a wee little continuation of wine, flowers, & blood.
inspired by sid's sexy massage and the various ways in which he decided to go beast mode on this four-point night, followed by this from taylor haase:
Sometimes, Sid gets bored of being an older player.
He’s let decline creep into his game over the last few years. Nothing major, not like the scoreless droughts Geno likes to put on to freak the fanbase out and get the media talking, but just enough to be realistic; a few games with bad passes, a stretch without a goal, things like that.
It’s not as fun, though. He much prefers the way the city feels when he’s overperforming on a nightly basis. His arena buzzes, almost, when he’s on top of his game, and the energy is enough to feel high on for weeks, even without a single touch.
It gets to Geno, too. A few seasons ago Geno had a hat trick, and he’d been practically catatonic by the time Sid got them home after the game; the team had been all over him in the locker room after, and between that and Sid’s own focused attention and praise, he’d overloaded a bit.
They had fun that night, once distance from the rink brought Geno back to himself a little more. Big wins like that always end the same way, with one or both of them strung-out and gagging for it.
It’s usually Geno. He’s only a demigod, after all, and he has no self-control; between the energy he picks up on his own and the conduit Sid’s given him access to, he gorges himself until he’s a whimpering mess, spreading his legs and mouthing at Sid’s neck like a whore when Sid settles on top of him.
As fun as it is, though, Sid knows that his career is supposed to be winding down. He opted for a two-year extension over the summer simply because he wasn’t sure how long he could tolerate playing pretend.
It’s easier when he lets himself have games like this.
The collision into the boards hurt. The twinge in his neck brings back unpleasant memories from 2011 when nothing worked to heal him, not even draining the arena dry of energy; nothing until he sacrificed one of his tributes, and even then it took months. But it’s not nearly as bad this time, of course, and Sid can feel Geno’s amusement as he lets the athletic trainer rub at his neck well beyond what’s necessary to fix it.
So sue him. People like to be helpful, and far be it from Sid to deny his people what they want.
A four-point night feels good. Geno one-upped him, of course, almost throwing the game in OT before recovering to set Rusty up for the winner, but Sid doesn’t mind him having his fun, too—the negative attention hurts him more than it ever has Sid, and he gets more of it besides even when it’s wholly undeserved.
He’d almost forgotten that he ‘got hurt’ until Taylor asks him about it in the postgame.
Geno sends him a memory of what he looked like getting massaged on the bench, and Sid can’t help but smile, even though it doesn’t make any sense at all in the context of the question. “Oh yeah, I’m fine,” he says. “Just a little sore. Nothing to worry about.”
Taylor narrows her eyes at him, and Sid tucks away his smile and widens his eyes guilelessly. It works, as always, and she melts back into the scrum looking a little dazed.
Geno makes fun of him for it later that night, back at the hotel after drinks with the guys. “You look, like, dirty movie or something,” he teases, sliding his hands down Sid’s back and pulling them closer to the bed. “Eyes closed, like, you’re about to start moaning. Inappropriate for game.”
Sid scoffs, letting Geno push him onto the mattress. Geno always gets fired up in Nashville, pushy and demanding, and Sid’s happy to indulge him. “You’re the only one who probably even noticed,” he says, lifting his hips to help Geno tug his pants down. “Plus, I was sore. I needed it to play well.”
Geno curls his fingers around Sid’s dick and squeezes, just a little too hard. Sid moans. “You take tribute during game?” he murmurs into Sid’s ear, breath warm. “It helps? Maybe I start to do, like, you think that’s fine?”
“Fuck,” Sid mutters, arching his neck to give Geno space to bite at him and picturing it.
Sid doesn’t need sex for tributes, no old gods do. Simple touch with intention is more than enough; sex is just extra, just for fun or a little something special. Geno does, though, and Sid imagines him with his face between some chick’s legs on the bench, making her squirm and gasp as he takes his fill from her, right in the middle of the game.
He’s never seen it before. Geno still needs to take his own tributes every now and then; running off Sid’s connection to the city is fine, but it’s not enough for someone with a job like theirs. He likes coming to Sid’s after, heavy-lidded and sated, and letting Sid pin him to the mattress while he describes in detail what he did to whoever he had in his bed. Sid’s never been there during, but he has a good imagination.
“Pervert,” Geno says, sliding down the mattress. “Next time I need, you come over, yeah? I put you in the chair in the corner and let you watch.”
When Geno takes Sid’s balls into his mouth and sucks, Sid practically jackknifes off the bed, the combination of Geno’s warm, wet mouth and the idea of watching Geno take someone apart like that for his own pleasure practically pushing him over the edge way too soon.
“Please,” he gasps, melting into the bed when Geno chuckles and puts his mouth to Sid’s hole.
