If anyone were to ask, Ilya is the one between them that has worse allergies. Normally, anyone on the Centaurs (or even within a ten mile radius of him on a spring morning) would agree. No one believes Ilya when he tries to defend himself, they’ve all been around him, they’ve all been witnesses in his nose’s attempt at escaping his face. Everyone rolls their eyes when Ilya insists it’s only because he’s louder that they think he’s worse. What Shane will never admit is that Ilya’s technically right. Until today, when Troy stumbles onto the ice half an hour late to practice, fresh out of a Dior Sauvage ad filming. Everyone wolf whistles and jeers as he hops over the barrier and almost eats shit trying to skate into position.

“Looking good, Barrett. I am sorry hockey disturbed beauty sleep.” Ilya, ever the instigator, is the loudest voice in the crowd despite being entirely across the rink skating bags with the rookies.

“That’s the number three pretty face in hockey, you might wanna ask for some tips, five.” That gets an even louder roar of approval from the team as Ilya playfully launches himself after Boodram. It is funny, almost every bout of teasing amongst the Centaurs is funny. It’s so unlike the atmosphere Shane remembers with the Metros that his chest fucking aches.

Unfortunately, Shane is too wrapped up in fondly surveying his team that he doesn’t see Ilya barrelling towards him. Much like a puppy who doesn’t know his own size, his husband has this (frankly adorable) habit of not remembering he’s built solidly of muscle. In his chase of Boodram, he makes a tight loop around where Shane and Luca are loitering at center ice and spots a much more enticing target. With a dopey grin and enough gusto that anyone could practically see his tail wagging, Ilya hip checks Shane right into Troy.

On any other day, this would be fine. On any other day, Shane would swing around Troy and give chase. On any other day, Troy Barrett would not be dripping with Dior Sauvage cologne. It was probably a nice scent, something sharp and fancy, very Troy. Whatever it might’ve been, Shane only recognized it as unbearably fucking strong. He tried to push himself back with a frenzied shake of his head, as if that alone would nullify the sudden buzzing in his sinuses. Both of his arms brace against Troy’s chest as the lineman holds his elbow in what is supposed to be a steadying gesture. Except, right now it felt more like he’s caging Shane’s nose against a bundle of horrifically expensive flowers.

“Hih’IYISCHhuh!” The first bursts from him before he can get his hands up to cover or try to suppress it into something that doesn't echo around the arena. Troy is startled enough to pull his hand away, Shane is eternally grateful as he doubles over again. “ISCH’iuh!” There’s just enough of a breath between what is surely going to be an embarrassingly steady fit, for Shane to shake his gloves off and pinch his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Hh’NGX’tiew! KDT’iew!”

A couple of the guys toss blessings over their shoulders, more of an after thought to the shenanigans still holding their attention. The rookies took chase after Ilya and Boodram to ‘avenge Shane’s honor’ or something, and that’s evidently more entertaining than Shane himself having an allergy attack. Despite the lack of anyone’s attention, the quivering of his sinuses doesn’t let up, intent on being acknowledged fully. “GNXT’iew! NXK’tchiew!” For some unfortunate reason, Troy is the only one who actually seems to notice Shane’s dilemma. That would usually be fine since Troy is usually one of the few people Shane can tolerate when he’s overwhelmed. Other than the fact that the universe apparently hates him today because the winger decides to go against his usual ‘leave it be’ tactics and starts fucking talking.

“Jesus, man-” “T-Troy-hh’EXK’schew! TXG’tiew!” “Sorry, didn’t have time to shower after-” “It’s f-hih-fine. N-huh-not you’re- NGXD’tiew! EDG’tiew!” “Yeah, it fucking reeks.” Interrupting Troy’s attempted apologies definitely isn’t helping assure him that ‘yeah, man, it’s whatever’. Except the idiot keeps trying to glide slightly closer to pat Shane’s shoulder, which is really going to fuck that up. It’s like an awkward dance, Shane shakily pushing backwards with both hands now covering his face as he convulses into himself.

“Give the guy some breathing room, damn.” Thank fucking God for Wyatt Hayes. The goalie floats over and puts a giant hand on Troy's shoulder, holding him in place so Shane can escape a few paces back.

“You trying to kill our center, Barrett?” Chouinard barks out a laugh from the other side of the ring, too caught up in effortlessly holding both Holmberg and Young back from Bood to actually care. Which, good for fucking him, because Shane is all too aware of the situation on this side of the ice right now.

“Fuck, how much of that shit did they use? You smell fucking sterile.” Dykstra coughs through his teasing as he skates over. Their teasing is mostly background noise as Shane doubles over again, and again, and again, and again.

