It had taught him the humbling reality that an adult relationship under a shared roof mostly consisted of planning meals, laundry cycles, and standing in the kitchen discussing whether they were out of olive oil. Marriage also transformed everything that was supposed to be communal into territory ripe for possession eventually—drawers became claimed, blankets accrued ownership, and taking his husband’s favorite seat at the dining table was akin to a criminal offense. Even a banal discussion about landscaping options somehow became a debate over financial priorities, a question of morality, and an exercise in international diplomacy until they both remembered they could compromise. 

It had not, however, taught Ilya that Shane could turn literally any bad experience into a personal failure. Ilya had learned that lesson long before vows and rings and shared home insurance. 

The Centaurs had played Montreal last night. 

The Centaurs had lost. 

Which meant Ilya woke alone. The space beside him had long since cooled, blanket straightened and smoothed. Pale, early morning sunlight stretched around the curtains. It was the sort of morning that invited laziness and going back to bed. 

Ilya remained sprawled beneath the blankets for a moment, staring at the ceiling, his heart heavy with disappointment. Truthfully, he had known better than to expect Shane to waste the morning in bed with him. After particularly ugly games, Shane was a creature possessed. But some indulgent part of Ilya had still imagined another hour or two tangled together under the covers, sunlight crawling slowly across freckles while they kissed each other awake. 

Ilya sighed and dragged himself out of bed. There would be no practice today, no meetings, no obligations other than surviving Shane’s mood.

He could picture it perfectly. Clipped replies, distant eyes, compulsive productivity. Shane would spend the day treating himself like a problem to solve. He would bleed guilt over everything he touched, and he would quietly punish himself through absurd little acts of self-denial—like rejecting sleeping in on a day off.

Today, Ilya decided, he would be patient. Today, Ilya would be understanding. Ilya would be whatever calm, stabilizing force Shane needed while he dissected every mistake he thought he’d made, the majority of which weren’t his fault. And then Ilya would drag him back to bed and kiss him until he forgot about hockey entirely. 

Then a smell hit him. 

Ilya stopped halfway out the bedroom. The odor creeping through their home was bitter and earthy, as though someone had taken the entirety of a forest and boiled it down into concentrate. He followed the smell to the kitchen where Shane stood at the stove, hunched over a steaming pot. 

Ilya demanded, “What the fuck is that smell?”

The words escaped him automatically, a reflexive blow. It was like getting hit in the knee during a checkup in exactly the right place, kicking out before your brain could catch up.

So much for being patient. 

“Fuck off,” Shane muttered without turning around. He looked wrong, somehow. Curled inward at the shoulders, tense up through his neck. His hair was a mess, like he’d been dragging his fingers through it for the better part of the early morning. 

Ilya took a breath and rolled his shoulders. “Seriously. What is that?” The smell truly was awful, medicinal in a way that suggested Shane was attempting to make soup using ingredients gathered from the yard. 

“Go away.” 

The words would have had more impact if Shane hadn’t punctuated them with a wet little sniffle. 

Ilya approached slowly, gaze sharpening as he came to stand beside Shane. Shane sniffled again, nose slightly wrinkled, and his eyes held a wet shine. Ilya stepped behind Shane and slid both arms around his waist, pressing an absent kiss beneath his ear.

“Ilya, stop,” Shane groused. “Get off me.”

Instead, Ilya tightened his hold. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked, gentler now. “Why are you crying?”

“I’m not crying.” Shane knuckled irritably at the side of his nose. “It’s just alleehh-! hh’ISHHh’uh!” He jerked his head sharply to the side, burying the sneeze into the crook of his arm. “snnf! Allergies.” 

Ilya closed his eyes briefly, remembering his vow to prioritize Shane and all his idiosyncrasies. Especially after a grueling, embarrassing loss. “Mmh,” he hummed agreeably. “Allergies, of course.”

Shane went still, surely suspicious at how quickly Ilya accepted his excuse. 

Ilya swallowed his amusement and peered over Shane’s shoulder, inspecting the steaming pot. Floating within the dark water were citrus peels, ginger, and what genuinely appeared to be pieces of the shrubs in their yard. “What is this?” he asked. “You make gross soup for allergies?”

Shane made an exhausted noise somewhere between a groan and a sigh. “It’s tea.” His voice cracked faintly on the word, and he cleared his throat afterward. “It’s supposed to help with allergies. I found the recipe online.”

“Online where?” Ilya scoffed. “Medieval doctor blog?” 

“Ugh, shut up.” Shane sniffled again, thicker this time, and pulled a tissue from his pocket to wipe at his nose.

“What if this… tea kills you?”

“Then I won’t have allergies anymore,” he snapped.

Ilya barked out a laugh before he could stop himself. Shane, though huffing, relaxed a little into Ilya’s hold.  

So Shane wasn’t sick. He just had allergies bad enough to wake early on what was supposed to be a slow Sunday and brew forest tea while looking seconds away from a mental breakdown. 

“You sound bad,” Ilya probed gently. 

“It’s allergies,” Shane insisted, clearly aware that he did, indeed, sound bad. 

Ilya smiled against Shane’s shoulder, then kissed it. This was all too familiar, Shane trying to outmaneuver his own body through denial and stubborn insistence. Shane preferred suffering privately whenever possible, which in practice meant acting annoyed at Ilya when he noticed Shane was clearly having a terrible time. 

It was fine, really, because Ilya could wait. There was no need to corner Shane about it now when his nose was pink and his eyes were wet and his voice was nasally. Nature was building Ilya’s case against Shane quite well. 

“Right, right.” Ilya settled his chin on Shane’s shoulder and peered once more into the pot with a brow raised. “Does allergy tea taste better than it smells?”

Shane stared down into the murky brew for a long moment, clearly weighing whether honesty was worth the humiliation. He finally admitted, “…Probably not.”

Ilya bit the inside of his cheek and kept quiet, deciding Shane deserved some reprieve.

Ten minutes later, Shane drank his questionable tea while Ilya busied himself with making breakfast. Ilya had cracked eggs one-handed against the edge of the counter and watched Shane take the first sip from the corner of his eye.

Shane had raised the mug with cautious resolve, taken exactly one swallow, then gone utterly motionless in the way prey did upon realizing danger was near. His expression had tightened, and a tiny, tortured flare of his nostrils followed. 

Shane was stubborn, however, and he continued drinking with small sips. He swallowed with visible effort, and Ilya kindly continued stirring the scrambled eggs on the stove, pretending not to notice. 

Ilya set the bar counter at the kitchen island, complete with eggs and yogurt and fruit cut into neat little pieces because he wanted Shane to actually eat. Shane continued his brave battle against his allergies, taking meager bites of breakfast interspersed with wet sniffles. Ilya noticed every single one and kept his mouth shut. 

“Huh’ISHh’oo! -ISHH’uh!” 

The sneezes burst out suddenly and hard enough to pitch Shane into an awkwardly angled curl away from the counter. He caught them into the crook of his arm just in time. For a moment, Shane remained frozen there. Then came a slow, defeated reach for another tissue (from a box that had somehow ended up on the counter when Ilya hadn’t been looking).

Ilya lifted his coffee to his mouth to hide his smug smile. 

Shane blew his nose gently and looked up just to find Ilya watching. Ilya widened his eyes innocently, while Shane narrowed his, and Ilya took a loud, slurping sip.

After breakfast, they stood at the sink, shoulder to shoulder, while Shane rinsed his mug and Ilya helpfully organized their dirty dishes for maximum soakage. Ilya joked about his excellent dish engineering, and Shane couldn’t help but laugh. A rough cough followed the laugh, and Shane turned it into his shoulder.

Ilya nudged him lightly with an elbow. “Come shower with me.”

Shane looked at him, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. 

Ilya feigned offense, arranging his face into wounded innocence, because he had only partly meant for it to be taken as a proposition for sex. If Shane wanted, maybe. Which he would, probably. 

“For allergies!” he clarified. “Hot water, steam, touching you. All very good for allergies.”

“Touching me,” Shane repeated flatly. “For allergies.”

“Oh, yes.” Ilya turned and leaned back against the counter with his arms crossed, all smiles and warmth. “I can heal you.”

Shane sniffed and averted his gaze. “I already showered.” He turned the faucet off and stepped away from the sink. “Maybe after we work out.”

Ilya stared at him in genuine disbelief, just for a brief moment. He had already suffered six straight days of practices, games, and Shane’s morning yoga routines. Some days had stacked all three. 

“No.” Ilya pushed off of the counter and left the kitchen with complete peace, abandoning Shane to his compulsive exercise regimen while Ilya claimed his rightful place on the couch. “Today is for rest.”

By the time Shane wandered into the living room, Ilya had already spread himself on the couch beneath a blanket with Anya tucked against his legs.

Shane stopped short at the sight. “Seriously?”

“You should try resting. Will fix your allergies problem, maybe.”

Shane looked scandalized. “You always feel better with active recovery.” His voice was slipping into his captain cadence, an old habit Ilya wished Shane would have left back in Montreal (which wasn’t true, but he much preferred when Shane used that voice in the bedroom). “Ilya, it’s basic condition-… ihh-ing… hh’ISHH’uh!“

Ilya smiled, positively coy. “We can actively recover in the shower,” he offered sweetly. “But nooo, you need to do some scary bosu ankle shit.”  

“It’s for stabilization,” Shane gritted through his teeth, rubbing irritably beneath his nose with a tissue procured from his pocket. “You had that high ankle sprain just last season—“

Ilya waved a hand dismissively. ”Aahh, whatever. Healed in a week.”

“It absolutely did not heal in a week.”

“Well I played after a week. Was fine.”

Shane stared at him incredulously, seeming to weigh whether this argument was worth expending energy over. Somewhere beneath the internal battle and oncoming definitely-not-a-cold, affection flickered helplessly through the exasperation on his face. 

Ilya, of course, found this adorable. 

“I love you, and I love your strong ankles,” Ilya conceded. “But I am going to rest and watch Youtube.”

Shane prepared for the home gym alone by filling his water bottle and arming himself with pockets full of tissues. Ilya watched this preparation from beneath his blanket on the couch and released a long-suffering, dramatic sigh.

Shane lifted one hand behind himself in a gesture that made Ilya laugh loudly and long enough to follow Shane all the way down the hallway. 

Ilya remained sprawled over the couch with Anya curled against him in a warm little crescent while a nostalgic Vine compilation played on the television—an old comfort. The video had started as actual entertainment, the strange humor of a bygone but familiar era, and gradually devolved into background noise while his mind wandered elsewhere.

Mostly, it wandered toward Shane. Specifically, he was imagining Shane sneezing through calisthenics and growing increasingly more frustrated. 

He didn’t have to wonder about Shane and his failing workout for long. Footsteps sounded down the hallway far too soon. Ilya glanced at the time on his phone. Shane couldn’t have been gone for even an hour, likely closer to half that.

Usually Shane returned from workouts flushed with heat and self-satisfaction, loosened with the restless static worked out of his system. Exercise settled Shane in a way Ilya envied sometimes. Ilya always emerged from hard training with energy crawling under his skin, but Shane always seemed sated and relieved.

Now, however, Shane just looked pale. 

He would probably still pass a cursory public outing. No stranger on the street would stop to ask after his wellbeing. He didn’t look awfully ill, but Ilya knew Shane’s face too intimately. Shane’s eyes were always easy for Ilya to read, and they were presently glazed with fatigue. The skin beneath them had begun to shadow faintly violet. Even his posture looked wrong, sagging under the weight of feeling unwell. 

“How was your workout?” Ilya asked casually, fixing his attention back on the television. 

