth before standing up, back against the door again.
“You are sick.” Ilya stated, once he seemed to be over the little display of symptoms for the moment.
The brunet didn’t respond, busy trying to figure out what the fuck to do with the t-shirt he’d just ruined.
“Is not problem.” Ilya continued, undeterred by the rapid disbelieving eye contact that the statement earned him. “I will fuck this out of you.”
“You will fuck this out of me?” His voice vanished in a squeak of disbelief at the end of the repeated sentence, the high pitch too much for his damaged throat.
“Yes.”
“I’ll get you sick too.”
No fucking shit, Hollander. “You breathe in my face all night at face-off, and you cough on me when I check you-” In hindsight, he probably should have realised that the other player wasn’t just doing that to be an asshole. “-so is not like is first time I get your germs today.”
The brunet looked guilty, and if he could have stepped any further back without breaking the door down and tumbling backwards into the hallway, Ilya was sure he would have. As it was, he settled for looking guilty, sighing softly through his nose like a put-upon puppy, and then immediately looking like he had to sneeze again, which currently meant making a very itchy, desperate, surprised expression, and then staring into Ilya’s far-too-close eyes with a look of extreme panic.
Wordlessly, the Russian reached out to take his hand. Hollander’s already softly hitching breath snagged, eyelashes fluttering as he tried to keep his eyes open and roving Ilya’s face for clues on what he was doing. The blond raised their hands into his line of sight, reminding him that he was still holding the t-shirt. Hollander’s expression flickered into realisation, relief, and then back to the itchy-looking one again as he lifted it to his face, Ilya letting go just in time.
“hTDSHh! hEh…hTCHhew!”
“God bless you.”
The brunet’s cheeks were tinged with the softest blush as he glanced up at him, regretfully. “Thanks, sorry, I don’t know why I’m doing that so much.”
“Sneezing?”
“Yeah.”
“You are sick, and you do not know why you are sneezing so much?”
“Shut up. What if people hear me?” Hollander looked at the walls as though they were about to slide away, gameshow style, to reveal the entire Boston Raiders roster crammed into the two adjoining rooms.
Ilya shrugged. “We win. Everyone is out, except Marleau, maybe, and you sound like girl when you sneeze anyway, so-”
“Fuck you! I don’t sound like a fucking girl.”
“You do.”
“Maybe I should just sneeze a million times so they think it’s just you in here.” The brunet retorted.
He paused, the chirp landing awkwardly, not quite rolling off him like the comments usually did, because it didn’t quite fit right. And normally Hollander was pretty good at knowing exactly where to hit to make it sting in a playful, competitive way. “Would not help. They have not heard me sneeze.”
“What?” The Canadian was completely thrown by that fact, apparently. “Never? You’re not exactly subtle about it.” Yeah, not with him he wasn’t.
“Fuck off. No, never.” Except for Marleau, who was about the only player on the roster he could trust not to use displays of weakness against him in any way, even if it was just to fuel a half-hearted chirp. Marly was freakishly good at knowing where the line was between pissing the captain off and actually making him uncomfortable. Which in itself kind of made him uncomfortable.
“Wow that’s…”
“What, you make point to sneeze in front of team? Is sign of good captain?”
“No, I don’t- I mean, maybe we sh- aren’t we supposed to trust each other?”
Ilya stared into his eyes, a million disjointed thoughts rushing through his mind, about trust, camaraderie, honesty, Hollander, vulnerability, leadership, Hollander, chemistry, strength, Hollander sucking his dick- yeah, however shitty they were as leaders did not fucking matter right then. He just wanted Hollander to suck his dick.
“Suck my dick.”
“Wha-?”
“Literally.” He took several steps back, in the direction of the bed, sticking his thumbs into the waistband of his shorts and starting to take them off. “Knees. Here. Suck my dick.”
…
Ilya was concerned that he hadn’t really noticed how much noise a blowjob made before. Not that either of them were moaning at the top of their voices or anything, or that the head was so bad that he’d found his mind wandering to the soundscape of the hotel room, but… it was kind of unignorable.
Hollander was hard at work, on his knees on the rough hotel carpet in front of the blond, bobbing up and down with the full, hardening length of him moving in and out of his mouth. He was visibly turned on too, trousers tight at the crotch, and hips shifting every so often as he grinded against the material. The sound of the rhythmic penetration was not overly loud or distracting, but the clicking of the brunet’s throat, the heavy, panted breaths, and what was frankly rapidly snowballing from urgent sniffling into some kind of deranged snorting sound were pulling him out of the realm of pleasure and placing him firmly somewhere between disgust and concern.
