mostly sickfics✨

Collin clicked his phone screen off, finally making eye contact with Greyson. “You missed my promotion dinner last month, did you not?” he asked, voice filled with venom. Greyson’s face flamed, and Collin turned back to his phone. “How quickly we forget things that have nothing to do with us.”

Biting the inside of his cheek, Greyson suppressed a scream. “I work in a restaurant,” he said, voice wavering. “It was a Saturday night, and you didn’t give me any notice. I can’t abandon the restaurant on a Saturday night.”

“But you can abandon me,” Collin said over his shoulder.

Greyson pressed his lips together, unwilling to sink to his boyfriend's level of petty. He was better than screaming the house down. If Collin wanted to do this, it was on him, not on Greyson. Fuck him.

Greyson stayed silent. Collin scoffed.

“Good luck with the award dinner,” he said, shooing Greyson with a flick of his wrist. Greyson took this bait, grabbed his things and ripped the door open with force. As he slammed the door shut, he heard Collin get the last word: “I hope it’s everything you dreamed of.”

***

Elijah knew from the moment Greyson blew through the back door of the restaurant that today was going to be a day.

“What the hell do you mean he isn’t coming?” he asked as Greyson bent forward in his chair to place his head in his hands. “The whole fucking dinner is practically for you, for Christ’s sake.”

“He’s punishing me,” Greyson mumbled into his lap. “For missing his promotion dinner last month.”

Elijah blanched. “You mean the one he literally told you about day of? Like, an hour before service?”

Greyson looked up from his hands with a pained smile. “That very one,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut again. Elijah flinched as Greyson pressed his fingers into his right eyeball, the third time since he’d sat in the office ten minutes ago that he insisted on fucking with the thing.

“Stop touching your eye,” he said, gently pulling Greyson’s hand away from his face. “The fuck is wrong with it, anyway?”

Squeezing his hand into a fist to keep from pressing at his face again, Greyson shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, miserably. “Allergies, or something. It fucking burns.”

“I think we have eyedrops in the cabinet, if you want to look,” Elijah offered, before opening the drawer between them and rummaging around himself. Within moments, he produced a tiny bottle that he placed in front of the chef, who nodded his thanks. “I’m sorry about Collin being an asshole,” he said, a consolation prize at best.

“Yeah,” Greyson said, snatching up the bottle and squeezing a few drops into his eye. “Me too.” He put the bottle down and regarded his boss again. “Guess it’s just me and you toniihh – hh! – hhITZCCH-uh!” Again, Greyson hung his head in his lap, an attempt to keep from sneezing in Elijah’s face.

“Bless,” Elijah said, opening the drawer again to look for some Claritin. “What are you so fuckin’ allergic to in the middle of October?” he asked as he snatched up the small blue bottle. Again, Greyson shrugged, defeated.

“Collin’s bullshit?” he said, pawing at his nose. “I don’t know, man.” Elijah shook a pill out of the bottle, handed it to Greyson who swallowed it dry. “Fuck, this was supposed to be such a fun night.”

In his chest, Elijah felt his heart rip in half. “Hey,” he said, placing a hand on Greyson’s bouncing leg. “Grey. It’s still going to be fun. Okay? You’re getting Best New Chef in the city. That’s huge. Fuck Collin, if he doesn’t care about that then he’s a dick. Alright?”

A small smile flitted over Greyson’s lips. “Okay,” he said. “Alright, yeah. Sure.”

Elijah patted Greyson’s leg again, before turning back to his computer. “Good man,” he said. “I have our suits hanging in the host closet. We leave at four. You’re sure Matt will be good tonight by himself?”

“Does he have a choice?” Greyson asked, once again messing with his eyeball. Elijah huffed out a laugh.

“Good point,” he said, making room for Greyson to move past him. “Go, make sure they’re prepped. It’ll be fun tonight, I promise. Okay?”

Still rubbing his eye, Greyson stood and nodded. “Sure, Lij,” he said, pulling his chef’s coat on and heading into the kitchen. “Whatever you say.”

***

It was around one p.m. when Greyson decided he wasn’t going to tell Elijah.

His boss was just trying so hard. Between trying to make Greyson forget about Collin and his petty bullshit and trying to hype Greyson up for the award itself, Elijah was nearly falling over himself trying, trying, trying. He didn’t need anything else added to his plate, Greyson reasoned to himself. Certainly not –

“HFFSHH-uhh! Hh-HRRSHHH-uee!” Greyson sneezed into a handful of paper towels, a vain attempt to dampen the sound that he was sure wasn’t working. Earlier this morning, when he was still mostly focused on being angry with Collin, Greyson assumed his claim of allergies had been correct – after all, his sinuses had been prickling since he woke up, and his throat had a weird catch in it that could have been written off, at least for a little bit, as allergic scratchiness. And his eye, his eye, his fucking eye -

That was what had given it away; the burning, painful itch that wouldn’t leave him be for longer than a second at a time. Rarely had Greyson ever had allergies that made his eyes itch and burn, but he had had something else before, something that happened to him occasionally, when stress and a headcold held him hostage as a team.

Pink eye. God, fucking pink eye.

As a kid, he got it often; he was the middle child of five boys, all of whom played sports and rolled around in the dirt for fun, so illnesses – even the more bizarre ones – trampled their house pretty much every week. Now, as an adult, it was much more rare but on occasion he did still succumb. Like, he was fairly certain, he had now.

Collin, of course, was the one who passed on the cold – a cold he picked up at work that Greyson assumed he’d been able to avoid, since his boyfriend got over it almost a week before. Of course he would come down with it now, he found himself thinking as he blew his nose and tossed the paper towels he had pressed against his face. Of course.

The pink eye usually didn’t show up until he was a couple of days into his symptoms, but with the stress of the awards dinner Greyson assumed he just… hadn’t realized he was getting sick until right now. He tried to think back on the past few days – had he been a little out of it? Maybe. A little stuffed up? Sure, it was possible.

Fortunately for Greyson, he was busy enough prepping up for the evening to keep from having too many interactions with Elijah. There were a couple of close calls; Elijah had definitely heard him sneezing more than a few times, but it wasn’t anything that he couldn’t write off as the already-established allergy story they had both agreed upon earlier. The eye was the only thing he was afraid was going to give him away.

“Jesus christ,” Elijah said around two when he came to the prep kitchen to check on Greyson, “your eye looks fucking awful.”

As if he didn’t know, as if he wasn’t absolutely consumed by the need to touch and fuck with it every moment. “It’s okay,” Greyson said, attempting to keep his voice level as he butchered a chicken. “Just really red.”

“I don’t know, man,” Elijah said, taking a step closer to more thoroughly examine Greyson’s face. “Are you sure? It looks really painful.”

It is, Greyson thought, his hand twitching with the want to press into the stupid thing. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he muttered, managing, just barely, to keep the congestion out of his voice. Elijah sighed through his nose.

“Alright,” he said, not convinced. “Let me know if it gets worse, yeah?”

Yeah. Sure. That would definitely happen.

“HRTSZCHH-uee!” A sudden sneeze, aimed into the sleeve of his chef’s coat, ripped Greyson back to the present. “Huhh - ! NGTSZZCHH-uhh!”

The sneezing had picked up in earnest around three, and with it went any energy Greyson had started the day with. Every moment, he got closer to just telling Elijah he was sick and wanted to skip the stupid goddamn dinner – but in the end, he just couldn’t. Because Elijah was trying so hard for him, and because he couldn’t let Collin win by slinking home before five and going to bed instead of going to the dinner that he had basically begged his boyfriend to join. He was not about to let stupid Collin and the stupid fucking cold he’d passed on win.

For what felt like the millionth time that day, Greyson washed his hands as thoroughly as he could, promising himself that now was the time he was going to stop fucking with his infected eyeball. He attempted a slow, deep breath – you are in charge of your body, you don’t have to touch your eye, you don’t have to sneeze – which was abruptly ended by a hoarse, barking cough. Christ, he couldn’t catch a fucking break here.