“Fine,” Shane insisted, but he ruined the illusion by ducking into the crook of his arm. “Huh’ISHH’ooh!”

Ilya muted the television.

Shane narrowed his eyes as Ilya unfolded himself from the couch. “Don’t start.”

“I say nothing,” Ilya replied with saintly calm. He crossed the room slowly, enjoying the suspicion gathering across Shane’s face. 

Ilya slid both hands over Shane’s hips. Shane looked downright silly, averting his gaze and taking a slow drink from the water bottle still in his hand, trying to appear unaffected. Ilya slipped his fingers beneath the hem of Shane’s shirt, spreading his hands over warm skin and feeling the subtle flex of muscle beneath them. 

“Mmh,” he hummed approvingly. “Thank you, exercise.”

Shane rolled his eyes. Ilya took the water bottle from his hand, pushed the mouthpiece closed against his hip, and tossed it onto the couch. 

Ilya kissed just beneath Shane’s ear and smiled against the skin when Shane exhaled softly. Ilya followed the line of his throat downward with slow kisses, feeling Shane’s pulse thrum hard and quick against his mouth. Bit by bit, Shane loosened under his hands. Triumph stirred warm and pleasant inside Ilya’s chest. 

“Shower now?” Ilya murmured against Shane’s neck.

Shane huffed a weak laugh. “It would be faster if I just rinsed off alone.”

“Maybe true.” Ilya hooked a finger beneath the collar of Shane’s shirt and tugged it aside, just enough to mouth lazily at his collarbone. “But I think maybe you need a little more exercise first.”

“That’s not even—“ The protest dissolved as Ilya kissed his throat again. Shane tipped his head to the side automatically, allowing Ilya better access even as he muttered, “You’re so annoying.”

“Mmh, definitely true.”

The matter of the shower became less an invitation and more an inevitability as Shane’s arms looped around Ilya’s neck, pulling him even closer. 

Not that Shane had been trying especially hard to resist.

In the shower, Shane melted under Ilya’s touch. He braced both hands against the tiled wall with his head tipped forward, breath catching in ragged moans. Every sound pulled from him carried a roughness now. His nose ran unchecked over his philtrum in a way he either genuinely didn’t notice or had decided to ignore in favor of more important matters.

There was something sacred in these moments. Shane spent so much of his life wound tight, holding himself in a perfectly polite package. But here, flushed and shaking and reduced to primal instincts beneath Ilya’s hands, he became raw and open. It was deeply intimate, watching Shane unravel like this with Ilya buried deep inside him. 

Through it all, Shane never once kissed him on the mouth. Jaw, yes. Throat, repeatedly. Once to Ilya’s nipple with so much lust behind it that Ilya nearly forgot his own name.

It was absurdly transparent. Apparently Shane believed he was conducting infection control measures all while wrapped around Ilya in a cloud of steam and desire. The earnestness of it charmed Ilya so thoroughly he could hardly decide whether it made him want to laugh or ruin Shane completely—or both, more likely. 

After their shower, Shane dressed in clean clothes (dark jeans, oddly, maybe he thought dressing up made him appear in better health?) and stood before the bathroom mirror, going through his routine of toner and some kind of sunscreen he always nagged Ilya to use. Ilya leaned shirtless against the closet doorway and watched him quietly. 

Shane looked exhausted now that adrenaline had worn off. His nose remained stubbornly pink, eyes heavy lidded. Every few moments he sniffled softly, yet he stood determined, as though refusing to let an oncoming cold compromise proper skincare. The sight filled Ilya with such unbearable affection he nearly proposed another round in the shower. 

By the time noon rolled around, Shane announced he was going to do a working lunch so he could relax later in the afternoon. 

“A lunch date with your laptop?” Ilya teased from the kitchen. He waited impatiently beside a pot of water refusing to boil, a box of pasta in his left hand. “I’m much hotter than emails.”

Shane popped his pre-prepped meal into the microwave, not even sparing Ilya a glance. “Debatable.”

“Wow. Shower Shane would agree with me.”

Ilya made pasta drowning in butter sauce and parmesan while Shane sat at the table answering emails between bites of salmon, increasingly congested sniffles, and periodic pauses to tend to his nose with tissues. 

“Nngkh!”

Ilya’s back was turned as he plated his pasta. The noise had come strangled, but Ilya was certain Shane had sneezed—and probably been dangerously close to blowing out his eardrums trying to silence it. There followed one careful sniffle, and by the time Ilya reached the table, Shane had schooled his expression into bland composure.

Shane finished eating first but lingered at the table with his laptop while Ilya worked through his pasta. Halfway through his meal, Shane went into the kitchen to rinse his meal prep container and returned carrying a clean fork. 

“Can I have a bite?”

Ilya looked up, brow raised. “You want some?”

“It’s a day off,” Shane replied seriously. “I can have one bite. Two, if I want.”

Ilya had to work especially hard to keep himself from grinning while Shane twirled exactly one modest forkful. Under normal circumstances, he would have stolen a bite using Ilya’s fork without hesitation, but Ilya kept this thought to himself.

Ilya finished his lunch while Shane puttered around the house in restless little circuits, tidying areas that already looked clean and repeatedly vanishing down hallways to blow his nose in private, maybe because he hoped that being out of sight would place him truly out of mind—or at least out of range of sound (it didn’t). 

Ilya kept easy conversation speckled between Shane’s self-directed tasks. Upcoming games, next week’s road trip. He reminded Shane to add some snacks to their grocery list, easy and dry things to pack for their next flight. Shane tapped on his phone while he stood at the back door, waiting while Anya sniffed around the yard. 

This kind of normalcy mattered to Shane, as did his image of good health, apparently. Ilya allowed him to keep both for now.

By mid-afternoon, after the dishes were loaded and the lap blankets on the couch had been rearranged to look effortlessly draped and home decor catalogue ready, Shane announced, “I’m going to lie down for a few. I need to decompress my spine.”

Ilya nearly choked holding back a snort. 

The excuse was absurd on its own, but they were married. They spent plenty of time existing separately in the same house without reporting their movements to each other like coworkers clocking breaks. But Shane had a funny habit of narrating his behavior when he knew it would appear suspicious. 

Five minutes later, Ilya wandered into the bedroom and found Shane fast asleep.

He had collapsed awkwardly atop the blankets, curled on his side in a way that surely wasn’t helpful for his spine. One arm was trapped beneath the pillow, a crumpled tissue still held loosely in the hand resting under his chin. 

Frankly, he looked sick. 

The tension was gone from his face, leaving behind the exhausted reality underneath. His mouth was parted to compensate for congestion, and he was breathing noisily. He looked warm and worn out and painfully human in a way that tugged hard at something protective in Ilya’s chest. 

Ilya quietly backed out of the room. He found Anya’s leash and took her on the long route through the neighborhood to give Shane uninterrupted peace and quiet. Crisp fall air bit pleasantly at his cheeks while Anya trotted happily beside him. Ilya carried one-sided conversation as they went.

“Your dad is pretending he’s not sick,” Ilya informed her gravely as they walked. “Very embarrassing for him. He’s a terrible liar, you know.”

Anya looked up at him. 

“Exactly,” Ilya said, feeling affirmed. He rewarded her with a treat from the pouch at his waist because Anya’s trainer had stressed the importance of consistent reinforcement, and Ilya took fatherhood extremely seriously. Eye contact on walks, apparently, ranked among the top five most important behaviors to instill in dogs. Ilya had initially been a little dubious, but he had also very thoroughly checked the trainer’s credentials and trusted expertise where his daughter was concerned. 

At the next crosswalk, he told Anya to sit.

“Smart girl,” he murmured warmly, crouching down to scratch behind her ear. Then, more solemnly, he said, “When we go home, you leave Dad alone, yes? No jumping, no making him throw your toy one million times. He needs rest. You only bother Papa.” 

Anya tilted her head, and Ilya chose to interpret this as agreement. 

Ilya returned with Anya expecting a quiet home. He knew it wouldn’t be completely silent. Anya’s nails skittered excitedly across the tile the moment he opened the front door (he needed to book an appointment with her groomer at the spa), and he heard the low, muffled hum of the washing machine in the mudroom leading to the garage. But he had expected the particular stillness of his husband asleep upstairs, napping his way through a cold he refused to acknowledge as anything more than allergies. 

Instead, he heard cabinets closing in the kitchen. 

Ilya stopped in the wide passage to the kitchen and crossed his arms. 

Shane stood at the island, hair rumpled and sweatshirt sleeves pushed up his forearms, while he aligned the corners of a kitchen towel. Ilya cleared his throat, and Shane looked up slowly at the sound. 

“You are folding towels,” Ilya observed calmly. 

Shane glanced down at the towel, frowning, then looked at Ilya again. “Uh… Yeah?”

“Why?”

Shane rolled his eyes weakly. “They were clean.” Halfway through smoothing the folded towel, he stopped and wrenched to the side. “Hh-! Hh’ISHH’uh!” He had caught it in the crook of his arm, but he still washed his hands after. Then he grabbed another clean towel from the small basket on the island and resumed folding. 

Ilya watched it all with a soft smile. Earlier Shane had been sharp and defensive, but sometime during his afternoon nap his cold had sunk deeper into him, blunting all that nervous energy and leaving him fogged over. 

“I took Anya on a walk,” Ilya said casually while shrugging off his jacket. He laid it over the back of a barstool at the island counter. “Your back feels better?”

“Yeah. Laying down helped.”

“You nap?” Ilya eyed the red sleep wrinkle still pressed across Shane’s cheek. 

“No.” Shane sniffed thickly, then cleared his throat. “Just... laid down for like ten minutes? Maybe fifteen.”

Ilya crossed the kitchen under the excuse of heading toward the refrigerator for a drink, and he let his hand slide briefly along the back of Shane’s neck as he passed, thumbing at the hair at the nape with gentle affection. Shane was warm, probably from his nap, but not fever-hot. Relieved, Ilya grabbed a can of coke from the fridge and retreated to the living room. 

The rest of the afternoon passed in domestic bliss, unremarkable in the best way. It was the kind of ordinary Ilya had once assumed life could never possibly become for him. A decade ago he’d imagined spending his thirties much the same as his early twenties, drinking his way around cities and keeping warm in unfamiliar beds. Instead, it was this, tossing Anya’s toy lazily across the room whenever she dropped it into his lap while his husband disinfected already clean countertops and snuffled into tissues.

This was, truthfully, much better. 

By evening, it was impossible to miss that Shane was getting worse. His entire nose had gone pink now, a flush spreading delicately over the bridge and sides of it. Congestion won steady ground, leaving his lips faintly parted with quiet breaths through his mouth. His voice roughened, too. Even his sneezes had changed, sounding tired. 

“Hh’ISHhh-‘ISH’uh!” 

Shane no longer seemed embarrassed about them, either. Earlier he had politely buried them into his elbow, and now he halfheartedly caught them in tissues. 

What truly convinced Ilya that Shane felt awful, however, was that he didn’t hover over Ilya when he had said he would handle dinner. 

Normally Shane supervised Ilya’s cooking. At his best, he tried to be helpful. At his worst, he moaned and groaned about nutritional value. He had eased up on his strict diet over time, but he still liked their meals to be reasonably balanced. 

Tonight, Shane simply leaned against a wall nearby, staring off and looking miserable. 

“I was thinking baked chicken,” Ilya announced. Anya’s head perked up from her food bowl, chicken apparentlyfar more enticing than her specially tailored meals Ilya paid too much for. “Roast vegetables on the side?”

Shane blinked at him. “Huh?”

“Chicken. Vegetables. Healthy things.” Ilya motioned to the ingredients he’d been steadily gathering on the counter. “For dinner.” 