Whatever new cologne this is fucking burns. Somebody’s stupid rich uncle is probably having a field day ‘dissecting the notes’ or whatever that means. God, Ilya’s going to be sleeping on the fucking couch and the entire team is skating bags. That is, as soon as he’s lucid and stable enough to actually reprimand anyone.

“Hollander?” Right, the only voice that sounds slightly concerned is the idiot that got him into this mess.

Glaring at Ilya as he passes Dykstra, Hayes, and Barrett is a much more difficult task to accomplish between stifles than it usually is. Too busy ducking back into his hands, Shane feels rather than sees his husband as a steadying hand lands on his shoulder. Took him fucking long enough, fuck, he’s sneezing so much he’s starting to get light headed. He sniffles sharply and turns so his shoulder is touching Ilya’s chest and he can use him as a human shield.

“I’ve got you, get it out. No one’s looking, just one big sneeze and it’s over.” Ilya’s assurances are whispered gently into his husband’s hair as he manages to drag them back to the player bench.

“Hih-hh’IYISCHeuh! Fuck, that’s better.” Shane sniffles a few times to be sure, his nose definitely still tingles but in a farther off way than it did seconds ago.

“You’re worse than Cap, Holly!” Rude, he glares at Dykstra in obvious resentment and straightens out of his husband's grasp. Objectively speaking, he is decidedly not worse than Ilya in the ‘pissed off nose’ department, thank you very much. It’s just that on the off chance something does bother him, he goes all in.

“Troy! Go shower!” Weibe claps Ilya’s shoulder in passing as he strides onto the ice to wrangle his team into doing something actually productive. Everyone groans as they skate back into positions, sans Troy who quickly hops the boards opposite Shane and Ilya and vanishes.

No one even mentions it when Shane sits heavily on the bench and takes the water bottle proffered by his husband. He sprays some directly on his face, attempting to wash the last of the lingering itch away, before offering it back. There’s an engraved expectation for Ilya to do the same, that if anything bothered Shane, it would obviously bother him as well. Except, Shane only watches Ilya take a swig of water and place the bottle back on the wall.

“I’m surprised that stuff didn’t bother you at all,” Shane admits with a tilt of his head.

“No, was not like flowers, so…” Despite his assurance, Ilya scrunches his nose with a faint sniff; though the reaction seems to be more from the mere mention of anything floral than Barrett’s actual cologne. “But I think we will maybe not do ads with Sauvage now. Is a shame, those ads are usually very sexy.”

“Ilya,” Shane chuckles, pushing lightly at his husband’s hip and earning a displeased huff.

--

The gentle huff of breath as the rush passed, as the afterglow faded and the endorphins made their way through, was in some ways better than the event itself. As far as Xiaotian was concerned at least.  'Cuz sure the sex was great, of course the sex was great, but the fuzzy space of time afterward was when everything else faded away, no longer any worries about volume because they'd already passed through the places where they may accidentally catch someone's attention,  no worries about bruises unable to be covered up because they were both already too tired for it, the only problem is one or both of them falling asleep like this and risking getting caught.

But oh was it tempting every time to allow. To not shake Red Son back awake from a light doze and remind him he should be getting going before anyone realized he was gone, or for Xiaotian to grasp onto Red Son's arm and refuse to let him leave, or for the most temping of them all, to simply ask him to stay.

But that would be breaking their rules. And those rules were in place not only for boundaries, but to keep them both safe.

No, these quiet moments after the passion fades were going to be the best he was going to get. “I want to draw you like this.” Maybe his best option was to immortalize it.

Red Son still looked a bit dazed from their previous activities, and only quirked a curious brow in response. And then he followed up with “Why?”

Because this can only end in heartbreak and I want to be able to remember it afterward when it was happy

Because I'm never gonna get to see you in the soft hours of the morning before you've fully woken up and get to watch you putter about a living space getting ready for the day and want to pretend I could see it some day

Because I think I might be falling in love with you and I need to draw you before you leave again

“Because you're beautiful.” It turned out Red Son was too tired to get embarrassed, something like that if asked before their activities would easily have flustered him. So it was notable that he'd simply shifted around in Xiaotian's bed until he got in a comfortable position.

It was meticulous, he wanted to take in every last damn detail, and he knew by tomorrow's light it would have been an unnecessary risk for their secret, he knew that he might look at this sketch and mumble to himself that it wasn't good enough, but right now it didn't matter.

He tucked a strand of hair behind Red Son's ear, it made a more interesting shadow like that.

By the time Xiaotian was finishing up, it seemed like Red Son had woken up more, because he'd started shifting about uncomfortably, gaze going from the motion of Xiaotian's pencil to a spot somewhere on the floor, cheeks doing a valiant impression of his hair.