As much as breath control was an interesting element to bring into the act, and something they hadn’t experimented with yet, and as much as he loved the mix of determination and helpless panic in the brunet’s expression, the sniffling was kind of setting him on edge. Both because one wrong breath meant his dick would be covered in the contents of Hollander’s nasal passageways, and because it was a constant, jarring noise, when he was trying to let his mind wander to more pleasurable places.
“Okay, move.” He pressed on the Canadian’s forehead, detaching him from his dick abruptly.
The brunet kept his head tipped back as he sat down on his haunches, disgust flickering on the edges of his entranced expression as his nose clearly began to drain down his throat. “Why?”
“You can not breathe. I want to finish before you pass out.”
“I can breathe. I can keep going.” His voice started to fade out towards the end of the sentence, and Ilya found himself making pointed, obstinate eye contact through the kneeling man’s hectically fluttering eyelashes.
“You can keep going right now? You don’t want to sneeze first?” It was actually almost boring how easily he could read him right now, there was no challenge, no jeopardy if he guessed wrong, just the brunet’s heart on his sleeve and a sneeze on his face.
“N-hh-no.” His chin tilted up stubbornly.
The Russian sighed, as though exasperated, though really he enjoyed the pushback. It made it more of a game, more of a performance, more exhilarating. “What if I want you to sneeze? What if I order this?”
Hollander considered this, jaw clenched, eyebrows just barely peaked in the centre, holding the sneeze in limbo. “I could maybe do that. A-hh-are you ordering me to…?”
He made him wait. Five seconds of sadistic, spun-out speculation. And then, “Yes, Hollander. Sneeze.”
The brunet did not make him wait in return, “eHNGT! hhNGTch!”
“Budʹzdorov.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Was the muttered reply, the nasal tone to the words making him sound even more pitiful, nose still held tightly between finger and thumb. “Sorry.”
“Means ‘God bless you’. Are you ready to suck my dick again now?”
The Canadian sniffled damply, but he was smiling just a little when he lifted his head to meet Ilya’s gaze. “You have one word that means all that?”
He didn’t deem the quip worthy of a response, picking up his shirt from where Hollander had meticulously folded it and placed it on the floor, almost under the bed, clearly too ashamed of what he’d done to it to keep it anywhere in sight. Which was stupid, because Ilya had almost definitely done worse to it, and most of his other shirts, when he’d been equally sick or much more allergic. This could barely be considered damage. He could probably wear this to sleep tonight.
“Blow.” He commanded, holding it out, squaring his stance as he loomed above the still kneeling man, to enforce his position of power.
“You don’t have tissues?” He immediately voided this attempt, trying to skirt the instruction.
“No. Is shitty hotel room. And I do not use. So, no.”
Hollander looked reluctant, chewing on his lip before stopping to breathe. Ilya, tired and entirely too turned on to wait much longer, employed the eyes that he usually saved for slightly later in the encounter. The Canadian caved immediately. Not a particularly hard battle given that his options were to resist and have his nose drip down his face or his throat for the rest of the night, or to give in and be able to actually breathe during sex.
“I get you real tissues next time, yes?” Ilya ran a hand through the brunet’s hair absently, tone immediately switching to praise as he spoke over the sound of him softly clearing his sinuses out.
“Okay. Thank you.”
Neither of them even hesitated to assume that there would be a next time, even a next time that would require tissues, that whatever this was would persist long enough for the famously health-conscious player to come down sick again while they were playing one another. It was just an attempt to placate him, calm him down enough to fuck him back to health, it didn’t mean anything. Nothing he was doing meant anything to Hollander, and nothing Hollander was doing was meant to be doing anything to him, either.
…
“This is good?”
Shane couldn’t respond, only able to nod feverishly, mouth gaped both to breathe and in response to the feeling of Rozanov pushing deeper into him. This definitely felt like it was more for him than for the blond, even though he’d won the game, and thereby all decision making power for the night, but he would not be pointing that out lest it get him back on his knees on the rough carpet, trying to breathe around his dick. Which would not normally be a problem, he wasn’t the kind of person to try and get out of giving what he owed, but right now that was horrifically hard. Thanks entirely to Hayden, who had spent a week insisting he wasn’t sick and infecting half the team, had just barely lived through their last game against Boston, and then had crashed so hard in the aftermath that he’d missed the next three, and tonight’s one, incapable enough of looking after himself that one of the trainers was staying at his place to ‘keep an eye on him’. Fuck, he did not need to be thinking about Pike right now.