“Oh. Yeah?” Shane nodded, rubbing at his nose. “That sounds… really good, actually.” 

What Ilya truly wanted wasn’t anything Shane would want to eat. Chicken parmesan, Chinese takeout, last night he had even thought about ordering from the new chicken wing place in town. He wanted something glutinous, a meal the team’s dietitian certainly wouldn’t have planned for them while on the road these next two weeks. But Shane looked terrible and certainly didn’t need to fret over poor dinner choices, so Ilya took pity on him. 

“Go sit on the couch.” Ilya nudged lightly at Shane’s hip as he passed him, heading for the cabinet where they kept the baking sheets. “Don’t bother the chef.”

Shane narrowed his eyes faintly but definitely seemed too tired to argue. “Fine,” he surrendered.

Ilya prepared dinner while Shane suffered in the living room. 

From the kitchen, Ilya periodically passed the wide passage leading to the living room. Every time Ilya chanced a look, Shane was further sunk into the couch. At first, Shane had been sitting upright, some forgettable home renovation show playing in the background. Soon after, he had curled into the corner piece. By the time Ilya had the chicken and vegetables in the oven, Shane was nearly horizontal, only his dark hair peeking over one of the cushions. 

“Hh… H’ISHHh!” 

A muffled groan followed several seconds later.

Ilya sat in a stool at the island and scrolled through his phone. Twice while dinner cooked, Shane disappeared upstairs.

The first time, Ilya caught movement from the corner of his eye and looked up just in time to see Shane trudging slowly toward the staircase. A minute later, muffled sneezing echoed faintly down the hallway overhead. Shane returned soon after with a fresh box of tissues and the small wastebasket from their bedroom. 

The second trip upstairs happened barely fifteen minutes later. Ilya hadn’t seen Shane leave, but he heard Shane climbing the stairs and stopping halfway up while he coughed. 

Ilya frowned down at the vegetables he was turning over on the baking sheet. He wondered how much more miserable Shane needed to be before he would admit to his cold outright. 

It was a double-edged sword, really. Shane’s stubbornness over this cold irritated Ilya, but it also reassured him. If Shane felt truly awful, he would eventually stop pretending otherwise. Shane still trying to salvage dignity meant he probably felt well enough to push through. 

When dinner finished, Ilya worked on piling two plates and called Shane’s name. 

He didn’t answer. 

Ilya expected to find Shane asleep on the couch but instead found him curled under a blanket with the tissue box on his lap, awake but thoroughly wilted. 

He looked awfully exhausted, staring off with his gaze unfocused. His eyes were dull with fatigue and were watering. And congestion had settled heavily across his face now, the space around his sinuses appearing almost puffy. 

His nose, especially, looked worked into the ground. His nostrils were rubbed raw and swollen, the kind of angry red one might expect to see played up with makeup in a commercial for cold medicine. His nose looked sore enough that sympathetic pain prickled over Ilya’s skin just looking at it.

Ilya had the overwhelming urge to gather Shane up in his arms and carry him straight upstairs. Change him into warm pajamas and put him to bed properly, press kisses into his hair until he fell asleep. 

Instead, Ilya crouched in front of Shane and put a hand on his shoulder. “Shane.”

Shane blinked at him, sleepy and embarrassed. 

“You look so sick.”

A miserable groan escaped Shane instantly. He dragged both hands over his face and left his palms pressed against his cheeks. “I know, I know,” he rasped. “I thought it was nothing.”

“No, you thought it was allergies,” Ilya taunted, and Shane closed his eyes briefly in shame. Ilya pressed the back of his hand to Shane’s forehead and found it warm, maybe, but still not feverish. He asked softly, “How bad do you feel?”

“Not that bad.” Shane sighed softly and leaned into Ilya’s touch. “No fever.” 

Ilya raised a brow, encouraging him to continue.

“I, uh… checked already.” Shane hesitated just long enough to sniffle. “While you were making dinner.”

“Ah, sneaky.” Ilya brushed a thumb softly under Shane’s eye. “I thought you didn’t want me to hear you sneeze your brains out.”

Shane huffed a weak laugh and ducked his head shyly. “No, I’m sure you… heard that anyway.” 

Rather than confirm, Ilya pressed a chaste kiss to Shane’s forehead and stood. “You should eat. I will bring it here.”

Shane nodded once and murmured a tired, “Okay.”

Shane wasn’t normally one to eat full meals on the couch, nothing beyond a light snack, and the simple compliance stirred concern inside Ilya’s chest. He supposed he was glad, however, that Shane was up to eating at all. 

Shane leaned fully into his cold now that he acknowledged it. He ate in small and distracted bites between sniffles and coughs, rough little things he muffled dutifully into crumpled tissues. Once, with the fork halfway to his mouth, his breath hitched warningly. He dropped the fork and fumbled for a tissue. 

“Heh’ISHHh’iew! Fu-uuh’ISHH’uh!”

“Wow.” Ilya rubbed a firm hand over Shane’s back. “Your allergies are really terrible.”

Shane shot him a bleary glare over the tissue held to his nose. “Shut up.” His voice came out wrecked, cracking at the end. 

“You want some more allergy tea? I think we have so many ingredients outside.”

Shane rolled his eyes, but the irritation behind them had dissolved completely now that he no longer had to defend himself. He was embarrassed, maybe, but definitely relieved. He looked tired and soft and willing (open, vulnerable, loved).

Ilya took the blanket from his own lap and wrapped it around Shane’s shoulders, cocooning him further in warmth. Shane accepted this without protest, even offering Ilya a shy little smile. When Ilya scooted closer, so that their thighs pressed together, Shane didn’t move away. 

Shane might have asked Ilya to keep his distance, when he was younger and struggled to give into simple pleasures in the face of more responsible choices. Tonight, Shane merely sniffled and leaned subtly closer. A year of safety, held in Ilya’s arms with the world watching and coming out better for it, had made it easier for him to give in and claim what he wanted.

By the time Ilya finished his plate, Shane had managed a little over half of his own. It wasn’t ideal, with their busy week ahead, but it was enough, especially given that Shane was fully leaned into Ilya’s side now and flagging hard.

“You are done?” Ilya asked quietly.

Shane nodded, drifting somewhere closer to sleep.

Ilya carefully helped Shane back against the couch, tucked the blanket tighter around his shoulders. He gathered their dishes and carried them to the kitchen, listening to muffled television punctuated by the occasional cough while he rinsed the plates. He started the dishwasher before he returned to the living room and dimmed the lights low, then sat on the couch, opening one arm invitingly toward Shane. 

Shane looked at Ilya for approximately two seconds before practically crawling into his lap.

He wasn’t particularly graceful about it, either. It was a desperate grapple, frantic in his reach as his fingers curled at the front of Ilya’s shirt. Shane buried his face in the crook of Ilya’s neck and shuddered out a sigh that signaled a homecoming. 

Ilya had been waiting for this, watching Shane white-knuckle his way through the day. Gathering Shane closer, Ilya shifted to bear the brunt of Shane’s surrender. 

“Good,” Ilya murmured into Shane’s hair. “Much better.”

Shane only coughed softly in reply.

For a long while, they stayed like this. Ilya scratched his fingertips gently over the hair at Shane’s nape. Shane tucked his head lower, giving Ilya more access. 

“Huhh-! Heh’INGSH’ieh!”

The sneeze burst suddenly, directed at a bunch of blanket clutched in Shane’s fist that rested on Ilya’s chest. He groaned into the blanket after, muffled and miserable. 

“Bless you,” Ilya murmured into Shane’s hair. “You are allergic to me, I think.” 

Shane’s fingers halfheartedly pressed into his ribs. 

Ilya smiled and kissed the crown of Shane’s head. “Practice tomorrow is optional. You should stay home.” 

Shane stiffened, and Ilya soothed him with a pass of his fingers through Shane’s hair. 

“I’m probably okay,” Shane murmured after a beat, though even he sounded unconvinced. 

“Mmh.” Ilya continued stroking gently through his hair. “We have a road trip soon. Better you rest now.” 

Shane’s shoulders rounded just slightly, a subtle tensing Ilya had learned meant Shane was preparing to shoot back yet was bracing for a retaliation to follow. He was two steps ahead in everything he did, on and off the ice. 

“Hih’ISHHh’uh! -ISHH’uh!” 

Except when his cold sent him five steps back.

Ilya waited, and Shane eventually sighed against his chest. Embarrassment hung heavy in his voice when he croaked, “Yeah, maybe…” 

Ilya brushed his lips, perched in a soft smirk, over Shane’s hair in slow passes back and forth, a sort of drawn out kiss disguised nuzzle. He breathed Shane’s scent as he took stock of the home around him. Anya slept curled nearby on the rug, paws twitching faintly in dreams. The dishwasher hummed distantly in the kitchen. Shane’s breathing warmed steadily through the fabric of Ilya’s shirt, growing slower and softer yet a tad noisier the closer Shane drifted toward sleep.

Married life, Ilya thought, had so many lessons.

Today, it had reminded him how love settled into ordinary places—into grocery lists and lap blankets, and eating dinner on the couch. Into open arms, and letting your husband crawl into them without needing words. 

Maybe years from now marriage would teach him other things, too. It would teach him how Shane’s hair would silver at the temples first, how his laugh lines would be earned, which insecurities would soften over time and which would stubbornly survive. 

Maybe it would teach him that head colds wouldn’t always be eased into with the excuse of allergies. One day Shane might wake up with a catch in his throat and climb into Ilya’s arms unabashed before even getting out of bed.

It would teach him every version of Shane through time. In turn, it would offer Shane the same.

That thought frightened him a little. He would reach an age he never imagined for himself, with a person he loved there to witness it. It was a terrifying thought, loving someone long enough to have decades of him remembered. The proud moments, and the lowest.

That, he realized, was marriage’s greatest lesson. 

It was learning, over and over again, how Shane would show Ilya that he wanted to see it all, and that he trusted Ilya to watch him grow and change, too. It was spending thousands of ordinary days learning each other by heart, only to find there was always something new to love. It was coming to understand he would never really reach the end of knowing Shane, and being grateful that there would always be more to learn. 

Frankly, he couldn’t remember the trek to bed. He remembered Ilya cajoling him into drinking some tea, remembered letting Ilya dab at the corners of his wet eyes when the realization sunk in that Ilya was truly there. He remembered feeling sick yet comforted, and consequently so sleepy he had let Ilya gather him up in his arms and—

Oh. Apparently, Shane had been carried to bed. 

Ilya was beside him, his hair crushed flat on the side and unruly at the back. Shane shifted closer to Ilya, feeling the warmth of his bare back through the cotton of his own sweatshirt. He nuzzled his nose against the back of his neck and had never wished so vehemently for clear sinuses, just to breathe the familiar scent of love caught sleeping. 

Ilya stirred with a snort, then a cough, and Shane remembered Ilya was sick too—recovering, but still not well. It was almost romantic, in a deranged way, to be weathering the flu together in the same bed. It felt distinctly intimate, a rite of passage in a relationship.

He soothed Ilya with another nuzzle, a soft hush whispered right up against his spine, and snaked his arm around a body that eased into him. Ilya was still asleep, Shane knew, but always angled himself like a sunflower in search of its own solnyshko. 

Shane was nearly back to sleep when his breath hitched, the warmth of it puffing on the back of Ilya’s neck, trapped between them. The sensation of a sneeze in the works was crawling up his sinuses and making him take slow, shallow breaths through his mouth as he wrinkled his nose. 

