Hii! I absolutely love your work!! I wrote a little story about Ilya and the Centaurs’ WAGs because I really love them! I hope you like it!!
The WAGs adopt Ilya Rozanov
It was still early in the evening so Shane was watching tv when he heard the door click open. A soft smile formed around his lips as he realized that Ilya was finally home. Immediately Shane heard loud, booming sneezes fill the house.
‘Huhh’DTSCHehh!’, ‘uhh’HHDEZZSCH’hoo!!’
By the time Ilya came into the living room, he was still sneezing his head off. Stumbling blindly over to the couch, he pressed one elbow against his face in the knowledge that Shane didn’t like him spreading germs. The man in question flinched involuntarily everytime his boyfriend scream-sneezed, but still held his hands out to catch Ilya.
The Russian let himself fall on the couch, into Shane’s arms before sneezing one final time and then going completely limp.
‘hihh'DZZTSHheww’
‘Bless you, baby’, Shane fished a pack of tissues out of his pocket and handed the blond man one. Ilya blew his nose tiredly and then went on to cuddle with his boyfriend. Shane rubbed his back soothingly as Ilya let out a few ticklish, little coughs.
Ilya often had these seemingly never ending sneezing fits in front of him. Mostly as soon as he got home from a day of being exposed to the hardships of Canadian spring. Ilya didn’t always sneeze in these draining fits like the ones he had right after practice, but Shane just assumed it meant that Ilya’s allergies were really bad in those moments.
——
Shane enjoyed his first barbecue with the Centaurs much more than he could’ve imagined. It was the end of the summer and the beginning of a new season with Shane as a new player of their team. Cassie and Bood had outdone themselves with all kinds of dishes and even made a different salad for Shane specifically.
Shane was startled out of his contentment when Luca Haas sneezed really loudly, alerting everyone in the garden. The rookie blushed and tried to disappear into the shadows before his teammates burst out laughing.
Shane, who was close to him, shook his head comfortingly and laughed, saying:
‘Don’t worry about it. I mean, have you ever seen Ilya sneeze?’
At that Luca narrowed his eyes while thinking deeply but then tilted his head sideways.
‘Uhm actually no, now that you mention it’
LaPointe lowered the piece of potato he was about to eat and frowned slightly.
‘It’s not possible that Cap has never sneezed, right?’
Bood shrugged, flipping some sausages on tbe barbecue.
‘I thought maybe Russians just didn’t do that’
Wyatt nodded in agreement, stretching his legs on the soft grass while leaning against his wife’s shoulder.
‘I would have remembered if it was that loud’
Dykstra turned towards Shane raising an eyebrow.
‘Are you sure about it?’
Shane was absolutely baffled. Almost everyday Ilya had these huge sneezing fits, loud and unstoppable. There was no way he had never once sneezed during practice?
‘Ilya has really bad hayfever. He’s the sneeziest person I know’
Shane shook his head at the incredulous looks on The Centaurs’ faces. He was almost starting to doubt himself.
But then Cassie Boodram placed another bowl of salad on the plastic table and coolly turned towards her husband.
‘I think Shane knows his own husband the best. Hayfever really sucks, I hope you take good care of your captain’
Bood put his gloved hands up defensively:
‘We can’t take care of him if we don’t know anything is wrong!’
‘And here I was thinking that he finally started to open up to us’, Wyatt pouted sadly.
Caitlin Dykstra rolled her eyes.
‘That’s so typical, guys really don’t pay any attention. I’ve literally heard Rozanov sneeze multiple times before’
Evan Dykstra’s mouth fell open and Bood raised his eyebrows in disbelief.
‘And I can confirm that it is indeed very loud’, Lisa Hayes added smugly and Wyatt pointed a betrayed finger at her.
‘You too?!’
Luca shook his head curiously.
‘When?’
Instead of Lisa, Cassie answered:
‘Well, there was that time we all went to the petting zoo last spring…’
——
Cassie Bood
In the beginning of March, the Centaurs and Harris organized a team building activity and they all went to a petting zoo in Ottawa. After practice they would take the kids and let them roam free between all the animals.
Although it quickly became clear that the adults might have even more fun than their children.
Cassie loved watching all the tough hockey boys absolutely lose their minds when they were allowed to feed the newborn lambs.
She wasn’t ashamed to admit that she took almost as much pictures of her son Milo sitting on a beautiful black pony, as she took of Rozanov and Barrett cuddling baby bunnies.
As the day went on though, she noticed Ilya becoming more and more quiet. She caught him more than once turning away from the group or staying a bit behind to quietly hide what she assumed were little sneezing fits into his shirt. Afterwards he would look around frantically if anyone else noticed and then continue on as if nothing happened.
When Zane took their son into the chicken coop, Cassie subtly pulled on the captain’s sleeve.
‘We’re gonna check if there’s a place to drink something around here’, she called out but the group didn’t react, too excited to see the next animals. Cassie shrugged and dragged Rozanov away from the barn and over the gravel path.
Ilya followed Cassie quietly as they walked next to each other in the direction of the little bar she had already noticed earlier.
‘What’s bothering you?’, Cassie dared to ask the stoic captain as gently as she could, but Rozanov was already busy. She saw more than heard him flinch into his elbow, strangled sounds filling her ears. They were different than the nearly silent ones he’d continuously let out earlier. She could tell these were more desperate and therefore less controlled.
‘H’DGxtt, Ngt’dtsh!, HHgxt’ugh’,
‘nGT’shh’, hehhD’xgt!-ng’
‘You can just sneeze here you know, it’s only us and some fields’, Cassie tried to encourage the stubborn hockey player.
Ilya opened his teary eyes a bit as if he wanted to check the area for himself. In the end he just gave an exhausted cough and let his body do its job to sneeze fully. The relieved sound echoed across the fields and Cassie worriedly counted about fifteen of them before Rozanov seemed even remotely finished.
“HEHH’dTSSChoo, ‘Ihh’ZZEHSCHHiew’
When Ilya straightened back up, he wiped tears from his eyes and blinked against the low, setting sun.
‘Allergies have been bad today. I am really sorry’, he snuffled congested and Cassie wished she hadn’t left the stroller that contained a pack of tissues with Zane.
She wondered faintly if Rozanov had waited all day, looking to hide somewhere and sneeze his head off. Even though he was still fighting them now when they were alone.
Cassie frowned. Zane had told her the new captain had been reserved when they first started playing together. It hadn’t taken long for him though to find a way into everyone’s heart. Cassie thought naturally that it must’ve been the other way around as well. But maybe they needed to step up their game.
There was a moment of silence between them until a horse in the distance, offended by the loud noise, neighed back at the hockey player. Cassie burst out laughing at the same time that Ilya flipped the poor animal off, his cheeks turning embarrassingly red.
‘I’m allergic to horses too’, Ilya muttered grumpily and Cassie stopped laughing instantly to sheepishly rub some stray pony hairs off of her shirt.
‘Let’s find that café so you can wash your hands and face’, she stated seriously. Ilya just nodded, still blushing fiercely.
‘I think I deserve some vodka maybe’
‘Water will do’, Cassie shook her head amused, linking her arm through Rozanov’s in quiet comfort. She was a mother after all, germs didn’t scare her.
——
Lisa Hayes
When Wyatt told Lisa that their captain had fallen ill, she had ordered him to go check on the man. Lisa had gotten to know Rozanov a bit better over the many months that he played for Ottawa now. She knew that the man was not so secretly a sweetheart but that he was also extremely stubborn.
Wyatt had gone the first time but apparently the captain had been asleep and hesitant to wake him up, Wyatt had just returned home. The next visit was for Lisa.
She rang the doorbell, holding on to a thermos with homemade soup. When the door buzzed, she pushed it open and went inside.
Lisa found the man under a blanket on the couch, watching television. He looked up through heavily lidded eyes but straightened when he saw her. Lisa informed him about the soup and made her way to the kitchen to warm the food up for him before he could protest. Once she’d done that, she put the bowel on the table next to the couch.
Lisa noticed some bottles of pills that the team doctor had prescribed him and a white package that she immediately recognized.
‘Did you take this?’, she pointed to the flu test, knowing that Rozanov very likely hadn’t. None of the things on the table seemed even touched.
As predicted, the man shook his head and mumbled something under his breath. Lisa settled herself next to him on the couch to which the blond’s eyes widened and he tried to move away from her.
‘What did you say?’, she prompted, ignoring Rozanov’s attempts at escaping.
‘I can’t- Is difficult in English’, Ilya muttered annoyed but Lisa understood what he meant. The instructions weren’t very difficult but when you’re sick, even reading in another language can be too much of a task. She could tell that the Russian was embarrassed about it, but honestly she didn’t mind.
‘I’ll do it for you. Just 30 seconds, 15 seconds for each side, and we’re done’, she proposed. Ilya considered it for a while but gave his permission eventually with a tight nod.
Lisa pulled out the swab and carefully inserted it deep into his right nostril. Rozanov tried to pull back with a startled groan but Lisa was a trained doctor so she kept his head in place with one hand.
‘Breath through it. Out through your mouth when I go in’, she instructed and when Ilya did, he calmed down a bit. She rotated the stick around in his nose, counting to fifteen out loud.
Lisa made it to ten before she became alert to the way her patients nose twitched and his eyes fluttered to stay open.
‘Are you going to sneeze?’, she asked sympathetically, wondering whether she could push through for the last five seconds.
Ilya muttered a short “no” and then focused on breathing through his mouth again. Only a bit later his eyes fully closed, head tilted back and the tip of his tongue peeked through his parted lips. His nostrils flared wide to give her better access.
It was only a matter of seconds so Lisa pulled the swab out and Rozanov lunged forward into his shoulder immediately, sneezing silently about a hundred times. Lisa breathed surprised and gave him some tissues that she found on the table.
‘GnxTsh!’, ‘huhh’gktsh’,
‘ihh-DT’shff!’, ‘hhihNgktt’
‘Bless you!’, she smiled kindly when he was done, but Ilya had his head turned away, his gaze focused on his lap.
‘I couldn’t stop it’, he observed sadly.
‘I know, that’s okay. It’s a normal reaction’, Lisa tried encourage him but Rozanov continued to look oddly put out, like it was the worst thing in the world to have happened. She tried her best to comfort him then.
‘How many times have you broken your nose?’
The man made an uncertain noise and Lisa nodded.
‘I thought so. That combined with being sick makes you more sensitive. That’s very normal, honey. I’m gonna have to do other nostril now’
Ilya nodded apprehensively and closed his eyes. This time they made it smoothly to fifteen but before Lisa took the swab out, she urged gently: ‘Don’t hold them in, doctor’s orders’
Ilya nodded barely before he sneezed loudly but politely into his elbow and then repeated the process two times.
‘HD’uhhT’SCHEWW!’, HehD'ESHHuhh’
‘HIHH’DTZZSHiew!’
‘I’m so sorry. I don’t want you to catch this’, the sick man apologized and Lisa handed him his bowl of soup.
‘I won’t’, she assured him.
‘Wyatt can come around tomorrow, to see how you’re doing?’
Ilya waved his hand somewhere in the air and began sipping from the now not so hot soup.
‘Not like this’
Lisa finished putting the swab away neatly for the team doctor to find. She would ask Wyatt for the results tomorrow.
‘He won’t mind’
‘I mind’, Rozanov croaked out around thick coughs and Lisa hummed concerned. She was definitely sending her husband to check in on Rozanov. Whether the stubborn man wanted or not.
——
Caitlin Dykstra
Caitlin was hosting a party in the winter for New Year. The new year had already begun but this was the only day that most people could make it. Everyone was outside having fun with the Sparkler Fireworks Evan bought when Caitlin went back inside to prepare the dessert.
As she was busy cutting the cake she had baked that morning, she heard some shuffling above her. Caitlin frowned. Wasn’t everyone outside? She went upstairs to investigate and found the upstairs bathroom closed.
Caitlin didn’t mind, she told her guests that they could use the bathroom if the toilet downstairs was occupied. Only, right now it wasn’t. Caitlin knocked softly and waited, but when no one opened the door, she let herself in.
‘Hey’, she said sheepishly to the man inside and Ilya Rozanov startled, looking up at her from where he was sitting on the closed toilet in the dark.
‘I’m sorry, I was ju-huhh just-‘, he started to explain but then his breath hitched, causing Caitlin to panic. Fearing that the man might be crying or worse, choking or something, she turned on the light.
The sudden brightness immediately tipped Ilya over the edge as he started sneezing quietly, ducking into his fist over and over again. After a while they were getting stronger and Caitlin was getting more worried.
‘Ihh’Gxt’, ‘Ng’tzd!’,
‘ngKTshh’, ‘UhhDT’nxt!’
Caitlin rushed to the sink and held a washcloth under the water. She pushed it into Rozanov’s hands and told him to hold it against his face. The cold shock stopped the sneezes for a while and Caitlin blinked nervously at the man in front of her.
‘Are you alright?’
Ilya nodded embarrassed, his breath still suttering every few seconds but he managed to hold the sneezes at bay.
‘I’m alle-hehh allergic to cats’, he admitted quietly. And Caitlin realized suddenly that of course now had to be the exact moment that they were babysitting Evan’s sister’s pet.
‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry. Normally we don’t have pets but Lexi is with us for a few weeks’
Ilya’s shook his head dismissively and started saying: ‘I couldn’t-‘
But Caitlin interrupted him before he could lunge into another suppressed sneezing fit that clearly didn’t help any bit:
‘I’m gonna serve the cake to all the guests outside and then I’ll come back. Hang on’
Caitlin hurried downstairs and took the tray with cake. With the excuse of preserving the heat inside, she closed the door loud enough. Outside she waited a little until she indeed heard the faint echo of what had to be impressively loud sneezes. Caitlin smiled to herself. She had no idea what the captain was self-conscious about but she hoped he’d gotten some relief when she got back.
After everyone was served, Caitlin turned to Evan: ‘Do we still have those antihistamines you normally take in summer?’
Evan nodded.
‘Yeah they’re in the bottom drawer in the bathroom. Are you having an allergic reaction?’
Caitlin had already turned her back to her husband again and called over her shoulder.
‘No, one of the girls asked for it’
Then she went back inside and hurried to the bathroom to find Ilya scrubbing at his nose but he had immediately stopped sneezing upon hearing her return. Caitlin rummaged worriedly through the drawer and found the medication she was looking for.
‘I only have the liquid kind, is that alright?’
Ilya nodded shyly and sat perfectly still, apart from a few sniffles, until she handed him the right dose.
‘You know Evan has hayfever in summer. He understands what a pain allergies can be’, she tried to cheer the miserable looking captain up.
It didn’t seem to work though as Rozanov simply said: ‘It’s nobody’s issue but mine. I’d like to keep it that way. It will never affect my playing, dont worry’
Cassie grimaced but quietly put the medication back again.
‘Of course not, honey. Just don’t forget that we’re all here for you. Let me see your face?
I think you should shower first. Then you are ready to go downstairs again’
Ilya nodded and hopped off the toilet. He waited until Caitlin showed him where the towels were before closing the door with an awkward little wave. Caitlin made eyecontact with Lexi on her way down the stairs and gave her a stern pet on the head, telling her to leave the poor man alone.
———
The more Shane listened to the women, the more outraged he became. He didn’t even know that Ilya was capable of holding his violent sneezes in, let alone that he was stupid enough to actually do it. Often, apparently.
‘So what, Ilya only sneezes that much with me because he spends whole day holding them back?! The first thing I’m doing on the team is training that habit out of him‘
Wyatt nodded earnestly.
‘We’re up for the task! Roz is our family, he deserves to be comfortable when he’s with us. And Luca needs good examples in his life growing up’
Luca threw his hands up exasperated.
‘I am grown up?!’
OH MY GOD ANON thank you so much for this fic it was absolutely wonderful and i LOVED reading it. have to share with everyone actually
The Part of Me That Ain't Around I'm Always Talking To (I'll Love You 'Til My Lungs Give Out) || sam//bucky
Sam comes down with the flu after a mission. He dreams about Riley — about everything they were, and everything he lost.
For the first time, he isn't alone.
--
Canon; set about a year after T/FATWS in the late spring. Is this just a character study of Sam Wilson and his past relationship with Riley through the framework of a sickfic? Mmm yeah, maybe. Probably.
Features lots of tenderness from Bucky, fever dreams/flashbacks, multiple characters sneezing, Sarah Wilson being a really good sister, and clumsily navigating grief. Check the content warnings, because this is heavier on the whump than what I normally write/the flashbacks take place when Sam was in the Air Force and witnessing a lot of violence.
Title is from All Your’n by Tyler Childers because it reminds me of Sam and Riley.
~15k words under the cut. CW for general references to war/violence/gore, references to a canonical character death, discussions of grief/loss, past internalized homophobia, referenced past homophobia (flashbacks take place during Don't Ask Don't Tell), references to smoking, one or two references to using drinking to cope, emeto (one instance on page but it's not described). Minors DNI.
These days, Sam isn't much of a praying man. At least not in the way his dad taught him to be.
In the Wilson household, prayer was as much a part of growing up as the Spanish moss, as the frogs and the boats and the summers that were so humid they could drown you. It greeted Sam in the morning at the breakfast table, with his mom murmuring blessings over him and Sarah, then again at dinner as his dad said grace over their meal, then late at night as they all gathered in the family room before bed and took turns bringing their daily anxieties to God.
Those three times every day, it happened together, but prayer, Paul Wilson always said, took place between you and the Lord. Anyone else just happened to be there to witness it.
Sam used to think that was true.
He shivers, chills tearing through his body, ripping at the bruises he picked up in a forest north of Ottawa. It's been an hour since they got back to his apartment, a little less since he let Bucky hold him steady beneath a scalding shower to wash the blood and dirt and cold off, and still, the rain ghosts over his skin — a constant lashing, needles to his eyes and face, whiting out the world. Hiding Bucky until his shouts tore through the comms in a storm of static.
Sam squeezes his eyes shut and waits. When the thud of a cabinet being closed echoes from the kitchen, he lets out a silent breath.
He burrows deeper into his pillow and sucks in a sniffle. The air crackles along his sinuses, whistling over swollen membranes, his nerves bristling hot. He presses a handful of tissues from the box beside his pillow under his nose as tears prick the corners of his eyes.
"Huh! — huh'IDT'shhueh!" The sneeze shudders through him, tearing at his shredded throat and throwing a punch in the recesses of his face. He pinches his nose, squeezing it right at the bridge before his breath can catch again.
It's prolonging the inevitable more than a real solution, but still — it's better than nothing.
He gazes past his darkened bedroom window into the evening shadows.
Bet you're laughing at me now. Calling me a dumbass like I don't already know it.
Growing up, prayer never felt like something to question any more than he might question why his parents sent him to school or fed him vegetables or told him to match his socks. Even when he had to scramble for something to say, it was a routine worn into his bones, no different than his morning runs or evenings spent out on the boat.
And then Afghanistan happened. Children lay in the sand with their guts spilling out like the beads he and Sarah used to strain to catch every year at Mardi Gras, tangled heaps of intestines darkening to black beneath the sun, and … well, there wasn't any reason to keep talking to someone who looked down on the world and let that happen.
Still, sometimes when he's isn't paying attention — jogging down the same route he's taken every day since he moved to DC, listening to a meteorologist ramble about the heat wave expected to hit the city, caught at the edge of sleep — he slips into a one-sided conversation.
"Bless you." Bucky pads into the bedroom, his feet silent on the floor. His sweatpants hang low around his hips, and he cradles a steaming mug against his chest. He lifts it toward Sam. "Made you tea."
"Thangks." Congestion rounds out the edges of the word, wearing down the embers of Sam's voice deep in his chest. He clears his throat, grimacing at the gritty feeling that scrapes along his tonsils, and sniffles into his tissues. "Dunno if I'll drink it all … kinda feel like I mbight fall asleep."
"Yeah?" Bucky sets the mug on the nightstand beside Sam's thermometer, a glass of water, and a bottle of NyQuil. He sits on the edge of the bed, one leg up and one leg down, dog tags clinking together over his gray henley. Shadows gather below his eyes, and a bruise blooms in soft shades of lavender over his right cheekbone. "You should get some rest."
Sam lowers the tissues from his face and peers up at him through one half-open eye. "You wanna yell at me first? Give mbe the whole 'you should've stayed home' spiel?"
Bucky's mouth twitches with a smile. "Well, if you're asking for it …"
"Huh'TCHiuuhh! Hih … Hh'DTZschhoo!" Sam shivers, then groans into his tissue. He dabs underneath his nostrils and grimaces. "Think I have the flu."
"Kinda figured. Colds don't usually give you a fever of a hundred and two."
Sam yawns. Tears gather along his waterline, his eyes throbbing with fatigue even as he lets them close. "Yeah, but … the rain …"
"That's an old wives' tale. Even I know that."
Another chill rolls through Sam's shoulders. He curls into Bucky's leg, pressing his forehead against his hip. "You never know."
Bucky hums a sound of assent and runs his fingers along Sam's temple. Only a few hours after ex-HYDRA agents surrounded him out in those woods, his touch is gentle, a barely there pressure, the same soft way he touches Alpine's face in the morning.
Sam shivers in closer to him.
You would've loved him.