“Yes?” The Russian forced him to clarify, fingers closing around his wrist, squeezing to keep him grounded.
He pushed the word out, breathy and faint through cracked lips, “Yeah.”
Rozanov nodded in response, loosening his grip a bit, the next thrust inadvertently slipping their hands together, fingers interlacing awkwardly, misaligned so Shane’s first three fingers were free. He dug them into the back of the blond’s hand anyway, reaffirming the position without even thinking.
Mind overactive as ever, Shane found himself noticing that lying like this, on his back, was shifting the congestion in his face quite significantly. He’d also noted that having his legs up like this felt amazing, having been on his feet all fucking day, and that the soft bedding under his back was so comfortable that he could almost feel the edge of sleep within his grasp. But the congestion was the pressing issue. Because every so often it would start to drain down his throat with a quiet clicking noise, and then things would start to move around in his sinuses, and a violent little tickle would spring up in his nose.
Every time that happened, he panicked slightly, worrying that the sensation would peak suddenly and he’d find himself sneezing all over himself and Rozanov without the slightest chance to stop it. So at the first hint of the tickle, he would bring his hand up towards his face slightly. The only problem with that was that it was still attached to the blond’s hand, and his delicate attempts to extract his fingers were not enough to dislodge the strong grip that they were caught in.
Before he could make any progress, though, the tickle would wane, and his focus would shift back to the dick being thrust in and out of him, and the owner of said dick, muscles defined with the effort of fucking him, sweat beading on his brow, increased bloodflow turning his lips an irresistibly biteable shade of red.
Shane’s gaze flitted away, over his shoulder to the far wall, as the congestion moved again, the tickle rising in its wake. He started moving their hands closer to his face, fingers spreading wide in an attempt to clue the blond in to his desire to free himself. Don’t sneeze, you don’t have to sneeze, focus on how good this feels, focus on anything else, you’re not going to sneeze right now, you’re-
“What…are you doing?” Rozanov panted, eyes glued to Shane’s face with an expression that was half determined scrutiny and half abstracted lust.
“So-rry, I…” He paused, biting hard down on his lip as the two sensations overwhelming him, rose in synchronicity, “I kind of ha-hH-ve to sneeze again.”
“You need me to stop?” He didn’t look that much like he could, clearly hooked on the pleasure now, the tension of self-restraint apparently building in his body even just at the inconvenience of having to slow down.
“No,” He didn’t even know if the sensation was going anywhere at the moment, so who knew how long they’d have to stop for. “I- I need my hand, though.”
Rozanov shifted his weight, picking up their intertwined hands and manoeuvring them to just beside the brunet’s face, waving them back and forth a little once they were suitably close. “Is here.”
As much as he wanted to argue, his breath had finally caught in a meaningful way, and he could tell his expression was already betraying him, because the blond gave a small nod of permission or acknowledgement, keeping up the slow, predictable pace to allow him to focus on the tickle.
Shane lifted his hand to his face, pinching his nose between the first finger and thumb, momentarily distracted by what appeared to be the side of Rozanov’s thumb brushing against his lip, and then tightening his grip, and allowing his eyelids to flutter closed, as he surrendered to the feeling.
“heHNGT!”
“G- oh…god bless you.”
“hhEHNGtt!”
“… god bless you.”
“hhihEHNGTch!”
“Blya, Hollander, budʹzdorov.”
Shane could feel himself clenching around Rozanov with each sneeze, an unintended by-product of the effort needed to stifle them. Apparently, he had also noticed this, because every time Shane’s eyes opened in the wake of a sneeze, the blond’s were half shut, riding a wave of pleasure. He’d been about to apologise for ruining the moment by reminding them both how disgusting he currently was, but it seemed that he was actually only improving things.
“hhEh-”
…
Ilya watched his eyebrows pinch together urgently for the fourth time in a row, huffed breaths against their linked hands the only indicator of how close he was to the next sneeze. He was so helpless like this, Ilya controlling his pleasure, his nose controlling his pain, and yet still exerting that control over the sneezes, keeping them quiet, contained, letting his symptoms show on his own terms. It was a skill that stirred jealousy in the pit of the blond’s stomach more than any he’d seen displayed out on the ice. Self-control, discipline, unobtrusiveness, it was everything he strove to display, everything he’d been taught to embody… everything that the slightest irritant made completely impossible for him.