Right on cue, in the midst of a coughing fit, Greyson heard Elijah call to him from the front kitchen. “Grey?” Elijah’s voice bounced off the walls of the prep kitchen. “You good back there?”

No, Greyson thought, finally getting his lungs under control enough to call back to his boss. “All good,” he said, his voice slightly clipped. “Sorry.”

There was a beat of silence, before Elijah called back. “We leave in thirty minutes, okay? As soon as the boys get here.”

“Okay,” Greyson called back before, unthinkingly, pressing his fingers once again into the socket of his eye. He flinched, then cursed, then turned the sink on again.

It was going to be a long night.

***

The suits fit perfectly, the ballroom at the Four Seasons was immaculate, and the food looked beautiful. Sure, Greyson’s stupid boyfriend had abandoned him, but other than that, it should have been an absolutely perfect night for the chef. His first big award, one of many, Elijah was sure of it. Greyson had talent in spades, and worked harder than anyone else Elijah knew. This should have been everything, a night to remember whenever he got his first Michelin star, or James Beard award. This, right here.

That, of course, was never how these things went.

“Hh-NTSXCHH-uhh! HTSZCH-ue! NGTSHHH-uee!” Greyson, for what seemed to be the thousandth time since they got to the hotel twenty minutes before, placed his whiskey on the small table he and Elijah stood at and pressed the sleeve of his suit jacket over his nose and mouth. Elijah sighed.

“Bless you,” he said, placing a soft hand on Greyson’s shoulder. “Nobody’s looking at us right now, you don’t have to… try to hold them in like that. It sounds like your head is going to explode.”

A laugh – or maybe a cough, Elijah couldn’t be sure – escaped Greyson’s throat, and he sucked through his nose before lowering the sleeve. “Thangks,” Greyson said, voice teetering between ‘rough’ and ‘ruined’. “Just tryigg ndot to gross everyone out,” he muttered.

Elijah gave his friend a quick once-over; even behind the thick-framed, fake pair of glasses they’d picked him up at the drug store, he could tell that Greyson’s eye was incredibly fucked-up. Not to mention the fact that he was pale as his own undershirt, and breathing solely through his mouth. Anyone with a lukewarm IQ would’ve been able to tell that Greyson Abbott, recipient of Best New Chef Manhattan, was sick as fuck.

“I don’t think anyone’s grossed out,” Elijah promised, handing Greyson his drink back. “I think maybe people are… concerned? But definitely not grossed out.”

Greyson shrugged, before downing his glass of whiskey. “M’okay,” he said.

This had been the chef’s line since they left the restaurant. Once he was dressed in his suit and Elijah finally got a good look at him, it took him barely a moment to piece the day together. The eye saga. The sneezing. The refusal to sit in the office for five minutes once he’d begun working; all of it only pointed to one thing.

“You’re sick,” Elijah said as they both closed their car doors. “Aren’t you?”

“M’okay,” Greyson had mumbled, not looking in Elijah’s direction. Elijah pressed his lips together, sat back at the wheel.

“Dude,” he said, “we’re not going anywhere until you’re honest with me. It’s fine if you’re sick, I just want to know so we can get you some meds before this thing. Because this is about to be the longest fucking night of your life if you feel like shit for it.”

For a moment, Elijah could tell that Greyson was going to try and deny it again. If the chef was anything, it was tenacious, and that tenacity applied to everything, including denial of illness. But when he turned to look at Elijah and saw the look of concern on the GM’s face, he did something Elijah had not yet, in the year and a half they had worked together, been witness to: he burst into tears.

“I have fucking pink eye,” Greyson half-sobbed, the admission cracking his voice like a teenager. “Collin gave mbe some horrible fuck-ass cold, and now I have mother-fucking pink eye for mby first ever award dinner.”

Elijah wasn’t exactly sure what to do; he had been described by former girlfriends as prickly at best, devoid of emotion at worst. It wasn’t that he had no empathy – in fact, he felt the emotions of others quite deeply, if he was being honest, almost too much, to the point of paralysis in situations like these. A crying man in a suit in the front seat of his car wasn’t exactly something he was prepared for. Gently, he reached across the car and placed a hand on Greyson’s forehead.

“Woof,” Elijah said when Greyson shook his hand off. “Quite the fever there.”

“Add it to the pile,” Greyson said, closing his eyes and sitting back in his seat. “Fuck. Sorry, Lij, sorry, I don’t kndow what the fuck is wrong with mbe, just – the Collin thing this mborning, and the award, and mby eye hurts so fuckigg bad, I just – sorry.” With effort, he opened his eyes and looked at Elijah, attempting a smile. “I’mb okay. Sorry.”

“Yeeeah,” Elijah said, raising an eyebrow, “I mean, you’re definitely not okay, but like… it’s all good, man. You’re sick, and your boyfriend is being a dick. That shit sucks. You don’t have to apologize for being upset when upsetting shit happens. You know?”

Greyson bit his lip, shrugged, and pressed his fingers into his infected eye. “Sure,” he said, defeated. “Yeah. If you say so.”

Unsure how to make any of this better, Elijah just squirmed in his seat for a minute. What the hell was he supposed to say? The situation was objectively fucked up. “Do you… still want to go to the dinner?” he asked, the only question he could think of with them sitting in the car outside the restaurant. Greyson bleated out a laugh.

“Yeah,” he said. “I do. It’s stupid, but… yeah, I want to.”

“It’s not stupid,” Elijah promised. “Let’s go get you some meds first, okay? If we’re a few minutes late no one will care.”

And so, in full suits and ties, the two of them had trekked over to the pharmacy and loaded Greyson up on cold medicine – dayquil, cough drops, the heaviest-duty eyedrops they sold over the counter, basically anything they saw that promised Greyson would look and sound even a little less awful was tossed into the basket. The glasses, Elijah thought, were a nice touch.

“They make you look… serious,” he said, as he handed them over to Greyson.

“Do they really,” Greyson deadpanned, donning the plastic frames. “Or do they just distract fromb mby stupid eyeball?”

Elijah tipped his head from one side to the other, considering his answer. “Six of one, half-dozen of the other,” he finally landed on, prompting the first real smile he’d seen from Greyson all day.

They doped him up as well as they could, placed the eyedrops in the inner pocket of Greyson’s suit, and hoped for the best. Thus far, things had gone about as well as Elijah expected.

“Sorryexcuseme – HTSSCCHH-uee! Fuckin – HRRTSZCCHH! HRRSTZZCHH!” Greyson stopped one of the servers passing out champagne in his tracks to hastily pull a handful of cocktail napkins off the tray he was holding, sneezing violently into the handful and – thankfully – away from the server. Somehow managing not to tip the tray entirely, the server took a step back and steadied the glasses, looking only slightly perturbed.

“Bless you, Chef,” the server said, placing two glasses of champagne on the table in front of Elijah and Greyson, as well as the rest of the cocktail napkins on the tray, and turning on his heels to leave. From behind the makeshift tissues, Elijah could see Greyson’s face flame.

“Thangks,” he muttered, though the server was already gone. The biggest issue about being sick at this event, they quickly figured out, was that Greyson’s photo was blasted, massive and looming, on the screen at the front of the ballroom – literally everyone and their mother knew who he was here. Hiding, in any sense of the word, was out of the question.

“This is such a fuckigg ndightmare,” Greyson muttered, balling up the cocktail napkins and shoving them in his suitjacket pocket. “What the fuck was I thingking combing here.”

Again, Elijah felt his heart shatter for his friend. He was right; this whole thing was a fucking nightmare. But they were here, and people wanted to congratulate Greyson, and fuck, Greyson deserved the congratulations. Since Elijah had hired him, the chef had worked more than a hundred hours a week, every week. He changed the menu daily – daily, something Elijah didn’t even know was possible with the tight margins the restaurant had to work within, though Greyson made it look easy, balancing the food cost every Sunday night to make sure they weren’t going over budget. He was hungry, something that Elijah so rarely saw in anyone other than himself. Hungry, and gave a fuck about Elijah’s dream, his vision.