“Okay... done.” Red Son got up as Xiaotian closed his sketchbook with a light 'snap'

“Am I not allowed to see it?”

“Nope.”

Red Son shot him an exasperated look, but Xiaotian gave him no leeway. It was for himself after all. “You're gonna fall asleep one of these times and i'm gonna find it and you can't stop me.”

“If you can find it where I'm gonna hide it I'm gonna need a better hiding spot because that implies Mei could find it too.”

Red Son's eyes widened as he remembered exactly what proof like that could mean.

“Nevermind I don't want to see it but I am gonna burn it.” he leaned over to make a snatch for the sketchbook, so Xiaotian stood up to get it out of his range.

“Nope. It's mine. I have a million hiding places in this flat, nobody will find it. Including you.”

Red Son scowled at him, but didn't make another swipe for the sketchbook as Xiaotian placed it down and rejoined him in the bed. “Besides, you're the one living life looking that gorgeous and tempting hapless artists to immortalize it.” And there was that lovely blush. His expression tightened again and he was very pointedly NOT looking in his direction, and it was adorable. Xiaotian couldn't resist reaching a hand up and pressing a thumb against Red Son's mouth—still slightly swollen from events earlier—and running the pad across his bottom lip.

“You've got no idea the shit you do to me, do you?” If anything he looked even more flustered at that, the tips of his hair glowing and about one more modicum of embarrassment away from properly igniting. And honestly...What else could Xiaotian do infront of that adorable fluster but curl his fingers beneath Red Son's chin to hold him in place and lean forward.

He felt Red Son relax against him once they were actually kissing. It really seemed like he wasn't used to verbal affection at all if simple stuff like that always got such a reaction out of him.

Xiaotian promised himself to give as much of it as he could, until there was nothing left of the arrangement but the picture in his sketchbook.

When the old Boston head coach had retired early in his second season, Marleou had used an expression; the wicked witch is dead. Currently, as Ilya paces his luxury penthouse in Moscow, he begins to understand why his teammate had said it with so much joy. Grigori Rozanov is dead. Ilya’s first thought is to crack open the most expensive bottle of vodka he owns. His second- and possibly the louder of the two- is to call Shane, which would require the most expensive vodka he owns.

Once about half that bottle has been drained, there’s enough liquid courage in Ilya’s veins to dial Shane’s number. Or, what’s hopefully Shane’s number, his vision is going a little pleasantly fuzzy around the edges. It only takes two rings of staring at his own clenched jaw for Shane’s face to pop up on the screen. Sweet fucking Moses, thank you God for all the years of unanswered prayers that have led to this moment. Shane with glasses pushed against the bridge of his nose, framing watery eyes, and slightly flushed cheeks. Ilya could join his father in hell and be entirely content with it all if this is the last thing he sees.

“Ilya, are you okay? JJ said you didn’t fly out with Boston. Where are you?” Anxiety is palpable through the phone, in the urgency with which Shane asks the list of questions, in the downturn of his lips.

“Home,” Ilya answers soberly. He’s drinking in every pixel on his screen like a man left in the desert for decades.

“Boston?” Shane shifts the phone slightly to press a curled forefinger under his nose with a sniff.

“No, Moscow.” The name of his home feels like lead as it falls from his tongue. Moscow isn’t ‘home’, only the mailing address on most of his emergency sheets. It hasn’t been home for a very long time, maybe since he was twelve. Fuck, he’s drunk enough to get to that mushy emotional state. Ilya swallows another burning mouthful to wash out the bitter taste of ‘home’ on his tongue.

“Then your father…” Shane doesn’t finish the sentence, his eyes growing slightly hazy with what Ilya assumes is empathetic grief.

“Yes, dead.” Why doesn’t he feel that same grief?

For a moment, Shane doesn’t answer, his face twisted in a frown before he ducks out of frame to bury his face into the crook of his elbow. Ilya is perplexed for a moment before he hears it; albeit, a bit static through the poor connection, but he’d know that sound anywhere.

“Ih’HTSH! Heh…h’HTSH!” Shane’s phone seems to shudder in time with each itchy outburst, making Ilya dizzy. “Excuse me, sorry.” Fuck, always so damn polite, it drives him insane. Shane reappears with an irritated sniffle and adjusts his glasses higher on his nose. Ilya thinks he’ll combust into ten million places right then and there.

“I think I know how you can make me feel better.” That certainly grabs Shane’s attention, his eyes lighting up like a dog perking its ears. In Ilya’s mind, this is a much better look for him than the slightly bashful dejected frown he’d worn seconds ago. “Take off your clothes,” he purrs, grinning like a cheshire cat as he moves the screen closer to his face.