Hollander took another wavering breath in, and his fingers tightened around the Russian’s hand like a vice, Ilya feeling first hand the harsh treatment that the brunet’s nostrils were being subjected to. He knew it was only an unintended consequence of their linked fingers, but he allowed himself the smallest pretence that it was the Canadian’s way of keeping him close, reaching out for support, seeking some sort of reassurance as he rode out the fit.
“hhEHNGTt!” The brunet’s abs clenched, muscles starkly defined for a single second as his head jerked upwards slightly from the force of the sneeze. His hips bucked slightly too, and Ilya bit back a moan at the simultaneous squeeze of pressure around his dick. It took all of his self-control not to thrust back harder in response, feeling the pleasure rising to a tangible peak, so close to tipping over the edge. Wait until he’s done. Wait until he’s okay. And then you can fuck every last trace of this virus out of him.
Eyes fluttering open, Hollander let out a warm, shaky breath across the back of Ilya’s hand, loosening his grip, tilting his head back to inhale deeply, mesmerising the blond with his shiny pink lips, still slightly twitching nose, and discomfort-furrowed brow.
“Sorry. Excuse me.”
Ilya realised he’d completely stilled, apart from his thumb, which was stroking the back of the brunet’s hand, partially an effort to not come prematurely, but also out of some kind of instinct to watch, wait, monitor the other man in this moment of ailment and vulnerability. He almost felt like he’d forgotten where they were, who they were, there was no hotel room, no game, no history, no future, there was just him, and Sh- and Hollander, and whatever the fuck Hollander’s immune system was doing to him.
“Budʹzdorov, god bless you. You are okay?” He responded at last.
The Canadian nodded, expression quickly melting from exhausted relief, back to lustful fixation. “Keep going.”
He needed no further encouragement, falling back into a passionate rhythm again, watching, gratified, as the brunet’s mouth fell open with a silent moan of ecstasy. How he’d love to fill that mouth, if he wasn’t already occupied filling another hole.
As though he’d read his mind, Hollander started pulling their hands back towards his face again. At first the blond faltered, wondering if he had to sneeze again, but before he could slow his pace or inquire, his thumb was abruptly inserted into the other player’s mouth. The brunet held the digit between his teeth as he slipped his lips around it, heavy breaths ghosting over Ilya’s hand again.
He stared into the Canadian’s eyes as his tongue ran methodically around his thumb, the significant size difference between his thumb and his dick, and the angle making it a lot easier for Hollander to breathe while he mouthed away at Ilya’s extremities. His hips bucked again, as the blond picked up the pace and the depth, a soft moan more felt than heard as it was huffed out against his hand, and the Russian knew that if they kept this up he was going to come. This felt far better for him than it was for Hollander, and he wanted something to feel good for him, since he’d almost definitely been feeling like shit all day, and then had showed up here only to be coerced into being starved of oxygen by the blond’s dick down his throat.
Ilya pulled all the way out. “Turn over.” He’d barely delivered the instruction before his hand was under the brunet’s thigh, lifting his leg to manually flip him over, the other player malleable and compliant in his grip. Too malleable and compliant. He’d expected some kind of pushback, or at least input on the movement, but no, there was nothing, and he flipped the Canadian onto his front, quick, forceful, and unceremonious.
Hollander hit the bed hard, not dirty hit-hard, not boarding-hard, not hard enough to wind him, but hard enough to knock him out of the rhythm he’d been breathing in. There was a barely audible huffed out breath of surprise, and then he was shaking the entire bed with a violent coughing fit.
“Fuck.” Ilya muttered, watching him push himself up onto his elbows so he could try to breathe without accidentally smothering himself. Even naked, dangerously short of breath, flat on his stomach with the Russian behind him, between his legs, the Canadian made the effort to cough in the direction of his elbow. So polite, so pointless… it made him want to fuck him so hard he forgot where his elbows even were.
The blond didn’t reinsert himself, not yet, leaning forwards and running a large hand over Hollander’s shuddering back, up and down, firm enough to shift the skin around his fingers, feeling the muscles beneath. “Shh.” He clicked his tongue, as though soothing a startled animal, willing the sick man’s lungs into compliance.
Shortly, the coughs turned to intermittent splutters, and then to heavy, raspy breathing, the brunet’s head dipping down towards the mattress as he replenished the spent energy and oxygen. Ilya grimaced behind his back, unseen. He resented the silence, which made it harder to ignore the guilty conscience screaming in his ear. He likes it rough like that, normally. He mentally defended himself. How the fuck was he supposed to know it would do that to him? He needed to fix this. Wasn’t he supposed to be ‘making him better’?