None of that was even to mention the fact that Greyson was very obviously the heart of that restaurant. The servers loved him, weren’t afraid to ask questions about the food, and the cooks would have just about taken a bullet for him. They’d retained nine out of the ten cooks they opened Elliot’s with, a number that felt near-impossible in this industry.

So they could make the best of this. They would. “It sucks that you’re so sick,” Elijah said, placing a hand on Greyson’s sagging shoulder. “But… Grey, you should really try to enjoy this. You work hard as fuck, dude. This is your night.”

Greyson shrugged, picked up another cocktail napkin, and wrenched to the side away from Elijah. “HRRFFSH-uee! Snf. If it’s mby ndight,” he said, wiping his nose and turning to face Elijah once again, “thend where the fugck is mby boyfriend?”

A beat of silence went by. Elijah wasn’t sure what to say; it was a fair question. Collin seemed… difficult, to say the least, but Greyson, for all his bitching about the man, never took well to anyone calling out Collin’s neglectful, or even abusive, behavior.

“I don’t know, man,” Elijah said, shrugging. “Maybe give him a call? See if he’s changed his mind.”

Greyson took the glass of champagne before him and swallowed it in one glug. “Ndo, thangks,” he said, pushing the fake glasses to the top of his head and pressing the flat of his palm into his red, weeping eye. “I’ve had endough humiliation for one day.”

Before Elijah could say anything else, the banquet captain – a woman he knew well, who was a host at EMP when he was a manager, way back in the day – approached the two of them with a clipboard in her hand.

“Hey, Elijah,” she said, smiling at her former manager before turning to Greyson. “Chef,” she said, looking Greyson up and down, concerned. “Are you still going to be going up on stage to make a speech when you receive the award?”

Greyson’s mouth hung open then, like a fish attempting to breathe air. Still with a hand placed over his eye, Greyson turned to Elijah, stunned. Elijah mirrored the look. Oh, fuck.

“Oh, fuck,” Greyson said, before turning away to once again sneeze into his sleeve.

***

“Greyson, you have to at least go up there and receive the award, c’mon man,” Elijah’s face was one of pure anxiety as he begged Greyson. He was wringing his hands – literally wringing his hands, what the fuck – but Greyson couldn’t bring himself to do anything other than shake his head.

“Lij,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, “I really cand’t.”

“Please,” Elijah said, kneeling next to the chair Greyson was sat on, in the middle of the Four Season’s kitchen.

When the banquet captain asked them if Greyson would be receiving the award, making a speech, his first instinct was to say of course, to accommodate no matter how horrible he looked and felt, no matter if he thought he was moments away from passing away. But something about what Elija had said to him – it’s your night, you should try to enjoy it – made him feel… bold.

“I wond’t be receiving the award,” Greyson said when he got control of his nose and lungs, sniffling into another handful of cocktail napkins. “I’mb sigck as fuck, I’mb so sorry. But Elijah would be happy to go up and speak.”

The banquet captain had accepted this, scribbling something down on her clipboard and thanking the two of them for letting her know, bounding off to go put out some other fire, all while Elijah had stood next to Greyson in stunned silence.

“You’re kidding me,” Elijah said when he finally regained the power of speech. “Greyson, I am not giving a speech, it isn’t even my award! It’s not even the restaurant’s award, it’s yours.”

“Lij,” Greyson said, motioning to himself – his nearly-closed, crusty eye, his red nose, his feverish pallor. “Do you thingk I would be able to go up there and say anything? I cand barely get through five words without snee – sneezingHFFSSCCHH-uhh!” He hadn’t meant it to be, but the timing on that one couldn’t have been more perfect.

Elijah groaned. “You cannot make me do this, Grey,” he said. Greyson just shrugged.

“Ndo, I cand’t.” he said, blowing his nose as gently as he could into the tiny napkins. “But… I mbean, it’s been a pretty shitty day for mbe. It would mbean a lot, Lij. Mbore than you know.”

So now, not an hour later, the two of them were holed up together in the makeshift backstage, which was just the prep area of the Four Season’s kitchen. Fitting, Greyson thought.

“I can’t, Elijah, I’mb sorry,” Greyson said now, shaking his head. “I ndeed you to do it. Please.”

“Elijah, are you ready?” the banquet captain asked, peeking her head into the back kitchen. “Everyone is seated.”

The GM looked ready to vomit, but Greyson gave him a light little push from his seat anyway. “You’ve got this,” Greyson said, smiling as well as he could. “Knock ’em dead.”

Elijah pressed his lips together, swallowed, and nodded. “This is a one-time-thing, by the way,” he said before turning to go on stage. “Next award, you’re on your own.”

Greyson smiled in earnest at that. “Heard, boss,” he said. “Thangk you.”

Taking a deep breath, Elijah fixed his suit coat and nodded at the banquet captain. “Okay,” he said. “I’m ready.”

The crowd quieted as Elijah stepped onto the small stage and received the plaque, Greyson’s photo behind him large and looming. Despite his illness, Greyson felt suddenly invigorated, sat in the banquet chair in this unfamiliar back kitchen, barely able to see Elijah. He couldn’t really believe that his boss was doing this for him. I must look pretty fucking shitty, he thought, laughing to himself.

“Good evening,” Elijah said into the microphone. “I, uh… I’m not Greyson,” he motioned to the photo behind him. “If it isn’t obvious.”

The crowd laughed. A showman, despite it all, Greyson thought.

“Um, I’m Elijah Morrison, I’m the owner of Elliot’s. Greyson couldn’t come up to receive the award tonight, but he sends his deepest thanks to everyone on the board who chose him to receive it.” Elijah took a deep breath then, holding Greyson’s plaque in both hands like a vice.

“I wanted to take a minute and just say a few things about Greyson,” he said. “He… I hired Greyson just a few days after opening the restaurant, after my first chef quit on me with no notice. He was – he is – so young, I didn’t want to hire him. I wanted someone seasoned, some old-head, someone well known.” He looked into the back kitchen then, caught Greyson’s eye. “Thank fucking god I didn’t get what I wanted.

“Greyson is the hardest working man on the planet,” Elijah said. “He not only rises to the occasion, he exceeds expectations at every juncture. Greyson Abbott is the type of man that only comes around once in a generation; not only does he work harder than anyone I’ve ever met, he does it with a smile. A joke. He would give you the shirt off his back, even if it left him with nothing left to wear. Greyson gives everyone a thousand more chances than they deserve. He sees the good in people who no one else sees anything good in. Not only that, but he’s talented, too – what an asshole.” The crowd laughed at that, and Greyson pressed his lips together.

“No one is as deserving of this award as Greyson Abbott,” Elijah said. “And I know he doesn’t believe that, which makes it all the more true. So, here’s to Greyson: the best chef I know, and the best friend I’ve ever had.” He raised the plaque as the crowd began clapping. “Cheers.”

The crowd went wild. In the kitchen, for the second time that day, Greyson felt hot tears course down his cheeks, burning his infected eye and further stuffing him up, not that he gave a fuck at the moment. As Elijah stepped off the stage and back into the kitchen, Greyson couldn’t get the tears to stop.

“Too much?” Elijah asked as he handed Greyson his award. The chef just shook his head, allowed himself a small, crazed laugh.

“You’re an asshole,” he said through the tears, pulling his friend in for a hug. “Thangk you, Elijah.”

“Hey.” Hollander offered the same stupid, awkward greeting he did practically every time the hotel room door swung shut behind him, eyes darting around the small room in the dim light, trying to acclimate himself. He was wearing a mock-vintage Metros t-shirt that the team had put out a couple of years ago. It was one of his favorites. Ilya wasn’t completely sure why he knew that, but the moment he’d caught sight of it his brain had offered up the words ‘favorite’ and ‘soft’ so apparently it was something they’d discussed before.