“Hhehh… Hh’huuuh…” 

The center of his face was throbbing, his nose becoming impossible to ignore now that it had its own pulse. He didn’t want to wake Ilya, not when he was finally getting quality sleep, and he should have been running to the bathroom to sneeze, as quietly as possible, in private. But his concentration was threadbare at best, the immense tickle making it difficult to think anything beyond don’t sneeze, don’t sneeze, don’t sneeze. 

He ducked his chin down toward his chest, hot forehead finding the cool relief of Ilya’s bare back, and he carefully removed his arm from around Ilya so he could worm his hand between them, bringing it to his nose. 

“HhEHH—“

His breath hitched in a strangled vocalization, the worsening surge of the tickle sudden and undeniable. His nostrils flared as the bridge of his nose wrinkled hard. His eyes squeezed shut, whole face tightening. He closed his hand into a fist and pressed a knuckle tight into the right side of his nose where the tickle was at its worst, then he held his breath and stilled. 

“Shane?”

Apparently, Ilya had woken anyway—and swept away Shane’s effort to hold back his sneeze. He stuttered a surprised and overwhelmed gasp.

“Hh’hh’heh’ISSHOO!” 

It tore out of him, harsh and wet against his fist. Now that his nose had started, it didn’t want to stop. It almost felt like a punishment, a vengeful fuck you for ever being denied relief.

“Huh’ISSHHuh! Hh’ISSHHeuh-ESCHH’iuhh!”

Each sneeze seemed to make the feeling worse, like shaking around something fragile until it splintered further and further. His nose felt oversensitive and unsteady, the irritation of sneezing feeding back into the itch in a constant loop. When he heaved a breath, it stuttered in uneven gasps, already starting him on the next sneeze. 

“Hh’ehh’heEH’SHHIUH! EISHH’uhh! HUH’ISSHEUh-ISSHHGh’uh!” 

His body was trembling, muscles quaking with each snap forward that he didn’t have the energy for but was forced into. He was distantly aware of Ilya saying his name, of his back being rubbed, of his hand being forced away from his nose and replaced with a bundle of tissues. 

He couldn’t have said how long the fit went on, a cycle of gasping and sneezing and a few faint groans in between. When it finally began to taper, enough that he could drag in a fuller breath, there was Ilya tending to his nose with pinched rubs and telling him blowing his nose would help. 

“Try, malysh. Here, blow your nose.” Ilya pressed a fresh bundle of tissues to his nose, and Shane was far too exhausted to refuse the support. 

He blew his nose in short, breathless spurts that did indeed help to abate the tickle. Ilya continued rubbing his back through it and murmuring sweet nothings. 

Ilya waited until he was done, then wiped his nose clean with another tissue. He stared at Shane after, assessing him with a look that made Shane smile. He felt very valuable, perhaps a rare sight fit for gemological appraisal. Ilya looked at him as such, closely and carefully. Ilya’s hair still looked aggressively disheveled, almost windswept, and Shane couldn’t help but tug at it.

Ilya’s hand on the small of his back, which had still been rubbing soft strokes with his thumb, inched under his sweatshirt and touched his skin. Shane’s smile twisted into a wincing frown, his skin incredibly sore where Ilya touched. It felt like having a sunburn slapped, but without the smell of saltwater hair and the feeling of sand in shoes. That had happened to him before, at seven years old and during his first ever beach vacation. His cousin had slapped his sunburnt shoulder and reduced him to loud, messy tears.

“I cried odne tibe,” Shane mumbled, recalling the pain of the memory as Ilya’s fingers moved across his back carefully. “Frob a sudburd.” 

Ilya stilled, giving a frown of his own, then his hand moved from under Shane’s sweatshirt to his forehead. The backs of his fingers first, then flipped so his whole palm lay across it, finally to the side of his neck like he didn’t quite believe whatever he was feeling. 

Ilya pulled back and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He coughed as he got up, sharp and encompassing and making him stumble a little on his way to the bathroom. 

Shane watched, distantly wondering if learning that his boyfriend had cried over a sunburn a lifetime ago was just too much for Ilya to bear, was the final and unforgivable straw for all the ways Shane could be so boring. 

Ilya came back from the bathroom with a thermometer in his hand, and Shane felt relief wash over him in waves. He had convinced himself Ilya had been packing his toothbrush with his heart already halfway out the door.

Instead, Ilya sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his leg, patiently asking, “How do you feel?” 

“Ubm… Sick,” he admitted uncertainly.  

Ilya made a quiet sound that might have been agreement, or dissatisfaction. He pressed the button on the thermometer and held it in front of Shane’s mouth. “Open.”

Shane blinked, and Ilya waited.

There was a pause in which Shane began to process that something was being asked of him, a request that he understood conceptually but wasn’t sure he needed to act on. It was as if Ilya’s command had slipped through one ear and gone clean out the other side, leaving him blissfully without thought but with the low, gravelly tone of Ilya’s voice still sitting warm in his mind. 

“Shane.” Ilya patted his thigh gently. “Open your mouth.”

With the thermometer set under his tongue, they waited in the quiet with only the sounds of Ilya’s short coughs catching on exhales and Shane’s congested, half breaths through his stuffy nose. They were a sight to be seen, or perhaps heard—a symphony composed of the sounds of sick men. 

Ilya removed the thermometer when it beeped and cursed under his breath, a phrase in Russian Shane hadn’t heard before but held familiar words, something like a plea for help. 

Ilya dropped the thermometer onto the bedside table and slipped his hand behind Shane’s neck, steering him upright with gentle insistence. “Come.” 

Shane let himself be guided out of bed. The stretch between the bed and bathroom became a journey of steps, careful heel-to-toe measurements like he was navigating unfamiliar space. Ilya stayed with him, a steady arm hooked around his waist. 

In the bathroom, Ilya turned him gently and pressed him down to sit on the closed toilet lid. Shane rested his elbows on his thighs and let his head hang. He noted the sound of the shower turning on, the roar of rushing water filling his ears.

Ilya came back into his space quickly, and Shane welcomed him with arms looped around his legs and his face pressed into his bare stomach. He was rewarded with a gentle stroke down his spine, then a tug at the hem of his sweatshirt. 

“Put your arms up,” Ilya said softly.

Shane lifted his arms, half with his own merit and half forced by his sweatshirt being dragged over his head. For a moment he was nowhere, blind and caught in fabric.

“Hh’ISSH’ehw!” 

It caught him by surprise, muffled awkwardly into the soft cotton still half over his face. His body jolted forward with it, and he grabbed blindly at Ilya from the shock of it. 

“Woah, okay, okay.” Ilya caught him immediately, one hand firm at his side as he finished pulling the sweatshirt free. “I got you.” 

Shane blinked, disoriented. “Sorry,” he mumbled thickly.

Ilya pressed a stray kiss to the top of his head before moving on. The rest of Shane’s clothes went the same way, removed carefully with one of Ilya’s hands keeping steady at his side all the while. 

“Fuck,” Ilya muttered suddenly, stopping in his tracks. Shane frowned, lips curving down until Ilya tapped his cheek and smiled warily. “Is nothing. Just, I forgot—wait here, okay? I will be right back.”

As if his plan had been to move at all. He wanted to say as much, but Ilya was gone faster than he could manage a single word. He felt horribly alone now, one hand bracing the counter beside him as he shivered, the air sliding unpleasantly against his overheated skin. 

“Huh’ISHHuh—‘TSH’uh!”

Two sudden, messy sneezes that had him curling forward, the second weaker and doing nothing to relieve the buzzing feeling suddenly taking hold of his sinuses. He stayed there for a moment, with his hand hovering uselessly in front of his face, breath stuttering in uneven hitches.  

“Have to sneeze?” 

Shane’s watering eyes shot up. Ilya had returned with a glass in one hand and his other closed in a loose fist, and he was taking in the sight of him. Shane nodded absently, then tilted his head to slide his gaze toward the bathroom light. 

“HH’ISHHoo—ISHH’uhh!” 

“Oh? That helps me too sometimes, looking at something bright.” Ilya gently nudged the glass of water into Shane’s hand, then offered him two tablets. “I learned something new about you.” 

Shane swallowed the pills down without fuss. His throat hurt with it, but he greedily drank half the glass of water, as if the first little sip had reminded him how parched he was. 

Ilya undressed, just his boxers, then helped Shane into the shower. When the water hit his skin, it sent a shudder up through him that made his teeth clack together. He flinched hard, pulling back instinctively. “It’s cold—“

“No,” Ilya said firmly, his arm tightening around his waist and effectively stopping his escape. “Is warm, Shane. Your skin is just warmer. Trust me, give it time.”

Shane obeyed, because that was what he did now—followed the path Ilya set, step by step, without needing to see where it led to. Letting Ilya tend to him, take care of him like Ilya had allowed Shane to do earlier in the week. What was love if not a give and take, if not an exchange of trust?

So Shane leaned into him and closed his eyes, letting his cheek rest on Ilya’s shoulder as Ilya adjusted the angle of the shower head so the water fell more evenly over Shane’s back. One arm stayed steady around Shane’s middle, anchoring him, and his other moved—a hand over his shoulders, down his arm, across his back. 

Shane’s consciousness narrowed down to sensation. The steady drum of water, the slide of Ilya’s hand, the quiet rhythm of breathing into each other. The steam seemed to be doing good for both of them, easing Ilya’s cough and Shane’s burning sinuses. The tension in him slipped away, muscles loosening as his body adjusted to the temperature of the water, his weight settling more fully into Ilya’s hold. 

At some point, Ilya pulled his shoulder back and took Shane’s cheek in his hand, fingers gentle but insistent as he forced him up a little straighter. “I will wash your hair, okay?” Shane made a vague sound that he hoped Ilya understood as a yes. “Close your eyes.”

Ilya placed a hand at the base of his skull, guiding him to tilt his head back to wet his hair. His fingers combed through gently, the drag of fingertips against Shane’s scalp. It made Shane sigh, long and loose. 

Shampoo came next, worked into a lather. Ilya’s fingers massaged careful circles and scratches, a firm pressure that wasn’t too hard but enough to make Shane feel hypnotized. His forehead drifted toward Ilya’s shoulder unconsciously. 

“Hey, no. No, stay up.” Ilya adjusted him again. “It’ll hurt if you get soap in your eyes.” 

“Feels so good,” he muttered drowsily. 

Shane knew Ilya must have been indulging him. It was slow and gentle work, certainly going on longer than necessary, but it was the best Shane had felt all night and Ilya seemed to recognize it. They stayed like this for a stretch of time, with Shane melting into Ilya’s touch, until his breath caught. 

“Hhuh!” Ilya’s fingers paused, and Shane lifted his wrist to his nose. “Hh’ISHHh!”

The sneeze caused him to jerk forward, the motion throwing off his balance just enough that he would have tipped if Ilya hadn’t tightened his hold.

“Hehh’ISHhuh! So-sooh’ISHHeuh! Sorry, fuck.”

“Easy, easy.” Ilya steadied him, holding him tightly to his chest. “Is okay, just sneeze.” 

Shane sniffled wetly, dragging his wrist firmly under his nose. “Doh, it’s okay… Thigk I’b donde.” 

Ilya waited a few more seconds, just enough to make sure, then helped Shane rinse his hair. Ilya’s fingers started at his forehead, swiping suds back carefully away from his face, then raked through his hair to help the water wash everything away. 

Ilya turned the shower off and they exited together. Cold air rushed around them, sharp against Shane’s wet skin. He shuddered hard, shoulders curling inward. The shower, which had been comforting, now felt like a trick. Perhaps this was a Herculean task. Maybe showering with the flu was one of the 12 Labours, with the act of standing wet and cold being the price to pay for working a fever down. 

But then Ilya was moving, reaching for a towel and wrapping it around Shane’s shoulders, drying him off with careful presses of the towel rather than dragging it in scratchy passes, and Shane felt soothed. Shivery, uncomfortable, but deeply loved. 