“Water.” The blond spoke before he’d even connected the dots in his conscious mind, coming out in English on mere chance. He was halfway through stretching a leg out in the direction of the floor when Hollander replied, voice borderline unrecognisable, but firm and assured.
“No. Keep going.”
“You are sure?”
“Yes.”
So, he reinserted himself, hand slipping down to rest at the small of the brunet’s back, while he leaned forwards to grasp his dick with the other. The Canadian moaned hoarsely. Ilya’s heart rate picked up at the noise, honing in on his mark, knowing exactly what every single calculated movement he made was doing to-
A door slammed close by in the hallway. Hollander flinched, but the next stroke of Ilya’s fingers down his dick relaxed him again. Like butter in his hands, or whatever that phrase was. Why would you want butter in your hand? As lube maybe?
“Is making you feel better?” The blond distracted himself with the question, purred low in the back of his throat as he fucked the sick man slowly, carefully, in the wake of his mistake. But if Hollander started sneezing like that again, squeezing tight around his dick, shuddering against the mattress, making that helpless, apologetic face…
“It’s-” He began in response, only to be abruptly interrupted by a knock on the door. He flinched again, Ilya slowing his rhythm to a stop as well, both of their eyes snapping towards the sound.
“Roz?” Marly. Fuck. Could not be worse timing.
The blond elected not to reply, adjusting his position to make waiting more comfortable, placing a firm, steadying hand on Hollander’s back again, to silently tell him not to freak out, and not to move. And definitely not to cough or sneeze or make any other Canadian-sounding noises that might give them both away.
After a beat of probably trifold baited breath, the winger knocked again. “Cap? Are you okay, dude?”
“Fuck off, Marly.” Ilya shot back. Clearly he knew he was in there, maybe the headboard was banging against the wall and he hadn’t noticed.
“Yeah? That’s kind of a rough cough, man, just wanted to check you’re all good.”
Every muscle in Hollander’s body tensed, and not in the good way like right before he came or when he’d been sneezing just then. Like he was terrified. Marly was not terrifying. Marly was idiot who did not know when to quit. So, Ilya would tell him when to quit.
“Is not problem, I am fine now, you can go.” He called, before leaning in as close as the angle would allow him to get to Hollander. “I have to fuck you louder, okay? So he knows is not just me in here. If he thinks I am with girl, he will leave me alone.”
“Yeah, okay.” The brunet’s response was breathy, tense, shaky. Ilya pressed the hand on his back down harder, anchoring him to the bed.
“Breathe, Hollander. Is pointless if you pass out.”
He inserted himself again, starting to thrust forcefully, both hands steadying himself against the mattress now, focused on making the bedsprings creak and the frame shudder and whatever ‘I’m fucking someone within an inch of their life in here so you should definitely go put headphones on or go out for the night’ noises he could.
There was silence from the hallway. For the love of fucking-
“Oh yes, da, like that.” He moaned, pointedly.
Hollander’s head snapped around to look over his shoulder at him, apparently not having realised that fucking louder meant making the most stereotypical sex noises he could think of. Ilya almost laughed at how high his eyebrows had climbed up his forehead. They didn’t really get to be loud during sex much, now that he was actually thinking about it. Which was sad because he loved to make the Canadian moan and whine and whimper his name. Stupid thin hotel room walls.
The current thin hotel room walls informed them abruptly that Marleau had retreated to his room again, as the door slammed again. Ilya kept up the increased power, though, wanting to make this worth the brunet’s while. He was rewarded by Hollander’s back arching as he shifted the angle he was hitting into him at, hearing him gasp softly as he reached around to take hold of his dick again.
“Fuck, Rozanov.”
The Canadian made various soft sniffling and moaning noises as Ilya brought him methodically closer and closer to release, alternating between pushing his head into the pillow and tipping it back to gasp at the ceiling, unable to be still between the twin sieges being laid to his body, just barely keeping himself from coming apart all at once. There was that self-control again. It was so goddamn hot to see him using every last drop of it, it was not a reservoir that usually ran dry on the ice, but behind closed doors, Ilya could push him right to the edge of composure, and then over it.
He was almost over the edge himself when he noticed the tension starting to build in the muscular shoulders ahead of him again.
“What is it?” He slowed slightly to ask, running a hand up Hollander’s bare side and earning a shiver in response.
“I… have to sneeze again, I think.”