He's been running his proverbial mouth like this all day, his tongue loosened by the fever, maybe, or the adrenaline of watching a dozen men swarm Bucky — a handful of words tossed out into the rain, and now, left to drift into the darkness as his body sinks closer to sleep.
Probably, that's okay.
"You need to remember that you're talking to someone who loves you," Paul Wilson always said, over and over across the span of Sam's life, little page markers to flag important moments from his childhood right up until just before his father's passing: the first day of kindergarten, after he came home with a black eye; the time in fifth grade when Paul got into a boating accident; Sam's high school graduation; the day his mom ended up in the hospital with a stroke; the summer he came home from college and started kicking around the idea of enlisting, even before either of his parents passed and sealed it for him.
"Ain't so different from talking to me or your mama," Paul said. "You don't need the right words, just as long as you know he's there with a listening ear for you."
He always made it sound simple. Easy, like whispering a secret to a friend.
Maybe it never really was so different from the kind of praying Sam does now.
Bucky thumbs the side of Sam's lip, right where he tucked a kiss this morning before they headed out to the airbase. "I'll save the spiel for tomorrow," he whispers. "You're falling asleep on me."
Sam smiles against his hand. His eyelashes whisper over Bucky's skin.
Wish you could see us now, Red.
**
Sam hangs at the edge of sleep, in that twilight place with enough awareness that, when the shadows unfurl before him, he knows better — knows to skirt their edges, to not get too close. Slip by without sinking into the past.
But the fever coats his neurons, makes him clumsy in his own head, and the past plays out in technicolor flashes before him anyway. He's in his body there on the cot at Bagram Air Base, but also not, memories tangling like weeds with what he has yet to live.
Riley's form crackles along the edges in a way that isn't right, isn't real, so present the roots of Sam's teeth ache as the taller man stands in the entrance to Sam's room. His fist thuds against the side of the doorframe — only once, nearly silent, though a muscle tics in his jaw.
"What the hell were you thinking out there, Birdie," he murmurs. It isn't so much a question as it is an expression of exhaustion, his voice a husk of its normal self, skin streaked in dirt and ash, eyes empty as he watches the toe of his boot draw a half circle on the floor.
Sam grunts a dismissive sound and leans his head back against the wall. Shivers creep across his skin, ghosts of the adrenaline that's kept him upright for the past three days and some change. As they begin to make their exit, they leave in their wake a dull ache through his whole body, the pang of bruised ribs over his right lung, a throbbing behind his cheeks and in his ears he's ignored too long. Above it all, everything glimmers a little too bright, glossed over in that way things get when he's running a fever on no sleep.
Riley's boots scuff across the plywood floor. The desk chair beside the bed squeaks beneath his weight. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and waits for Sam to meet his eyes.
When Sam doesn't, he kicks their boots together.
"Wilson." His voice is quiet, graveled with fatigue. "Listen to me, you dumbass. You nearly got yourself killed out there. What the fuck was that?"
"Fuck off, Red," Sam mutters, then grimaces. His own voice is shot to hell, smoldering ash that makes his throat spasm when he swallows. A new box of tissues sits on the bed beside him, but he muffles a cough in the sleeve of his jacket instead. "That rocket missed me by a mile."
"Yeah, thanks to me." Riley presses the tips of his fingers over his eyelids as his mouth drops into a yawn. "You're welcome, by the way."
Sam coughs again and scrubs a hand over his face. Three months. Three months he's been here, running combat rescue missions with Riley as autumn darkened into winter and snow fell across the sand. It's nothing — barely time to blink, to get your feet under yourself, to notice the days and nights racing past in a world of fire and bullets and blood.
There is so much blood. It never stops flowing, no matter what he does.
Some things never change, do they?
"Hey." Riley's hand settles on Sam's shoulder. Even with dirt still streaking his face, a cut bisecting his left eyebrow, and a burn beginning to bubble under his left cheekbone, his eyes flicker with something softer. It smooths the edges of his voice as his fingers tighten on Sam. "You good?"
Sam blinks at Riley's hand. Something smolders inside his chest, the first real feeling he's had in days sparking through the numbness coating his synapses. It's been there since they met at basic all those months ago — a steady burn now, once as hot and fast and ragged on his nerves all at once like skinning a knee on summer-warm concrete, the flame so quick to catch when that crooked smile and voice that could never quite hide its Southern drawl stepped into his world.
In another life, it could be … something. Not the sort of thing they could take out around town, but still a named tension between them. Saturday mornings spent curled beneath each other's sheets. Drunk kisses traded on the boat or in the back of Riley's pickup truck. Fingers brushing up against each other in the corner of a bar where the shadows cover everything black, not quite holding each other's hands, but nearly just.
But here? Here, there is nothing — just that fire, eating away at empty air. Three months, and already, he's so much less Sam and so much more an empty body with a face he no longer recognizes, void of interests or desires or needs. Here, there is only endless sand and snow washed in red, the blue sky broken by brittle screams.
A prickle at the back of Sam's nose breaks through his consciousness. He wrenches sideways a second before his breath snags.
"HDT'CHiuhhh!" The sneeze hits him like twin fists behind the ribs and between his ears. Gritting his teeth, he pinches his nose in his fingers as his lungs tremble through another inhale. The muck in his head pounds against his eardrums and through his face, seeping warm and thick against his hand.
"G'bless you." The chair squeaks, and there's the soft shfft of a tissue being pulled from the box. Riley nudges his knee up against Sam's. "Told you you should've gone to med earlier."
Sam takes the tissue with his free hand and gives his nose a tentative blow. Still, the pressure in his sinuses boils, flaming along his occipital nerves and deep into his cheeks. He cups the tissue closer to his face as his breath staggers, then curls into himself with a ragged, "hDT'ZSHHuehh!"
This time, instead of a blessing, Riley offers the soft contact of his palm against Sam's forehead.
"Shit, Sammy." He turns his hand, presses the back of it to Sam's cheek, his skin blessedly cool against Sam's. "You're sick as a dog."
Sam shoves the tissue under his septum, then crumples it in his fist. He tucks his arms tight over his chest again as a shiver ripples through him. "'S'probably just a sinus infection."
"No shit. You've been snoring like a fuckin' chainsaw for … god, it's gotta be close to three weeks by now." Riley leans back in his chair and kicks his legs out, his body stretching to nearly fill the tiny room, all muscle and sweat and freckled skin. "They give you anything for it?"
"Didn't mention it." Sam sniffles, the air bristling through the back of his nose and deep into his head. His breath gives a quiet shiver, and he rubs the heel of his hand into his eye. "Don't think I was runnin' a fever yet when they checked me out."
A smile slips over Riley's lips. He knocks his leg against Sam's. "Kinda think you've been running a fever since Sunday with the way you've been flying."
"ih'DTzhhuueh! hdT'chishhoo!" The sneezes, caught against Sam's palm, snatch any argument he could toss back at Riley. He grips his side with his free hand, pressing over his ribs as his lungs spasm. Congestion squeaks between his ears, and he swallows back a groan as the corners of his eyes flush hot and gritty.
Riley frowns at him, his expression watery behind the sheen of tears. "You should get some sleep," he says.
Sam shrugs and rips a tissue from the box. When he rubs his nose into it, the skin around his nostrils stings, chapped from the wind whipping his face and weeks of white-knuckling his way through this cold he can't seem to shake.
For a moment, he drifts, feels himself caught up in that wind again, flying beside Riley, rising in the crystal blue as they looked down on the wreck of bodies below them: so many of them strewn across the snow, tangled in the rib cages of bombed-out Humvees. From above, they nearly looked like the little porcelain dolls Sarah played with when they were kids. Every night, she tucked them into the tiny wooden beds she'd glued together from sticks and acorns, even after too many adventures in the yard left them chipped or limbless.
Bile burns at the back of Sam's throat. He presses his palm over his eyes, as if the darkness of his hand against the light will block everything out. Instead, the colors burn brighter, a flame on the backs of his eyes, cooked into his retinas forever. He leans forward, presses his forehead against his knees, forces his lungs to expand and collapse.
In a year, this will seem like nothing. In a year, I will beg for tonight.
God, I never stop begging for it all back, even the worst days.
He swallows.
"Wasn't trying to run myself into the ground," he mutters, uncurling his spine, his elbow on his knee. "You know I wouldn't have gone if it weren't … if it wasn't gonna be …"
There is no way to finish the sentence — to put to words the carnage they were warned they would find, that still snatches his breath now here in the quiet of his shitty plywood-walled room anyway.
"Yeah, I know." Riley thumbs the side of his nose, blinks twice, his auburn eyelashes flickering gold in the dim lamplight. His fingers twine together over his chest the way they do when he prays — knuckles straining under his skin, right thumb rubbing little circles over the mole on his left. "I'm glad you were there to see it with me."
Sam coughs through a laugh. "You're fucked up, man."
"Yeah, probably so."
Another breath of stale air burns through Sam's nostrils. Pressing along the bridge of his nose sends a pulse through his head, but he does it anyway, massaging his sinuses through his tissue. Come morning, he'll have to drag himself back out into the snow and biting wind, see if they'll give him antibiotics and a few days to lie low and sleep this shit off. Which isn't really fair, not when there's someone's father or sister or baby bleeding out in the middle of nowhere.
He leans back against the wall and closes his eyes again.
I can't do this by myself, man.
"Hey, Sammy?" Riley's voice is low, dusky as the fatigue they've pushed off for days wells up like an overdue tide around them.
"Mm."
For a moment, Riley's quiet, save for the soft, rhythmic scrape of his boot on the floor dragging back and forth. He does this after long missions as the two of them fight sleep in Sam's room, trying to snatch a few more moments of quiet as the nightmares circle closer — scuffs it back and forth like he's trying to sand straight through the plywood. Probably would, if he sat there long enough.
"You think everyone feels like this?" he asks.
"I dunno." Sam sniffles, swipes his wilted tissue under his nose. "Think a lot of guys get numb. Stop feeling anything just so they can get through it."
"So why's it still hitting us so hard?"
Sam cracks one eye open. "We've only been here three months, Red. That's nothing."
Riley's thumbs press together, his head bowing over them, fingers still tangled together. His elbows rest on his knees as he watches his boot work away at the floor. "Don't think I wanna get numb."
"So don't."
"It ain't that simple." He tips his head up a little, just enough to look at Sam. The light bulb overhead darkens his green eyes to a glossy shade of black like the marbles the kids just outside the air base toss across the sand. "Can I tell you something stupid?"
"Always."
His dog tags whisper against each other, framed in the taut angles of his chest and arms as he rubs the pads of his thumbs together and blinks back down at the floor. "I started talkin' to my mom instead of praying. You know, just — just thinkin' about what I would say to her, I guess. Picturing conversations I'd like to have." The corner of his mouth carves a soft little parenthesis into the side of his face. "Think she's a better listener than God anyway. At least she doesn't have any kind of say in who lives or dies over here, you know?"
Sam's teeth sink into the inside of his cheek. He hugs his arms across his chest and tenses through a shiver. "Yeah, man. I know."
"'S'just … I dunno." A shadow coils around Riley's throat, flickering as he swallows. "It's stupid, but sometimes I — I mean, when we're on the phone, I can't actually say any of this shit. It ain't fair to her. But when I'm just thinkin' about it, I can … I can say anything I want. Tell her about all the bodies we see. The people we can't save."
"Does it help?"
"I dunno. Seems better than nothing." Riley's boot stills on the floor. He slips his dog tags over his head and winds the chain around his fingers, eyes on his skin as it blushes purple beneath the metal. "You got someone like that? Someone who listens?"
You; it'll always be you.
"My sister, probably. I mean, I haven't tried, but … if I did." Sam muffles a cough in the collar of his jacket. Something gritty coats his tonsils, even when he tries to swallow it back. "I tried writing some of it down — not to send to her, just to get it out of my head, but it just …"
"It's too much, ain't it?"
Sam grunts and coughs again. A loose thread hangs from the edge of his left sleeve, and he picks at it, his fingers shaking as he gives it a tug. "To tell you the truth, I think you're the only one who's ever gonna get it."
Riley nods. "Think you might be the same for me, too." He closes his fist around his dog tags, knuckles bulging a little, squeezing tight enough to leave his name imprinted on his skin. "Mom's great, but she's not — I'm never really gonna tell her any of this shit. She's never gonna know, and neither will the rest of them. It's just you and me with this … this thing. A secret we're gonna have to carry forever."
"Yeah, well." The thread rips free from Sam's sleeve. His eyes flicker up to meet Riley's. "At least we got each other."
"Damn right." Riley yawns again. He drops his dog tags on his thigh and scrubs his palm over his scalp, his buzz cut springing up around his fingers. In the low light, it's the color of rust — shadowed, softened. "Shit, I'm tired."
Sam pushes his wrist against his nose. "So quit running your mouth at me and go to bed."
"You first." Riley slings his tags back over his neck. He pushes himself up from the chair and gives Sam's boot another nudge. "Get some meds tomorrow so you can kick this shit, okay? Don't need you flying into a rocket and leaving me to deal with this on my own."
Sam sniffs out a laugh. "You know I'd come back and haunt you."
"You better, 'cause I'm not doing this on my own."
God damn you, Red.
Riley pats Sam's leg — just once, but his touch is warm and weighty through Sam's pants, a tether to here and now when the fever and fatigue pull at the edge of his consciousness, thirsting to return to the gore of the past seventy-some-odd hours.
Riley's lips tug up on one side in half a smile, all warm sunlight, even in the tiny box of a bedroom. "We're taking this shit to the grave together, Birdie."
**
The scent of menthol pricks along Sam's sinuses, sharp like Newports out on the tarmac, smoke heavy in his lungs, the sun a flame just beginning to lick the horizon.
A groan croaks from his throat as he skims the surface of consciousness, caught in that watery place between lucid thought and dreams. Something sticky holds his eyelids together, and pressure throbs through his face and deep into his skull, an invisible fist clenched around his brain. When he tries to inhale through his nose, his sinuses give a dull squeak, swollen flesh grinding together without moving any air, and he coughs.
"Shh." The sheets shift beside him. "Just gonna give you some Vicks. You're — hih! — snff. You've been pretty restless."
Sam's fingers graze something warm — the solid muscle of a thigh or hip.
"Bad idea," he mumbles. His voice wells up from his stomach, a tide that can't quite reach the shore, his syllables low and liquid in his mouth.
Bucky sniffles, a damp, irritated sound that crackles through the quiet of the bedroom. "Well, you sleep like shit without it … get so damn stuffed up …"
The sheets wilt away, and goose bumps fall across Sam, little flurries dotting his skin from his neck down to his chest. The hem of his shirt is peeled back, tugged up around his neck. He grimaces.
"Sorry." Metal fingers settle over Sam's stomach, flushed warm like the ceramic of a coffee mug, like bicycles left out in the grass on summer afternoons. "I'll put it back in — snff! — in a second. Just gotta get this on your ch-chest —"
The tail-end of his sentence crumbles away into a soft gasp. His muscles wind tight against Sam as his fingers slip away. There's the soft shfft of a tissue being pulled from the box, and his breath shudders again. "hih — hpt! hpt'Chih! hpt'Chiuh! h'Tchiuh!"
The corner of Sam's mouth twitches.
Gonna sneeze his damn head off, same way you always did.
"Fuck. Sorry." Bucky sniffles and clears his throat. The press of warm vibranium settles back over Sam's skin, a blanket to his aching ribs and sore stomach. "It's gonna be cold."
Sam grunts and sinks deeper into the pillows.
Bucky's fingers slide over Sam's chest, slick with the medicated ointment. Beneath his touch, Sam's nerves prickle hot, the end of a match blistering under a flame.
And then the cold hits.
His breath hisses through his teeth. It's a punch to his lungs, an ice pack on a bruise, as overwhelmingly frigid as the bags of frozen peas his mom used to pack against his ankle when he fell playing football in the yard with the neighbor's kids. Cold showers on even colder days when his teeth wouldn't stop chattering. Skin on bare skin, searching for a warmth they couldn't find out in the crimson snow.
"Sorry," Bucky murmurs again. He smooths his palm across Sam's sternum, bites back another trio of sneezes, cups the metal of his other hand closer like he can force the heat back inside.
The hem of Sam's shirt falls back around his waist. Fingers tuck the sheets around his shoulders. Plastic scrapes on plastic, then wood, the soft thud of something being set on the nightstand.
The mattress dips as Bucky settles under the sheets and curls against Sam's side. His right arm drapes over Sam's chest, and he burrows his face into Sam's neck, his breath gusting hot, even when he has to sniffle again.
"Y'okay?" he murmurs.
Sam hums a low sound and shivers into him. With his eyes closed, Bucky's body is an endless expanse, warm and soft, and he nuzzles his cheek into it.
A kiss whispers against his temple, prickly against his fever-sensitive skin. "Go back to sleep," Bucky whispers.
Despite the shivers creeping across his skin, exhaustion wraps around his muscles and mind, an anchor pulling him down into a bottomless sea, and he lets himself sink into the darkness.
**
"Heads up."
Something hollow glances off Sam's shoulder. He exhales a voiceless grunt and cracks his eyelids open, sunlight and fatigue washing the family room in streaky lines of light. He blinks, then blinks again and rubs his eyes, scrubbing tears and something gritty from their corners.
With a heavy sniffle, he squints toward the floor. The offending object — an unopened box of tissues — rests on its side beneath Sarah's coffee table.
"Rise and shine, Birdie." Riley slides around the arm of the couch, a second box of fresh tissues tucked under his arm, and collapses onto the cushion. Red halos bloom around the mossy green of his irises as a smile settles sideways on his lips. "That's my bed you're sleeping on."
"'S'my sister's couch, dumbass." Sam sniffles again and shifts beneath his throw blanket. His voice scrapes low in his throat, brittle like bones buried deep under dry sand. He shoves his left foot against Riley's thigh. "Gimme the tissues before I start sneezing again."
A cough rumbles low in Riley's chest. He flaps a hand at the box under the table. "All yours."
"Fuck you," Sam says, though the corner of his mouth curls up.
He slides off the couch, blanket still wrapped around his shoulders, dog tags skittering against his t-shirt, and crouches to fish for the box. The congestion in his head sloshes forward and then settles, hot and heavy like the mud along the shore of the bayou. On summer days, he and Sarah used to wade through it to look for crawfish and apple snails, let it squelch around their toes and up past their ankles until the viscous goo soaked the hems of their shorts.
With another sniffle, he snags the tissue box and works his fingernail around the peel-off top. Outside the back window, the sun boils like a blister in the sky, soaking the bayou in May's relentless heat, the South teetering on summer's brutal cusp. It's the sort of weather that begs for a trip out on the boat: Coronas and Gatorades shoved next to frozen bait in the ice chest, lines allowed to drift in open water, letting the hours slip by until the world darkens like a bruise and stars pepper the sky and the gators bellow along the shore.
They should be out there now, soaking up the sun, seeing who can hook the biggest fish. They'll be stateside for a month — two weeks here, two weeks in Macon to visit Riley's family. Barely a flash in the pan, in the grand scheme of things, but time all the same, rolling out in front of them with no real plans, endless possibilities, plenty of chances to pretend — even for a moment — that life could be normal.
But today, well —
"hpt'Chu!"
Something warm unwinds at the center of Sam's chest. He reaches to set a hand on Riley's knee. "Bless you."
Riley shakes his head, hands steepled over his mouth and nose. As his breath snags, he flinches deeper into the cup of his palms. "hih! — hpt'Tchuu!"
A cough kicks up in his chest before he can lower his hands, the sound stirring deep in his lungs, rough and jagged like gravel caught in a bike chain. He sinks forward, elbows resting on his knees, body curling over his own box of tissues, dog tags trembling beneath him.
Sam frowns. As the coughing settles into a softer wheeze, he squeezes Riley's thigh. "You sound like shit."
"Yeah, well." A grimace strings Riley's expression taut, and he rubs his hand over his rib cage, palm flat against the plain of his chest. "You know shit always goes to my lungs."
Sam's hand shifts to pat Riley's back through another cough. God, how many nights did he listen to Riley hacking and wheezing when he wound up with pneumonia in January? He lay awake for hours those nights, shivering as the snow and wind whipped against the walls of their B-huts, praying through numb lips to a God who'd turned his back on that part of the world, begging that they'd make it to the morning as Riley coughed himself sick.
Sam withdraws his hand to nudge his thumb against the side of his nose. "You want some Vicks?"
Riley coughs into his fist. His knuckle skims the tip of his nose as he blinks at Sam. "Thought that was just for kids."
Sam huffs a laugh. "What, 'cause adults don't get colds?"
"I dunno, man. That's what I always heard." Riley pulls a tissue from his box and swipes it under his nostrils. A flush colors his pale skin pink, washing out the freckles scattered across his nose and cheekbones. They cover his face now, same as they did last summer just before they deployed — blooming in the sun like flowers, their edges fading into one another.
There's an image, here and gone, a flash of lightning at midnight: hundreds of those damn freckles, covering his face and arms like fallen rain, like stars blown apart over an endless sky. Sam's lips drift along the back of his neck, kissing down a trail of them, careful, slow, memorizing the warmth of his skin, as if he knows this is the last time he will touch Riley's lovely, unbroken body.
Think maybe I did, deep down.
Sam swallows.
"Does it work?" Riley sniffles and crumples his tissue in his fist. "If it'll work, I'm game."