It settled somewhere deep in Shane’s chest, that kind of attention—in being learned so thoroughly by another person. Ilya, full of force and rough edges in so many corners of his life, was handling Shane with a kind of gentleness that made him feel frighteningly known. It was as though Ilya knew by instinct which parts of Shane needed softness without ever having to place it into words. 

Ilya managed to get them both dried and dressed, a pair of shorts hanging low off his hips purely for the convenience of them, and Shane more carefully tugged into a loose shirt and sweatpants. Once Shane was back in bed, propped up against the headboard, Ilya reached for the thermometer and held it out to him. 

Shane frowned, edging more towards a wince. “Agaid?” 

“Yes, again.” 

He put the thermometer under his tongue and watched Ilya while they waited. Really watched him—his damp, unruly hair; the crease between his brows; the way his hands rested on Shane’s thighs like he couldn’t not touch him; the way he looked at him, assessing from the top of his head, his face, the climbing numbers on the thermometer. 

The thermometer beeped, Ilya took it, and Shane quietly considered that the act of loving someone had less to do with grand declarations and a lot more to do with selecting soft, warm clothes and taking temperatures.

Ilya squinted at the thermometer, and his shoulders dropped with a sigh. “Better,” he said, sounding relieved. “Still high, but better.” Ilya set the thermometer aside and started adjusting Shane, guiding him lower down the bed, easing his head against the pillow, pulling the blanket up to his shoulders. 

Shane swallowed. He was, essentially, being tucked in. “Ilya.”

Ilya’s hands paused, now hovering over Shane. “Yes? Are you okay?” 

“You… I, umbb…” 

He could feel the words sitting somewhere in his gut, formed in intention but not taking the shape of language. It was the slow, aching pull of tenderness tangling up with the sharp sting of embarrassment. Now with a sound mind, or closer to one, he was painfully aware that he had been washed, dried, dressed. He had failed, even, to hold himself up. He had let his body become more an extension of Ilya’s, or a burden to him, than something within his own control.

The truth of it, though, was that something else was threaded through every moment. It had been care in motion, as if Shane was allowed to need him, as if Shane needing him wasn’t an inconvenience but a circumstance that Ilya met eagerly and entirely willingly. 

The hands that pressed him face-first into mattresses, that gripped him with the edge of a challenge, that stole touches at the worst moments just to prove they could—those same hands had held him upright under a shower, had tenderly wiped his nose clean, had generously washed his hair. This version of him, weak and unsteady and unable to care for himself, hadn’t changed anything fundamental. The world hadn’t come crashing down. In fact, the world felt a little lighter, like Ilya had decided to shoulder it with him without being asked. 

But how would he say any of that? The enormity of it, gratitude and vulnerability and love, sat somewhere in the aching center of him. He wouldn’t be able to find the words tonight, and maybe not ever—not in a way that would feel like enough. So instead, he croaked a soft, “Thagk you for helpig mbe.”

Ilya smoothed his hair back, palm flattening briefly against the crown of his head in a gentle, reassuring press. “Always.”

The rest of the dark, early morning hours passed in stretches of restless sleep and bouts of hazy consciousness. Sometimes Shane woke to find Ilya scrolling on his phone beside him; at others, he woke to fingers carding through his hair. Once, horrified, he woke to Ilya coaxing him up so he could change his shirt because he had apparently sweated through it. 

The day arrived somberly. There was no glowing sunrise, no hopeful sense of renewal—just weak, muddled light leaking around the curtains and Shane waking with the immediate realization that he still felt like absolute shit. 

The flu had settled into him completely now. His skin was oversensitive and hurt just from the rustle of his clothes. His body ached with a deep, heavy soreness. His sinuses throbbed and buzzed in miserable little waves, and he was so congested he had to breathe through his mouth, making his throat feel rubbed raw. 

Ilya was asleep on his side, one arm thrown over Shane’s waist protectively. Even now, still recovering and obviously exhausted, Ilya slept like he was holding the hope of the world in his arms, like rest was secondary to keeping Shane close and cared for. 

Shane loved him with such terrible force it seemed to circle back around into fear. Could you love someone so much that it stopped being healthy? Maybe there was some kind of recommended limit, beyond which devotion crossed a line and became pathological. 

Throughout the day, Shane’s house transformed. It carried signs of ill health. Tea mugs accumulated, half full and abandoned after naps between doses of cold medicine. Damp washcloths were left draped over the edge of the bathroom sink. Crumpled tissues bloomed in strange places (the bathroom counter, tucked into folds of blankets, inexplicably on the windowsill in the kitchen). 

“How mbady boxes do I have stashed away?” Shane asked hoarsely, blinking blearily at the fresh box of tissues Ilya placed on his lap. “That’s gotta be… What dumber is that?” 

Ilya flattened the empty box in his hands, probably for recycling. “Three,” he said. Then he glanced at Shane, his mouth twitching into a crooked little smirk. “There is two left, but with both of us… I should order grocery delivery, for tissues. And food.”

“Yeah, good idea.”

“Ten boxes of tissues, yes?”

Shane huffed a weak laugh that dissolved into grumbling coughs muffled into his sleeve. Ilya stepped closer and spread a warm hand over his chest, rubbing slowly while Shane coughed himself miserable. When the coughing eased, Ilya brushed his knuckles over Shane’s cheek. 

“You sound so bad, Shane.” 

“You soud worse.” 

Ilya raised a brow. 

“Doh, really,” Shane insisted. “Your cough really does soud bad.” 

“I’m getting better.” Ilya looked Shane over, pursing his lips. “You, well…”

Shane lowered his gaze, fixing it on the corner of the bed. Ilya hadn’t meant any harm, Shane knew, but the truth of it reminded him that Ilya had a life waiting. Soon, Ilya would stop spending entire days wrapped around Shane. He would leave for Ottawa and slide back into the rhythm of his normal life while Shane remained in Montreal. 

It was ridiculous how distressing the thought was, as if that hadn’t been their arrangement for the past couple years. 

Ilya sat on the edge of the bed and pressed a soft kiss to the corner of Shane’s mouth, palm cupping under his jaw. 

“You will get better too,” he said softly. “Maybe slower than me, because I am very strong. But your strong boyfriend will take care of you.” 

The joke should have calmed something in him. Instead, emotion climbed unexpectedly into Shane’s throat, hot and awful. 

“How logg?” he asked quietly. His voice strained despite his effort to steady it. “Udtil you go back?” 

“Hey.” Ilya’s expression softened. “Don’t worry about that right now.”

But Shane did worry. He worried because he wanted this horribly domestic version of them forever, wanted Ilya worrying about their stock of toiletries and asking him about grocery orders. He wanted to settle in bed at night without counting down days. He wanted—

“We have time,” Ilya said quietly. He brushed his thumb beneath Shane’s eye, stopping him from spiraling further. “I have to go to Ottawa on Tuesday to see my team doctor. Get cleared for light practice, probably. Maybe play game Wednesday.” He continued slow strokes over Shane’s skin. “So we still have a few days, okay?”

Shane nodded. A few days shouldn’t have felt as precious as it did, but relief still coursed through him. Relief that Ilya would have more time to rest, and selfishly, that Shane would have two more nights not spent alone.

Their conversation dissolved into murmured pillow talk, little sweet nothings and encouragements whispered back and forth until Ilya coaxed more water and medicine into him, and eventually guided him out to the couch with the promise that a change in scenery might make him feel better. 

By late evening, Shane had become part of the couch.

He lay cocooned under two blankets, his head propped up against one end of the couch and his legs resting in Ilya’s lap. A nearly unwatchable slapstick comedy played quietly on the TV, only really on for Ilya’s benefit while Shane dozed between bouts of coughing and sneezing. 

It had been funny at the time, when Ilya actually added ten boxes of tissues to the grocery order, but now Shane thought Ilya had demonstrated great foresight. 

“Huh’EISHH’uh!” His head throbbed with it, and he scrubbed weakly at his nose with a tissue. “Heh-! Hehh’ISHH’iehh! H’ITSHHooh! Ugghh.” 

Ilya assessed, watching him with the same low-level concern he’d been wearing on his face all day. Then, he carefully slid out from underneath Shane’s legs. “I will heat soup.”

Shane answered with another sneeze. 

“After we eat, I think we go to bed.” Ilya stroked his palm gently over the top of Shane’s head as he passed the couch. “You want chicken noodle? Or miso?”

Shane wanted neither. Really, all he wanted was to remove his entire respiratory system, and possibly his musculoskeletal system while he was at it; he was sore in places he didn’t even know he could hurt. But the instant miso cups Ilya bought were small, more drink than meal, and it sounded marginally less miserable than trying to choke down noodles. 

“Mbiso,” he croaked. 

Ilya returned a few minutes later, carrying two cups of instant miso soup. “Sit up,” he instructed. 

Shane struggled his way into something resembling a half sitting lounge. Every muscle protested the movement, but when he accepted the soup, he nearly groaned at the warmth of it in his hands. Ilya drank from his own soup cup while Shane slowly sipped at his. 

He was halfway through the cup when his nostrils flared. The tickle came on so suddenly he let out a strangled sound before he even registered he needed to sneeze. He pinched his nostrils tightly while his other hand reached blindly toward the coffee table, trying desperately to set the soup down lest he spill it all over himself and the couch. 

The cup disappeared from his hand at the last possible second.

“Hh’nnghk’uhh!” The first sneeze was forcibly contained behind his pinched fingers. It hurt everywhere. “Owwwhhuh-hEH’TSHH’iewhh—ISHH’ooh!” 

Tissues were pressed into his hand, and Ilya murmured a soft blessing while Shane groaned miserably as he cleaned himself up. He finished with a thorough blow. By the end of it he felt entirely drained, all the energy wrung out of him by half a cup of soup and three poorly timed sneezes. 

Quietly, Ilya gathered both soup cups, Shane’s still only half-finished, and disappeared into the kitchen. When he returned, he crouched in front of the couch and held his arms open toward Shane. 

Shane, without a word, sank into Ilya’s arms. He allowed himself to be gathered up, Ilya’s arms fitting securely around his shoulders while Shane buried his face against the slope of his neck. He let his eyes slip closed, all tension draining under familiar warmth. 

Ilya’s hand settled against the nape of his neck, thumb moving lazily through the short hair there. “We should go to bed now,” he murmured. “You need sleep.”

“You do too,” Shane countered grouchily, voice muffled against Ilya’s shoulder.

Normally Ilya would have struck back, would have found some way to beat Shane at his attempt to smart him, to tease Shane into smiling just for the sake of it. Tonight, he only hummed softly and pressed a lingering kiss into Shane’s hair before helping him carefully off the couch. 

He held Shane’s hand the entire walk to the bedroom. 

Shane leaned shamelessly against Ilya while they brushed their teeth, side by side at the bathroom sink. At one point, he caught Ilya watching him in the mirror with sleepy fondness, toothbrush hanging from the corner of his mouth. 

“What?” Shane mumbled around toothpaste foam.

“You are very cute when sick.”

Shane rolled his eyes and brushed his teeth a little more aggressively, if only to stop himself from smiling.

When he finished rinsing, Ilya wiped the corner of his mouth clean with his thumb before guiding him gently toward bed. The sheets were cool when Shane climbed in, a relief against his feverish skin. He curled toward Ilya, and Ilya gathered him close instinctively.

Shane rested his forehead against Ilya’s collarbone and listened to the slow rhythm of his breathing. It had deepened noticeably, slow and even. Apparently, Ilya had fallen asleep almost instantly. It struck Shane suddenly that Ilya must have been exhausted. The entire day had revolved around Shane and his temperature, and his liberal use of tissues, and his love of freshly brewed tea. 