He thought? Ilya could probably tell him with greater certainty than that, just from his breathing pattern. Fuck, Ilya could probably predict the look on his face, how far he was from coming, and how much ice time he’d racked up that day, just from his breathing pattern. “Okay, so go.” Did he have to tell him every time now or something?
“What if he’s still listening?”
The anxiety in the brunet’s tone was exactly what he’d been trying to avoid. Sex was good for illness, stress not so much. “Hollander, listen to me. You will sneeze now, properly, not hold in like ‘ggt’-” He mimicked the sound of the stifles, “-you have to sneeze properly, but make it sound like girl, okay?”
“Like a girl?” He sounded reluctant, the anxiety still evident.
Ilya upped the firmness in his tone. “Yes. Can you do this for me?” It was not much of an ask, given the sound of the Canadian’s sneezes was feminine to begin with, but asking him to do it on purpose, when he knew that someone was most likely listening?
“…yes.”
“You are sure? I think you can not do this.” Maybe challenging him would be helpful.
This time the response was quicker, more assured. “I can do it.”
“Good.” The blond praised him pre-emptively.
“hhEh…” Hollander’s back swelled as he took in a hitching breath, lungs filling to capacity, and then emptying with a shaky exhale, before the process repeated, “hehH… hHh…”
Ilya slowed his thrusts further, coming into a smooth, constant rhythm, considering whether the sensation of impending orgasm was distracting him, “Is stuck?”
The brunet shook his head. “I need something to c-hh-over with.”
“No.” He responded firmly, “Is better to let it out.”
“It’s gross.”
“Nothing about you is gross.” The phrase was perhaps slightly too eager, too vulnerable, too familiar, so the Russian hardened his tone, making it a command instead of a request. He was in charge tonight after all. “Is about what I want right now, and I want you all over these sheets, Hollander. Your sweat, your spit, your cum. You will make as big of mess as possible for me, yes?”
The response was a small, hitching whine.
“Yes?” Ilya pushed.
“Y-hh-es.”
He didn’t reaffirm the promise this time, instead focusing on adjusting his position so that he was ready to take this all the way in the aftermath of the sneezing, because sooner or later (and almost definitely sooner), Hollander was going to tire himself out, and then this wouldn’t be fun for either of them. The blond placed his hand on the small of the Canadian’s back, spreading his fingers out, and the other on his hip, securing him in place. And then, keeping up the smooth, slow strokes, he waited.
Hollander’s head tipped back, tilted to one side slightly so Ilya could see his mouth fall open, the slight flare of his nostrils, the way his eyes squinted at the ceiling and then squeezed shut.
“eHTCHew!”
The sneeze was mostly directed into his bare shoulder, from what Ilya glimpsed before his own eyes shut automatically in response to the slight added pressure on his dick.
“hTSHhew!” Hollander seemed to remember his instruction before the second one, awkwardly directing it downwards at the sheets below his chest, the shockwave resulting from his head jolting downwards making his hips slam back against Ilya’s.
The blond stared at his hand on the sweat-beaded back in front of him, dug his fingertips into the skin slightly, trying to keep his focus on not coming before his stupid, extremely sick rival, who was helplessly sneezing his head off in his hotel room bed, pretending to be a girl- which he was doing a pretty good job at, actually- so that his best friend wouldn’t realise who he was actually fucking. Holy fucking-
“heHTDSHiew!” The Canadian’s hands fisted in the sheets as he misted Ilya’s pillow with the forceful, but still effeminate sneeze. “hiHSHhew!”
Helplessly snowballing towards climax, Ilya started thrusting again, taking his hand off Hollander’s hip and taking his dick back in his hand again. The brunet gave a slightly less feminine sounding moan, which was cut off by another gasp.
Wait, just wait a second. Ilya willed him. Fucking hold it back, hold it in, do whatever you usually do, or I’m going to-
“eHTSHhew!”
He caught a last glimpse of spray drifting across the bed in the artificial light before his eyes slammed shut and it crashed over him. The blond inadvertently tightened his grip as he deepened his thrusts, seeking out every last drop of pleasure, hearing a muffled moan from the Canadian and feeling his own orgasm taking over his body as he apparently pushed his face into the pillows. This should not be such a good feeling, considering what had led up to it. But fucking hell it was an incredible feeling. Better than last week, somehow.
Breathing harder than he had all night, Ilya pulled out, watching Hollander curl in on himself in response, shaking the bed with one last, soft, “TShhew!” directed into the pillow that his face was still pressed into.
Ilya crawled up the bed and collapsed beside him, staring up at the ceiling as he panted out, “God fucking bless you, Hollander.”