"Of course it works." Sam drops his blanket and the box of tissues on the couch. "Stay here and I'll get it."
He offers Riley a light squeeze on the shoulder, then wanders toward the linen closet outside the bedroom previously occupied by his parents, now shared by Sarah and her husband. A small collection of photos in mismatched frames lines the wall: his parents on their wedding day, sharing their first kiss as a married couple; him and Sarah in front of a Christmas tree, digging through red and gold wrapping paper for candy and new board games; Sarah on the steps of Howard University, smiling into the sun; Sam in his Air Force fatigues out on the dock. He looked so much younger then, his shoulders too narrow to fill out the uniform — smaller, in a way, though it doesn't seem right that six months of witnessing the deaths of people whose names he will never know should change that.
He fumbles in the closet, eyes scrunching shut through a yawn, the layout of medicine a map his fingers know well from every other time he's been home since he enlisted. It's a familiar cycle: A few days pass in Delacroix, long enough for his nervous system to suss out the safety of the situation. Then, when his subconscious is certain he can rest, he crashes — comes down with some kind of bug just bad enough to leave him with a stuffed-up head and rough voice, the sort of thing that sounds worse to anyone listening than it actually feels to experience. At the first sign of a scratchy throat, Sarah bullies him into lying on the couch and watching shitty TV, even when he itches to get out on the water and remember he still has a home, that not everything is sun and sand and blood.
Sniffling, he pushes a knuckle against the side of his nose. His skin bristles under his touch, flushed and sensitive after several days of abuse. The pressure flares the smoldering itch deep in his sinuses, the one that's been tingling behind his eyes and cheekbones and down into his nasal passages for three days straight, swelling his sinuses and forcing him to keep a box of tissues permanently by his side.
"huh'TSCHuuihh!" Sam ducks behind the neckline of his shirt, shoulders buckling as the sneeze barrels through him. It rips across the swollen membranes of his throat and comes out all breath and spit, the echo of his shredded voice muffled behind the fabric of his t-shirt.
Tears prick the corners of his eyes as his lungs spasm through another breath. As his mouth falls slack, he clamps his shirt more tightly to his face.
"Huh … h'ADT'ZHiuhh!" He shudders through the sneeze, then sniffles, the air buzzing in his nose. His t-shirt sticks along his nostrils, flushed warm and wet, and he grimaces as he scrubs his face against it.
"G'bless you." Riley's voice is a sweetly low like fresh honey. He coughs. "You forgot your tissues."
Sam laughs into his ruined shirt. "Really? I hadn't noticed."
He lifts the hem of his shirt to give his nose a firm scrub, then snags the Vicks from the closet. On the way back to the family room, he strips the shirt off and tucks it over his arm. His dog tags settle against his bare chest, and the vent overhead whispers across his back, drawing goose bumps out along his spine. He relaxes into a shiver as he wanders back out to the couch.
That soft, nameless thing in his chest flutters warm around his lungs as he looks at Riley. The sun falls in a yellow ray over his face, kissing his eyelashes gold as he rests his head against the back of the couch, nose tipped toward the ceiling and lips softly parted. His dog tags tremble with his breathing, shivering on top of the white fabric of his t-shirt. As a quiet wheeze cracks in his lungs, they catch the sun, flashing white.
Like the picture of Sam in the hallway, he looks so young here, frozen in time — not the man with skin calloused by endless days and nights spent in the snow and wind and sun, cursing God as he bends over a graying body, trying to breathe life back into it until his own lungs give out and his eyes have gone hollow. This Riley is softer, one who doesn't slip away into himself when a car engine backfires, whose nerves haven't grown a protective coat yet — naked and exposed like the baby mockingbirds that fall from the oak trees every spring, mouths gaping, featherless bodies aching for warmth and comfort.
Oh, Red.
Sam bites the inside of his cheek. He drops his shirt to the floor and plops down beside Riley. "Take your shirt off," he mutters.
Riley cracks an eye open without lifting his head. His breath buzzes in a low laugh. "I'm not really up for that kind of thing right now, Wilson."
Heat flames up Sam's neck and settles in his cheeks. He shoves his palm against Riley's shoulder. "It goes on your back and chest, dipshit."
Riley hums a soft sound of understanding and shifts to sit up. A wince cuts through his forehead, and with a quiet cough, he folds his fingers around the hem of his shirt. A flash of skin — soft, barely darker than the cream he poured in his coffee this morning, untouched by the sun — peeks out above the waistband of his sweatpants.
Sam drops his gaze to the Vicks. He wedges the tub between his knees and works his wrist side to side, loosening the cap. "You wanna turn Killer Klowns from Outer Space back on, or are you gonna fall asleep on me like yesterday?"
"Man, that movie put me to sleep." Riley's shirt flips forward over his head and slides off his arms, rattling his dog tags. The white cotton puddles on the coffee table between the twin boxes of tissues. "You couldn't have picked a worse movie if you tried."
"Hey, I didn't say it was gonna be good," Sam says. "It's just mindless shit. Something you can turn your brain off to."
He taps Riley's back, nudging him to lean forward, and dips two fingers into the Vicks, his nostrils flaring as the menthol and camphor prickle through the congestion packing his head. It's the scent of waking up shivering in the middle of the night and calling out for his mom, of comforting words whispered in his ear as a cool washcloth kissed his forehead, of skipping school and reading comic books in bed, and for a moment, his chest aches. Even if he hadn't enlisted, this place would be haunted, reminders of them tucked between every chip in the paint and crack between the floorboards, their memories caught in the shadows.
Sam gets a dollop of medicated ointment on his fingertips, then lifts his hand to Riley's back. He rubs a slow circle to the right of Riley's spine, the Vicks glistening on his skin as Sam's fingers press against the rungs of his ribs.
Goose bumps bloom over Riley's shoulders. He stiffens through a shiver. "That's cold."
"It'll feel good. Just give it a second." Sam spreads his hand flat and works it up and down from the small of Riley's back to his shoulder. Beneath his touch, his skin glows softly warm, as if he's been lying outside under the sun. "You talk to your folks since we got in?"
"Yeah, a little." As Riley reaches forward to snag a tissue, his muscles flex under Sam's hand, a network of strings tightening and relaxing, tuned by invisible fingers. "Told them we picked up some kind of plague and your sister's nursing us back to health, feeding us real good and shit. Think she might be a better cook than my mom."
"Oh, you know she is." Sam's thumb presses into a knot below Riley's right trap. There's a mole just to his left, an eclipse in the pale expanse of his back, small enough he could hide it under the tip of his pinky. "You still have those … conversations with your mom?"
Riley's mouth turns up in a grin as he swipes the tissue under his nose with a liquid sniffle. "Hell yeah, man. snff! I was just telling her this morning about the annoying guy who keeps falling asleep on the couch I'm crashing on."
The knot gives a little, Sam's touch coaxing Riley's muscles to begin to untangle. He shifts to push the heel of his hand into it, his palm covering the mole. "She like me?" he asks.
Riley pinches the tissue up around his nose, his lungs wheezing through a shaky breath, rib cage broadening beneath Sam. "huhh — huh'TSHieww! Jesus Christ," he mutters. He sniffles and glances back at Sam, tears heavy in his eyes. "What? Oh, she loves you. Thinks you're a great influence on me."
"Sure am."
"huh'ISHhieww!" The sneeze shudders through him, curling his body forward with a soft shiver that ripples up into Sam's arm. He rubs his nose through the wilted tissue. "You talk to Sarah at all?"
"Only when you're not around." Sam dips his fingers back into tub of Vicks, then swipes them over the back of Riley's neck. His fingers snag on the chain of Riley's dog tags. "Feels like she rolls her eyes the whole time."
Riley hums a laugh. "Probably does. snff! Have you heard yourself?"
"Knock it off or I'll steal the couch back."
"hih — hih'DTshieww!" Tears bead on Riley's lashes and catch the sunlight as he blinks narrowed eyes. He drops his crumpled tissue in his lap and brings his fingers up to press along either sides of his nose, palms coming together like a prayer as he stutters through another breath. "Goddamn, what's — hDT'tshiiew! — what's in this shit?"
"I dunno, just … menthol, mostly. Nothing crazy." Sam laughs as Riley collapses into another sneeze. "I wouldn't have offered it to you if I knew you were so sensitive."
"Fuck off, everything's making me sneeze right now. Your hands feel kinda nice, though." Even as he sniffles, Riley's mouth turns up at the corner. "Think maybe I should let you rub my back more often."
Sam's throat flushes warm. His muscles grind through a swallow, dry tissue scraping against itself, dragging a husky cough up from his lungs.
He lets his hand slide down Riley's neck, slip off his back, and fall back to his own lap. The back of his nose twinges through a sniffle, air grating along overstimulated nerves.
"Do you ever think about —" He swallows again, shudders into another cough. His gaze falls to the puddle of sunlight in front of the couch. It's already begun to slip down Riley's body, leaving his face shadowed as it spills off his chest and legs in gentle waves of gold, pooling on the floor in front of him.
"Just." Sam rubs his hands together, working the Vicks into his wrists, the backs of his knuckles where his skin likes to crack in the winter. "If we'd met some other way. Do you think about how things might have turned out?"
Riley rubs a hand down his face. His fingers fold together in his lap. "You know I do, Sammy."
Sam nudges his big toe against the floor, right at the edge of the sunlight. "You think we would have … ?"
The sentence is a cliff's edge overlooking everything beyond the walls boxing them in — kisses they don't have to hide in the dark, gazes allowed to linger without fear of someone up the chain of command catching wind, trips back home where they can introduce each other as something more than friends.
Riley, smile still hung loosely on his lips, dives over without any hesitation. "In another life? 'Course we would've."
Sam nods. Chews the inside of his cheek as his gaze slips sideways toward Riley's. "So then — what about after we get out?" he asks. The shadows around them cling to his voice, color it dark and quiet. "You ever think about that?"
Riley's nostrils tremble through a sniffle. He tugs several tissues from the box and gives his nose a quiet blow, then peeks out at Sam from behind them, eyebrows carving soft frowns into his forehead. "You fishin' for a proposal?"
"Shut up." Sam bends over himself, folds his arms against his stomach. Still, goose bumps trickle over his back and down his chest. He takes a slow breath. "Just trying to have a conversation with you. See where your head's at."
Riley balls up his tissues and settles back against the couch with a sigh. His hand finds its way to his dog tags, and he wraps their chain around his fingers, the metal coiling tight around his knuckles. One of these days, that chain's going to snap — pop in half under his fingers from all the tension he's constantly putting on it.
"I think about keeping you alive," he says. "All the time, from the moment I open my eyes until I fall asleep. That's what it's all about — making sure we're both still here when it's over."
A cough wells up in Sam's throat, hot and hollow. He catches it against his fist, and his eyes flush wet. The tears gather on his lashes as he blinks back at Riley. "You don't think about what comes after?"
Riley's head bows into the shadows. The chain tightens around his fingers, his flesh going white, then purple. "Sammy, you know I wasn't raised like that," he murmurs. "We can't — it can't be like that."
Sam's throat squeezes. It's like trying to run in a nightmare, the sort of thing where they never cover any ground, no matter how many times they've argued it over in the desert alone late at night, but still, he presses. "You're a grown-ass man, Riley."
Riley nods. His jaw works back and forth for a moment before his throat twitches through a swallow. "Yeah, I know."
"So what, then?" Sam's voice rasps, scratched up from coughing and months of circling this thing between them, the heat he couldn't tamp down when they met at basic, everything they've let it grow into in the year and some change since. "You just gonna let them tell you how to live for the rest of your life?"
Riley lets go of his dog tags and scrubs a hand over his face again. "Come on, man. You know it ain't like that."
Sam rests his elbows on his knees, lets his forehead sink into the cup of his hands. His breath rides out in a low sigh.
You know the worst part? For all those times we fought, it wouldn't have changed a damn thing in the end.
Outside the window, a breeze blows in off the bayou, shaking Spanish moss loose from the oak trees. The silhouette of wings cuts across the sunlit spot on the floor, and the stillness shatters around the hoarse scream of a hawk. Somewhere down the hallway of family pictures, near his parents' old room, the floor creaks — the house settling as its old bones soak up the humidity, complaining like it always has during the spring and summer months since he was a kid.
Sam shivers. The back of his neck prickles with the same itch that creeps up on him as jackals circle them out in the desert, their bony shadows floating like ghosts over the sand in the dark. The air conditioner sighs with a gust of cool air, and a fresh wave of goose bumps washes over his body. He watches them sprout up along his naked torso, rising like tiny bug bites over his stomach and chest before spreading out to his arms.
Beside him, Riley wears matching bumps — so many little spots peppering his skin, drawing out a shiver as he rubs a knuckle against the side of his nose.
Sam hugs his arms against his stomach and curls around himself. With a heavy sniffle, he ducks to nudge his nose against his shoulder, head turned away from Riley.
"Doesn't feel fair to keep you a secret for the rest of my life," he murmurs.
Riley coughs on a brittle laugh. "Ain't much fair about any of this."
"Yeah, well." Sam bends forward to snag a tissue from the coffee table. He glances at Riley. "You gotta hope it'll be different someday."
Riley nods. He reaches to take the box of tissues from Sam, and their knuckles brush together.
He shakes his head through a sigh. "You're real brave, you know that, Sammy?" The corner of his nostril trembles as he sniffles. He pulls a tissue from the box but doesn't lift it toward his face, just folds it over on itself, makes it smaller and smaller in his palm. "Think you might be the bravest man I ever met."
Sam's throat winds tight, even as his mouth tugs up at the side. "That's just your fever talking."
Riley shakes his head. "I mean it."
Sam grunts. Rubs his nose against his tissue and stretches his foot toward the patch of sunlight. "You know you're just about the only reason I can stomach any of this shit."
"Yeah, I reckon that's true." Riley sniffles again, then lifts his hand to catch Sam's wrist. His fingers fold around Sam, skin warm, callouses familiar.
In the shadows, his eyes are softer — bruised in watercolor shades of gray and blue, the green of his irises darkened to the same color as the water off the docks in the evening. He looks older, in a way, the lack of light drawing out the heaviness that gathers over his eyelids when he hasn't slept well, the bags that never go away, the little smile lines he's beginning to develop in spite of it all.
"Don't stop thinking about what comes next," he whispers. "Do it for both of us."
**
Chills latch onto Sam, relentless as a rabid dog as they drag him back to consciousness.
Cold wraps around him like a body bag, like snow blanketing fallen soldiers. It drips across his forehead and over his temples, trickling down toward his eyes and catching in his lashes.
"Shh, it's okay." Fingers brush his face, wipe the water from his eyes. "Just got you a washcloth … your fever's back up again."
His breath sits heavy in his lungs, bubbling through something muddy when he wheezes out a groan. Light burns through his eyelids and coils around his occipital nerves, needling deep inside his skull. It flashes through him, brighter than those early mornings when the sun seemed to blaze through the whole sky and made his vision blink black and white, promising a migraine that wouldn't settle until his feet hit the ground again and darkness fell across the world.
Even with his eyes closed, tears well up, hot and salty under his eyelids. They collect on his lashes, melt away into the sweat and cold water dribbling from his forehead.
A metallic chirp comes from somewhere overhead.
"Open your mouth for me, Sammy." The bed dips, and a hand rubs a circle over Sam's chest. "Just need to check your temperature before I give you more meds."
Sam shudders under Bucky's touch as the chills sink their teeth down through his bones and into the marrow. Another groan grates across his throat, brittle and breathless, but he lets his lips part, lets Bucky slide the thermometer under his tongue. It jams against his nerves, cold and unwieldily in his mouth, makes the back of his throat flutter, his gag reflex tingling.
The tears leak down his cheeks — hot little streams, his skin blistering beneath them.
So many times, they carved trails through dust, washed lines in the sand and ash — sketched out his weakness on his face for everyone to see as they landed back at base. Eyes skittered away from his, dropping to the blood on his uniform, to the burn marks on his boots. But Riley never looked away.
"Hey." Bucky's hand cups the side of his face. His thumb trails along the side of Sam's nose, smoothing over the heavy throb in his sinuses. "It's okay. We just need to get some more medicine in you, is all."
Damp warmth leaks along the edges of Sam's nostrils. He tries to sniffle but coughs instead, his nose walled off with swelling and congestion.
"You just gotta get through tonight," Bucky murmurs. He moves the thermometer back under Sam's tongue. "It's always worse at night."
The bed creaks, the mattress bending with his weight as he leans over Sam. His fingers tug at the washcloth, sliding it higher on Sam's forehead, when something clinks against Sam's chest.
Sam cracks one eye open. Tears and fever wash his vision out, everything broken in starbust patterns of white and gold. He blinks, then blinks again before coaxing his eye to focus.
Bucky's dog tags hang down from his neck and rest against Sam's t-shirt, quivering at the center of his rib cage, the same way Riley's did that last night in Macon as he hung over Sam in the back of that shitty pickup truck they rented while they were stateside. They whisper against each other like insect wings, no heavier than a moth, barely there — a kiss through his clothes, a fist breaking the bubble of breath in his lungs, a plea dying on his lips as the man in his arms takes his final breath, the last piece of home crushed in his fist as Delacroix's sky stretches wide and blue and foreign above him.
His stomach surges into his throat.
Fire erupts over his skin as he lurches out of bed and into the bathroom, collapses on the tile in front of the toilet, and vomits. Everything is burning — but hasn't it always been? He is diving into flames, scrambling to pull people out even as the smoke blisters in his throat; Riley is lying in the sand, his body torn open, too burned to bleed as his lungs give out; he is drowning himself on the dock, letting the liquor coat his brain in a haze, his stomach on fire; he's puking the shit back up, blood boiling in his veins as Sarah tries again to coax him to come inside, please just come inside and try to sleep.
And just when he gets his feet back under himself after an eternity of hell, starts to feel like maybe he could have a shot at stability, he's tossed back in again — dodging flares and getting thrown out of the sky all over again.
As he drags a shaky breath in through his mouth, Bucky lays a steady hand on his back.
"You're okay," he murmurs, kneeling beside Sam. He reaches past him to flush the toilet, and cool air gusts against Sam's face. Something cold gets pressed against his arm. "Take a sip of this."
Sam coughs, his stomach clenching around empty air. His legs quake beneath him as he eases back on his knees. Sweat coats his body, sticking his shirt to his back, even as he shivers on the icy tile floor.
Bucky extends the glass of water toward his chest. "Take a sip," he says again.
Sam's arms shudder, muscles limp with adrenaline and the pain winding through his limbs. He lets Bucky hold the glass to his lips and sips from it, swills his mouth out and then spits.
His stomach cramps in on itself, though there's nothing left to bring up but a hollow gasp — a low, broken breath that snags in his chest and floods his eyes with tears again.
Bucky sets the water down and catches him as he curls in on himself.
"It's okay," he whispers, mouth warm against Sam's ear. "It's okay. I've got you."
Sam slumps against Bucky. A chill rips through him, burning over his skin, icy in his veins all at once. Pain throbs through his body, pulsing behind his eyes, twisting his stomach inside out, knotting in his calves. Everything shakes, hollowed out, ready to collapse like a bombed-out building.
He buries his face in Bucky's chest. The dog tags brush against his neck, soft as Riley's touch on that last morning, a ghost along his skin. The sky had been so clear that day, the wind catching them both in a gentle upswell as they sailed through the open blue, the sunlight silhouetting Riley's wings in gold when Sam dipped below him.
Sam's shoulders shudder, another breath suddenly struggling not to cave in under the weight of the past. His face flushes hot and wet.
"I miss him so much," he whispers.
"I know." Bucky tucks his face into Sam's shoulder and holds him closer. His voice dips low, rough as he speaks up against Sam's ear. "I know. I miss him, too."
Sam bites his lip, reining his breath in as tears seep into Bucky's shirt. A gulf hangs between them, a chasm of everything Sam hasn't said — all the memories he's spent years trying to leave buried back in Afghanistan.
They were never supposed to be a secret. And yet here he is, broken on the bathroom floor, throat jammed with everything he can't say.
He shivers through another rough breath as a tear hits the tile beneath him.
Told you I wasn't brave, Red. Never really have been without you.
**
I should go inside.
There is a part of him that knows this — the part that witnesses the rain crashing down on the bayou, that observes the water dripping down his face and neck and arms, that feels himself shivering beneath the weight of saturated jeans and a drenched t-shirt.
The part that inhabits his body — makes his limbs move and mouth tick up at the corner and colors his voice with laughter when he hears a joke, the part of him that might be a soul — lies dormant somewhere eight thousand miles away, buried beneath a burnt patch of sand in Bakhmala.
He stands frozen at the edge of the dock, vision washed white as the rain falls in buckets, fingers wrapped tight around a set of dog tags. They rest snugly against his palm, their metal warped from a bomb that will never stop going off behind his eyes.
Footsteps thud on the dock behind him.
"Sam, come inside." Sarah's voice breaks through the rain, its edges pitching up with the poisoned mix of pity and worry she's adopted since he got home. She traipses down the dock, a black umbrella bobbing over her head. "You're soaked to the bone."
He doesn't move. Rain drips off the tip of his nose and flows over his lips. A vaguely warm itch trickles through his left nostril, and he sniffles.