Aching with the realization, he tilted his head up and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to the center of Ilya’s throat before he let sleep drag him under, too. 

Unfortunately, the flu rendered sleep very difficult, indeed. Shane surfaced abruptly from a shallow fever-dream less than an hour later because a cough caught at the back of his throat. It made his chest ache and his eyes water. 

Ilya stirred under him and passed a sluggish hand over his back. Shane stayed still, listening carefully. He desperately wanted Ilya to get more rest. 

When he was certain Ilya was still asleep, he carefully shifted off of Ilya and onto his back. He swallowed against the soreness in his throat and tried to settle back down, but his sinuses had packed themselves completely shut, as though cotton were stuffed deep into his skull. 

Slowly, cautiously, he reached for a tissue on the nightstand and attempted to blow his nose, one nostril at a time, with the smallest amount of pressure possible. The congestion remained stubbornly immoveable, but somehow his nose was still managing to run. 

Shane sighed miserably and, out of desperation, tore off two small pieces of tissue, stuffing them into his nostrils so he wouldn’t have to wipe at his nose every few seconds. The skin around his nostrils was rubbed raw and painful, anyway.

It felt deeply pathetic, but also incredibly effective. 

For a while, he lay on his back like this, staring into the darkness and trying to ignore the pressure throbbing behind his eyes. It was miserable business, but Ilya was at least sleeping soundly. 

“Hh-hIIH!”

He clamped a hand over his nose, trying to smother the tickle out before it worked into a sneeze, but the congestion only made the sensation worse, pressure building painfully. 

“Hhgh’SHHoo!”

Yeah, that fucking hurt. 

Sneezing while this congested felt genuinely agonizing, the force ricocheting painfully through his blocked sinuses. 

“Hh’GSHHiuh!”

“Shane?” Ilya mumbled drowsily. “You okay?”

Shane was beginning to suspect Ilya possessed some inexplicable biological reflex to react to the sound of Shane suffering. Perhaps a survival instinct, ancient and deeply coded in his DNA. Maybe Russian men had once survived brutal winters by instinctively waking whenever their lovers sounded ill, entire bloodlines preserved through aggressive caretaking and sheer emotional vigilance. 

“Mby dose…” Shane tried to sniff and immediately regretted it when he choked on a cough. 

Ilya made a soft sound of understanding and rolled toward him. Even half asleep, his hand found Shane’s face in the dark, broad palm nice and cool against his hot cheek. 

“Come here.”

Shane shifted closer beneath the blankets, and Ilya’s fingers moved over his face, carefully mapping it in the dark. His fingertips pressed gently beside Shane’s nose, then along his sinuses in slow practiced motions. The pressure hurt at first, making him wince, then slowly began to ease some of the tightness. 

Shane let out a low, appreciative groan.

“Mmh, feel good?” Shane could practically hear the little smile in Ilya’s voice.

Shane made a soft sound, and Ilya’s fingers continued to work carefully in touches more gentle than seemed possible for such strong hands. It wasn’t enough to clear the congestion completely, probably not even enough to be able to properly blow his nose, but enough that the throbbing behind his eyes lessened into a dull, nearly unnoticeable ache. 

“How do you kndow how to do this?” Shane asked, bewildered. 

Ilya’s fingers slowed briefly as he answered, “My mother.” 

Ilya was able to say these things, late at night with the world quiet behind sleep and without the bright hours left to expose him. It was like he saved his sadness for the dark, when only its silhouette was visible in the low light, its details swallowed kindly by shadows.

And it had been stated so simply, not an invitation for probing or a request for comfort. It was an explanation, a humble offering of information caught between I trust you with this and I trust you won’t make me talk about it. It was a house of cards, a building without a proper frame, a structure one breeze away from catastrophe—of Ilya falling apart. And Ilya trusted Shane enough to chance it anyway. 

Ilya once had a mother, too. Once, Ilya had been loved freely and tenderly, by a woman who had pressed cool hands to feverish skin and learned the exact places to soothe pain from her son.

Shane could picture it, Ilya’s mother sitting beside him and teaching him care through patient hands, passing her love so ordinarily neither of them knew how important it would become later. People passed, and parts of them continued moving through the world. What Ilya kept for himself, the remnants of his mother’s love, lived on in his hands and was being selflessly handed over to Shane. 

Shane shifted closer, tucking himself warm against Ilya’s chest, and murmured in practiced yet still clumsy Russian, “я тебя люблю.” 

For the briefest moment, Ilya went very still. Shane felt the pause of his breathing, the way his body tightened sharply before relaxing again. Then, Ilya lowered his face into Shane’s hair with a gentle nuzzle. 

“Terrible accent,” Ilya whispered against the top of his head. 

Shane smiled weakly. “Dod’t lie, I’b very good. It’s… It’s just the codgestiod, that’s all.” 

“Wooorst accent.” But Ilya’s arms wrapped tightly around Shane, pulling him impossibly closer, then continued gentle rubs along Shane’s sinuses with his thumb. “But good effort.” 

Eventually, little by little, Shane’s breathing eased. He was halfway to sleep when he sneezed again, suddenly and helplessly right into Ilya’s chest. 

“Hh’ISHHuhh!”

The force of it startled both of them. Then, Shane realized with horror that he still had tissue stuffed in his nose.

“Oh, fuck,” he groaned, mortified. “I’b sorry… This is so gross.” 

He twisted away from Ilya and pulled the damp tissue free, quickly wrapping it in a clean tissue before abandoning it on the nightstand. He had the foresight to grab a few more tissues just to keep in his hand.

Beside him, Ilya laughed softly. “Yes,” he agreed. “Is very gross.”

Shane groaned again, but through a self-deprecating laugh, and Ilya pulled him back into his arms. 

“But,” Ilya continued, sounding awfully fond, “this is also love.”

Something warm spread through Shane’s chest. He pressed the tissues to his dripping nose and settled heavy into Ilya’s arms again, forehead finding the crook of Ilya’s neck on instinct. 

“I could do this agaid,” Shane admitted softly after a moment, voice edging on shy. “Every flu seasod, forever.”

Ilya made a quiet sound against his hair that might’ve been a laugh. “Every flu season? For the rest of our lives?”

Perhaps it was the fever, but he nodded. Shane considered that he was essentially proposing under the pretense of surviving future respiratory illnesses together, which honestly sounded perfectly reasonable to him at the moment.

“I like flu-Shane,” Ilya mused. “He loves me very much.”

“Healthy Shade loves you too,” Shane argued weakly. “Healthy Shade loves you without sdeezig od you.”

“Healthy Shane, sick Shane.” Ilya smoothed his fingers over Shane’s hair in gentle, slow pets. “All my Shanes.”

Love was a lot of things. Sometimes it was bright and cinematic and made Shane think happily-ever-afters weren’t only for fairytales. Sometimes it was mild summers spent in Lanaudière, or puzzles at his parents’ house during family dinner nights. 

And then he had spent his two hour drive back to Montreal deliberating and halfway mourning over sleepy goodbyes and how much they hurt. Ilya hadn’t asked him to stay, jokingly as he usually did, if only because he knew how hard it was for Shane to leave in the first place. He hadn’t wanted to rub salt in the wound, probably, but a wound is a wound is a wound. Being asked to stay wouldn’t have made it hurt much more, maybe it would have even been like a salve that stung at first but made everything feel a tad better later.

At the practice rink, fatigue was really starting to set in. It wasn’t all that surprising; he hadn’t slept properly since… Fuck, Monday night? Between Ilya coming down sick and having his sleep schedule interrupted with lazy daytime naps and Ilya’s grating cough that seemed to kick it up a notch at night, he was racking up a mountain of sleep debt and couldn’t find the time to pay it off. 

Shane leaned forward in his chair, fingers wrapped around a warm paper cup of coffee Hayden had picked up for him. He had taken off the lid a moment ago, first to confirm it was black the way he liked it, then to have an excuse to look at something. Theriault was noticeably pissed, standing at the front of the meeting room and throwing daggers his way as the team settled in their seats, and Shane appreciated there being something to stare at other than his hands. 

He already felt like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs. He didn’t need to look like one, too. 

“Tuesday was a win, but don’t let that get to your heads.” Theriault’s gruff voice cut through the morning shuffle, silencing the room. “Tonight’s game won’t be that easy, and we have some serious issues to address.” 

Shane tried to pay attention, but the tension in the room made it difficult. It was so thick he felt like he was swimming in it, batting at it with heavy blinks and slow nods when he felt he was supposed to, but he was really just making educated guesses. His mind lagged about five steps behind, still stuck on the way Theriault would point at something on the screen and motion widely in Shane’s direction like he was at fault for support not following through quickly enough.

“And some of you,” Theriault spat, looking straight at Shane this time, “should learn to read your teammates and know when the fuck to reset instead of pushing a broken play.”

Theriault let the silence stretch just to make a point. 

A few chairs creaked. Someone cleared their throat. Shane ducked his head and took a sip of his coffee.

“I guess it’s no secret we have some very greedy players in the room.”

Shane spent the rest of the meeting shooting apologetic glances at his coffee cup, at the wall, at anything other than his teammates because the elephant in the room was definitely Shane, and Theriault looked suspiciously like a poacher with his laser pointer at the ready. And Shane was sorry for that, but not sorry enough to admit fault when he had been the only one to put the biscuit in the basket on Tuesday—a hat trick, in fact, and they had won. 

Theriault could hold a serious grudge, and after all these years, Shane knew how to weather them. It wasn’t personal, even if it felt like Theriault would jump at the chance to take your first born and throw them in the net as a little incentive to up the defense. It wasn’t personal, but Theriault could lean cruel sometimes, if only because it produced results. It wasn’t personal, but—

“Hollander! A word.” The room was shifting around him—chairs scraping, hurried steps, a watering hole being left abandoned with a predator on the prowl. “Everyone else, gear up and get on the ice.” 

Shane stayed sitting, and Hayden clapped him on the shoulder on his way out. Theriault stood near the front of the room, laser pointer still in hand, tapping it a few times against his palm like he was deciding where to start. 

Shane had been sent to the principals office before, just once, when he had melted down over a kid behind him clicking his pen over and over and over during the most stressful math test he’d ever had in his then thirteen years of life—and pens hadn’t even fucking been allowed on the test, which is what he had yelled, more or less. There may have been a few more fuck’s thrown in there, and his mom hadn’t even known he was capable of saying such colorful words at the time. 

This felt something like that—like being sat in the principals office and waiting to receive punishment for something that only halfway felt like his fault but that which he would take full responsibility for anyway, because that was what honorable men did (according to his mom, his principal, and his in-house hockey coach from when he had been five years old and still learning to hold himself on the ice). 

“That.” Theriault jerked his chin toward the screen, and Shane’s eyes flicked over to the frozen frame. “What, thought you’d get an early breakout? Without clueing in your fucking team?”

“I thought—“

“They see you force a play they’re not ready for, and suddenly they think they’re allowed to be sloppy and take risks they don’t need to be taking.”

“But if they—“

“They aren’t you. You might be able to pull off shit like that, but they can’t.” Theriault’s mouth flattened. He took in a deep breath through his nose and let his shoulders drop on the exhale. “You’re too good of a strategist to be making these mistakes. Do better. Oh, and Hollander, next time you miss practice for a paycheck, you’ll be a healthy scratch.” 