Geno’s incredible with his tongue. Sid wants to watch him use it on someone else.
i decided to do some stuff from wine, flowers, & blood, which is my first (and only, at this point) foray into body horror-adjacent fic. it is way outside of my comfort zone and it's still one of my favorite things i've written!
something i really tried to do with this whole fic was drop hints throughout that there was more to sid than meets the eye. right from the start, geno mentions that his amulets warm up when he's in the presence of other half-gods, but around sid it stays cool. my idea with this was that for the bastards like geno, heat is the indicator, but a true old god makes things cold, not hot—so geno's thought that his pendant would burn through to his heart isn't wrong, but it would be from cold, not heat.
a few people in the comments mentioned how geno could sense that mario had been interfered with and wondered how much of that was sid—actually, hardly any if at all. the curses came when he was very young, and if sid did anything, it was his rookie season, when mario retired halfway through, and it would have been the smallest effort to prolong his playing career. the majority of what geno notices was done long before either of them entered the league.
i think my favorite part of this fic is this section:
He meets Sid’s eyes on the plane ride back to Pittsburgh, shuffling in just his socks back to his seat after making the rounds, filling up cups with cheap champagne for everyone he passes. Sid’s got the Cup strapped into the seat next to him, and he’s glowing, incandescent with the same joy filling Zhenya’s blood.
The plane aisle runner is thin and cold as Zhenya scuffs along it. He reaches out and runs his finger along the lip of the Cup, digging his other hand into Sid’s hair.
A zap sparks up his hand, all the way up his arm to his chest, where his pendant fizzes. He jumps a little, then shakes his head.
Sid’s laughing at him, eyes fierce and bright despite the haze of alcohol. “Watch that static electricity, bud, eh?” he says, leaning into Zhenya’s grip. “Maybe put your shoes back on.”
Zhenya tightens his hand just a little. Sid’s hair is tacky with champagne, and his face is blood-pink, a flush spreading down his neck. Zhenya can picture Sid’s chest, broad even after the grind of the postseason, the blush patchy across his pale skin like it is when he’s been exercising, or when he’s being teased in the locker room.
Those thoughts from his rookie year never really went away. Not as Sid accepted the C, and Zhenya the A. Not as they established them as a legitimate, dominant threat—a one-two punch down the middle that the league can’t ignore. Not after the heartbreak that was the end of last season.
It would be easy, Zhenya thinks. Sid looks at him, looks to him, more and more as the months bleed on. He wouldn’t need to do more than tilt his head the right way, sway a little too close, maybe box Sid into a corner somewhere, press them together until Sid melted into him. He wouldn’t even need to push, although Zhenya hasn’t had to push at all since he was a teenager, not since he grew tall and his talent on the ice started drawing admiring eyes.
It would be sweet, the two of them—Zhenya could probably stay sated from the glow of Sid’s radiant energy for months, maybe even the whole off-season. Sid shines so brightly on a normal day, and now...
Sid’s staring at him. His gaze is direct, and there’s a quirk at the corner of that lush mouth, like he’s tucking away a mean little smile. His cheekbones, too prominent from the slog of the post-season, are casting harsh, strange shadows down his face from the overhead light.
Zhenya pulls his hand back, clenching it to a fist as it drops to his side. His pendant feels heavy, and he pulls his hand off the Cup, too—there’s too much magic swirling too closely, and combined with the alcohol Zhenya’s suddenly starting to feel woozy with it.
of course, there was no static electricity, and none of the swirling, drugging power geno was feeling was from the cup. it was all sid—who knew exactly what geno was thinking. it would only have been easy if sid let it be. he probably would have, if geno tried it. he would have let geno believe it was all his idea and power that made it happen, and he would have thought it was funny.
as i was writing this, i had a pretty defined idea of what sid was like living in the back of my head, even though this was from geno's point of view. he's both old and young, and while he cares for his team genuinely, it's at a bit of a remove—there's a part of him that views his teammates as tools and nothing more. he's a step further away from humanity than geno is, and there's a part of him that doesn't give a shit if anyone lives or dies. he has to keep himself on a very tight leash, because if he loses control he can hurt or even kill people. he shocked geno on the plane because he was drunk and happy, and geno can handle input like that—a regular person might have felt more than a static electricity-like zip.
he fixates on geno pretty quickly, when geno gets to pittsburgh. he's aware of where he is and what he's doing at all times, and i think he did a pretty good job of faking surprise when mario sideways-told him what geno was, but at no point did he actually need to be informed. he knows when geno's taken home a tribute and what they were doing, and he knows when geno's feeling overwhelmed at his house party (and how to fix it—that wasn't coincidental). i think he was content to wait until geno came to him, though, when geno knew what he was and wanted him anyway.
the passage of time doesn't mean a ton to either of them. in my head they'll have the career progression of a normal human, but once they decide to retire they will likely end up somewhere remote and semi-isolated, and when they end up in town or around people, all anyone will be able to talk about is how well they've aged :)