Sarah holds the umbrella over the two of them, huddling close beside him. Her arm brushes his, and the deep purple of her t-shirt flushes black as it soaks up the rain water. "There's coffee on," she says. "Come inside and warm up."
Sam traces his thumb over the letters on the dog tags, little scabs in the metal his skin has memorized a hundred times over. The chains fall across the back of his hand, slithering over his wet skin.
A chill creeps up his spine as his nose scrunches through another sniffle.
Sarah lays a hand on his arm, palm warm through the wet fabric of his shirt sleeve.
"Making yourself miserable isn't gonna bring him back," she murmurs. Her tone is lower now, steady without trying to cajole him for the first time in as long as he can remember, and something suddenly jams the back of his throat.
"So what, then?" His voice scrapes up from somewhere low in his chest, brittle from disuse and a vague soreness smoldering over his tonsils. The dog tags bite into his skin as he scuffs the toe of his boot against the dock. "I should just move on? Put him out of my mind?"
"No." The wind gusts over them, spraying rain against their backs. She reaches up to adjust the umbrella's angle and block the worst of it. "You should come in and put some dry clothes on. That's all."
His eyes flush hot and wet. He presses a knuckle against his septum and blinks out at the bayou. "I don't sleep, Sarah. Every time I close my eyes, I …"
"I know." She cups a palm against his cheek and wipes her thumb under his eye, flicking water off his skin. "Just come and get something hot to drink. Change your clothes before you get a chill. That's all you have to do."
He swallows. Makes his head dip in a nod.
Still, neither of them move to go back inside.
Sam scrubs his wrist against his nose and watches the rain splash on the dock just beyond his feet. Once, just before their first tour ended, he and Riley spent a day and a half hiding out in a cave when a rare storm hit during a flight over Bamyan. They squeezed in chest-to-chest, backs braced against the rock walls, bodies pressed together in the humid dark as the wind howled through the cracks overhead and water seeped in around their boots. At least five times, Sam had to grit his teeth as something small and scaly slithered across his face.
By the time they climbed back out, their knees wobbled and rolled under them, every muscle in their legs and backs locked in a spasm. A week passed before they could stand up straight again.
I'd go back today. Just to see you for another minute.
Sarah shifts, her head dipped to the side, eyes on the dock. "Listen, Sam," she says, voice half-drowned by the rain. "I don't — maybe it's none of my business, but I — you know you can tell me anything, right?"
He nods again.
"Okay." She tucks her braids over her shoulders and smooths the front of her shirt. Folds her hands at her waist, eyes on the rain as it falls on the water in front of them. "I guess I'm just trying to say that — well, I'm not stupid. I saw the way you looked at him, and — I'm here to listen, if you want to talk about it."
Heat pricks through the nerves in Sam's neck and into his cheeks, settles behind his eyes and at the back of his nose. He should probably feel a rush of shame or anxiety or hell, just simple adrenaline, but his body is a husk — hollowed out, as dark and empty as that cave.
He blinks down at the dock and shoves the dog tags in the pocket of his jeans. "There's nothing to talk about."
Sarah glances sideways at him. "Are you sure?"
He swallows. He could fill a novel with everything there is to say about Riley: what it felt like flying into hell side by side; the steady way they had each other's back, no matter how many hits they took along the way; how Sam never, not once, felt alone.
But more than that, maybe, there's an ache somewhere in his chest to name the quieter parts, like the way Riley always caught the punchline of a joke a few seconds late, his laughter bursting strong and loud above the buzz of engines, a reckless, ruthless sound. All his odd little habits — how he played with his dog tags or scuffed his boot on the floor or paced the same path around the B-huts hundreds of times when he couldn't sleep at night. The dozens of little ways he drove Sam crazy, like when he poured his milk before his cereal or got the other guys to help him cheat on crossword puzzles or dove headfirst toward death without a second thought. The way his eyes caught the light in the morning, the infant sun turning them the color of the jade ring their mom used to wear on Sundays. How his lips felt the last time they kissed.
Sam's throat collapses in on itself, squeezing tight around his breath. He makes himself nod again, swipes at the heat gathering in his eyes. Turns his back on the water and lets Sarah lead the way toward the house.
**
The world flickers in and out of focus. In one moment, a thermometer is being slid under his tongue, Bucky's silhouette outlined in lamplight; in another, Alpine nests on the pillow, her fur warm against Sam's cheek as sunlight washes the bedroom in gold; in the next, he's being coaxed to sip from a bottle of blue Gatorade and nibble at buttered toast, the TV mumbling something in the background about whale shark migration patterns.
He lets himself drift in this floaty place, awake enough to skim past any dreams, asleep enough to blunt the worst of his symptoms. Still, a low-level ache throbs through him, a full-body bruise that pulses with his heartbeat. An unscratchable itch tingles somewhere behind his eyes, the sensation walled off behind swollen sinuses, and his breath draws a soft wheeze from his lungs. Everything feels strangely heavy, like summer mornings spent swimming in the bayou in clothes three sizes too big, the fabric suctioning to his face, smothering him, dragging him down.
Riley hangs just beyond the edges, submerged beneath the water, bent around the knees of the cypress trees. There, but just out of view.
Sunlight pools on his quilt in honeyed shades of orange when Bucky rouses Sam with a kiss on the forehead.
"You're sweaty," he murmurs, his lips skimming against Sam's skin, buzzing along his nerves. "Feels like your fever broke."
"Probably ndot for long." Sam sniffles; his lungs kick against his rib cage, rebellious against the strain of trying to pull air in through his nose. He rubs a hand over his chest as his breath crackles and sputters, grit burning hot in his throat. "What time is it?"
"Almost six." Bucky lifts a glass of ice water from the nightstand and holds the straw toward Sam's lips. With his metal hand, he strokes his index finger against Sam's cheek. "Slept the whole damn day away."
Sam grunts and catches the straw in his teeth. Bucky's touch is cool against the swelling in his face, and he leans into it, lets his eyes close as he takes slow sips. Sweat sticks his clothes to his skin, and each swallow of ice water carves a cold trail down his throat and into his chest, cutting through the dull ache in his muscles.
When he's drained half the glass, he falls back against the pillows and pushes the heel of his hand into his left eye. Congestion pulses through his face and fills his ears, blanketing the room in a fuzzy static. He clears his throat, though his voice still sticks low in his chest, whittled down to a small, colorless sound, its edges dulled from the crap packing his head. "I should shower."
Bucky shakes his head. "You're too dehydrated. I ain't picking your ass up if you faint."
Sam fumbles through the sheets for a moment before locating the tissues. He glances back at Bucky as he pulls several from the box. "You would."
While Sam rubs his nose into the tissues, Bucky squeezes his shoulder. His mouth remains lax, but something fond flickers in his eyes, sweet and warm like when he watches Alpine play with a new toy or when he's sprawled out on the couch with one earbud in, listening to an old Vera Lynn song. "Try a bath," he mutters.
Bucky half carries him to the en-suite bathroom, and still, the walk leaves Sam shaking and breathless, his limbs wobbling with a sudden rush of adrenaline. He drops onto the edge of the tub and lets Bucky fiddle with plugging the drain, turning the water on, adjusting the temperature so steam rises in plumes around them. Outlined in the bathroom light, shadows smudge the spaces under his eyes, and the bruise over his right cheek has darkened to a grayish green.
Sam reaches up to touch his face. His fingers tremble as he brushes them against Bucky's jaw. "You okay?" he whispers. "Feels like maybe I'm weari'g you out."
Bucky angles his head to brush a kiss against Sam's fingers. "Don't mind being worn out for you, Sammy." He turns and crouches to dig under the cabinet beneath the sink. "We'll both sleep better tonight."
"I can take the couch." Steam seeps through Sam's nose, flushing his nerves hot. He reaches over Bucky to snag a handful of toilet paper. "Might not sleep so great after being in bed all day."
"You gotta rest." The cabinet closes with a quiet thud. Bucky straightens, a bag of Epsom salts in hand, and shuffles back to the edge of the tub. He glances up at Sam as he tugs at the bag's peel-away tab. "I'll put something shitty on. One of those home renovation shows you hate."
Sam shoves the toilet paper against his septum. "You hate those, too."
"So we'll both get bored and fall asleep." The bag pops open, little flakes of salt spilling out over Bucky's skin and against his t-shirt. He cringes, then holds the bag over the tub, letting nearly half of its contents spill into the water. "D'you feel like you're past the worst of it?"
"I dunno. It's been a while since I had the flu, but I think the first day was always the worst. Or the first ndight, I guess." Sam scrunches his nose and gives an experimental sniffle. His breath sizzles along his sinuses and cuts off with a sharp snag behind his sternum. "HDT'CHIshhuhh! Uhh — uh'idZCHHiuuhh!"
"Bless you." Bucky tosses the bag of Epsom salts back toward the cabinet and grabs a folded hand towel from the back of the toilet. "You still sound like shit."
"Well, yeah. Gonna sound like shit for a week, probably." Sam leans forward past Bucky to drop the wilted toilet paper in the trash can between the toilet and the cabinet, then takes the hand towel from him and scrubs it against his nose. "You ever have the flu?"
Bucky finds a mostly empty bottle of lavender bubble bath on the floor and pours it in the tub. "Of course I've had the flu."
"So you know this is how it goes." Tears smolder in the corners of Sam's eyes as he sniffles again. His breath stutters low in his chest with a quiet crackle, and he clutches the towel closer to his face. "HDT'Chishhuhh! Hih … hEDT'zhhuehhh!" The sneezes curl him forward on the tub, each landing a dull blow between his eardrums. He shudders through a heavy cough and gestures at his face. "It's gonna be a lot of this for a while."
Bucky shakes his head a little as Sam blows his nose into the towel. "Get in the bath," he murmurs, catching a thumb under the hem of Sam's boxers.
Getting out of his clothes is a clumsily intimate process — Sam climbs to his feet and slumps against the side of the tub, legs still unsteady beneath him; shivering, he lets Bucky guide his t-shirt over his head, allows him to help him step out of his boxers. Standing upright, his muscles feel like taffy beneath gravity's pull, weak and stretched thin. The steam feathers low in his lungs, and when he starts coughing, his chest gives an ugly wheeze.
Bucky rubs a steady hand over his back and mutters something about getting a humidifier for the bedroom.
There's an echo here, whispering over them as Bucky helps him into the tub and complains that he should have eaten more than just toast earlier, a mirror from another time: two men hassling each other to take better care of themselves because no one else would, scolding each other for running themselves into the ground; hands pressed to foreheads in the dim light of a B-hut or out under the stars, fingers feeling the sides of necks for swollen glands; laughter sneaking in through the cracks when a sneeze knocked one of them sideways midair or their voices sputtered and fizzed through their comms, breaking on every syllable. Knowing no matter what, they always had each other's backs.
"I was gonna order soup for dinner." Bucky kneels on the bath mat, then leans forward to grab a bottle of shampoo, his dog tags clinking against the lip of the tub. He pops the bottle open and tips it sideways over his palm. "D'you want anything else? Don't think you're running low on any meds …"
"Soup's good. From Benny's, right?" A shiver crawls up Sam's back as Bucky nods, the water's heat beginning to work its way through his muscles. "Don't know how much I can stomach, but …"
"I'll get a cup of broth, too." Bucky stretches over the edge of the tub and rubs the shampoo into Sam's hair, his fingers light as he scratches tiny circles over his scalp. Water seeps into the front of his shirt, and the dusty blue fabric darkens to navy. "Is your stomach still bad?"
Sam grunts a "no" and lets himself relax into Bucky's touch. "Think it was the fever more than anything … woke up and it all just hit me."
Bucky nods again. He thumbs a blob of shampoo suds off Sam's temple. "Seemed like you were having nightmares all night," he murmurs. "I tried talking you through them, but it didn't seem like you really heard me."
Sam sniffles. He drags a finger through the layer of Epsom salt on the bottom of the tub. "I say anything good?"
"No. Kicked me a few times, though." Bucky nudges Sam's shoulder. "Lean your head back."
Sam does, sinking down into the water until it laps at his ears, knees bent to fit as much of his trunk beneath the warmth as possible. He blinks at the water from the corner of his eye as Bucky scrubs the shampoo from his scalp. Soft plumes of soap filter out into the bubbles around his head, dissipating around Bucky's fingers as his touch slips lower to work the muscles of Sam's neck.
Sam closes his eyes and lets the quiet sound of their breathing settle over him — the stuffy catch of his, the even rhythm of Bucky's above him. It's the first time an illness has wiped him out quite this badly in front of Bucky, rendered him barely able to stand on his own feet without help, and yet there's already an easy routine to it. Since yesterday, Bucky's been a solid rock, dosing him with cold medicine, tracking his temperature, making sure he always has a glass of cold water within reach. Simple things, but the sort of care that takes attention to detail and practice when you add everything all together.
Bucky works Sam's neck and shoulders for several minutes, long enough for water to soak halfway up the front of his shirt, then helps Sam sit up a little higher. With a yawn, he settles back on the bath mat and tugs his shirt off. His skin flushes softly pink in the steam, the same full-body blush Riley used to get after showers. His dog tags glisten silver against his bare skin.
Sam swallows. "You do this before? With Steve?"
Bucky's mouth curves up at the corner — a quick, involuntary tug of muscles, and for a second, he looks younger, a version of Bucky Sam will never know, the one who shared an apartment with his best friend in a world that no longer exists. "Yeah. A few times." He ducks his head as he wipes his hands on his sweatpants. "Think he must've had pneumonia or something … it's kinda fuzzy."
Sam hums. He curls against the side of the tub and rests his face against its lip. Water drips down the side of his temple over his cheek before pooling on the tub's enamel. He drags his thumb through it, pushing it closer to the edge.
"Last night in the bathroom," he says. "I wasn't talking about him."
"Yeah, I know." Bucky's dog tags whisper together as he shifts to pull his knees up in an inverted V. "Kinda figured you weren't dreaming about him, either."
Sam glances up to meet his gaze. "Thought you said I didn't say anything."
"Nothing good." Bucky rests his metal forearm on top of his knees. He rubs the thumb of his other hand over one of the plates, smudging water across the reflective surface. "I couldn't understand most of it, but I got enough to know it wasn't something Steve had anything to do with."
"Yeah, well." Sam sniffles. In the steam, the congestion is beginning to ease into a warm leak inside his nose, and he pushes his knuckle against his septum. "The shit from Afghanistan is … it's all still there, you know?"
Bucky snags the hand towel from the floor and passes it to him. "Yeah, I know."
Behind the towel, Sam nudges at his nose and watches water continue to drip onto the edge of the tub. Everything he isn't saying settles over them, thick as the steam, coiling in his lungs, clogging his throat. So many times, he's told Bucky about the things that happened over there: the blistering sand and the shock of the cold; the people who died in his arms, gasping for air and turning gray; the first child he saw die — god, just how many children he saw die; the hollowed-out feeling he returned home with; the balled-up mess of guilt at the center of his chest he'll never untangle. And yet it's never felt quite finished, like a scrapbook of out-of-focus photos. Riley's there, but never the way he should be — a side character, a guy Sam knew once, just another soldier who didn't make it home.
Sam shudders through a low cough. It's been years — nearly two decades since he watched dirt get tossed on top of that casket in a rainy Macon graveyard — and still, he carries Riley like a noose around his neck, a dead body he'll never stop dragging through the desert, a ghost trapped behind the teeth of a younger man too scared to tell anyone the truth. It doesn't matter that he hears Riley in every gunshot and whisper of the wind when he's up in the sky, sees him in every sun-soaked morning in Delacroix, feels him in the low laughter Bucky breathes against his chest when it's early and they're just beginning to wake. Not when he's the only one who knows it.
I don't wanna take you to the grave, Red.
He sniffles and folds the towel over on itself on the lip of the tub. A loose thread at one corner hangs down and disappears into the bubbles, drawing water up into the white terry cloth, saturating the edge.
"Do you ever talk to Steve?" he asks. "I don't mean in any kind of real way. More like … just letting your mouth run."
"All the time." Bucky folds his hands over his knees. "Do you?"
Sam's bottom lip cracks under his top teeth. He swallows, but the words still come out rocky, like little shards of glass caught behind his vocal cords. "With Riley, yeah."
Bucky's head dips in a slight nod. He traces his thumb over the back of his hand. "Does it help?"
"I don't know."
Bucky nods again. His eyes settle on a point beyond the room, and the right side of his cheek caves in, caught in his teeth, the same way it gets when he's working through something neither of them can remember. "You don't talk about him very much."
"Don't know what to say, I guess. Feels like he got buried in the past for everybody else. And that's never how I wanted it to go, but … there wasn't really anything I could do about it." Sam's nose trembles through a sniffle. He lifts the towel, its wet thread trailing through the bubbles and down his wrist, and presses it against his septum. It hides the lower half of his face, a soft shield against the bathroom's white light, Bucky's distant gaze.
His lungs wheeze through a breath. "We spent so long keeping each other a secret, and then all of a sudden, I think I was supposed to talk about him, but it doesn't work like that. I couldn't just switch it off, or dial it back the way people wanted me to. Make them remember him the way they wanted without all the messiness."
Bucky hums. Keeps fiddling with the metal on the back of his hand, head tipped at an angle, a crease working its way between his brows.
Sam clears his throat, swallows the taste of grit along his tonsils. "Anyway, I wasn't really me when I came back. Took a long time for me to feel human again, and by then, everybody had already moved on. No one wanted to hear about all of it, and even if they did, I wouldn't know where to start."
Bucky nods again and chews the inside of his cheek. The line in his forehead deepens, a canyon between his brows. "You go to therapy back then?"
"Yeah, but we didn't — it was a different time, man. I don't have to tell you that. Couldn't really talk about it like it was anything more than what it looked like on the surface." Sam shivers, goose bumps creeping up along the exposed skin of his neck and wrist as the steam settles around the floor. The faucet drips, a lazy plink … plink … plink by his feet.
He lets go of a sigh, his breath shuddering through him. "Feels like maybe it shouldn't hurt so bad anymore. And it doesn't, most of the time, but then all of a sudden, it's like a wave hits me, and I'm back there all over again, and no one can see it."
Bucky shrugs without looking up. "You're always saying there's no time limit on this kind of thing."
Sam grunts, though the sound snags in his throat. He winces, spit grinding along his tonsils and larynx as he strains to keep from coughing. Deep in his lungs, congestion bubbles around his breath, and the nerves at the back of his nose flicker, nudging tears into the corners of his eyes.
Bucky cranes his neck, shifting forward onto one knee. "You okay?"
Sam's breath wavers, eyes narrowing to half mast as the room goes foggy with tears. He cups the towel closer to his face, nervous system teetering on the edge of triggering a sneeze, though a coughing fit ends up tearing through him at the last second. Each expulsion of air is a sharp, rasping blow to his ribs that pops and crackles like kindling in his chest and blazes in his throat.
Bucky dips his hand below the bubbles and lays it between Sam's shoulders. "Easy," he murmurs. "Probably just wore your voice out, is all."
Tears drip down Sam's cheeks as his breathing settles into a jagged, off-key rhythm. He scrubs the towel against his face, nose streaming behind it. "Sorry." The word claws over his vocal cords, and he chokes on another cough. "Probably gonna lose my voice …"
"You already did." Bucky stands, his dog tags falling against his chest, and goes to the sink. A moment later, he returns with a glass of water and kneels back down again on the bath mat. "Try to drink a little."
Sam shakes his head, eyes already narrowing again, the back of his nose tingling hot. His breath knifes through his lungs in a sharp gasp. "idZH'huehh! Huhh! — Huh'IDZHuehhh! Ishh'SHuehhh!" He coughs on the tail-end of the sneezes, fresh tears spilling down his cheeks. "Jesus Christ. Sorry."
"Quit apologizing and drink your water." Bucky holds the glass in one hand and rubs the other over Sam's back, and as Sam blows his nose into the towel, he bends to press a kiss to the peak of his shoulder, the exposed rise of skin speckled in goose bumps above the water.
Sam drops the towel over the edge of the tub and takes the water. He swallows a mouthful and grimaces. "Think I might do better with something to suck on."
Bucky hums against Sam's shoulder. "You gotta drink more, Sammy."
Sam rolls his eyes, though the muscles around the edge of his mouth flicker. He takes another sip and leans his forehead into the curve of Bucky's neck. A shiver whispers up his spine. "You're cold."
"M'not. You're just running a fever."
Sam grunts and sinks farther into Bucky. In the bathroom's humidity, he really does feel cool, though comfortingly so, like pressing a cold water bottle to his forehead after hours spent out on the baseball field back in middle school, skin coated in sweat and red dust; or a cold sip of his mom's sweet tea after a weekend afternoon spent helping his dad on the boat.
Bucky's hand rubs over his back, slipping low under the water to trace circles across his spine. "Was he a morning person?" he murmurs.
Sam blinks, his eyelashes whispering against Bucky's neck. "What?"
"Sometimes when I think about Steve, it's … it's like I could drown in everything. All these memories I forgot I even had." Bucky's thumb presses into the small of Sam's back, working the spot to the left of his spine that always aches after a rough night's sleep. "Sometimes the only way through it is to find something small. The shit other people never thought to care about. So … was he a morning person?"
Sam swallows. Feels his mouth falling into a smile.