Shane took that as permission to leave. He managed a yes sir because Theriault was the kind of guy who liked to keep those closest to him in line—the kind of retired NCAA dud who talked big about keeping control just to prove how much control he had. To Shane, he was something of a shadow made up like a mentor, a devil in wolf’s clothing because at least wolves would protect their pack when they were threatened from the outside. Sometimes Shane respected him for it, in the way you might give accolades to a tyrant just because you weren’t allowed to give them to anyone else. 

In other words, Shane was scared shitless of a washout turned coach—but one who was otherwise highly regarded, for some reason. 

Practice went alright, if only because Shane overcompensated and used too much of his energy trying to appear in top shape. The tension from the team melted away with their captain in full swing, leading to high energy play run-throughs. Even Theriault appeared appeased, nixing the extra bag skates he’d threatened earlier. Shane, conversely, felt split every which way, maybe julienned for all he knew—pieces of himself sprinkled on the ice, in a sickbed back in Ottawa, two hours behind in a tongue lashing disguised team meeting, seven hours ahead in a roaring arena. 

The dressing room was always loud after a good pregame practice. Their nerves were loosened up enough to take off some of the pressure. Saturday games always felt a hair more important, something about the novelty of the weekend withstanding changes in modern society. In life as Shane knew it, it started with Saturday morning cartoons with sugar glazed fingers, grew into sleeping in an extra hour during teenage rebellion, metamorphosed into just another day to read the news and pay the bills because adulthood liked to do that to a person, but Saturday still felt special somehow. 

He sat at his stall with a towel draped around his shoulders, joggers already on and duffel half-packed. Sounds bounced around him, overlapping and bringing about a bright chaos—the slap of towels on skin, music from a phone propped precariously on a shelf, whoops and groans and harrowing tales of the latest diaper blowouts from the guys who had young kids—and words of sympathy from those who had been there, done that.  

Which, honestly, left Shane with little to say. He was tugging on his shirt when he heard a low, “Hey.” He looked up and saw Hayden leaned against the stall next to him, hair still damp. “You, uh, all good?”

Shane nodded, halfway through the motion before he even understood the question. “Yeah, ‘course.” 

“Yeeaaah,” Hayden echoed, pointedly slower and disbelieving. “You kinda look like shit, buddy.” 

Shane let out a short breath that might’ve sounded like a laugh if it didn’t come out so weathered. “Thanks, Hayd.”

“No, really.” Hayden pushed off the stall, then took a step forward and leaned in. “You look like someone kicked your puppy or something.”

“I don’t have a puppy.”

Hayden laughed incredulously, shaking his head. “Dude, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know.” Shane reached for his hoodie. “I’m good. I just—“ He rolled his shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “Didn’t sleep great. I’ll be good after some food and a nap.”

Back at home, he meant to eat lunch. He knew the importance of fueling after expending energy, of replenishing what he’d burned through. It was foundational knowledge, and normally there was something mundanely satisfying about the whole thing—of doing something right for his body and feeling it pay off in kind. 

But the idea of food sat wrong in his stomach even before he had opened the fridge, turned downright uncomfortable when he stared at the shelves. He realized his prepped meals were days old anyway, past the point of being safely edible anymore, and he reasoned that he was let off the hook from lunch.

He set three alarms on his phone as he walked to his bedroom, spaced out because he always woke up on the first but felt better having the other two as insurance. He plugged his phone into its charger, stripped down to his briefs, and climbed into bed. The weight of the morning pressed into him as he sunk heavy into sleep.

When his alarm went off, he jerked awake with a gasp and then an irritated groan. He must have set his alarm wrong because he had only been asleep for—

Oh.

It was his third alarm, the last of them and twenty minutes past when he had planned to wake. He pushed himself upright too quickly, blinking hard as the room warped around the edges. A thin sheen of sweat clung to his skin, cooling in the open air as the blanket slipped down to his waist. It sent a chill down his spine. 

Oh, no. No, no no. 

He swallowed. His throat felt dry, maybe even sore. Actually, it was definitely sore, and a second swallow informed him of a thick, swollen kind of feeling. He closed his eyes as he tried to take stock of himself—the sore throat, the headache, the prickling unease under his skin.

He last had the flu four years ago, when he had learned the horrors of hanging around germ-ridden children during the holidays—the Pike children, to be specific. It had been an awful battle consisting of new year ailments, best friend cash-outs, and captain duties, but at least Hayden had been able to vouch for Shane’s ill health at the time. Shane had been a decent—very good, even—friend wanting to lend a helpful hand to two very overwhelmed parents. 

(There had been a headline somewhere, of Shane exercising his good will for the benefit of a teammate in need, and sacrificing his health in the process. It had cost him two games, but all the public remembered was how honorable a captain he was.) 

Ilya wasn’t a child, or a Metro, and no one knew Shane had been kissing his influenza-driven tears away. And it wasn’t like Ilya tried to, like, eat his own hands or cough in other people’s mouths the way children did. Shane had been a little reckless, but he had gotten his flu jab a few weeks prior and washed his hands so much the past few days his knuckles were cracking with the proof.

So, yeah, he could be sick, but he doubted it. It felt theoretical, like something you would consider because it was a possibility but not very probable, not anything worth trying to prove unless you were ready to dedicate your life to a miserable cause—being wrong and wrong and wrong and just hoping you might eventually get it right. 

He didn’t really know what he was trying to get at, mulling over the scientific process with his eyes still closed, but the point stood that he wasn’t likely sick. He forced himself out of bed, dressed and texted Ilya and told him to keep up with the medication timetable he’d left for him in the kitchen. He opened his fridge and remembered, just then, that he didn’t have anything substantial to eat—not unless he wanted eggs, but those were for meant for breakfast. 

Fine, he could get something on the way, because fast food places usually had some options that weren’t the worst in the world—a grilled chicken something-or-other, with too much sodium. But he was sweating as it was so a little extra salt would probably be a good thing, and, well, maybe he should have just gone with the eggs.

It was too late, though, because he was already in his car and on the way to the arena. He stopped at a drive-thru on the way and ordered a sandwich, a grilled chicken deluxe monstrosity because it had lettuce and tomato and he could probably use some kind of vegetable. He would just have to tear off most of the bread. He already felt tired, and simple carbs weren’t going to help. 

“Huhh’ishhuh! Oh, shit—ISSH’ooh!” 

He asked for extra napkins at the pickup window, a generous stack of them. He really needed to get a deep clean detail done to the interior of his car. It was so dusty that it was making his nose itch.

At the arena, he picked at his sandwich in front of his dressing stall, hunkered down and curled over his lap like a fiend hiding their stash. It must have looked strange but at least half the team wasn’t in yet, probably finishing an early dinner with their families. It was when Hayden finally rolled in, loudly announcing himself with a whoop and a promise to kick ass tonight, that Shane straightened and crumpled the rest of his half eaten sandwich in its wrapper. 

“Holy shit, is the sky falling? Are pigs flying?” Hayden looked absolutely scandalized, waving his hands at the balled up shame still in Shane’s hands. “Our cap’s eating fast food? What, did that puppy of yours die? Are you grieving?” 

“I don’t have a fucking—hheh! Heh’chssht!” He reached for a napkin in the bag beside him the moment his breath hitched and muffled the sneeze into it just in time. “Sorry, ahem, ‘scuse me.”

Hayden’s eyes widened. “Oh, fuck. Fuck no. Tell me you’re not sick.”

Shane scoffed and dabbed at his nose. “I’m not sick.”

“I’m gonna need you to sound about 110% more sure than that, dude.”

“I’m not. My car is, uh, dusty…” Which sounded even less believable.

“Your car? Is dusty?” Hayden deadpanned. “Buddy, if you think that makes any sense, you’re pretty much confirming you’re on death’s door. What the fuck?”

“Hayd, drop it, okay? I’m fine.” He discreetly pinched his nose through the tissue, doing away with the last of the wetness. He tested his nose with a sniff, pleased with the unobstructed breath, and felt more confident when he said, “Do me a favor and make sure you don’t overshoot your passes tonight.”

“Yikes, alright! Alright, will do. Jesus, what crawled up your ass and died?” Hayden looked particularly proud of himself over that while Shane flushed all the way down past his neck.

Ten minutes before the game, his team was asking for a speech. Shane had already fulfilled his pregame interview and had only sneezed once, very politely into his elbow, at the tail end because dust seemed to be following him everywhere. (He had tried to make a joke about it, which wasn’t very much like himself when he thought about it after, but at least he had gotten a little smile out of the reporter.)

He looked over the room full of his teammates, could see the way they were buzzing with pregame jitters. “Uh, just… Just fucking score?” It sounded more like he was asking for permission, or that he wasn’t really sure what he was saying at all, but no one seemed to bat an eye at their captain’s less than passionate attempt at motivation. 

“We’re going to fuck them up tonight!” JJ beamed like sunshine, because the guy was always such a mood setter, and looked at Shane expectantly. Shane managed a mild mannered fuck yeah because he knew he was supposed to, and it was a well rehearsed line after years in locker rooms. It wasn’t that he didn’t mean it, because it admittedly felt good when he felt tantamount to the joy in the room continuing on, but he wasn’t sure of how it all equaled up at the end of the day, whether his ability to rile up the room (or lack thereof) counted for anything in the unwritten rulebook of leadership. 

If JJ could set the mood then Shane could, at the very least, not do anything to get in the way. 

Adrenaline carried him through the first period with such acute ferocity he was starting to believe whatever had been wrong with him earlier was a blip. It had probably been the result of overthinking, a natural worrier turning himself sick with it. His throat still hurt, yeah, but that was in his head. He was sneezing intermittently, sure, but his nose was just irritated from earlier. He should have had the sense to take an antihistamine, but hindsight was 20/20. 

He scored once with an assist from Hayden and didn’t even avoid the scrum after. That was what a healthy player did, of course, and Shane had been known to get into it every once in a while (quarterly, perhaps, if measuring up against a decade). 

After first period, back in the locker room, the high of it all wore off fast. He wiped his face off with a clean towel and let himself stay like that for a beat, pressing his warm eyes into the soft folds of it. It helped carry him away from the room, the shouts of his team and the distant roar of the crowd, the pressure of two more periods looming in the dark behind him. 

He blew his nose without shame because half of the guys were too, a casualty of heavy exercise on cold ice. Hayden elbowed his side and laughed about something, JJ and Mitty were covering the latest Twitter feud about a team they weren’t even playing anytime soon, for a reason Shane was trying to follow but couldn’t seem to piece together. 

He wasn’t sick, he was quite certain, because the risks just didn’t really add up—but something wasn’t right. He felt underwater, maybe in a fishbowl, or maybe the fishbowl was surrounding him in some sort of strange, inverted aquarium in which he was probably still swimming with the fishes, as they say. 

He got a total of two minutes of ice time at the start of second period before Theriault had them switching forward lines. He dropped onto the bench and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, sucking in a deep breath of cold air. It made him cough a couple times, aimed down at his skates, a dry and irritating little thing that scratched at his throat on the way out. Then his vision dimmed, like someone had reached past his eyes and turned down the brightness without asking—or put sunglasses on him, which he thought was a douchey thing to do indoors. 

“I think,” he started carefully, not to anyone in particular, but closer to the person on his left. He tried to sound as much like himself as he could manage, but slowly because his tongue was moving strangely in his mouth. “I think I’m gonna pass out.”

“What? Wait, what did you just s—”

Hands were on him immediately. One at his shoulder, another at his arm, forcing him upright when he started to list sideways. Loose limbed and halfway under, his head lolled. It felt heavier than he remembered.

“Hey—no, come on—Shane.“

“I got him.” He was hauled to his feet, and he felt his weight dropping straight through him. “Jesus, okay—easy, get on his other side. He’s about to drop.” 