Grigori Rozanov is rolling in his casket as his son sets the phone against a bottle of vodka and tugs his shirt over his head. That doesn’t matter, nothing else matters when Shane is just as eagerly shuffling his pants down. Ilya’s heart is slamming into his chest, reminding him for the first time that day that he isn’t the one being lowered into the ground. Through the pixels, he can make out the way Shane’s jaw ticks as his hand vanishes out of the frame. He can hear the soft sniffles between his breathy moans too, accompanied always by the crinkling of his freckled nose bridge. It doesn’t take long for whatever is bothering Shane to spark enough that his hand stills on his dick with a frustrated whine.

“Your nose is angry with you,” Ilya teases. Shane says nothing in return, his face already braced against his inner arm as he waits impatiently. ‘Impatient’ is not normally a word to be associated with Shane, but this image of him is anything but collected and calm. His brows are furrowed against a deep crease between his eyes which are squeezed shut, even his jaw is slack with the effort. Fuck, he looks delicious. Ilya’s hand on his cock slows as he watches Shane’s battle with his nose, his other hand coming up to prop his cheek on the palm.

“Hh’TSCHh! HeESCHuh! Excuse me, guh. Finally.” Even his sneezes are predictable, almost rhythmic, a breath between them before he hunches further into himself. Ilya has to take a slow breath to keep from keening so loud it wakes the neighbors, God he’s so fucked.

“Something is bothering you.” It’s less of a question, more of an observation; one that makes Shane blush through bitten back whimpers.

“Yeah, um. One of the guys got new cologne, doesn’t really agree with me. **! Excuse me, fuck.” The third seems to sneak up on him, or perhaps he wasn’t paying attention to much else besides his screen. He hadn’t even buried it in his elbow like usual, though Ilya’s sure he’ll regret that after they hang up. Heat builds in Ilya’s core as he watches Shane’s face twitch and scrunch up at the bridge of his nose. Between each huffed out moan and whine, there’s a split second where his breath catches and stutters itchily in his throat.

“Fuck, Hollander.” Ilya forces his eyes open to watch the building spectacle despite how badly they seem to want to close and let him drift. He won’t cum before Shane does, it’s been a general rule in his head since their first tryst, but it’s become increasingly difficult. Especially as he watches Shane’s nose give a final aggravated twitch at being thrown to the back burner.

The way Shane’s face crumples is near orgasmic, despite his hand stilling on his dick and preventing any real orgasm. He gives two sharp gasps of breath that have his chest heaving as he ducks into his elbow. “Hh’ISCHhu! Hh’DTSCHhe! I n-heh-need- hdTSCHhiw! H’TSCH Ilya, it’s sti-hih-il right- heh…hh’GZt’TSCHeh! Hh’ESCHuh!” Each forceful dip of Shane’s head has his glasses dip lower on his nose, then lower, and finally slide off onto the sheets. It’s probably that which sends Ilya over the edge, cumming hard over his hand in sync with the final expulsion. Shane stays unaware behind his elbow, blinking quickly to clear the allergic tears from his vision before sniffling and leaning out of frame for a tissue.

“Better?” Ilya smirks through his panting, reaching behind the phone for his glass of vodka as he watches Shane sniffle in the aftermath.

“Much. Oh…did you-?” Shane sniffs, repositioning his glasses with an almost self conscious blush now dusting his cheeks.

“Sorry,” Ilya shrugs with one shoulder, tilting his head and not looking particularly sorry, “you are too-” he mouths a few words before settling, “irresistable.”

The way Shane bites his lip makes Ilya grin, he shifts closer to the screen to give him his full attention. As much as he enjoys being the one to unravel the tight spring that is Shane Hollander, it’s just as euphoric to watch. Perhaps even more so as his freckles pop against a backdrop of irritated red and permanently wrinkling skin. Ilya’s sure he hasn’t gotten hard this quickly since high school, the thought making his head spin. With a guttural whine, Shane’s head falls back against the pillow as he cums. His hips buck just high enough for Ilya to see his perfect dick on his screen, he swallows hard and sets his jaw.

“I need to shower,” Shane grumbles, yanking a wad of tissues and folding them politely- always politely- over his nose.

“Ah, without me?” This must be amazing vodka if it can make Ilya spout nonsense like that.

“Your father just died, Rozanov. You shouldn’t be wasting your time on the phone with me.” As if any time Ilya can spend with Shane is a ‘waste’, he pouts at the mere assumption.

“I’d just forgotten, but thanks for bringing it back up.” That seems to give Shane pause, make his eyes do that thing where they scan Ilya’s entire face like he’s an open book. Whatever he finds there makes him roll his eyes fondly, a look Ilya is much more enamored by.