The blond looked him over silently, with the gaze of a starved man contemplating an endless buffet. Starving man would not bother with niceties. He stepped closer, head tilting as he contemplated where to begin.

“I can’t…uh I can’t stay.”

“What?” The Russian’s trance was broken for a second. He never stayed anyway, and with the Raiders’ early start the next morning, plus the Metros’ rookie back at Shane’s place, he’d hardly thought there was a need to clarify how long this would take. They’d literally done this exact thing last week, and he hadn’t needed to state how long he’d been there before he started pushing him against the wall as they kissed.

“I just thought I should tell you in person. I want to… you know,” He nodded towards the bed, “But I can’t.”

So, what, he’d come here just to tease him? Show him what he wasn’t going to get that evening? Was he mad about the loss still? Or… did he want to be talked out of leaving? People were so stupidly complicated sometimes.

“You want, I want, so you stay. Simple.” Confident that he’d solved the situation, Ilya pulled off his own shirt.

Hollander looked pissed, pointedly avoiding eye contact with the blond’s bared torso. “Sometimes it’s not that simple, Rozanov. Sometimes it’s not just about what people w-” He paused, pressing his lips together into a thin line, discomfort appearing to suddenly mount.

Ilya tipped his head to one side, analysing him. His thoughts flitted from some mortal injury he’d somehow missed being inflicted on the Canadian at one of his last few games, to something along the lines of a chastity belt that his own nudity had suddenly made extremely uncomfortable for the brunet, to… the completely opposite possibility.

“You have plug in or something?”

“What?” The question broke Hollander’s focus, and Ilya was treated to one singular second of those wide, startled eyes that he so loved to provoke before they were slamming shut and the brunet was ducking in on himself, pinching his nose between finger and thumb. “hNGT! heHNGT!”

The sneezes made barely any noise, but what little of them was audible, was telling. There was an insistent force behind them that savored of multitudes more having preceded the double, and the Canadian’s voice squeaked with the small vocalisation, strain showing itself.

“God bless you.” The blond watched him straighten hesitantly, with a soft sniffle.

“Excuse me.” The strain persisted, and Hollander cleared his throat, gaze directed awkwardly at the carpet beneath his feet. “Thanks.”

“You are okay?” As always, making this inquiry caused the brunet to stand up slightly straighter, squaring his shoulders in a close to imperceptible demonstration of defiant strength. But Ilya had the advantage here, and they both knew it.

“Something in the air, I guess.”

“Is your fucking city, Hollander. Only thing in air is your germs.”

This assertion seemed to spark surprise-apparently they hadn’t both known that Ilya had the advantage, did he really think he was doing that good of a job of hiding his illness?- and then annoyance again, “Fine, I’m leaving. I said I was leaving, so-”

“You are not leaving.” The Russian responded impassively, taking the indignant player’s chin between finger and thumb and tilting his head back to examine his face as though assessing it’s suitability for inserting his dick into, in its current state. Unsympathetic, single-minded, salacious…. simple. This was supposed to be simple.

Ilya, distracted by his train of thought diverting, apparently tipped the brunet’s head back too far. Hollander made an interesting spluttering noise and stepped back, slamming into the door. The blond winced-at the noise, definitely not because he thought it might have hurt- triggering a brief apologetic expression as the stricken man ducked back into the safety between his finger and thumb.

“hehNGT! EhNGT!”

“G-” He began, expecting that to have been the end of it.

“hEHNGTchh!” It wasn’t. “hTSHh!” The brunet struggled to maintain control, the sneeze bursting out of his mouth despite his strong grip on his nose.

Eyebrows raised so high they were considering becoming part of his hairline, Ilya watched him gear up for another one, and, barely thinking, offered him the t-shirt he was still holding in one hand.

“Wha-ahh-t the fuck? N-hh-no. hheHTDShh!”

“Hollander.” The Russian deadpanned. “I am in charge tonight. You are making mess all over hands, and I have plans for hands later. So-.”

There was neither room nor time for argument, as Ilya manoeuvred the item of clothing into his grip, the Canadian’s eyes already shutting, and breath spiralling irreversibly, “hTDSHhew!”

“Budʹzdorov.”

“Sorry.” Hollander croaked vacantly, fabric still pressed to his face, the single word causing him to dissolve into a coughing fit that he folded in on himself and crushed the shirt over his mouth to muffle, torso shaking as he fought for air. It took him slightly too long to regain his composure, subtly wiping his nose and mouth before standing up, back against the door again.

“You are sick.” Ilya stated, once he seemed to be over the little display of symptoms for the moment.

The brunet didn’t respond, busy trying to figure out what the fuck to do with the t-shirt he’d just ruined.

“Is not problem.” Ilya continued, undeterred by the rapid disbelieving eye contact that the statement earned him. “I will fuck this out of you.”

“You will fuck this out of me?” His voice vanished in a squeak of disbelief at the end of the repeated sentence, the high pitch too much for his damaged throat.

“Yes.”

“I’ll get you sick too.”

No fucking shit, Hollander. “You breathe in my face all night at face-off, and you cough on me when I check you-” In hindsight, he probably should have realised that the other player wasn’t just doing that to be an asshole. “-so is not like is first time I get your germs today.”

The brunet looked guilty, and if he could have stepped any further back without breaking the door down and tumbling backwards into the hallway, Ilya was sure he would have. As it was, he settled for looking guilty, sighing softly through his nose like a put-upon puppy, and then immediately looking like he had to sneeze again, which currently meant making a very itchy, desperate, surprised expression, and then staring into Ilya’s far-too-close eyes with a look of extreme panic.

Wordlessly, the Russian reached out to take his hand. Hollander’s already softly hitching breath snagged, eyelashes fluttering as he tried to keep his eyes open and roving Ilya’s face for clues on what he was doing. The blond raised their hands into his line of sight, reminding him that he was still holding the t-shirt. Hollander’s expression flickered into realisation, relief, and then back to the itchy-looking one again as he lifted it to his face, Ilya letting go just in time.

“hTDSHh! hEh…hTCHhew!”

“God bless you.”

The brunet’s cheeks were tinged with the softest blush as he glanced up at him, regretfully. “Thanks, sorry, I don’t know why I’m doing that so much.”

“Sneezing?”

“Yeah.”

“You are sick, and you do not know why you are sneezing so much?”

“Shut up. What if people hear me?” Hollander looked at the walls as though they were about to slide away, gameshow style, to reveal the entire Boston Raiders roster crammed into the two adjoining rooms.

Ilya shrugged. “We win. Everyone is out, except Marleau, maybe, and you sound like girl when you sneeze anyway, so-”

“Fuck you! I don’t sound like a fucking girl.”

“You do.”

“Maybe I should just sneeze a million times so they think it’s just you in here.” The brunet retorted.

He paused, the chirp landing awkwardly, not quite rolling off him like the comments usually did, because it didn’t quite fit right. And normally Hollander was pretty good at knowing exactly where to hit to make it sting in a playful, competitive way. “Would not help. They have not heard me sneeze.”

“What?” The Canadian was completely thrown by that fact, apparently. “Never? You’re not exactly subtle about it.” Yeah, not with him he wasn’t.

“Fuck off. No, never.” Except for Marleau, who was about the only player on the roster he could trust not to use displays of weakness against him in any way, even if it was just to fuel a half-hearted chirp. Marly was freakishly good at knowing where the line was between pissing the captain off and actually making him uncomfortable. Which in itself kind of made him uncomfortable.

“Wow that’s…”

“What, you make point to sneeze in front of team? Is sign of good captain?”

“No, I don’t- I mean, maybe we sh- aren’t we supposed to trust each other?”