"Well, yeah, more than you, but I guess that's not saying much." He tucks his head closer to Bucky's neck, one hand holding himself steady against the side of the tub. "Took him till we were up flying before he really woke up most of the time."
"You probably talked his ear off."
Sam shakes his head. "No more than he did. That man was always running his mouth." He rubs a knuckle against the side of his nose. Low in his throat, he hums a laugh — brittle, breaking halfway through, but warm nonetheless. "He called me Birdie. Got this stupid smirk on his face the first time he did it, like he didn't look like just as much of a dumbass trying to figure out how to get the wings to work."
Bucky's fingers cradle the small of Sam's back. "Bet you called him something worse."
"Red. It drove him crazy." Sam sniffles, then ducks toward his own shoulder, irritation sparking along frayed nerves again. "Hih'IDZuehhh! Huh — hDT'schhuehh!"
"Bless you," Bucky murmurs. He snags the towel from the floor, hand scattering drops of water over his bare chest, and passes it to Sam. "Red ain't so bad."
"It was some childhood thing. Think he was sensitive about it till he figured out I had a thing for him." With a heavy sniffle, Sam wipes his face on the towel. He clears his throat, though his voice still snaps on every syllable, the last shreds of his pitch and timbre chipped down to nothing. "You know he'd sneak food out to the jackals outside the base? Said they reminded him of his family's dog back home."
Bucky nudges his knuckle under Sam's left eye, smoothing over the spot where everything is swollen and heavy. Water drips from his hand down onto Sam's skin, carving a warm trail down his cheek. "Jackals … they're like coyotes, right?"
"Sorta. They're smaller — look a little bit like foxes." Sam catches a cough in the towel and swallows hard. "The ones outside the base started acting like stray cats — got so tame you could almost pet them if you had food on you."
Bucky hums. He rubs his thumb over Sam's cheek, wiping away the water from his hand. "I wanna know more," he murmurs, "but your voice is shot."
"I'm okay," Sam says, though his voice crumbles on the last word, and he coughs down at Bucky's shoulder, a soft wheeze whistling in his breath.
"Yeah, that's convincing." Bucky brushes a kiss against his forehead. His lips are warmer than the rest of him, a little burst of heat, like catching a ray of sunlight through the clouds. "You wanna tell me the rest when you're feeling better?"
Beneath his lips, Sam lets himself go lax. A jagged tenderness smolders along his tonsils and over his larynx, flaring bright every time he swallows, but it's a good sort of pain, like peeling a scab off. A slow, gentle unburying of the past. It isn't a letting go, but an opening of a door to let the light in. There's a sense now that maybe, he won't have to shoulder it alone — not the love, not the loss, not the dreams that gut him in the dead of night or the memories that warm him like a kiss every time he puts on his wings.
it's been quite a while since i actively wrote anything, let alone posted anything, and while i am painfully aware that i have several WIPs and asks in my inbox which are probably over a year old now (i'm sorry!) i couldn't help myself when it came to writing this. i've been working on this for some time, have utterly fallen in love with these two dorks and have plenty more to come where these two are concerned!
now, i would like to preface this by saying that it is probably embarrassingly inaccurate when it comes to all the sci-fi related stuff, so please don't come at me for anything that perhaps doesn't quite make sense haha. it makes sense in this little world! (at least to me...)
this is just a silly little self-indulgent one-shot that has been living in my head rent-free for an embarrassingly long time now! but believe me when i say that this won't be the last i post about these two because my adhd ass brain won't stop hyperfixating on them (:
Details: <5k words. Male sneezing, non-human sneezing, induced, slight mentions of spray/mess but nothing graphically detailed.
Warnings: heavy sci-fi themes, including space, other planets, non-humans.
i usually write a summary here but it's impossible for me to summarise what's going on in this without going into masses of detail haha, but i hope y'all enjoy!
~*~
Had anyone told him twelve years ago that Earth would no longer be his place of residence, Soren would have laughed them out of the room. The mere concept would have sounded ridiculous; moving cities had sounded like a pipe-dream, let alone moving planets. Despite the deep-freeze winters, the scorching summers, the depleted fossil fuels and the unequivocal economic collapse run under an attempt at dictatorship, a life other than one born of struggled hardship seemed outside the realms of possibility. It had been the dream for many, a reality for none.
But those days were long gone. For many, a reality. No famine; no riots or killing in the streets outside their window; no catastrophic natural disasters as the planet attempted to reclaim itself. Those visions were nothing more than memories, smeared like wet paint against a blank canvas, forgotten by many, immortalised by few, haunting for those unlucky enough to remember them.
Soren fell into the latter category, waking frequently at night to imaginary blood-curdling screams between his ears and sheets of red across his vision, tormented by phantasms of a life that no longer existed.
His reality now was blue grass, twin moons, purple skies and Echoes cohabiting alongside the human colonists.
When humanity arrived on Eos-9 three months prior, it was assumed to be a barren planet. More than ten years of research while aboard the ship that brought them here and years prior to that of Earth-bound research had indicated no sustainable life was present here. Aside from the unusual vegetation, there didn't appear to be another living thing. Technically, that much was still true.
A team of survey corps had been deployed to investigate the area shortly after arrival, an excursion which had stretched on for several days. Whether one was to believe in fate, or whether it was sheer coincidence, one of the surveyors had lost their footing and fallen down an approximation of a rabbit-hole, uncovering some of Eos-9's ever-expanding curiosities. Arguably, its greatest one.
Beneath the ground were what appeared to be tunnels lined with dormant mechanisms nestled within an approximation of a civilisation. It appeared abandoned upon first inspection, but it was only a matter of time before humanity discovered that they were not as alone as they first appeared to be.
Within the mechanisms resided constructs of the planet, of which the colonists had dubbed the ‘Echoes’. They were dutifully named as such due to when first contact occurred, they were nothing more than voices without a physical presence, like echoes of the planet.
No one knew who, or what, had made them. The first survey teams had found empty cities half-buried beneath silver dunes, full of silent machines waiting patiently in dormant halls.
Then the machines woke.
They spoke human languages before the colonists taught them. They already knew Earth history. They knew Shakespeare and Seoul street maps and old Brazilian soap operas and the exact composition of atmospheric carbon in 2091.
They had, apparently, been watching humanity for a very long time.
Humanity was initially seen as an intruder, a dangerous threat to the planet's delicate ecosystem in which the Echoes had spent millennia protecting. Eviction was attempted, followed by pleading, bargaining, and finally, acceptance. The Echoes permitted humanity to remain on Eos-9 on the premise that they would work together to upkeep the safety and efficiency of the planet, to respect it and not to exploit it. Naturally, no one had argued.
That had been several weeks prior.
Now, the Echoes walked alongside humanity wearing approximations of human bodies.
“I'm just saying,” Soren was explaining as he shrugged to his companion. “One of the things I miss most about Earth are the cigarettes.”
Soren lay back against a warm black stone, jacket bundled beneath his head, staring straight up at the sky. Elyx was sitting upright beside him, motionless except for the faint turning of his head between the stars and the lights of the colony domes.
There was a stretch of silence that passed before a voice spoke beside Soren, much deeper and more monotonous than his own, almost ethereal.
“Humans would ingest carcinogenic material into their respiratory systems?” Another thoughtful pause, followed by, “On purpose?”
The voice next to him belonged to one of Soren's closest friends planet-side, Elyx - an Echo.
Some of the Echoes looked nearly perfect, practically human. Others were… off.
Elyx belonged firmly in the second category.
His limbs were a fraction too long. His fingers bent with unsettling smoothness. His face was handsome in the way sculptures were handsome - technically correct, emotionally strange. His smile arrived a second or two too late sometimes, as if triggered by internal processing rather than instinct.
But Soren liked him anyway. Maybe because he was the only real friend Soren had made since arriving on this planet. Or maybe because Elyx never treated him like he was disappointing.
Most people over fifty looked at Soren’s generation with quiet resentment. They were the children born during the Collapse Years, after the oceanline evacuations had begun, after Earth stopped pretending recovery was possible. They inherited smoke-choked skies and ration riots and departure lotteries.
Then, they inherited exile.
But Elyx listened to Soren talk about Earth like it was important. Like it had mattered.
“Well, yeah, I guess so,” Soren continued in response to Elyx's question. Questions… There were always questions, so many of them. The Echo's fascination with humanity was neverending, and honestly endearing.
“That would appear to be irresponsible,” Elyx concluded, staring at Soren thoughtfully.
“No, no, you don't understand,” Soren was trying to explain. Or justify. Perhaps both. “That first drag of a cigarette on a cold winter morning with a cup of fresh coffee just hits different.”
“You were correct in your estimation,” Elyx confirmed. “I do not understand.”
Silence settled between them after that. Not awkward, exactly, just… considering. Soren could have tried to explain the simple pleasure of cigarettes despite their detrimental effects to Elyx, but memories of life back on Earth always made him somber.
The two of them watched the twin moons for a few moments in companionable quiet, the only sounds being the faint ruffle of grass in the gentle breeze and the soft hum of colony life below them. Until a sound (or two) pierced the quiet between them.
“hh.. h'ITSCH!.. H'TSCSH-!..”
The sounds were sudden, sharp, leaving Soren sniffling a little after, rubbing the back of his wrist against the underside of his nose to rid it of any residual irritation.
“..Soren?”
The voice came unexpectedly, a note of uncertainty woven behind it. Shifting his fingers for a quick pinch-rub around his nostrils, Soren settled back against his makeshift rock-pillow.
“Yeah?” he asked without looking over. He didn’t need to glance across to know that Elyx was staring at him, able to feel the pressure of the Echo’s silver irises boring into him.
“What was that?” the construct asked, shifting across to close the space between them. Their knees were almost pressed together.
“What was what?” Soren asked, tilting his head to listen, as though what Elyx was referencing was coming from elsewhere. When he heard nothing suspicious, realisation settled in, his head rolling to the side curiously. “You mean me?”
“Yes,” Elyx replied, his gaze honed acutely onto Soren now, caught somewhere between fascinated and horrified . “You expelled air at high velocity accompanied by involuntary muscular contraction.”
“I just sneezed,” he snorted casually, as though that would answer all of Elyx's questions. Naturally, it did not. If anything, it only heightened the Echo’s curiosity. Soren could practically hear the dozens of follow-up questions buzzing around the Echo’s mind.
“Sneezed?” Elyx asked as though trying out the unfamilar word for the first time, eyes narrowing in suspicion as they locked onto Soren. “Are you compromised?”
“What? No.” Soren said as his head snapped to the side, sounding offended, his features narrowing a little. A stretch of considering silence passed before Elyx piped up again.
“Did it hurt?” The question was laden with slight concern, which made Soren roll his eyes fondly.
“No, it didn’t hurt,” he reassured, glancing across at Elyx as a slight smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Haven't you seen someone sneeze before?”
“Not this close in proximity,” Elyx offered honestly. Then, unexpectedly, “Can you do it again?”
“Again?” Soren repeated, baffled, as though he wasn't quite understanding the question. His next words came out sharp with disbelief. “No, I can't do it again.”
“Why not?”
Sighing softly, Soren realised that this was just another part of humanity that he would need to educate Elyx on. For as much as the Echoes appeared to have studied humanity, they seemed to have skimmed over the minor details. Elyx had apparently been tardy for the lesson on bodily reflexes.
“It doesn't work like that,” Soren started to explain patiently, hands motioning for emphasis. “It just… happens. You can't control it. Like, your body just does it, y'know?”
The blank look on Elyx's face told Soren that he did not know.
“Why did it happen?”
Soren couldn't help the slight smile and huff of amusement at the question. Elyx's fascination and curiosity really did make him endearing, his intimidating aesthetic belying his naivety.
“Something just irritated my nose, I guess,” Soren shrugged. “Making me sneeze is my body’s way of getting it out.”
Elyx appeared extremely intrigued by the explanation, his fascination growing stronger by the minute. “Your respiratory system forces a violent expulsion response to microscopic intrusion?
Soren balked. “Uh, yeah? I guess so. But when you say it like that, it sounds terrible."
“It sounds extraordinary.”
“Does it?” Soren asked. “It isn’t really.”
“I would like to experience it.” Soren took a second to pause, staring at Elyx blankly.
“You want to sneeze?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes,” came the flat, stoic reply, as if Soren was asking something obvious.
“Are you even able to?” Soren wondered aloud. It wasn’t like Elyx was exactly human, after all. And Echo physiology wasn't exactly Soren's forte. He doubted it was anyone's.
“I believe it is worth attempting.”
“Okay, but,” Soren started, in quiet disbelief that this conversation was even happening. “It’s not something you can just decide to do. Sneezing just… happens naturally.”
“It has not happened to me,” Elyx informed him, shuffling closer and closer until they were practically shoulder-to-shoulder.
“Case in point,” Soren sighed. “If it hasn’t happened yet, it probably isn’t going to.”
“Humans induce sneezing sometimes,” Elyx supplied casually. Soren froze, almost toppling over, despite being sitting.
“How could you possibly know that?” he asked, stunned.
“I have consumed sixteen million hours of human media.” Elyx said it as though it was the most casual, natural thing he could have done. “There are archives involving pepper and feathers, although the results are often inconsistent.”
“You’re serious about this,” Soren stated, amusement creeping into his tone.
“Yes,” Elyx confirmed, pausing briefly as he scanned back through the Earth archives he had committed to memory, before continuing. “There is also photonic stimulation triggered by direct sunlight.”
“You’ve done your homework,” Soren quipped, sounding almost impressed. “But yeah, that one’s real. Happens to a lot of people.”
“Excellent.”
Before Soren could protest, Elyx had turned towards both moons, head tilted back as he gazed directly up towards them. They both waited for a stretch of seconds while nothing happened, until Elyx sighed and turned back towards Soren with a look of sheer disappointment on his face.
“That does not appear to function correctly.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Soren huffed, unable to stop the smile that was spreading across his lips. Elyx was so serious about this that it was impossible not to held at least some element of comedic value. “You do realise that reflex isn’t universal, right? Not to mention you just looked at the moon.”
The blank stare he received indicated that Elyx had not, in fact, realised that.
“Do my receptors lack the required sensitivity to trigger such a phenomenon?” The question was delivered with such deadpan sincerity that Soren couldn’t help but audibly laugh.
“I mean, maybe? I’m not an expert on Echo physiology.” A beat of thoughtful consideration passed. “But there may be other methods.”
Elyx narrowed his eyes.
“I do not understand why you are smiling when you say that.”
“Because this is actually kinda funny.”
“Explain.”
“You’re an alien trying to get yourself to sneeze like a human for the first time.”
“I’m not an alien,” Elyx sulked. “You are.”
Soren opened his mouth to respond but closed it almost instantly. Honestly, there wasn’t really any coming back from that one. Elyx was right; he was the alien here. Humans were the aliens on Eos-9. Which was actually pretty strange to think about. Although perhaps no stranger than trying to get an incorporeal being to sneeze while being corporeal. That was certainly high up on the list of oddities.
“I need you to assist me.” Elyx shuffled across the rock, crouching down just in front of Soren with a look of pure enthusiasm that softened his features just enough to make him seem almost human. Almost. Soren was gently taken aback for a moment, looking into the steel-silver gaze of the Echo before him.
“Please.”
The word came out much softer than either of them had anticipated. And that was Soren’s real problem with Elyx. Not the uncanny proportions. Not the mechanical precision. Not even the impossible ancient intelligence behind those silver eyes. It was moments like this, moments where Elyx sounded young, curious, hopeful. Like someone discovering existence for the first time. And, in a roundabout sort of way, he kind of was.
“Fine.” Soren sighed dramatically, unable to resist most anything Elyx asked of him. And this felt oddly intimate in a way that Soren couldn’t really describe. Though he did hasten to add, “But if this goes dramatically wrong and you end up imploding or something then I’m not being held liable. And I’m definitely not explaining this to the rest of the colony.”
“Your terms are agreeable,” Elyx lilted, a soft, gentle smile barely beginning to tug at the corner of his mouth.
With a firm nod, Soren began glancing around, unable to quite believe that his current thoughts were occupied with varying ways of getting Elyx to sneeze. Had anyone told him that this would be his life on this new planet, he would have probably launched himself into the nearest wormhole.
“I dunno, dust maybe?” he suggested, not really finding much else that would be of any use. Elyx responded without hesitation, scooping up a handful of fine, silty sand from around the rock base, lifting it up to his face before Soren could stop him.
“Wait, not that much-”
But it was too late. Elyx had already drawn in a huge breath through his nose, sniffing back a large portion of the sand in the process. It made him cough, the sounds dry and tight, causing him to drop the sand back to the floor with a sound of utter contempt. Soren could only blink in wide-eyed disbelief, waiting to see if anything else happened.
“You can cough?” he asked, startled. It took Elyx a moment or two to regain composure before he glanced back at Soren with glistening eyes.
“Apparently.”
“Well, I guess that’s a good sign?”
“What made you deduce that conclusion?”
“If you can cough, then that means you can probably do other reflexes, right? Which means you can probably sneeze. We just... haven’t found a way to make it happen yet.”
Elyx was quiet, thoughtful, though there was a glint of hopefulness in his expression that Soren found impossible to disappoint.
“Okay, we can try something else,” Soren said, now on a mission to get Elyx to sneeze. No matter what it took.
The ‘something else’ turned out to be just Soren attempting to physically irritate Elyx’s nose externally. He was kneeling in front of the Echo, the non-human details impossible to ignore at such close proximity.
The faint metallic sheen beneath synthetic skin; the perfect stillness between movements. Barely noticeable traits that were usually missed, now glaringly obvious as Soren continued his mission.
Two fingers lightly pinched the bridge of Elyx's nose, occasionally wriggling or rubbing in an attempt to stimulate any kind of reaction.
“Anything?” he asked, almost hopeful, as he gave the Echo’s nose another wriggle before very gently flicking the tip. Elyx just blinked, going still for a moment as though internally analysing, before sighing heavily.
“No,” he said glumly. “Nothing.”
Soren wrinkled his own nose in demonstration. “There’s usually, like, a tickle.”
“A tickle,” Elyx repeated, as though speaking the words aloud would commit it to memory.
“Yeah. It’s a weird feeling, kinda makes your face all twitchy.”
“My face does not twitch involuntarily.” Elyx straightened a little as he said it. An eye roll came from Soren.
Though he continued, now adamant for this task not to defeat him, rubbing higher, fingers moving side to side over the narrow bridge of Elyx’s nose. Still nothing. Elyx watched him intently the entire time, silver eyes unblinking.
“Y'know, that’s really unsettling,” Soren muttered, eyes flicking down occasionally but refusing to meet his gaze.
“You are concentrating.”
“Most people close their eyes when someone’s this close.” Another gentle wriggle. “Or at least look down.”
“I enjoy observing you.” The delivery was so deadpan, so genuine, that Soren nearly slipped off the rock. Elyx tilted his head. “Was that statement inappropriate?”
“No,” Soren said a mite too quickly, a faint heat rising to his cheeks. “Just— distracting.”
“Oh,” Elyx said quietly, before adding, mostly to himself, “Interesting.”
Soren scowled, still just inches away from Elyx’s face. “That wasn’t an invitation to analyse it.”
“It is difficult not to.”
Soren groaned. “You are impossible.”
“Continue the nose manipulation.”
“Can you not word everything so weirdly?” Soren blurted, almost flustered.
Still, he tried again.
Pinching. Rubbing. Gliding a finger from the bridge to the tip.
Nothing.
No twitch, no reaction. No sneeze.
“Okay,” Soren said finally, sitting back. “Maybe your body just can’t do it.”
Elyx looked sincerely disappointed, slumping a little.
“But the reflex exists in your species.”
“It does,” Soren agreed, before adding, “But you don’t have a species.”
It came out a little harsher than Soren intended, a trickle of guilt running down his spine as he watched Elyx ruffle a little.
“That feels philosophically incorrect.”
“You know what I mean,” Soren was quick to correct. Technically, Elyx did have a species, but not one with a physical form. The being currently kneeling before him was constructed manually after rigorous study of the human system. A replica, so to speak. No one really knew just how accurate Echoes were to human physiology.
Elyx went quiet for a moment, gaze drifting toward the distant colony lights.
Then, softer: “I would still like to understand it.”
Something twisted in Soren’s chest at the candid vulnerability in the Echo's tone. Elyx approached every human experience like a starving man discovering food. Laughter; music; warmth; touch.
Now sneezing, apparently.
“Okay,” Soren said, motivation restored. “We’re not giving up yet.”
“Don’t look so excited,” he warned as he sat back on his haunches a little.
“I am excited.”
Soren laughed softly despite himself, shaking his head as he glanced around them, considering his options.
“Right,” he concluded, standing abruptly before his eyes settled on Elyx, glinting with confident mischief in the moonlight. “Last attempt.”
Elyx stood too, towering over Soren slightly, his trust in the human almost palpable between them.
The strange, turquoise grasses around them swayed in the breeze blowing across from the ridges. Long filaments sprouted upwards around the edges of the rock, thin as wire and surprisingly soft. Soren plucked one from the ground, studying it thoughtfully as he twirled it between his fingers. Elyx watched with rapt fascination.
“You have an idea,” he proclaimed, more of a statement than a question. Though his expression tightened a little, caught between confused and awed. “With… vegetation?”