…
The following morning came early, and cold, and unforgiving. Ilya stood in the hotel parking lot waiting for the shuttle to the airport, which had been delayed, warming himself with memories of the night. Pressing against Hollander’s slightly feverish skin, the sweat of exertion dripping from his torso onto the brunet’s back, fingers interlinking, tongues intertwining, changing position over and over, never satisfied with each other’s closeness, wanting to see and touch every inch of him at once, wanting to fill him with a pleasure so intense it would cancel out all the discomfort and pain.
The blond sighed, thumbing over his phone in his pocket, as still and silent as it had been since Hollander left, no update, no chirp, no anything.
“Morning.” Marleau joined him, ignoring the withering look the captain sent in his direction, detecting his desire to be alone but not enabling it.
“Hi.”
“How are you doing?”
What the fuck was he trying to start? “Amazing. Why?” Ilya responded flatly.
“You sounded bad last night. I texted you, but you didn’t respond.” Which he remembered now, a brief ‘u ok?’ sent through just close enough to Hollander’s exit for Ilya to be in the middle of coming down from the high of the encounter, and to be entirely too irritated by everything to text back.
“Is all good. Montréal girl get me sick, I fuck her anyway.” If he’d known that asking him to stay would result in having to falsely admit to sickness just to cover for them both, he would have let Hollander leave.
“Yeah, I heard her too, she sounded twice as rough as you, but people don’t get sick over the course of an hour, cap.”
“We meet last week too. You would not know because you were out all night.”
Marleau looked at him with wary but discerning eyes. “You seem kind of fine, though, and you played well yesterday.”
Ilya sniffled performatively. It was cold out here, and he’d woken up in the last two hours, and he was always at least slightly sniffly anyway, so the sound served to back-up his retort. “Is worse at night, maybe. I do not know, Marly, I am not doctor.”
“Did you see one, though?”
“No. Is not big deal.”
“Okay.” He accepted that, swiping the back of his hand under his nose, shifting from foot to foot to fight off the chill.
They stood in silence for a few seconds, Ilya willing the bus to pull into the parking lot, and willing Marleau to want to sit somewhere else so he wouldn’t have to pull any more fake symptoms out of nowhere. It was slightly daunting to remember that they wouldn’t be fake for that long, after the amount of fluids he’d swapped with the sick man last night…
“Shit.” The brunet muttered, drawing his captain’s attention again as he swung his bag off his shoulder and started to rifle through it. “hhH-Kkf-”
Whatever he was looking for, he evidently didn’t find in time, tipping his head back skywards, before snapping back down towards the floor, “hhEh-hTNGK! hEhTGKkhOo!”
“Budʹzdorov. You are sick also, yes?”
He shrugged, sliding his bag back onto his shoulder, and pinching the bridge of his nose, as though fighting off either a headache or more sneezes. “I guess I might be coming down with something.”
“Must be serious if you do not go out to see your Montréal girl.” Ilya commented absently, pulling his phone out to check that he still had no messages of importance.
Marleau sighed, and then coughed. “Think that’s where I got it from, actually.” Really? If so, that was pretty quick for him, illnesses usually took slightly longer to break through his defences, and it had barely been a normal incubation period’s worth of time since they’d last been here.
“She was sick when you saw her?”
“Mm.” He responded, and then muttered something that sounded like ‘both times.’ but couldn’t be, because they’d only been in Montréal once in the last couple of weeks.
Ilya hadn’t been planning on responding, but even if he had, the winger would have interrupted him, as the airport shuttle pulled into the parking lot, and his hand came down firmly on the captain’s shoulder. “Maybe we sit together, dude, quarantine this shit. Can’t be taking the whole team out.”
“Sure.” Maybe listening to Marly sniffle and cough and be generally disgusting would be punishment enough, in the eyes of the universe, for putting his dick in every hole in Hollander that would receive it, despite knowing that he was feeling shitty, and then he wouldn’t end up getting sick. Or maybe he was just doubling his chances of catching something. Either way, someone had to sit next to the unwell winger, and they both knew that Ilya wouldn’t be an asshole to him about things beyond his control, like the fact that he was almost definitely going to snore for the entirety of the plane ride, and that the changes in pressure would probably do unthinkable things to his sinuses.
…
Almost two weeks had passed since the game in Montréal, and Cliff’s conditioning schedule had finally lined up with his captain’s again, the two of them entering the gym at their hotel together, unspeaking, after taking the elevator down there, unspeaking, and meeting in the hallway outside their rooms, unspeaking. Rozanov was always quiet, but this had to be some kind of new record. He hadn’t been able to get a single noise out of him so far that morning.