Ilya stared into his eyes, a million disjointed thoughts rushing through his mind, about trust, camaraderie, honesty, Hollander, vulnerability, leadership, Hollander, chemistry, strength, Hollander sucking his dick- yeah, however shitty they were as leaders did not fucking matter right then. He just wanted Hollander to suck his dick.

“Suck my dick.”

“Wha-?”

“Literally.” He took several steps back, in the direction of the bed, sticking his thumbs into the waistband of his shorts and starting to take them off. “Knees. Here. Suck my dick.”

…

Ilya was concerned that he hadn’t really noticed how much noise a blowjob made before. Not that either of them were moaning at the top of their voices or anything, or that the head was so bad that he’d found his mind wandering to the soundscape of the hotel room, but… it was kind of unignorable.

Hollander was hard at work, on his knees on the rough hotel carpet in front of the blond, bobbing up and down with the full, hardening length of him moving in and out of his mouth. He was visibly turned on too, trousers tight at the crotch, and hips shifting every so often as he grinded against the material. The sound of the rhythmic penetration was not overly loud or distracting, but the clicking of the brunet’s throat, the heavy, panted breaths, and what was frankly rapidly snowballing from urgent sniffling into some kind of deranged snorting sound were pulling him out of the realm of pleasure and placing him firmly somewhere between disgust and concern.

As much as breath control was an interesting element to bring into the act, and something they hadn’t experimented with yet, and as much as he loved the mix of determination and helpless panic in the brunet’s expression, the sniffling was kind of setting him on edge. Both because one wrong breath meant his dick would be covered in the contents of Hollander’s nasal passageways, and because it was a constant, jarring noise, when he was trying to let his mind wander to more pleasurable places.

“Okay, move.” He pressed on the Canadian’s forehead, detaching him from his dick abruptly.

The brunet kept his head tipped back as he sat down on his haunches, disgust flickering on the edges of his entranced expression as his nose clearly began to drain down his throat. “Why?”

“You can not breathe. I want to finish before you pass out.”

“I can breathe. I can keep going.” His voice started to fade out towards the end of the sentence, and Ilya found himself making pointed, obstinate eye contact through the kneeling man’s hectically fluttering eyelashes.

“You can keep going right now? You don’t want to sneeze first?” It was actually almost boring how easily he could read him right now, there was no challenge, no jeopardy if he guessed wrong, just the brunet’s heart on his sleeve and a sneeze on his face.

“N-hh-no.” His chin tilted up stubbornly.

The Russian sighed, as though exasperated, though really he enjoyed the pushback. It made it more of a game, more of a performance, more exhilarating. “What if I want you to sneeze? What if I order this?”

Hollander considered this, jaw clenched, eyebrows just barely peaked in the centre, holding the sneeze in limbo. “I could maybe do that. A-hh-are you ordering me to…?”

He made him wait. Five seconds of sadistic, spun-out speculation. And then, “Yes, Hollander. Sneeze.”

The brunet did not make him wait in return, “eHNGT! hhNGTch!”

“Budʹzdorov.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Was the muttered reply, the nasal tone to the words making him sound even more pitiful, nose still held tightly between finger and thumb. “Sorry.”

“Means ‘God bless you’. Are you ready to suck my dick again now?”

The Canadian sniffled damply, but he was smiling just a little when he lifted his head to meet Ilya’s gaze. “You have one word that means all that?”

He didn’t deem the quip worthy of a response, picking up his shirt from where Hollander had meticulously folded it and placed it on the floor, almost under the bed, clearly too ashamed of what he’d done to it to keep it anywhere in sight. Which was stupid, because Ilya had almost definitely done worse to it, and most of his other shirts, when he’d been equally sick or much more allergic. This could barely be considered damage. He could probably wear this to sleep tonight.

“Blow.” He commanded, holding it out, squaring his stance as he loomed above the still kneeling man, to enforce his position of power.

“You don’t have tissues?” He immediately voided this attempt, trying to skirt the instruction.

“No. Is shitty hotel room. And I do not use. So, no.”

Hollander looked reluctant, chewing on his lip before stopping to breathe. Ilya, tired and entirely too turned on to wait much longer, employed the eyes that he usually saved for slightly later in the encounter. The Canadian caved immediately. Not a particularly hard battle given that his options were to resist and have his nose drip down his face or his throat for the rest of the night, or to give in and be able to actually breathe during sex.

“I get you real tissues next time, yes?” Ilya ran a hand through the brunet’s hair absently, tone immediately switching to praise as he spoke over the sound of him softly clearing his sinuses out.

“Okay. Thank you.”

Neither of them even hesitated to assume that there would be a next time, even a next time that would require tissues, that whatever this was would persist long enough for the famously health-conscious player to come down sick again while they were playing one another. It was just an attempt to placate him, calm him down enough to fuck him back to health, it didn’t mean anything. Nothing he was doing meant anything to Hollander, and nothing Hollander was doing was meant to be doing anything to him, either.

…

“This is good?”

Shane couldn’t respond, only able to nod feverishly, mouth gaped both to breathe and in response to the feeling of Rozanov pushing deeper into him. This definitely felt like it was more for him than for the blond, even though he’d won the game, and thereby all decision making power for the night, but he would not be pointing that out lest it get him back on his knees on the rough carpet, trying to breathe around his dick. Which would not normally be a problem, he wasn’t the kind of person to try and get out of giving what he owed, but right now that was horrifically hard. Thanks entirely to Hayden, who had spent a week insisting he wasn’t sick and infecting half the team, had just barely lived through their last game against Boston, and then had crashed so hard in the aftermath that he’d missed the next three, and tonight’s one, incapable enough of looking after himself that one of the trainers was staying at his place to ‘keep an eye on him’. Fuck, he did not need to be thinking about Pike right now.

“Yes?” The Russian forced him to clarify, fingers closing around his wrist, squeezing to keep him grounded.

He pushed the word out, breathy and faint through cracked lips, “Yeah.”

Rozanov nodded in response, loosening his grip a bit, the next thrust inadvertently slipping their hands together, fingers interlacing awkwardly, misaligned so Shane’s first three fingers were free. He dug them into the back of the blond’s hand anyway, reaffirming the position without even thinking.

Mind overactive as ever, Shane found himself noticing that lying like this, on his back, was shifting the congestion in his face quite significantly. He’d also noted that having his legs up like this felt amazing, having been on his feet all fucking day, and that the soft bedding under his back was so comfortable that he could almost feel the edge of sleep within his grasp. But the congestion was the pressing issue. Because every so often it would start to drain down his throat with a quiet clicking noise, and then things would start to move around in his sinuses, and a violent little tickle would spring up in his nose.

Every time that happened, he panicked slightly, worrying that the sensation would peak suddenly and he’d find himself sneezing all over himself and Rozanov without the slightest chance to stop it. So at the first hint of the tickle, he would bring his hand up towards his face slightly. The only problem with that was that it was still attached to the blond’s hand, and his delicate attempts to extract his fingers were not enough to dislodge the strong grip that they were caught in.

Before he could make any progress, though, the tickle would wane, and his focus would shift back to the dick being thrust in and out of him, and the owner of said dick, muscles defined with the effort of fucking him, sweat beading on his brow, increased bloodflow turning his lips an irresistibly biteable shade of red.

Shane’s gaze flitted away, over his shoulder to the far wall, as the congestion moved again, the tickle rising in its wake. He started moving their hands closer to his face, fingers spreading wide in an attempt to clue the blond in to his desire to free himself. Don’t sneeze, you don’t have to sneeze, focus on how good this feels, focus on anything else, you’re not going to sneeze right now, you’re-

“What…are you doing?” Rozanov panted, eyes glued to Shane’s face with an expression that was half determined scrutiny and half abstracted lust.

“So-rry, I…” He paused, biting hard down on his lip as the two sensations overwhelming him, rose in synchronicity, “I kind of ha-hH-ve to sneeze again.”

“You need me to stop?” He didn’t look that much like he could, clearly hooked on the pleasure now, the tension of self-restraint apparently building in his body even just at the inconvenience of having to slow down.