He blinked, the world coming to him through static. It was like a bad signal, with glimpses breaking through in fuzzy, prismatic ghosts—a violent mess of visual noise overlaying his field of vision. He was dragged through the tunnel and he fumbled in the hallway, skates hitting the ground in heavy thumps as he tried to get his footing.

“I gotta sit down,” he slurred. He felt nauseated, if only because he was so hot in all his layers. “Please.” He then was laid on his back, legs up propped up high in someone’s arms and helmet being pulled off by someone else. He let his head sink heavy to the side, cheek on the dirty floor, but it felt nice and cool and made him groan in relief. 

“Shane, eyes open, buddy. Look at me.”

He looked and looked and looked, blinked and only saw the colors of his breath pulsing behind his eyes and one of the trainers kneeling beside him. Then the world narrowed down to his heart slamming into his sternum and the blur of being moved again, which he really wished they would stop doing before he was ready. 

He was deposited on an exam table and tugged at in so many directions he had to close his eyes or he thought he might scream. There was a pinch to his hand and ice climbing through his limbs soon after, his skates were tugged off and he thought someone might have even been massaging his socked feet, and he was pretty sure if he opened his eyes he would have seen Lucifer himself orchestrating everyone in the room.

“Fuck, what—“ Something was shoved up his nose, swirling in what felt like an honest to god attempted lobotomy. When it was pulled out, he shuddered with a gasp. “Hhehh! Hehh’chsshoo! Huh’isshuh! Huh’isshhh!” 

He felt so tired, and he was genuinely concerned the pieces of his brain dislodged from the backyard lobotomy were in danger of shotgunning through his nose. He curled onto his side with a groan and let himself drift into the misery of it all, still sneezing occasionally into a crushed tissue he’d gotten from—well, he was fucking lobotomized, so it wasn’t surprising that he couldn’t recall. 

“Shane. Did you hear me?”

“Mmh?”

“You have the flu, Shane. When did you start feeling sick?”

Shane opened his eyes, a little panicked. “I… Um… Don’t know.” He swallowed and considered Ilya, and the moment he remembered Ilya first sounded strange over the phone. “Tuesday? Morning. Like, on the phone.”

“Oh?” The team doctor smiled reassuringly, which looked really, really wrong. Shane much preferred when he frowned his way through wrapping injuries in ice packs and bitching about hockey players with anger issues. He sounded very calm, as if he were talking about the weather, when he asked, “What day is it today?”

“Saturday,” he said proudly, because he was certain. 

“Good.” The team doctor put a paltry sheet over him, and Shane barely resisted the urge to throw it off. “Let’s let this saline drip finish up, and we’ll see where you’re at after.”

The next time he came to, Hayden was standing beside him and on the phone. He sounded worried, a little too serious for a guy who liked to boast about his masturbation habits while on a road trip. In fact, two weeks ago he had told Shane he managed three times in one night. Shane had wanted to bleach that memory away at the time and was dismayed that the fever he now understood he had wasn’t doing anything to cook it out of him.

He decided he needed someone else to share the misery of knowing. “Hey. Heeey.” He cleared his throat and spoke a little louder, gripping Hayden’s arm to pull him closer. “Hayden jerked off three times in Buffalo. Like, in the same night.”

Hayden looked a funny mix of horrified and murderous, maybe a little sympathy somehow weaved in there too. “No, he’s totally out of it, I don’t know.” Hayden paused, and Shane heard a distorted voice on the other end. “Yeah, it was 40. Doc said he was just dehydrated, it should come down soon.” 

“24,” Shane supplied groggily, offended that Hayden had gotten his number wrong. “Can’t believe…”

“What, buddy?” Hayden, distracted, patted Shane’s arm. “What was that?”

“I’m number 24,” he muttered. 

Hayden looked genuinely confused, which Shane felt frustrated about. “Yeah, he—no, I’ve got it handled. I’ll take him home… Yes, I’m going to fucking wait. I’m not an idiot.” 

Shane waved Hayden close, then grabbed his shoulder when he didn’t move fast enough. “Hey,” he rasped right into Hayden’s ear. “Can you call Ilya? Tell’im I’m okay?” 

Hayden glanced back at the team doctor, who was busying himself with cleaning up for the night. “Yeah, man, already done. All good.” 

Embarrassingly, Hayden had to help him get changed, then let him use his coat as a lap blanket in the car. Shane spent the ride home feeling caught in the time machine from Back to the Future, oscillating between fast speeds and timelines of the very healthy phone sex from Sunday night and Ilya crying into his chest during feverish witching hours. The present sat somewhere underneath, with Hayden steering them through it all and answering Jackie’s omnipresence, the voice of a god booming from the heavens. 

(It was probably just the miracle of bluetooth, but Shane had his eyes closed and knew better than to question acts of god.)

‘Yeah, Jacks, I know, I know. I got it, it’s like taking care of the kids. No—no, I know you usually—alright, yeah. No, I’m not trying to pick a fight, baby. I’m just—yeah, it was pretty scary. It’ll be fine now, douchebag’s on his way and—no! No, I played nice, I swear.’

Getting inside, once they arrived, was about as pleasant as the car ride had been. Worse, in fact. Shane tried to carry his own weight, which mostly meant leaning in the wrong directions at the wrong times and nearly taking Hayden down with him. 

“Okay—nope. Nope, that’s not—c’mon, dude.” Hayden hooked an arm under his and took most of his weight. “Would rather not have to carry you bridal style, you’re heavy as shit.”

Hayden steered him to the couch, and Shane dropped boneless onto the cushions with a heavy exhale that turned into weak coughs. He muffled them against his sleeve, grimacing.

“Don’t fall asleep yet,” Hayden said, already halfway across the room. “Hang on.” 

Shane stayed like this, blinking blearily at the warm recessed lights on the ceiling. They were dimmed just how he liked them, keeping the room pleasantly cast in a glow reminiscent of sunset leftovers, of when the sun sat just below the horizon and scattered its light particles across the atmosphere in long, reaching swoops of amber. 

Ilya knew how to set the lights like that for him, when he had a headache or a hard day or was sleepy but didn’t want to waste the night. 

“Ilya?”

“Not yet,” Hayden said, returning from the kitchen with a glass of water. He set it on the coffee table and reached his hands out. “He’s on his way.” 

Shane frowned, taking Hayden’s hands without question. He was maneuvered to the corner of the couch, propped up enough so he could drink from the glass of water when Hayden handed it to him. “The, uh… The lights.” He coughed and set the water precariously on the cushion, which Hayden whisked away immediately. “Ilya.” 

Hayden blinked. “Oh, that? Yeah.” He laughed disbelievingly. “He told me to set the dimmer to a quarter. I honestly just thought he was being a fussy prick, but…” Hayden grabbed the throw on the other end of the couch and spread it over Shane’s lap before sitting on the edge of the coffee table. “I’m gonna be honest, you scared the hell out of me. I thought you were, like, dying or something.” 

“Sorry, Hayd.” Shane shifted under the blanket, dragged one heel against the couch just to make sure his legs were still attached. With the way Hayden was looking at him, he hadn’t been sure. “Is coach mad?” 

“What—no! What are you talking about, man? You have the goddamn flu and you scored in first period. No one’s mad.” Hayden paused. “Alright, maybe he’s a little mad, but he’s always mad about something. Fuck that, everything’s fine. We won, and now you get a little vacation, yeah?” 

Shane squinted, trying to decide the legitimacy of what Hayden was saying, and gave up when his nose itched. He rubbed at his eye, which wasn’t very helpful to his nose but was a nervous habit he relied on when he wanted to appear nonchalant.

“Hehh’tshhh’uh! Heh’ISHH’iuhh-ISHh’ehw!” Though, he supposed, that had been quite chalant of him. He probably should have just rubbed his nose after all.

Hayden was gone when he opened his eyes, so he took the chance to wipe his nose with his sleeve. It wasn’t very hygienic of him, but he wasn’t feeling very hygienic as it was. When Hayden returned with a roll of toilet paper, Shane nearly complained, but he was admittedly relieved to have something other than his sleeve to clean his nose with.

There was a stretch of quiet after that. Hayden stayed on the edge of the coffee table, elbows on his knees as he tapped at his phone, while Shane drifted. Time slipped and folded, sent Shane back to the locker room and the ice and, for some reason, his first sunset with Ilya on the beach.

When the front door opened, Shane’s eyes shot open. The sound cut clean through the fog of fever, wired in deep—somewhere under thought, under language. He heard the specific scrape of the key in the lock, the quick click of it turning, the two second pause before the door gave way. A resumption of movement, under the pretense that the two seconds would have given Shane enough time to shout no, stop! if it were necessary. 

It was like the condition of Pavlov’s dog, the way something in his chest pulled taught and made him turn, expectant, toward the door before he consciously knew why.

Ilya barreled in, not taking off his shoes, but he smiled tightlipped and gravely serious, and he looked so very handsome even when his brow wrinkled like that. “Hi, sweetheart. How are you feeling?” 

“Ilya,“ Shane smiled. “Ilya, are we in Ottawa?”

Ilya turned to Hayden, eyes wild. “What did you do to him? Why is he like this?”

“Lobotomy,” Shane said wistfully. “It was awful.”

“Hey, I didn’t—! He just—! I d’know, man! He’s just sick!” 

Ilya sighed. Hayden looked sad, maybe a little mad. Shane thought he might cry, which—oh, yeah, he was definitely doing that now. 

“No, Shane, no, look. We are friends.” Ilya threw his arm around Hayden’s shoulders and Hayden gave a tense looking thumbs up sans smile. “Thank you, Hayden. You did a good job. Now please go home.” 

Ilya steered Hayden toward the foyer, and Shane could hear hushed words bleeding together. He thought he heard the promise of a text, a well wishing of a safe drive, the casualness of people who weren’t really friends but pointedly weren’t enemies. The flu could be very humbling, Shane decided.

He heard the door shifting in its frame, the click of a lock, and Shane lay there at the edge of sleep, sniffling wearily around the sounds of Ilya finally toeing off his shoes. 

“Ilya?” he called.

“Am here.” Ilya crossed the room, shrugging out of his jacket and letting it drop onto the floor. “Right here.”

“Hi,” Shane said, trying for a smile. It came out a little crooked. “You—hihh!” His breath hitched, sharp and sudden, and he turned his head down toward his shoulder. “Hih’TSHHuh! Huhh’ihhshh’uh!”

“Bless you,” Ilya murmured with a frown, already reaching for him. 

He sank down onto the couch and gathered Shane up, one arm sliding behind his shoulders and the other tugging the blanket securely around him. Close and careful, with Ilya’s shoulders trying to curve around him, his whole body becoming shelter like he was handling something very, very important. A bulkhead in the sea of things, a means of keeping Shane afloat even when parts of him were trying to sink under.

Ilya was cool where Shane was burning, and he indulged in the relief as he pressed his forehead into the nape of his neck. He let out a long, shaky breath and let his eyes slip closed. Ilya stroked a thumb absently at the small of his back, under his sweatshirt.

“You are very warm, malysh.” His voice sounded rough, the rasp of nights spent coughing and the nasal quality of congestion that had loosened in the face of recovery, proof of a body pushing forward in messy determination. Shane loved this body, and its rigid muscles and the way they set soft when wrapped around him.

“Mmh.” He snuffled, feeling the slip of a running nose but not wanting to disturb the quiet peace with anything more offensive. “I have the flu.”

“Yes, you do.” Ilya sighed like he was mourning. “I’m sorry.”

Shane pursed his lips, reaching with them until they touched soft, warm cotton. He voiced a soft muah, and again just in case Ilya didn’t hear the first one, just in case Ilya didn’t understand he was searching for him through kisses. “I’m not. I’m not, at all.”