“This should work,” Soren stated, as though that would explain everything.
“Explain.”
Of course, it didn’t.
“I'm not explaining because it sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud,” Soren shrugged, ignoring Elyx's dubious glance. “Just… trust the process.”
At that, Elyx held perfectly still standing before Soren. The realisation hit Soren a little too late that Elyx wasn't only trusting the process; he was trusting Soren. It seemed so trivial but Elyx had no idea what Soren had planned and yet confided his full trust to him. It meant more than Soren anticipated. But he swallowed that thought down, other more pressing matters at hand.
Which were, essentially, manually tickling the Echo's nose in a bid to make him sneeze for the first time.
And that was the reason he hadn’t spoken it aloud; it sounded insane.
Setting his jaw, Soren lifted the thin, wiry blade up in front of Elyx's face and gently, delicately slipped it up inside one nostril.
At first, there was nothing. Just a slight furrow of Elyx's brows as his nose adjusted to the tiny intruder threading inside. Though when Soren dipped it just a little higher, wriggling it minutely, Elyx jerked very slightly, his eyes widening.
“Oh…”
Soren paused, inadvertently halting any progress they were making. “What?”
“I felt something,” Elyx declared, a hand lifting as he motioned towards his face.
“Like what?” The hope was audible in Soren's tone. “A tickle?”
“Yes,” Elyx confirmed, prompting Soren to begin movement once more, flicking the blade up against the sensitive inner walls of Elyx's nose. The reaction was immediate. “It is.. hh-..”
A small, involuntary hitch cut Elyx's sentence short, Soren able to see the visible twitch in the Echo's nose, the way his slender nostrils flared rounder just slightly.
“My facial actuators are behaving unpredictably.”
“Good,” Soren confirmed, a slight, almost smug smile curving his lips as he continued to weave the grass inside Elyx's nose.
“That's good?” Elyx asked, his voice slightly breathy.
“Yeah,” Soren chimed. “It means it's working.”
Though despite continuing to flick the blade inside Elyx's nose, the Echo's expression soon levelled, a small inhale drawn through his nose before it was sighed back out again.
“It stopped,” he concluded, unable to hide his disappointment. Soren frowned.
“What do you mean it stopped?”
“The feeling,” Elyx explained. “It's gone.”
Soren had paused for the moment, considering, before Elyx snapped him back into the moment.
“Again,” he stated, almost a command rather than a request. “Try it again.”
“You're really committed to this, aren't you?” Soren quirked.
“Yes.” Elyx's eyes fixed on Soren's, almost pleading. “It was working.”
“Alright,” Soren conceded, locking in. “Round two.”
Trying again, Soren swept the grass just a fraction higher inside Elyx's nose, teasing the sensitive inner walls, making them quiver gently against the irritation. The reaction was once again immediate, Elyx's nose twitching as a sharp, involuntary inhale was drawn. For the first time, his eyes fluttered against the sensation, his shoulders hunching just a fraction as a tiny hitch escaped.
“..hH-!..
“I can see it,” Soren almost whispered, fascinated as he watched each tiny crease, each flicker of Elyx's expression as the tickle expanded. His hand kept flickering the blade inside Elyx's nose, searching for that sensitive sweet-spot that would trigger a sneeze.
A hand suddenly reached out, gently grabbing Soren's wrist, not to stop him but as though grounding himself.
“There is-.. hH-!.. pressure,” Elyx managed to stammer out even as his breath caught in his throat, his gaze rapidly losing focus.
“That means it's building,” Soren assured. “Don't think about it. Just let it happen.”
His wrist snapped the blade just a tiny bit higher, Elyx's nose twitching once, twice, a tiny, helpless sound escaping that Soren had never heard him make before.
“Hh-!.. ihh-... It is.. ehh-... escalating.”
“Don't overthink it,” Soren advised, knowing Elyx too well by now that he was likely overanalysing every single sensation, unintentionally preventing the sneeze from coming. He visibly watched as Elyx's eyes drifted closed as the grass continued its assault, the Echo's nostrils flaring wide around the intruder, a tiny glisten of moisture beginning to collect around the inner shores.
“My s-.. sensory input is nahh-.. narrowing.”
“Stop trying to narrate it,” Soren almost snapped, though Elyx didn't stop.
“It feels as though something is.. ihh-! o-overriding motor control..”
Soren couldn't help the huff of soft laughter at that. “That's exactly what's happening. You gotta let it.”
Elyx made another desperate little sound as his head tipped back slightly on instinct, eyes closed, nose twitching, nostrils flared wide, the perfect picture of someone caught in a sneeze.
Soren dipped the blade higher still, the tip brushing lightly against the most sensitive spot along his inner wall.
That did it.
A sharp inhale was drawn. Elyx froze completely, every muscle locked, jaw slack and eyes closed as his chest inflated on a hitch.
“hh…Hh…!”
Soren could practically see him trying to maintain composure through sheer force of will. But it was a losing battle.
Elyx's breath hitched violently, the next inhale shuddering through his entire frame, his expression collapsed as he was completely overcome.
Then—
“hh-! H'TDJZSH-!!”
The resulting sneeze was clumsy, untidy, unpracticed. Elyx made no attempt to cover, doubling forwards slightly as a fine mist sprayed out in front of him from the release. Luckily, Soren managed to duck out of the way just in time, avoiding getting caught in the crossfire. The sound was clipped, slightly metallic at the edges, almost human but not quite, echoing softly across the ridges.
For a moment, both of them froze. Soren could only stare. Elyx stared back, his eyes wide.
“You did it,” Soren congratulated, the blade of grass since removed from Elyx's nose and discarded somewhere at their feet.
“That was… interesting,” Elyx concluded, drawing in a sharp, involuntary sniffle as he considered, almost awe-struck. “My thoracic systems compressed automatically.”
“You did good for your first time,” Soren quipped, his voice softening slightly as he added, “Bless you.”
Elyx's expression morphed into a look of confusion once more.
“What does that mean?”
“It's just something humans say whenever someone sneezes,” Soren said with a shrug. Elyx's expression grew no less confused.
“Why?”
“I dunno,” Soren admitted. “Something to do with wishing people good health? I'd need to look it up.”
Elyx looked like he was about to respond when he froze in place suddenly, his eyes widening in something resembling shock, before he managed to mutter, “...it's happening again.”
Soren looked almost as horrified, unable to quite believe what was happening before him. The second build up was much faster, Elyx barely being given time to turn slightly to the side as another sneeze barrelled through him.
“hH-!.. h'TSZSHh-!”
That one had Elyx staggering half a step backwards from the force of it, one hand rising instinctively up towards his face a second or two too late, the backs of his fingers brushing beneath his dampening nostrils.
“You're enjoying this far too much,” he snipped at Soren, who hadn’t been able to hide the grin that crept onto his face.
“You managed that one all by yourself!” Soren exclaimed, a patronising tint edging his words.
“Yes, I was present for it,” Elyx sulked, before his expression collapsed once again into startled distraction. Soren audibly gasped.
“There's more?”
Elyx still had his fingers crushed beneath his nose, blinking against tears of irritation as the tickle began to build again.
“The sensation is relentless,” he narrated, his expression and posture utterly overwhelmed by it at this point, composure completely dismantled. His eyes fluttered shut again as his shoulders tensed hard.
Soren had never seen him this disordered, never seen him unable to think his way through something. It was captivating, in a weird sort of way.
“..hh-.. hAH-! H'TZSSHH'uh-!!”
The third sneeze cracked out of him strongest of all, leaving the Echo bleary-eyed and sniffling, his internal processes clearly calculating every minor detail, leaving Elyx standing motionless for several seconds.
Then, slowly, he lowered his hand from his face.
“…I understand now,” he said quietly, voice edged with a subtle thickness.
Soren grinned. “You do?”
Elyx looked at him with something strangely bright in his expression, belying his next words.
“It was horrible.”
Soren barked a laugh.
Then Elyx’s mouth twitched upward a fraction too late.
“But,” he admitted, “also fascinating.”
“So, no interest in doing it again?” Soren asked. Elyx shook his head slowly, as a faint, residual irritation still flickered beneath his features.
“No,” he confessed. “I think I have experienced enough sneezing to last me this lifetime.”
Jayce's allergies are bothering him but Vander seems surprisingly relaxed about all his sneezing. Dominance/Submission - mostly praise kink related.
PLEASE ONLY REBLOG TO KINK RELATED BLOGS
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Jayce rubbed his nose again, feeling his nostrils twitch against his fingers. He wasn't sure what was bothering him at The Last Drop when the only thing he was allergic to was dogs. But the last thing he wanted to do was be a gross allergic mess in front of Vander. He'd had a crush on the man since he first laid eyes on him and hearing his voice had only sealed the deal. He was pretty sure his feelings were unrequited but he couldn't stop coming to The Last Drop even if it was just to bathe in Vander's attention for a few hours.
Vander was friendly and seemed to enjoy chatting with him well enough. So even on busy nights he still made a little time to talk to Jayce when he could, and that was more than enough to keep him coming back.
He sipped his drink and scrubbed at his nose with the edge of his sleeve. Vander reappeared across the bar having finished with another customer. Jayce immediately dropped his wrist away from his nose and smiled but he could feel the itch getting worse.
“You alright there, lad?”
“Yeah, I'm fine. Snf! How are you doing?” He tried to quickly deflect and judging by Vander's raised brow his clumsy attempt hadn't gone unnoticed but he didn't call him out.
“Restless tonight. Might clock out early when it slows down, let Sal hold down the fort.”
“Oh? Gonn-ahhh snfsnf go do something fun?” He rubbed a knuckle against his septum as his nostrils trembled with irritation.
Vander grinned leaning in a little closer. “Wouldn't mind if you'd like to join me lad.”
Jayce felt a rush like he'd just drank champagne nervous and lightheaded and fizzy with excitement. Unfortunately his nose had finally had enough. “HIH’IEZSHMPHH…Hh’Hih’IGDZSH-MPHhh…” he managed to catch both sneezes in his elbow but even muffled they were loud and shook him on his barstool. A few nearby patrons looked over at the disturbance.
He looked back up at Vander with his cheeks burning. “Sorry. Excuse me. I um I’d like that.”
“Bless you. You've got quite the sneeze there, boy.”
Jayce felt his cheeks grow even hotter at the comment. “Sorry, I know they're obnoxious.”
“Hey, no, I didn't mean it like that, lad,” Vander said apologetically. He reached out a placed a hand on Jayce's arm. “Just seems like something’s bothering you is all. You fighting a cold?”
Jayce felt syrupy warmth spread from where Vander's large hand cupped his arm paired with an expression of soft concern.
“No…um no just a-hah tickle,” he pressed a finger under his nose, rubbing his nostrils to try to get the itch to ease but his touch set him off instead and he sneezed into his palm.
“Hh…suh-sorry gonna-Hah’AAIISHHMPHH…HH’IGZSHmphh…shit. Sorry. I promise I was fine before I got here. I thi-hink it might be my ah-allergies.” He couldn't stop his breath from wavering as he talked, eyes starting to water from the persistent tickle which had only worsened since Vander had come over.
Vander didn't flinch away at his sneezing, rubbing circles with his thumb on the arm Jayce wasn't using to catch his sneezes. “Bless you, lad. What are you allergic to?”
“Snfff! Just dogs, so I'm not sure what could be…hhhh-SNF setting mbe off ind here.” He winced as congestion built up enough to affect his speech. He sniffled repeatedly to clear it.
Then he noticed Vander's wince. “Ah, I was…around some dogs earlier. Probably what's setting you off. Sorry about that Jayce. I'll keep away from you tonight.”
“No!” He blurted out and then flushed but gamely continued, “Um I mean you don't have to. Snf. But obviously I'm kind of gross like this so I would totally understand if you SNF didn’t want to be around me when I’m-“
Vander cut him off gently, “Jayce, I don’t mind, I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”
”Snfsnf. It’s really ndot that bad. Just a little ih-itchy. Hhhh…” He rubbed his nose with two fingers, pressing hard against his septum as his nostrils flared. “Sorry, gonna…hah…sndeeze…Hehhhh’EISSHHHuee…Hh’HUH’IGZTZSHHH…ngh…” His attempted stifle just made his sinuses ache and barely reduced the racket he was making. He looked up at Vander with watery apologetic eyes.
“Bless you, lad.” He said, voice low and warm. He stepped away and Jayce deflated. It just figures the first time he might get to spend time with Vander when he’s not working his allergies would crop up and ruin things.
“Sal, take over for me would ya? I’m headed upstairs for the night.”
”You got it, Vander.” The other man at the back of the bar responded moving to the front as Vander stepped out from behind the bar and came around to Jayce’s side.
Jayce looked at Vander in confusion as Vander set a hand on his shoulder and gave it a friendly squeeze. “C’mon upstairs with me. If neither of us mind your sneezing then your still welcome to join me for a drink if you’d like.”
”Yes,” he said eagerly, visibly perking up despite needing to sniffle more frequently with Vander this close. “I’d really like that.” Vander grinned at Jayce’s endearing enthusiasm and shifted his hand to Jayce’s lower back guiding him off his barstool and up a stair case in the back corner of the bar. Vander’s large hand felt like a furnace against him and he felt a corresponding heat in his belly at how big Vander’s hand felt, and how small and safe it made him feel in response. He’d never met anyone else who dwarfed him like Vander did.
They got to the top of the stairs and Jayce had to pause as the increased proximity set off the tickle in his nose again.
“Suh-sorry just a seh-Heh’HEISSHHew,,,Hhhhhhh’IESSHHHuhh…” He sneezed against his shoulder away from Vander just barely containing the spray against his jacket, Vander’s hand jolting with the movement as Jayce shook with the strength of it. He brought up his wrist snuffling against his jacket cuff as he dabbed at his damp nostrils. He wished he’d thought to bring a handkerchief.
“Bless you, lad. It’s alright. You don’t need to apologize,” he soothed, rubbing his hand in a few loose circles against Jayce’s back.
“Thandks. Sndff!”
Vander finished guiding him inside and then told him to have a seat on the couch. Jayce sat down looking around the apartment taking in knicknacks and a few books. Vander returned a few minutes later with two glasses of amber colored liquid and a bandana. He set the glasses on the battered low table in front of the couch and offered the bandana to Jayce.
”For your nose.”
”Thandks, Vander,” he murmured shyly. Vander just gave a nod of acknowledgement as he picked up his drink. Jayce’s cheeks flushed as he turned away to try to blow his nose as quietly as possible. He knew he would only get worse the longer he was around whatever dog hair and dander was all over Vander but he hoped he’d have a chance to talk and share a drink before it got too bad. He didn’t want to completely embarrass himself tonight even if Vander was being really kind about it.
Jayce set the makeshift handkerchief on his thigh, unfortunately aware that he would need it again soon, and picked up his own drink. He gave a surprised hum at how smooth it was, rich and carmely and a little smokey. It certainly wasn’t the quality of drink he was used to, even with his patron being a Kirramen mostly he’d had wine and champagne.
“This is really good,” he complimented. Vander grinned looking pleased, he settled into the couch a little more arm across the back of it, fingers just brushing the fine hairs on the back of Jayce’s neck and sending an electric shiver down his spine.
”I’m glad you like it, lad. Not often I get a chance to pull out something to savor.”
”I’m glad to give you the excuse.”
”Well it’s a bit of a special occassion isn’t it?”
”Oc-occassion?” He asked unable to look away from Vander’s confident gaze until his allergy ridden nose made itself known again and he whipped his head to the side sneezing down across the couch cushions. “Huh’ERSSSHHuhh…Hh’hh’IESSHHHeww…god excuse me. Sorry about that.” He could feel the tips of his ears were hot as he turned back to Vander. But the intensity of his gaze hadn’t dimmed in the least.
”Well it’s not everyday I get to bring a pretty boy like you home,” Vander practically purred flirtaciously, large calloused fingers brushing over the back of his neck and over his closely trimmed fade. Jayce blushed all the way to his hairline even as his heart skipped a beat.
“You…you want me?”
”Every bloody person in the bar downstairs wanted you, boy. I’m just apparently a very lucky bastard.”
”But you’re…you’re so strong and confident and handsome, you could have an-anyone. Snf!” Vander laughed but he sounded pleased and his hand cupped the back of his neck, gently scruffing him.
“Hm, well I want you Jayce.”
”Oh…” he said with breathless wonderment.
”Set down your glass,” he instructed softly and Jayce barely managed not to slam it down on the table in eagerness. Vander smiled again like he was fondly amused.
”Now sit on my lap, sweetheart.”
Jayce felt like his stomach was filled with butterflies at the petname, he liked that. He threw a leg over Vander’s lap and sat down across his thighs, his legs had to stretch obscenely wide to do so and he felt heat pool between his legs at how big Vander was.
“Good boy.”
Jayce sucked in breath at the praise that sent a wave of pleasure through him.
”Is that what you want, Jayce? To be my good boy?”
”Yes, please, I want to be..hh…good for you,” he winced scrubbing roughly at his nose when his breath wavered. Vander reached up and pulled his hand away. “Vander…? Hhh…” He asked confused.
”Relax, pet. I told you I wasn’t bothered by your sneezing. You don’t need to worry about it or hurt yourself trying to control your nose.”
”I…hh..don’t want to hh’hh sneeze on you,” he admitted with a guilty embarrassed grimace.
“It’s fine if you do. I’ve certainly been covered in worse,” he said with an amused quirk to his lips. But his expression softened when he saw Jayce still tense with anxiety. He returned his hand to back of Jayce’s neck giving it a squeeze. “I promise if you do something that bothers me I’ll tell you. I want you to relax. Trust me.” Jayce’s nostrils flared wide and he couldn’t turn away with Vander’s hand keeping his head there so he sneezed across Vander’s chest.
”Hhhhh’hh’HEISSHHHeww…Hhh’hh’EGSSHHuue…Snffff…scuse mbe.” Jayce looked Vander over closely but Vander was relaxed, wearing a pleased smile.
”Bless you, sweetheart. That’s right, just relax and sneeze if you need to.” He punctuated his praise by trailed one large hand up Jayce’s thigh and cupping his hardness. Jayce’s eyes fluttered shut as he moaned, hips bucking up into his touch.
”You really…you really duhhhh-dond’t mbind?” He asked shyly as his breath wavered again. He wanted to keep going. Wanted Vander so badly. But it was hard to believe that he wasn’t going to ruin by being so disgusting.
Vander nudged his hips upward, hardness pressing against Jayce. “Does it feel like I mind, pup?” He purred. And Jayce whined at the feeling of Vander’s desire. He wanted so badly to please Vander, to make him feel good.
“Ndo. What do y-you Huhhh…hh’hhh’HEISSHHew…hh’EGSHHuhhh…” Vander tugged him down into another kiss, hungry for the sweet sneezy boy in his lap. The way his shirt was just starting to grow damp from Jayce’s sneezes had his cock throbbing in his pants. Jayce moaned against his lips and Vander swallowed down the sound as he stroked Jayce.
”Put your hands behind your back and keep them there. Can you do that for me, pup?” Jayce put his hands behind his back with a slight pout to his lips.
“But I wanna touch you..” Vander chuckled and took Jayce’s jaw in his hand brushiing his thumb over his lower lip.
“I promise you’ll get to touch me plenty later, sweetheart.” He squeezed Jayce before continuing to stroke him, brushing his thumb over the leaking slit.
”Vander…” Jayce whined, hips rolling into his fist for more friction. Vander stopped moving and Jayce’s eyes flew open with a whimper.
“You’ll take what pleasure I give you, pup.” Jayce shivered at the nickname, something about the way Vander said it, a mix of patronizing and affectionate lit a fire in his veins. ”So you’ll keep your hips still for me won’t you?”
”Yes. SNF. I can be—I can be good.” Vander smirked at how desperate Jayce sounded already.
“That’s right. My good boy.” Jayce moaned again, head falling back with a shudder but he managed to keep his hips still. Vander rewarded him by starting up his hand again in smooth steady strokes on Jayce’s cock.
“Hhh…ngh have to sndeeze againd…hh..Huh…” Jayce wrinkled his nose, trying to lever out his breathing but the tickle he’d been ignoring had only been getting worse the longer he was so close to Vander. He was torn between the pleasure of Vander’s hand on him and the allergic tickle in his nose.
“I’ve got ya,” Vander murmured as he tugged Jayce closer and guided his head down to his shoulder, nose nestled against the loose collar of his shirt. All the while his hand kept moving on Jayce’s cock. “Just relax, sweetheart.”
The tickle was only worse pressed close like this and Jayce’s chest heaved with a sharp inhale before he sneezed messily against Vander’s shoulder.
”HHHHUH’ERSSSHHmphhh…Hhh’IGSHHmphhh…heh’Eh’EISSHHmpphh…hh…Snfff…” He whined rubbing his itchy nose against Vander’s shoulder and the older man pet through his hair with a low hum of pleasure. “Bless you, sweet boy. You’re being so good for me.” Jayce tried to keep his hips still, desperately wanting Vander to move faster instead of the teasing pace he’d set, but the pleasure was still slowly building with Vander’s firm grip.
“Can you be good for me this time, and keep your hips still, sweetheart?”
“Yeah, yes. I'll huhh-hh…I'll be good.” Vander began stroking again and Jayce gripped his own wrist tight and pressed his head back against Vander's shoulder breathing heavily.