“No,” He didn’t even know if the sensation was going anywhere at the moment, so who knew how long they’d have to stop for. “I- I need my hand, though.”

Rozanov shifted his weight, picking up their intertwined hands and manoeuvring them to just beside the brunet’s face, waving them back and forth a little once they were suitably close. “Is here.”

As much as he wanted to argue, his breath had finally caught in a meaningful way, and he could tell his expression was already betraying him, because the blond gave a small nod of permission or acknowledgement, keeping up the slow, predictable pace to allow him to focus on the tickle.

Shane lifted his hand to his face, pinching his nose between the first finger and thumb, momentarily distracted by what appeared to be the side of Rozanov’s thumb brushing against his lip, and then tightening his grip, and allowing his eyelids to flutter closed, as he surrendered to the feeling.

“heHNGT!”

“G- oh…god bless you.”

“hhEHNGtt!”

“… god bless you.”

“hhihEHNGTch!”

“Blya, Hollander, budʹzdorov.”

Shane could feel himself clenching around Rozanov with each sneeze, an unintended by-product of the effort needed to stifle them. Apparently, he had also noticed this, because every time Shane’s eyes opened in the wake of a sneeze, the blond’s were half shut, riding a wave of pleasure. He’d been about to apologise for ruining the moment by reminding them both how disgusting he currently was, but it seemed that he was actually only improving things.

“hhEh-”

…

Ilya watched his eyebrows pinch together urgently for the fourth time in a row, huffed breaths against their linked hands the only indicator of how close he was to the next sneeze. He was so helpless like this, Ilya controlling his pleasure, his nose controlling his pain, and yet still exerting that control over the sneezes, keeping them quiet, contained, letting his symptoms show on his own terms. It was a skill that stirred jealousy in the pit of the blond’s stomach more than any he’d seen displayed out on the ice. Self-control, discipline, unobtrusiveness, it was everything he strove to display, everything he’d been taught to embody… everything that the slightest irritant made completely impossible for him.

Hollander took another wavering breath in, and his fingers tightened around the Russian’s hand like a vice, Ilya feeling first hand the harsh treatment that the brunet’s nostrils were being subjected to. He knew it was only an unintended consequence of their linked fingers, but he allowed himself the smallest pretence that it was the Canadian’s way of keeping him close, reaching out for support, seeking some sort of reassurance as he rode out the fit.

“hhEHNGTt!” The brunet’s abs clenched, muscles starkly defined for a single second as his head jerked upwards slightly from the force of the sneeze. His hips bucked slightly too, and Ilya bit back a moan at the simultaneous squeeze of pressure around his dick. It took all of his self-control not to thrust back harder in response, feeling the pleasure rising to a tangible peak, so close to tipping over the edge. Wait until he’s done. Wait until he’s okay. And then you can fuck every last trace of this virus out of him.

Eyes fluttering open, Hollander let out a warm, shaky breath across the back of Ilya’s hand, loosening his grip, tilting his head back to inhale deeply, mesmerising the blond with his shiny pink lips, still slightly twitching nose, and discomfort-furrowed brow.

“Sorry. Excuse me.”

Ilya realised he’d completely stilled, apart from his thumb, which was stroking the back of the brunet’s hand, partially an effort to not come prematurely, but also out of some kind of instinct to watch, wait, monitor the other man in this moment of ailment and vulnerability. He almost felt like he’d forgotten where they were, who they were, there was no hotel room, no game, no history, no future, there was just him, and Sh- and Hollander, and whatever the fuck Hollander’s immune system was doing to him.

“Budʹzdorov, god bless you. You are okay?” He responded at last.

The Canadian nodded, expression quickly melting from exhausted relief, back to lustful fixation. “Keep going.”

He needed no further encouragement, falling back into a passionate rhythm again, watching, gratified, as the brunet’s mouth fell open with a silent moan of ecstasy. How he’d love to fill that mouth, if he wasn’t already occupied filling another hole.

As though he’d read his mind, Hollander started pulling their hands back towards his face again. At first the blond faltered, wondering if he had to sneeze again, but before he could slow his pace or inquire, his thumb was abruptly inserted into the other player’s mouth. The brunet held the digit between his teeth as he slipped his lips around it, heavy breaths ghosting over Ilya’s hand again.

He stared into the Canadian’s eyes as his tongue ran methodically around his thumb, the significant size difference between his thumb and his dick, and the angle making it a lot easier for Hollander to breathe while he mouthed away at Ilya’s extremities. His hips bucked again, as the blond picked up the pace and the depth, a soft moan more felt than heard as it was huffed out against his hand, and the Russian knew that if they kept this up he was going to come. This felt far better for him than it was for Hollander, and he wanted something to feel good for him, since he’d almost definitely been feeling like shit all day, and then had showed up here only to be coerced into being starved of oxygen by the blond’s dick down his throat.

Ilya pulled all the way out. “Turn over.” He’d barely delivered the instruction before his hand was under the brunet’s thigh, lifting his leg to manually flip him over, the other player malleable and compliant in his grip. Too malleable and compliant. He’d expected some kind of pushback, or at least input on the movement, but no, there was nothing, and he flipped the Canadian onto his front, quick, forceful, and unceremonious.

Hollander hit the bed hard, not dirty hit-hard, not boarding-hard, not hard enough to wind him, but hard enough to knock him out of the rhythm he’d been breathing in. There was a barely audible huffed out breath of surprise, and then he was shaking the entire bed with a violent coughing fit.

“Fuck.” Ilya muttered, watching him push himself up onto his elbows so he could try to breathe without accidentally smothering himself. Even naked, dangerously short of breath, flat on his stomach with the Russian behind him, between his legs, the Canadian made the effort to cough in the direction of his elbow. So polite, so pointless… it made him want to fuck him so hard he forgot where his elbows even were.

The blond didn’t reinsert himself, not yet, leaning forwards and running a large hand over Hollander’s shuddering back, up and down, firm enough to shift the skin around his fingers, feeling the muscles beneath. “Shh.” He clicked his tongue, as though soothing a startled animal, willing the sick man’s lungs into compliance.

Shortly, the coughs turned to intermittent splutters, and then to heavy, raspy breathing, the brunet’s head dipping down towards the mattress as he replenished the spent energy and oxygen. Ilya grimaced behind his back, unseen. He resented the silence, which made it harder to ignore the guilty conscience screaming in his ear. He likes it rough like that, normally. He mentally defended himself. How the fuck was he supposed to know it would do that to him? He needed to fix this. Wasn’t he supposed to be ‘making him better’?

“Water.” The blond spoke before he’d even connected the dots in his conscious mind, coming out in English on mere chance. He was halfway through stretching a leg out in the direction of the floor when Hollander replied, voice borderline unrecognisable, but firm and assured.

“No. Keep going.”

“You are sure?”

“Yes.”

So, he reinserted himself, hand slipping down to rest at the small of the brunet’s back, while he leaned forwards to grasp his dick with the other. The Canadian moaned hoarsely. Ilya’s heart rate picked up at the noise, honing in on his mark, knowing exactly what every single calculated movement he made was doing to-

A door slammed close by in the hallway. Hollander flinched, but the next stroke of Ilya’s fingers down his dick relaxed him again. Like butter in his hands, or whatever that phrase was. Why would you want butter in your hand? As lube maybe?

“Is making you feel better?” The blond distracted himself with the question, purred low in the back of his throat as he fucked the sick man slowly, carefully, in the wake of his mistake. But if Hollander started sneezing like that again, squeezing tight around his dick, shuddering against the mattress, making that helpless, apologetic face…

“It’s-” He began in response, only to be abruptly interrupted by a knock on the door. He flinched again, Ilya slowing his rhythm to a stop as well, both of their eyes snapping towards the sound.

“Roz?” Marly. Fuck. Could not be worse timing.