They headed for the running machines, Marleau absently scanning the room as he stepped on, and realising that they were the only two people in there. It was early, but not so early that he’d expect to be alone in the gym. Normally he wouldn’t be bothered at all, in fact it was preferable if he was going to switch machines a lot, or wanted to feel unobserved. But with Roz being so freakishly silent… the whole thing felt kind of like a horror movie.
The hum of the treadmills coming to life was a welcome noise, faint music already playing over the gym’s speakers, but not really loud enough to feel like a distraction, or upbeat enough to make things feel less apocalyptic. There are no zombies, it’s a normal gym, you have got to stop watching horror movies on the flights.
Cliff found his rhythm quickly, revelling in the feeling of his body awakening, coming to life, paying attention to every muscle, tendon, joint that he knew would get him through the game later. It was pretty meditative, running over each limb in his mind, checking in on past injuries, feeling out the vibe for morning skate, how he’d spend his day, and then how he’d play the game. It was also an excellent distraction from the other thought in his mind, Pike. Whatever illness he’d kindly passed across to the Boston player had somehow taken the same amount of time to run through both of them, with their first games back happening on the same night, a few days ago.
He’d been lucky to only miss one game, and Pike had been pissed to miss so many more, texting him something along the lines of ‘not suspicious at all that we’re both playing tonight’ at first intermission, and strongly hinting that he should have taken one more game off when they talked on the phone afterwards. Honestly he didn’t think it was suspicious. They’d gotten sick at different times, their teams had given different reports of what the illness was, Pike getting scratched for ‘flu symptoms’ and Cliff for ‘upper respiratory condition’, and they’d literally never been connected in any significant way before. So as far as he saw it, they were in the clear.
Beside him in the mirror, Rozanov appeared to stumble, hands coming to the treadmill handles to support himself as he jerked forwards awkwardly. Concerned, he slowed his speed slightly and turned to look at him directly. He’s not turning into a zombie, he’s not turning into a zombie, he’s-
“-hKk! kKSH!-” He’s just having one of his sneeze attack things. Okay.
The blond directed the expulsions down at his chest, apparently caught off guard, because Cliff wasn’t sure he’d ever seen him sneeze in a public space like this without making some attempt to get away first before. They were alone, but there was no guarantee they would stay that way until the end of the fit.
“-hKSHh! hiHKSHh!-” He stumbled again, spritzing the running belt and his own legs.
With barely a second’s hesitation, the brunet reached across and pulled the safety key out, the machine slowing to a stop, which also seemed too much for Rozanov, who struggled to accommodate the pace change, taking the bulk of his weight on his arms as his feet scuffed against the belt uselessly.
“-hKXSHhuh!-” Cliff looked away at that one, half seeing the mess that it made, but mostly averting his eyes in time, staring at the console of his own machine as the blond lifted a belated hand to cup over his face.
“KSHh! kKXSHh! hrRSHH! hRSHHh!” Aaand he was done. Fuck, those things always seemed so exhausting, would he even still want to work out?
Marleau glanced across at him, just barely hearing, over the sound of the treadmill, some kind of frustrated curse that had to be in Russian because to him it just kind of sounded like ‘something something colander’ which made no sense at all. It also kind of didn’t make sense that these were the first concrete symptoms he was seeing from him in a week of supposedly being ‘sick’, and playing flawlessly, and seeming fine, apart from the standalone sniffs that he would give when Cliff inquired about it, and a fit that he’d seen him have in a stairwell during intermission at the last game which he was pretty sure had something to do with the rookie fucking up trying to adjust his stick and exploding sawdust all over the hallway.
“Bless you, Roz.” The brunet tossed him the towel he’d thought to grab on the way in- which the captain hadn’t- and increased the speed on his machine, with the intention of giving him the privacy he clearly needed to clean up. It took him fifteen full seconds of running and staring at himself in the mirror opposite to realise why that didn’t make any sense, but by then Rozanov had finished tending to his nose and was increasing his own machine’s speed again, their footfalls falling into rhythm.
Marleau took a deep, grateful breath in through his uncongested nose, and relished the feeling of his muscles not aching before he’d even really begun the workout. He was finally healthy again. He just had to hope he didn’t catch whatever Roz had, because the chances that in all of Montréal, both his casual hockey hook-up and the captain’s long-term girl had managed to infect them with the same cold, were incredibly low, right?