“There we go. Good boy.” Jayce whimpered and shivered but his hips stayed still. And then he drew in a deep wavering inhale, nostrils flaring against Vander's shirt.
“Hhhhhh’EIGSSHHHmphh…hh’huh’IZZSHmphh…hah-have to sndeeze…ah-againd…”
“Bless you, lad. That's alright.”
“Hhh’ITZSHHuh…oh I'mb…I'mb close…”
“You wanna come, pup?”
“Yes. Please let mbe combe, Vander.”
“Go ahead, sweetheart. You did so well for me.”
Jayce moaned, eyes rolling up into his head as his back bowed and he came into Vander's fist. Vander stroked him through it. “Good boy. So good for me, Jayce.”
Jayce collapsed against Vander utterly spent, muscles like limp noodles. Vander ran his fingers through Jayce's hair, letting him drift for a few minutes.
“Bless you, pup. Let's get you cleaned up.”
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Thank you 5 other people into ha/mmerhound and snz. I hope you enjoyed and thank you for reading!!
Something inspired me, and I wanted an "I Told You So" situation, so I wrote this. It's only a teeny bit D/s, with a sweet ending.
“Aww, sweetheart, you look miserable,” says A.
“SNF. I amb,” B responds, their words thick with congestion.
“I’m sorry you’re feeling poorly. But you know, this could have been prevented.”
A miserable, viscous sneeze is B’s only response. It fills the tissue that’s held desperately to their face, a constant presence under their red, streaming nose.
“Like I said, if you had only…” A looks at B expectantly, prompting them to finish the sentence.
“If I had… ha… ha’ERRSSHH’IUE!” B groans miserably into their mangled tissue. “If I’d have godden bmy flu shot.”
“Yep. Then you wouldn’t be…”
“Ha’IIGHHH’SHUU! Ugh. Sigg.”
“With?”
“The… huh- the -heh’AAIIEEH’SHUH! With the flu,” B practically whines into the tissue.
“Correct.” A can’t control their smug, satisfied smile. “Now, are you going to listen to me next time?”
Heyy, it’s so sweet that you let us send you our stories, you are amazing, thank you so much!! I wrote this one a while ago, I hope you will like it!
I really don’t want Ilya to suffer but unfortunately he always ends up doing exactly that in my stories. Only because I know Shane will take care of him though ;)
3 times Shane Hollander was Ilya’s safe space
First time
Shane almost zoned out while listening to the questions different interviewers threw at them. Rozanov next to him was playing with the cross hanging from his neck. He put it against his lips in a stupidly distracting manner and twirled it between his fingers. Shane clenched his teeth.
The Russian man smelled like a mix of cigarettes and sweat and it made Shane think dangerous things, like how he wanted to taste the nicotine still on those lips.
He at least pretended to be remotely interested in the questions, even though he was exhausted after the game.
Montreal had almost lost the game today with Rozanov giving them a hard time on the ice. He was somehow everywhere all at once and yet impossible to intercept once he had the puck. Shane had to double down on his game to keep up.
In return, Shane ordered his teammates to give Rozanov as hard of a time as they could. Focusing on Boston’s star player had earned them their victory in the end. Shane understood why the man next to him wasn’t as sharp as usual during the press interview.
Boston’s coach had even send Cliff Marleau with him, who was currently answering some vague question about teamwork and Boston’s group atmosphere.
Shane couldn’t wait to be back at his hotel, take a nice shower and preferably wait for the hockey player next to him to knock on his door. It had been months sinds they last saw each other. Having Ilya so close to him without being able to even shoot him a knowing smile, was slowly killing him.
Suddenly Rozanov shot up and leaned sharply to his side, angling his whole body slightly towards Shane. He turned away from the camera, ducked his face barely visible towards Shane’s shoulder, using the other man’s body as a living shield.
At first Shane had no clue what the other player was doing, but then he heard a soft, breathless noise, accompanied with the tiny dips of Rozanov’s blond curls. He realized his rival was sneezing. Practically silent.
“HhNgxt, Hhm’pxt, NtGxt’
A strange fluttery feeling filled Shane’s insides. Ilya was seated between Marleau and the man he was supposed to hate. And yet, in a moment of desperate vulnerability, he had instinctively turned towards Shane.
He trusted Shane to have his back, to protect him from prying eyes. He felt safe enough be gross with Shane rather than with his own teammate. Shane hadn’t even thought they considered themselves friends up until this point.
He didn’t care about germs or anything right now, he felt sort of honoured, special maybe. Shane had never witnessed the rival captain sneeze before, or lose control in any way, for that matter.
“hhKtsh, Nt’shh, Hehxpt’shew’
It sounded painful. And more importantly it didn’t seem to end. Shane pushed down the overwhelming urge to rub Ilya’s back in a soothing manner and instead let his arm hover somewhere in front of Rozanov’s shoulder.
Under the table Shane placed one steady hand on Ilya’s knee as the young man curled further in on himself. He rubbed comforting circles with his thumb against the other man’s jeans.
All of it was over remarkably quickly, despite Ilya having sneezed at least fifteen times in a row. Shane had no idea how he even breathed.
Shane had to bite his tongue to keep him from saying “bless you”. He knew that Rozanov wouldn’t want his little display of weakness to be acknowledged.
And indeed when Rozanov straightened back up, he nonchalantly pretend to have been looking for something under table. A faint blush crept high upon in his cheeks in embarrassment, while he subtly blinked tears out of his eyes
Shane tried to catch Ilya’s gaze to make sure that the other hockey player was alright, but Rozanov’s eyes never met his. In the end, the journalist beat him to it.
‘Are you alright, Mr. Rozanov?’
‘Yes, I thought I saw something’, Rozanov lied effortlessly and quite badly too. He gestured somewhat vaguely in the direction of the table and seemed to realize how strange his excuse sounded, because his shoulders shrunk imperceptibly. Shane noticed though.
He turned to Ilya and forced a playful grin to take over from him. Trying to lighten the mood with humour was something Shane had learned from the very best.
‘You were definitely trying to tie my shoe laces together and trip me’
Ilya huffed out a laugh, but it sounded more like a sigh of relief to Shane. Ilya was fully gazing at him now, his nose was pink and his complexion was unnaturally pale. Oh. He was sick wasn’t he? Shane still refused to feel bad for challenging Ilya on the ice today.
‘Oh I don’t need to tie your laces for you to get on your knees for me, Hollander’
Shane made a disgusted face while the press laughed heartily at the rude Russian.
Shane tapped Ilya’s foot under the table, and Ilya returned the gesture, assuring Shane that he was alright.
———
Second time
Ilya Rozanov’s favourite place was in Shane Hollander’s arms. He was Boston’s notorious party animal, thriving under the rainbow coloured lights at the clubs, the terrible vodka and beautiful girls. He used to stay up all night and get lost in the loud music, the busy crowds. It was better than being alone.
But Ilya Rozanov wasn’t alone anymore, and that meant that he had better things to do than waste his precious evenings. Shane wasn’t in Ottawa very often and when he was, Ilya was with him.
Ilya had done his best to clean his house, knowing that Shane would already be tired and overstimulated from a long day of traveling. Ilya on his own didn’t mind throwing laundry mindlessly on the floor or leaving dirty dishes in the sink for a while. Ilya with Shane was better in every way.
He let the warmth of Shane’s skin that radiated through his shirt comfort him. Shane was home. It would be alright. Shane pulled away gently from the hug and his eyes unconsciously wandered to his boyfriend’s lips.
‘How was training today?’
Ilya’s lips turned upwards at the corners. Shane was the most earnest person he knew but he was truly a terrible actor. He was nothing if not polite, going into every social interaction by the book, but he could never fool Ilya. Shane was dying to kiss him after weeks of missing each other.
Ilya liked Shane’s hunger for him, not only because he pretty much felt the same, but also because he didn’t want to lie to him. He only briefly opted for telling Shane that he didn’t go to practice today.
It was Ilya’s own fault honestly. He had known that Ottawa’s team doctor would send him home and he still let himself get caught. A better captain would grit his teeth and continue playing.
It was only that he was in so much pain and it didn’t let up after weeks, like it normally would. That was why he started to slack.
Ilya had been diagnosed with a sinus infection and forced to take antibiotics every day. It wasn’t big enough of a deal to bother Shane with it though. The last thing Ilya wanted was to feel more guilty than he already did after letting his team down.
Ilya leaned in to kiss Shane on the cheek. He was fighting an internal battle about inevitably giving Shane his cold or refraining from kissing him altogether.
Shane didn’t notice Ilya uneasiness and grinned delighted as Ilya held his hand and pulled him along to push him unto the sofa in the living room. Shane held himself up on his elbows and blinked up at his boyfriend trough half-lidded eyes.
‘I missed you so much’
At this point Ilya definitely would have kissed Shane and it would be suspicious if he didn’t. Nervously licking his lips, he pushed both his hands in Shane’s hair. Shane cupped his cheeks with one hand and before Ilya could tell him to stop, Anya barked outside in the garden.
Saved by the dog, Ilya shot up and nearly ran trough the door, grabbing a dark pair of sunglasses as he passed by. He opened his back door and kneeled lovingly in front of his favourite daughter.
‘Do you want to say hi to Shane?’, he cooed in a low voice. He didn’t want Shane to hear the congestion in his every nasal consonant.
Shane followed Ilya in his footsteps and crouched next to his boyfriend.
Anya immediately jumped on her second favourite human’s lap, causing Shane to yelp surprised while he almost toppled over. He buried his fingers in her soft fur and kissed the top of her head.
‘Hello, beautiful. Has Ilya been taking good care of you? Yes, of course he has’
Golden rays of sun lit up Shane’s black hair and turned it a dark brown instead. Ilya stared at the light for a second before it became too bright and a telltale burning sensation snaked it’s way high into his sensitive nostrils.
Ilya swiftly slammed the sunglasses onto his nose while he kept his head bowed to block out the light and concentrate on getting the tickle to leave him alone. He hated that being in the sun elicited such a dramatic reaction from him every time. But his crystal blue eyes disliked being brutally blinded and insisted on falling shut, no matter what.
As soon as Ilya was certain that the sneezes had successfully backed off, he shook his head frustratedly and straightened up to find Shane staring oddly at him.
‘Nice glasses’, Shane remarked teasingly but a small frown creased his forehead, as if he was trying to figure something out. Ilya let Anya inside the living room and threw the glasses back on the table.
‘I need them because your looks are so blinding’, Ilya nonchalantly tried to play his odd behaviour off, cringing at the amount of stuffiness seeping into his voice.
‘They are new, I needed to test them. They work, so is good’
Ilya knew that he could unapologetically be himself with Shane, but no matter what his boyfriend said, no professional hockey player would like someone sniffling all over them during hockey season.
On top of that, Ilya never sneezed just once, not even five times. It would be germs times twenty or something with how wet his natural sneezes were. He’d gotten very good at keeping them silent though in Russia. Only with this cold, the continuous stifling had taken a nasty toll on him.
Svetlana warned him about not sneezing properly all the time and he usually discarded her unnecessary worrying.
The problem was that repeatedly crushing his sneezes while all they wanted was to break free, was exactly what had given Ilya his sinus infection in the first place.
Only, Ilya had been on the road with The Ottawa Centaurs the entire duration of his cold and he really did not want to attract any negative attention. So keeping his sneezes quiet and unnoticeable was his number one priority. Now all of that was out of the question, the team doctor forbade him to do so.
Shane didn’t easily buy Ilya’s nonsense but then again he was used to his husband’s antics. And he had other things on his mind.
He pinned both Ilya’s wrists behind his back and hummed appreciatively as he watched Ilya’s Adam’s apple bob.
‘There is more to me than my looks, you know’, Shane murmured low in his throat and Ilya’s breath sped up. However, all of the sudden, Ilya ducked underneath Shane’s outstretched arms and ruffled his black hair affectionately.
‘Do you want to watch movie together?’, Ilya asked, already on his way to the television. It made Shane pause, confused, because that was weird. Ilya would ever let an opportunity pass to melt into Shane’s affections and claim him as his. Especially not after such a long time of going without each other.
But if Ilya wasn’t in the mood, Shane would never ever push him. Maybe he should tamp down his suggestive gestures a bit. He just hoped his boyfriend was alright.
——
Ilya knew all Shane’s favourite movies by heart. Shane hated watching new things and rather went back to what he knew he would like. So, this time they restarted the complete Star Wars series for the third time and Ilya knew exactly which commentary Shane would give during which scene.
Looking at the screen though, made the pounding ache in Ilya’s head only worse. He sniffled quietly into his sleeve where his chin rested on top of Shane’s leg. Ilya felt gradually more tired as the movie continued.
Everything hurt and yet he was so relaxed that it wasn’t very weird when he eventually fell asleep on Shane’s lap.
The next time Ilya opened his eyes, he was glad to be feeling a little bit better. Unfortunately, luck wasn’t on Ilya’s side today because he soon found out exactly why he had woken up.
It was a terrible mistake to sniffle even once because nose still desperately needed to get some of that irritation out. He could almost hear his abused sinuses begging for some relief.
He was too slow to stop it. Before he knew it, Ilya almost sneezed, really sneezed; his eyes closed, lungs expanding:
“HehTc-“
But then the prospect alone of the unbearable pain sneezing would cause him, made the tickle abruptly disappear. Ilya swallowed the sneeze with an embarrassingly audible hitch and quickly covered it up by clearing his throat. Only, that resulted into an actual coughing fit.
‘Went down wrong hole’, Ilya croaked out, rubbing faintly at his chest. His nose was running now, and his eyes were annoyingly watery.
‘The wrong pipe, Ilya’, Shane sighed amused while he threw a pack of tissues right into his lap. Ilya blinked innocently back at him from behind his tissue. He was sure that Shane saw right through him then and there but the raven haired man already went back to watching the movie.
——
For dinner, Ilya was happy to cook for Shane while he sat back at the dinner table and watched him with his head on his hands. Ilya had stopped wearing a shirt a while ago, it was way too hot in the kitchen with all the vegetables steaming.
Ilya was well aware that Shane liked his food much more spicy than he did. He loved caring for his boyfriend during the few times they could dine together, so he wasn’t one to hold back on all different kinds of spices.
Today, however, Ilya tried to be sneaky and “accidentally forget” to put in almost all spices except for salt. He felt awful for purposefully messing up Shane’s dinner only so he could spare his own nose a little bit.
When Ilya put the lid on the pot, he met Shane’s warm brown eyes across the kitchen table and Ilya’s heart spasmed uncomfortably, warning him that it might break if he kept this up.
And honestly, what was a bit of pain in comparison to lying to the love of his life. Ilya managed a small smile as he reopened their small spice cabinet.
‘Almost forgot you have much better taste than me’, Ilya winked at Shane who huffed fondly at him, and then pretended to blow him a kiss while he watched how Ilya took the pepper and added much needed flavour to their dinner.
And if Ilya had to tamp down his breath hitching dangerously by biting hard on his tongue and subtly pinching at his nose, so be it. He wasn’t going to sneeze on Shane’s food for the love of god.
——
Shane was perched up against the headboard of their bed, reading his book and looking beautiful in his reading glasses. The setting sun cast the whole room in a golden glow.
As if he could feel Ilya staring at him, Shane closed his book and pushed himself towards the edge of the bed. Ilya was leaning against the door frame and smirked at Shane approaching him.
‘What are you smiling at?’, Shane drawled playfully.
‘You are literally Canada’s golden boy now’, Ilya admitted softly and was rewarded by a rosy blush highlighting Shane’s freckles. Shane moved steadily closer to him then, and Ilya didn’t have the heart to fight him. Maybe one kiss wouldn’t hurt.
Everything went well and Ilya quickly forgot his guilt. He savoured Shane’s sweet lips as if he had forgotten how he tasted. That was until Shane angled his head to the other side, his nose bumping against Ilya’s.
Without warning, the tickle in Ilya’s nasal passages exploded and he jerked head back, still gripping onto Shane’s shirt. Ilya was powerless to stop it and he fought to keep his lips closed.
An unfortunate side effect of his stuffed up nose was that now Ilya couldn’t breath anymore, although he really wanted to. Even the thought of getting a proper breath of air was nearly enough to push him over the edge of a sneeze. But Ilya had iron willpower.
After a few moments though, he started feeling lightheaded and stumbled slightly backwards. Shane’s eyes widened in concern while his hand shot out to support Ilya’s elbow.
‘What’s wrong?!’, Shane’s voice broke on the last vowel and he swallowed against the panic rising in his chest. Shane studied his boyfriend’s face to find any signs of a heart attack or something else drastically wrong with him.
Shane took in Ilya’s flushed cheeks and red nose and suddenly all the sniffling, the coughing, Ilya’s weird aversion to kissing him made sense. How hadn’t he caught up with it earlier? If Ilya was this sick now, he must have been for quite a while already.
Ilya felt something squeeze his arm comfortingly and Shane looked at him so lovingly and so worried, that Ilya almost sobbed.
Then, before he registered it, the sneeze was there. And he was standing way too close to Shane as it escaped him. Ilya’s head involuntarily dipped forward and in a last panicked attempt to preserve his dignity, he pinched his painful nose shut, knowing he shouldn’t, to keep the germs inside.
“Hmtp’ngxt”
Ilya’s sinuses feel like they would explode from the bottled up power. It hurt more than he could take and he barely even registered a low whine following the tiny sneeze. It probably came from him.
After that, everything went black but Ilya still felt Shane’s arms holding him up. And he was glad; he did well if Shane still cared so much. That alone was worth all the pain.
——
When Ilya came to, he felt strangely peaceful for a while. Everything was dark, it was blissfully quiet and he wasn’t conscious enough yet to register any discomfort he might normally be feeling. He had no idea where he was or who he was with, but he felt completely at ease. Enough for a hopeful tingle to take advantage of his weakened resistance.
It started high in his sinuses, almost behind his eyes, but spread dangerously close to his nose. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Ilya remembered that he didn’t want this.
He lifted a trembling hand towards his face and pushed it weakly up against his nose. Ilya was relieved to find that it caused him less pain than he was used to. Unfortunately, it also lacked the same power to scare off the feathery sensation dancing through the insides of his nose.
In a hazy attempt to recreate the same kind of distraction, Ilya dug his nails into the palm of his left hand. He would love to take a longer nap at the moment. He felt noticeably less exhausted than before, but his whole body felt unbearably wrong.
The bed underneath Ilya dipped as something solid touched his shoulder. Ilya used whatever strength he could muster to blink his eyes open and to find Shane smiling at him.
‘Welcome back’, his boyfriend whispered, thankfully, but his posture was stiff and his eyes were watery enough to reflect the sunlight still coming in through the window. He hadn’t been out for long then.
Ilya pressed his nails harder against his skin. The pain reduced the sun-loving tickle to a dull itch and Ilya finally dared to breath again.
‘I was really worried’, Shane mumbled sadly and Ilya wished he could comfort his boyfriend like he was supposed to. His brain wouldn’t cooperate however, as it could only focus on one thing, and that was not repeating the incident that scared Shane in the first place.
Shane, always so very perceptible, read the overwhelming regret on the Russian’s face and reached for Ilya’s hand to tell him it was alright. Shane made a move to intertwine their fingers, gently opening up the other’s hand.
A surge of panic flashed white hot through Ilya’s sedated mind. His nails were the only thing keeping his body in check. Shane next to him gasped almost inaudibly.
Ilya wrenched his wrist out of Shane’s grip and went back to hurting himself a bit harder this time, scrunching his nose desperately to get rid of the building irritation.
‘You’re bleeding’, Shane’s voice broke off sharply, forcing Ilya’s fist to open again.
Suddenly, Ilya wished he was anywhere else but with Shane. Were he alone, he would have just sneezed, probably louder than he ever had, until the stupid cold left his body and then fall asleep from the exhaustion. But in front of the one person he cared for most in the world, he would never allow himself to.
Shane was kissed his hand now, his lips soft and loving, and Ilya knew he deserved better. Tears welled up in his ocean blue eyes, which was a huge mistake. The prickling of the tears immediately shot straight to Ilya’s nose and he clamped his mouth shut again before his breath could hitch urgently.
Shane instantly caught Ilya’s panic and he cupped Ilya’s cheeks in his hands.
‘What’s wrong, baby?’
Ilya almost lost it at the pet name, but he would rather chop his own head off than push Shane away now that they had come so far. He would never talk so lovingly to him, if he knew how gross Ilya truly was. His father always warned him about how tired people would grow of his disgusting sneezing fits.
Ilya’s other fist pressed fiercely against his flaring nostrils, this time it did hurt.
Understanding shot through Shane’s worried eyes and he swiftly got up and walked away. Ilya wanted to call him back, apologize for being difficult, maybe ask Shane for a hug as soon as he fixed himself.
But it was too dangerous to open his mouth now. Luckily, he didn’t need to because Shane came back with a box of tissues. He plucked a few out of the box and placed them in Ilya’s non-bleeding hand.
Ilya fought to keep his eyes open while the tickle burned painfully towards the tip of his nose. He was losing the battle rapidly. Again.
‘Hey, it’s okay’, Shane soothed him, ‘I know it hurts, but you will feel so much better afterwards. I can hold you or go away, if that’s more comfortable?’