The blond elected not to reply, adjusting his position to make waiting more comfortable, placing a firm, steadying hand on Hollander’s back again, to silently tell him not to freak out, and not to move. And definitely not to cough or sneeze or make any other Canadian-sounding noises that might give them both away.

After a beat of probably trifold baited breath, the winger knocked again. “Cap? Are you okay, dude?”

“Fuck off, Marly.” Ilya shot back. Clearly he knew he was in there, maybe the headboard was banging against the wall and he hadn’t noticed.

“Yeah? That’s kind of a rough cough, man, just wanted to check you’re all good.”

Every muscle in Hollander’s body tensed, and not in the good way like right before he came or when he’d been sneezing just then. Like he was terrified. Marly was not terrifying. Marly was idiot who did not know when to quit. So, Ilya would tell him when to quit.

“Is not problem, I am fine now, you can go.” He called, before leaning in as close as the angle would allow him to get to Hollander. “I have to fuck you louder, okay? So he knows is not just me in here. If he thinks I am with girl, he will leave me alone.”

“Yeah, okay.” The brunet’s response was breathy, tense, shaky. Ilya pressed the hand on his back down harder, anchoring him to the bed.

“Breathe, Hollander. Is pointless if you pass out.”

He inserted himself again, starting to thrust forcefully, both hands steadying himself against the mattress now, focused on making the bedsprings creak and the frame shudder and whatever ‘I’m fucking someone within an inch of their life in here so you should definitely go put headphones on or go out for the night’ noises he could.

There was silence from the hallway. For the love of fucking-

“Oh yes, da, like that.” He moaned, pointedly.

Hollander’s head snapped around to look over his shoulder at him, apparently not having realised that fucking louder meant making the most stereotypical sex noises he could think of. Ilya almost laughed at how high his eyebrows had climbed up his forehead. They didn’t really get to be loud during sex much, now that he was actually thinking about it. Which was sad because he loved to make the Canadian moan and whine and whimper his name. Stupid thin hotel room walls.

The current thin hotel room walls informed them abruptly that Marleau had retreated to his room again, as the door slammed again. Ilya kept up the increased power, though, wanting to make this worth the brunet’s while. He was rewarded by Hollander’s back arching as he shifted the angle he was hitting into him at, hearing him gasp softly as he reached around to take hold of his dick again.

“Fuck, Rozanov.”

The Canadian made various soft sniffling and moaning noises as Ilya brought him methodically closer and closer to release, alternating between pushing his head into the pillow and tipping it back to gasp at the ceiling, unable to be still between the twin sieges being laid to his body, just barely keeping himself from coming apart all at once. There was that self-control again. It was so goddamn hot to see him using every last drop of it, it was not a reservoir that usually ran dry on the ice, but behind closed doors, Ilya could push him right to the edge of composure, and then over it.

He was almost over the edge himself when he noticed the tension starting to build in the muscular shoulders ahead of him again.

“What is it?” He slowed slightly to ask, running a hand up Hollander’s bare side and earning a shiver in response.

“I… have to sneeze again, I think.”

He thought? Ilya could probably tell him with greater certainty than that, just from his breathing pattern. Fuck, Ilya could probably predict the look on his face, how far he was from coming, and how much ice time he’d racked up that day, just from his breathing pattern. “Okay, so go.” Did he have to tell him every time now or something?

“What if he’s still listening?”

The anxiety in the brunet’s tone was exactly what he’d been trying to avoid. Sex was good for illness, stress not so much. “Hollander, listen to me. You will sneeze now, properly, not hold in like ‘ggt’-” He mimicked the sound of the stifles, “-you have to sneeze properly, but make it sound like girl, okay?”

“Like a girl?” He sounded reluctant, the anxiety still evident.

Ilya upped the firmness in his tone. “Yes. Can you do this for me?” It was not much of an ask, given the sound of the Canadian’s sneezes was feminine to begin with, but asking him to do it on purpose, when he knew that someone was most likely listening?

“…yes.”

“You are sure? I think you can not do this.” Maybe challenging him would be helpful.

This time the response was quicker, more assured. “I can do it.”

“Good.” The blond praised him pre-emptively.

“hhEh…” Hollander’s back swelled as he took in a hitching breath, lungs filling to capacity, and then emptying with a shaky exhale, before the process repeated, “hehH… hHh…”

Ilya slowed his thrusts further, coming into a smooth, constant rhythm, considering whether the sensation of impending orgasm was distracting him, “Is stuck?”

The brunet shook his head. “I need something to c-hh-over with.”

“No.” He responded firmly, “Is better to let it out.”

“It’s gross.”

“Nothing about you is gross.” The phrase was perhaps slightly too eager, too vulnerable, too familiar, so the Russian hardened his tone, making it a command instead of a request. He was in charge tonight after all. “Is about what I want right now, and I want you all over these sheets, Hollander. Your sweat, your spit, your cum. You will make as big of mess as possible for me, yes?”

The response was a small, hitching whine.

“Yes?” Ilya pushed.

“Y-hh-es.”

He didn’t reaffirm the promise this time, instead focusing on adjusting his position so that he was ready to take this all the way in the aftermath of the sneezing, because sooner or later (and almost definitely sooner), Hollander was going to tire himself out, and then this wouldn’t be fun for either of them. The blond placed his hand on the small of the Canadian’s back, spreading his fingers out, and the other on his hip, securing him in place. And then, keeping up the smooth, slow strokes, he waited.

Hollander’s head tipped back, tilted to one side slightly so Ilya could see his mouth fall open, the slight flare of his nostrils, the way his eyes squinted at the ceiling and then squeezed shut.

“eHTCHew!”

The sneeze was mostly directed into his bare shoulder, from what Ilya glimpsed before his own eyes shut automatically in response to the slight added pressure on his dick.

“hTSHhew!” Hollander seemed to remember his instruction before the second one, awkwardly directing it downwards at the sheets below his chest, the shockwave resulting from his head jolting downwards making his hips slam back against Ilya’s.

The blond stared at his hand on the sweat-beaded back in front of him, dug his fingertips into the skin slightly, trying to keep his focus on not coming before his stupid, extremely sick rival, who was helplessly sneezing his head off in his hotel room bed, pretending to be a girl- which he was doing a pretty good job at, actually- so that his best friend wouldn’t realise who he was actually fucking. Holy fucking-

“heHTDSHiew!” The Canadian’s hands fisted in the sheets as he misted Ilya’s pillow with the forceful, but still effeminate sneeze. “hiHSHhew!”

Helplessly snowballing towards climax, Ilya started thrusting again, taking his hand off Hollander’s hip and taking his dick back in his hand again. The brunet gave a slightly less feminine sounding moan, which was cut off by another gasp.

Wait, just wait a second. Ilya willed him. Fucking hold it back, hold it in, do whatever you usually do, or I’m going to-

“eHTSHhew!”

He caught a last glimpse of spray drifting across the bed in the artificial light before his eyes slammed shut and it crashed over him. The blond inadvertently tightened his grip as he deepened his thrusts, seeking out every last drop of pleasure, hearing a muffled moan from the Canadian and feeling his own orgasm taking over his body as he apparently pushed his face into the pillows. This should not be such a good feeling, considering what had led up to it. But fucking hell it was an incredible feeling. Better than last week, somehow.

Breathing harder than he had all night, Ilya pulled out, watching Hollander curl in on himself in response, shaking the bed with one last, soft, “TShhew!” directed into the pillow that his face was still pressed into.

Ilya crawled up the bed and collapsed beside him, staring up at the ceiling as he panted out, “God fucking bless you, Hollander.”

…

The following morning came early, and cold, and unforgiving. Ilya stood in the hotel parking lot waiting for the shuttle to the airport, which had been delayed, warming himself with memories of the night. Pressing against Hollander’s slightly feverish skin, the sweat of exertion dripping from his torso onto the brunet’s back, fingers interlinking, tongues intertwining, changing position over and over, never satisfied with each other’s closeness, wanting to see and touch every inch of him at once, wanting to fill him with a pleasure so intense it would cancel out all the discomfort and pain.