Ilya shook his head instinctively, he didn’t want Shane to leave. He wouldn’t sneeze, it would be fine.
Shane didn’t understand why his boyfriend was making such a big deal out of this. This obviously wasn’t a normal cold, he probably had a sinus infection if he was being honest. He had just fainted from holding in a sneeze, for heaven’s sake! They’d had this conversation more times than Shane could count, but Ilya wouldn’t be Ilya if he wasn’t perpetually stubborn.
‘It’s okay to sneeze Ilya, you know that’
With a shuddering breath, Ilya mumbled “наказание” under his breath.
Shane didn’t know much Russian, so it was a coincidence really that he recognized the word at all. Ilya had whispered it to him before in a playful, seductive manner when Shane had been teasing him in bed. It meant something along the lines of “punishment”.
Only now, Ilya didn’t seem to be joking at all. The colour drained from Shane’s face.
He had longer suspected that Ilya’s insistence on suppressing long, draining sneezing fits until he simply couldn’t breathe anymore had something to do with his strict upbringing. Hearing it said like this, though, made Shane’s blood boil with anger. If Ilya’s dad wasn’t already dead and burried, he’d murder the man.
Shane put his hands under Ilya’s armpits so he could hoist the other man up. He manoeuvred his boyfriend until he was practically sitting in his lap. Shane rested his forehead against Ilya’s and carded his hand trough his curls.
‘Listen to me, here’s what we are going to do: you are going to let yourself sneeze. Fully and freely. I want you to be gross for once and get as much of that stupid virus out of your system as you can. I want you to be so loud that you scare the cold right off, okay? I am here. I will be here, forever, do you get that? I want all of you’
Ilya was fully crying now, sobs rocking through him silently. The sneezes were successfully backing off and Shane couldn’t have that. So he leaned forward and kissed his boyfriend on the tip of his nose. Then he let Ilya’s head lean against his collarbone, feeling hitching breaths ripple through his frame.
Shane should have given him more tissues, maybe, but he didn’t care. He threaded his fingers trough Ilya’s curls, silently encouraging him. He didn’t know if Ilya would actually listen to him, but Shane was going to lose it, if his boyfriend started hurting himself again.
Shane was pleasantly surprised when Ilya actually listened to his advice. At first the sneezes were quite soft, like Ilya wasn’t used to letting them out and was still testing the waters.
“He’ktshew, hih’Tschue, Ach’chew’
However, once Ilya’s nose understood that it was getting what it needed, the sneezes became more enthusiastic. And loud. Really loud.
“HUH’ESHH, Heass’choo’
‘There we go’, Shane praised Ilya quietly, ‘You’re doing so great’
“TChew, HITSCH, ihhKSchew’
‘That feels good, right? That’s it, being so loud for me’
Shane was maybe enjoying this a bit too much. When Ilya seemed done, he kept his face buried in Shane’s chest and held out his hand in a simple request for more tissues. Tissues that Shane had already grabbed.
‘Bless you. Bless you. Bless you’, Shane said, kissing the top of Ilya’s head when he resurfaced. He looked miserable.
‘Sorry’
Shane pulled Ilya close and just held him while rubbing his back.
‘Nope. No sorry’
Ilya smirked weakly.
‘You liked that, da?’
Shane blushed and quickly changed the subject.
‘Tell me about your cold so that I can take care of you’
And that was the start of how Ilya stopped stifling around Shane.
———
Third time
It was the first time that Luca Haas shared a hotel room with the hockey husbands. He didn’t mind at all because he was used to rooming with Ilya even before his secret relationship got leaked on the internet.
At first, Luca had been nervous to have both his childhood idols on one team but he soon realized that Shane Hollander was the nicest person he’d ever met. Luca loved seeing their relationship flourish on and off the ice.
Right now Shane was sitting in front of Rozanov, trying to put some kind of curly cream in his hair. The captain kept pulling his head away, complaining about grease on his pillow when he slept.
‘You have to take care of your hair, Ilya. Or do you want to end up bald?’, Shane chastised his husband earnestly.
Ilya pouted and let Shane dote on him as much as he wanted to.
‘Some people like their partner even if they were worms but you would not even love me if I was bald’
Shane didn’t dignify that with a response and kept massaging Ilya’s scalp. He was almost done with the cream when Ilya dropped his head tentatively unto Shane’s shoulder. He hid his face there, as if Shane was the only thing that mattered in world.
Luca had seen Rozy do that before after a game or during training, but never so open as right now. Shane kept his hands steady on his husband’s back.
Luca could barely make out Shane murmuring a soft “bless you” into Rozanov’s curls. Luca waited to hear the signature small, painful sneezes Roz always let out when no one was watching.
Naturally, he almost got a heart attack when Ilya sneezed louder even than he normally did. This must have been the first time he did not try to make them silent.
Luca was impressed; how did the man even hold all of that in normally. Shane blessed him tiredlessly after every sneeze but Rozy didn’t seem to mind because Shane clearly was Ilya’s non-stifle safe space.
Oh my GOD anon this was incredibly perfect!!! I absolutely adored every part of this! Them going from I/lya hiding behind S/hane so he can stifle to him sneezing loudly and openly was everything to me! The caretaking in the second part was definitely my favorite!!!! But i also really really loved all of them! (P3 is special to me because LUCA!!)
Thank you so much for blessing me and us with this fic, it was absolutely perfect!!! (And thank you for trusting me and my inbox haha) i absolutely cannot wait for the others to read it too!! (Also the sneeze sounds are really good!!)
Well, here I am … writing S/tucky fan fiction again after accidentally going on a five-year hiatus.
This is an old fic that I revamped and almost completely rewrote, but if you recognize parts of it, that’s why (I have a few like this that I’m planning to rewrite, hopefully). This takes place sometime post-AOU but diverges from canon sometime pre CA:CW. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but I am hoping to write a lengthier fic soon that explores some of the backstory/the gap between CA:WS and post-AOU more.
~2.2k words below the cut. CW for general references to Bucky’s PTSD and chronic pain. Minors DNI.
Bucky stands outside the compound’s main conference room, his shoulders shrugged deep inside his hoodie.
A conversation half-seeps out through a crack beneath the door, the glass blurring the words but allowing the speakers’ inflections to carry through — Tony and Sam’s voices, both punctuated with snarky rises and falls; Nat’s more even tones; and every so often, Steve. Tiredness wears down the edges of his voice, quieting it into something hoarse and bordering on desperate, like after an hour spent in the post-mission briefing, the room’s frosted-glass walls are beginning to feel as though they’re pressing in around him.
A shiver rides up Bucky’s spine and prickles over the place where his chest and shoulder meet metal, his nerves firing just enough to make his muscles twitch. He lifts his other arm to sniffle into his sleeve, the sharp menthol of the cough drop he just swallowed tingling over his tongue and up into his sinuses. Probably, if he were to speak, that same exhaustion would wear his voice down to the bone, even if he did waste the past three days alone in Steve’s apartment rearranging furniture and channel surfing while he waited for contact to be restored between them.
Our apartment, Bucky thinks, though the tickle at the back of his nose and throat pulls his attention away from any further argument with himself.
Heat blooms in the corners of his eyes, damp and tingling. He pushes his metal wrist against his nose, though as his nostrils begin to tremble, he reaches up to pinch them between his thumb and index finger.
“huh … ngkt!” He shudders into the near-silent sneeze, his bad shoulder giving a little jump like it’s been touched by a live wire. He blinks up toward the fluorescent lights overhead, the tears settling on his lower lashes as his eyes strain against the buzzing in his sinuses. “ngkkt! h’gkkt’ihh!”
Though they rip at his throat and make his shoulder jerk, the sneezes stay trapped behind his vocal cords, muted to nothing more than a grunted exhale — a once-useful skill picked up decades ago when silence mattered, now just a bad habit he hasn’t found a way to shed no matter how many times Steve’s warned him he’s going to rupture a blood vessel.
A heavy weight throbs behind his eyes. He scrubs the cuff of his sleeve against his nostrils to clear the warm dampness beginning to collect around his septum, then sags against the wall with a shiver.
Tony’s voice reaches a crescendo as he shouts something about collateral damage. It comes with plenty of warning, like thunder chasing behind storm clouds and breezy weather, but still, Bucky flinches.
A chill coils in his chest and squeezes his throat. He shouldn’t be down here — not in general, not when he isn’t a part of the team, but especially not when he’s getting sick for what has to be the dozenth time in as many months since Steve pulled him out of Bucharest.
Probably, when they wrap up their meeting, he should ask Steve about spending the night in … somewhere else. The med bay? That seems excessive for what’s probably just a head cold, but then again, it isn’t fair to expose Steve to any illness when he’s expected to be back out in the field by next week. Then again, Bucky spent all night muffling coughs into the sheets, then sneezed his way through a shower and breakfast this morning. Maybe Steve would be better off sleeping at Sam’s place — treat the apartment like its own little isolation ward …
The conference room door swings open. Tony comes out first, though he’s so busy saying something over his shoulder to Nat that he brushes by Bucky without so much as a nod. She gives him a tight-lipped smile, and Sam — whose left eye is blossoming five shades of purple — tosses him a “hey, man” on his way past.
And then there’s Steve, still in tac pants but stripped down to a white t-shirt on his top half. Several day’s worth of stubble, along with a smattering of blue-gray bruises the size of pennies, covers his jaw. A bandage hugs his right bicep, wide enough to hide stitches, and dirt and exhaustion shadow his face, turning his expression more gaunt than when he left a few days ago.
But when his gaze lands on Bucky, the tension melts, and a smile turns his eyes into soft crescents.
“Hey, Buck,” he murmurs, moving closer to wrap his arms around Bucky. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
Bucky sniffles into the shoulder of Steve’s shirt. The scent of gunpowder and smoke seeps through the inflammation in his head and stings his sinuses — both a warning that the past few days haven’t been easy and a reassurance that they’re over.
His good arm snugs itself around Steve’s waist. “Because it’s such a long walk from your apartment.”
Steve hums a laugh, the sound rumbling low in his chest, and runs his fingers over Bucky’s hair. His touch is light and tingles along Bucky’s scalp. “You get up to anything fun while I was gone?”
“All kinds of crazy stuff. I reorganized the bookshelf by color.” Bucky’s nostrils tremble a little, the itch in his sinuses flickering. From behind the cuff of his sleeve, he jerks his head at Steve’s arm. “How was Albuquerque?”
“Hot. Sandy. Bordered by nice mountains, at least.” Steve rubs his thumb over the bandage on his arm. “We’re all a little bruised up, but that’s all.”
Bucky nods, then steps back with a mumbled, “Sorry,” tears pooling in his eyes. His chest shudders beneath his hoodie, and he tips his head back, thumb and index finger poised to pinch his flaring nostrils.
“huh … ngt!” The sneeze jolts through him a second later, curling him in on himself and sending a spasm through his bad shoulder. The metal arm clicks and gives an odd jerk, his fingers vibrating a little as the plates shift and reset.
He holds his forearm against his chest, bracing the knotted muscles of his trapezius as his breath trembles again. “huh’tshff! huh — ih’tsh!”
The second set of sneezes slips out a little more loosely — soft, but less constrained as the muscles of his throat spasm in protest. As he catches his breath, he muffles a handful of quiet, raspy coughs in his sleeve, his mouth hot and gritty.
Steve’s hand settles on the small of Bucky’s back. Warmth seeps through the fabric of Bucky’s hoodie and into his skin.
“G’bless you,” Steve murmurs.
“Thanks.” Bucky sniffles into the cuff of his sleeve, tears washing Steve’s face in a watercolor glow. He blinks down at the floor. “Sorry …”
Steve tsks at him and brushes his hair back from his face. The corner of his mouth turns up a little as his forehead dips, his face just shy of pressing up against Bucky’s. “You sound like you have a cold, love …”
He says it tenderly, his voice devoid of disappointment or accusation, but still, the chill in Bucky’s chest squeezes tighter. He cradles his metal arm closer to himself and sniffles into his sleeve. “Ain’t that bad, just …” He shakes his head. “Some sneezing, is all.”
“Yeah, and your throat’s bad, and your shoulder’s acting up.” Steve brushes a kiss to his temple, then slips his hand into Bucky’s. The gauze on his bicep whispers against the sleeve of Bucky’s hoodie. “Let’s go home and order soup or something warm. That’ll be nice for both of us.”
Bucky swallows, grimacing around the ache eating along his tonsils. Back at the apartment, the sheets are a mess, the bed unmade, cold medicine and tissues and dirty dishes strewn on the counter and coffee table. But it’s also safe and warm and private, promising a night spent tucked against Steve’s chest.
He glances sideways at Steve. “Are you sure?”
Steve ducks his head again, this time to tuck a kiss against the side of Bucky’s neck. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
**
“You feel warm.”
Steve’s voice crackles around the edges, humming over Bucky’s eardrums in that weird too-loud, too-close way reality does when everything is washed in the fog of NyQuil and half-consciousness.
Bucky curls deeper into Steve’s chest without opening his eyes. He hums a dissenting sound, his voice thick and formless in his mouth. “Because we’re … under a bunch of blankets,” he mumbles, his lips catching a mouthful of the sweater Steve changed into after his shower.
“No, you’re extra warm.” The back of Steve’s hand presses against Bucky’s forehead. Goose bumps bloom beneath his touch and trail down Bucky’s neck. “I’ll give you ibuprofen before we go to bed.”
Bucky sniffles, a flushed, vaguely runny feeling tingling through his nose. He shoves a knuckle under his septum. “We’re already in bed.”
“Before we go to sleep.” Steve’s hand falls away from Bucky’s forehead to squeeze his good shoulder. “Let yourself sneeze.”
Bucky cracks his eyes open, though they squeeze shut before he can argue, the discomfort in his nose blossoming into the persistent itch that hasn’t really let up since this morning. He pushes his knuckle more firmly against his septum as his breath gives a quiet hitch. “ht’tshh! tschh’ihh! huh … hih’ishh!”
Steve drops a kiss on the crown of his head. “That hardly counted, but bless you.”
Bucky coughs on a laugh and pulls his face from Steve’s sweater. “The hell does that mean?”
“I’m just saying you don’t have to keep holding them back. We’re by ourselves. It doesn’t bother me.” Steve pulls several tissues from the box balanced between their pillows and holds them out toward Bucky. “Your shoulder tenses up, you know. Same way it does when you’re having nightmares.”
Bucky scoots back in bed to sit up against the pillows, then accepts the tissues. He pinches his nose into them, rubbing his swollen nostrils through the soft paper. “Well, it sorta hurts. Just, anything with my upper body.”
“We should talk to Tony about that. Or Bruce, maybe?” Steve rubs his back as he gives his nose a couple of soft, stuffy blows. “I don’t know if that’s a muscular thing or a tech thing or — bless you.”
Through narrowed lids, Bucky rolls his eyes, then clamps the tissues closer to his face. As his breath shivers, his bad shoulder shrugs up a fraction of an inch — not enough that anyone besides Steve might notice, though it’s enough to tug at his neck and send a pang through his nerves.
“h’tschihh!” He curls forward, his abdomen clenching with the sneeze. Tears gather on his lashes as ticklish heat floods his nose and snatches his breath again. “tsh’iuhh! h’tschuh! huh … tshh!”
Steve presses a kiss to Bucky’s shoulder. “Bless you,” he murmurs again.
Bucky drags in a stuffy breath, the air whistling through his inflamed sinuses. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Steve moves the box of tissues to Bucky’s lap. He wraps his arm around Bucky’s back, bracing him against his side, and cups his hand against his hip beneath the blankets. “Do you feel like going to sleep yet?”
Bucky’s breath snags on a cough. With his good hand still holding the tissues in place, he scrubs his metal palm over his eyes. “I’ll take the couch.”
“Yeah, nice try.” Steve gives his hip a soft pinch. “How’s that worked out for you before?”
“Would’ve worked fine, if you weren’t such a stubborn pain in my ass about it.” Bucky shoves the crumpled tissues in the general direction of his nightstand. He shivers through a sigh. “Sorry I keep getting sick on you. I don’t — I should be better.”
Steve hums a sympathetic sound and brushes Bucky’s hair back from his face. “There’s no deadline on recovering,” he says softly. “And this — what you went through was … it would be a lot for anyone.”
Bucky sniffles, scrunching his nose down at the box of tissues. “Just wish it was easier on you.”
Steve cups the side of Bucky’s face in his hand, nudging him to meet his gaze. “I don’t need easy,” he murmurs, his lips whispering against Bucky’s. “I just need you.”
Bucky sinks into him, wrapping his good arm around Steve’s shoulders as he melts into the kiss. The soft stubble of Steve’s face scuffs his skin, prickly against his fever-sensitive nerves but familiar, every little sting a reminder that he’s tangible — not the ghosts that haunt his nightmares, but flesh and blood, real and present, not going anywhere.
Despite the ache in his bad shoulder, Bucky lifts his metal hand to grip Steve’s shirt, tugging him in closer. Their noses bump together, buzzy warmth zipping through Bucky’s sinuses. Steve huffs a laugh into his mouth, and after a second, Bucky has to pull away to sniffle.
“Sorry,” Bucky mumbles, the back of his hand drifting up to rub at his nose. His breath stumbles, and fresh tears prick the corners of his eyes. He crushes his wrist against his septum. “h’TCHihh! hih — h’tschhihh!”
“Bless you.” Steve hums another laugh and kisses the space between his brows. “My fault.”
“It will be when you catch this.” Bucky sniffles again, then slumps against his side. He lets his cheek fall against Steve’s shoulder.
“I’m glad you’re okay, Stevie,” he whispers. “I missed you.”
“Missed you, too.” Steve slips his hand into Bucky’s, their fingers tangling together, and holds it to his chest. “I’m glad you’re here.”
For the anons who requested allergic Viktor! I had this in my draft and thought I'd release it into the wild for you!
Not sure where to go from here but I hope you enjoy this ficlet nonetheless. Set in an AU where Viktor never came to Piltover.
-------
Jayce stepped into the small shop off one of the dark side streets of Zaun. Little to identify it outside of a small sign designating it a repair shop. But Jayce had heard he could fix anything and even upgrade things and Jayce had hit a wall in his current prototype. He was hoping this lauded genius of the undercity might be able to help him.
He tried not to cough to much and draw attention to himself as green smoke swirled around his ankles as he walked. He stepped inside and was immediately stunned by the beauty of the man behind the counter. He was working on some kind of delicate clockwork device, long beautiful fingers moving with steady precision. His auburn locks and high cheek bones made him look almost aristocratic but he had a bit of a wild air to him.
“Shut the door please,” he said without looking up from his project.
Jayce quickly stepped fully inside and shut the door behind him, cheeks hot. “Sorry.”
“It’s alright,” he murmured finally lookikng up from his work with a curious gaze. Eyes going slightly wide in surprise when he saw Jayce, probably placing him as Piltovian even with the ratty cloak over his clothes.
“How can I help you? Snf.” He asked. His voice was soft and accented and Jayce tried not be distracted by it. But then the man’s nose wrinkled and he sniffed again.
Jayce watched as a wisp of green colored smoke drifted across the air and brushed nose, and the response was immediate as he took a sharp breath in. “Ih’TSSHHxkt…Snf.”
“Are you all right?” He asked utterly entranced and trying not to act like it.
“I’m fine. It’s just….thehh-the grey. Huh’ITCHxt. It always makes me Hhh…ITCHssht. Pardon me. Snf.” He rubbed underneath his nose with one delicate finger.
“Bless you,” Jayce breathed, heat coiling in his belly, “Um, Should I come back another time?”
“No, no, I’m fine. It’s just a minor hh’ITCH-shuh…inconvenience. Pardon me.”
“Bless you. If you’re sure…”
“Yes, I’m fine. Hihhh’IKXT…hn. There’s no need to fuss over it.” He shot Jayce a look that suggested he would not like what happened if Jayce made a fuss over it.
Jayce conceded with a quick nod, not wanting to press and make the other man uncomfortable
“I'm Jayce by the way. Sorry for not introducing myself.” He certainly wouldn't admit it was because he was distracted by the other man's sneezes.
“I'm Viktor,” he offered softly followed by a few sniffles. “What can I help you hhhh’IGSSHtt snf, pardon, help you with?” He wrinkled his nose with a grumpy expression, obviously irritated by the continuous interruptions to his speech even though he seemed otherwise fine.
Jayce shook off his momentary daze as Viktor let loose another poorly stifled sneeze. “Ah, I was hoping you might have an idea of how to get this working? I was told you're the best.”
“Oh? And where did you hhh-hear that?” He asked curiously as he examined the device Jayce had set on the counter between them.
“I asked around,” he offered vaguely to which Viktor raised an eyebrow at, but let the subject drop.
A moment later Viktor set down the device as his brows drew in and his nostrils fluttered. He turned his head until his nose hovered just above his elbow. “Hhh…pardon me a-hh moment…Hhhh’IGSSHtt…Hh’IGSSH–Ishhuh…hh’huhh’ EGSSHHooo…sndff goodndess. Mby apologies. Sndf.”
“It's fine,” he said hoarsely, pants feeling too tight. “Um, bless you.”
- TBC??
[Snz Fic Masterlist]
Let me know if you liked it and feel free to hit me up if you have ideas for where this should go.