The blond sighed, thumbing over his phone in his pocket, as still and silent as it had been since Hollander left, no update, no chirp, no anything.

“Morning.” Marleau joined him, ignoring the withering look the captain sent in his direction, detecting his desire to be alone but not enabling it.

“Hi.”

“How are you doing?”

What the fuck was he trying to start? “Amazing. Why?” Ilya responded flatly.

“You sounded bad last night. I texted you, but you didn’t respond.” Which he remembered now, a brief ‘u ok?’ sent through just close enough to Hollander’s exit for Ilya to be in the middle of coming down from the high of the encounter, and to be entirely too irritated by everything to text back.

“Is all good. Montréal girl get me sick, I fuck her anyway.” If he’d known that asking him to stay would result in having to falsely admit to sickness just to cover for them both, he would have let Hollander leave.

“Yeah, I heard her too, she sounded twice as rough as you, but people don’t get sick over the course of an hour, cap.”

“We meet last week too. You would not know because you were out all night.”

Marleau looked at him with wary but discerning eyes. “You seem kind of fine, though, and you played well yesterday.”

Ilya sniffled performatively. It was cold out here, and he’d woken up in the last two hours, and he was always at least slightly sniffly anyway, so the sound served to back-up his retort. “Is worse at night, maybe. I do not know, Marly, I am not doctor.”

“Did you see one, though?”

“No. Is not big deal.”

“Okay.” He accepted that, swiping the back of his hand under his nose, shifting from foot to foot to fight off the chill.

They stood in silence for a few seconds, Ilya willing the bus to pull into the parking lot, and willing Marleau to want to sit somewhere else so he wouldn’t have to pull any more fake symptoms out of nowhere. It was slightly daunting to remember that they wouldn’t be fake for that long, after the amount of fluids he’d swapped with the sick man last night…

“Shit.” The brunet muttered, drawing his captain’s attention again as he swung his bag off his shoulder and started to rifle through it. “hhH-Kkf-”

Whatever he was looking for, he evidently didn’t find in time, tipping his head back skywards, before snapping back down towards the floor, “hhEh-hTNGK! hEhTGKkhOo!”

“Budʹzdorov. You are sick also, yes?”

He shrugged, sliding his bag back onto his shoulder, and pinching the bridge of his nose, as though fighting off either a headache or more sneezes. “I guess I might be coming down with something.”

“Must be serious if you do not go out to see your Montréal girl.” Ilya commented absently, pulling his phone out to check that he still had no messages of importance.

Marleau sighed, and then coughed. “Think that’s where I got it from, actually.” Really? If so, that was pretty quick for him, illnesses usually took slightly longer to break through his defences, and it had barely been a normal incubation period’s worth of time since they’d last been here.

“She was sick when you saw her?”

“Mm.” He responded, and then muttered something that sounded like ‘both times.’ but couldn’t be, because they’d only been in Montréal once in the last couple of weeks.

Ilya hadn’t been planning on responding, but even if he had, the winger would have interrupted him, as the airport shuttle pulled into the parking lot, and his hand came down firmly on the captain’s shoulder. “Maybe we sit together, dude, quarantine this shit. Can’t be taking the whole team out.”

“Sure.” Maybe listening to Marly sniffle and cough and be generally disgusting would be punishment enough, in the eyes of the universe, for putting his dick in every hole in Hollander that would receive it, despite knowing that he was feeling shitty, and then he wouldn’t end up getting sick. Or maybe he was just doubling his chances of catching something. Either way, someone had to sit next to the unwell winger, and they both knew that Ilya wouldn’t be an asshole to him about things beyond his control, like the fact that he was almost definitely going to snore for the entirety of the plane ride, and that the changes in pressure would probably do unthinkable things to his sinuses.

…

Almost two weeks had passed since the game in Montréal, and Cliff’s conditioning schedule had finally lined up with his captain’s again, the two of them entering the gym at their hotel together, unspeaking, after taking the elevator down there, unspeaking, and meeting in the hallway outside their rooms, unspeaking. Rozanov was always quiet, but this had to be some kind of new record. He hadn’t been able to get a single noise out of him so far that morning.

They headed for the running machines, Marleau absently scanning the room as he stepped on, and realising that they were the only two people in there. It was early, but not so early that he’d expect to be alone in the gym. Normally he wouldn’t be bothered at all, in fact it was preferable if he was going to switch machines a lot, or wanted to feel unobserved. But with Roz being so freakishly silent… the whole thing felt kind of like a horror movie.

The hum of the treadmills coming to life was a welcome noise, faint music already playing over the gym’s speakers, but not really loud enough to feel like a distraction, or upbeat enough to make things feel less apocalyptic. There are no zombies, it’s a normal gym, you have got to stop watching horror movies on the flights.

Cliff found his rhythm quickly, revelling in the feeling of his body awakening, coming to life, paying attention to every muscle, tendon, joint that he knew would get him through the game later. It was pretty meditative, running over each limb in his mind, checking in on past injuries, feeling out the vibe for morning skate, how he’d spend his day, and then how he’d play the game. It was also an excellent distraction from the other thought in his mind, Pike. Whatever illness he’d kindly passed across to the Boston player had somehow taken the same amount of time to run through both of them, with their first games back happening on the same night, a few days ago.

He’d been lucky to only miss one game, and Pike had been pissed to miss so many more, texting him something along the lines of ‘not suspicious at all that we’re both playing tonight’ at first intermission, and strongly hinting that he should have taken one more game off when they talked on the phone afterwards. Honestly he didn’t think it was suspicious. They’d gotten sick at different times, their teams had given different reports of what the illness was, Pike getting scratched for ‘flu symptoms’ and Cliff for ‘upper respiratory condition’, and they’d literally never been connected in any significant way before. So as far as he saw it, they were in the clear.

Beside him in the mirror, Rozanov appeared to stumble, hands coming to the treadmill handles to support himself as he jerked forwards awkwardly. Concerned, he slowed his speed slightly and turned to look at him directly. He’s not turning into a zombie, he’s not turning into a zombie, he’s-

“-hKk! kKSH!-” He’s just having one of his sneeze attack things. Okay.

The blond directed the expulsions down at his chest, apparently caught off guard, because Cliff wasn’t sure he’d ever seen him sneeze in a public space like this without making some attempt to get away first before. They were alone, but there was no guarantee they would stay that way until the end of the fit.

“-hKSHh! hiHKSHh!-” He stumbled again, spritzing the running belt and his own legs.

With barely a second’s hesitation, the brunet reached across and pulled the safety key out, the machine slowing to a stop, which also seemed too much for Rozanov, who struggled to accommodate the pace change, taking the bulk of his weight on his arms as his feet scuffed against the belt uselessly.

“-hKXSHhuh!-” Cliff looked away at that one, half seeing the mess that it made, but mostly averting his eyes in time, staring at the console of his own machine as the blond lifted a belated hand to cup over his face.

“KSHh! kKXSHh! hrRSHH! hRSHHh!” Aaand he was done. Fuck, those things always seemed so exhausting, would he even still want to work out?

Marleau glanced across at him, just barely hearing, over the sound of the treadmill, some kind of frustrated curse that had to be in Russian because to him it just kind of sounded like ‘something something colander’ which made no sense at all. It also kind of didn’t make sense that these were the first concrete symptoms he was seeing from him in a week of supposedly being ‘sick’, and playing flawlessly, and seeming fine, apart from the standalone sniffs that he would give when Cliff inquired about it, and a fit that he’d seen him have in a stairwell during intermission at the last game which he was pretty sure had something to do with the rookie fucking up trying to adjust his stick and exploding sawdust all over the hallway.

“Bless you, Roz.” The brunet tossed him the towel he’d thought to grab on the way in- which the captain hadn’t- and increased the speed on his machine, with the intention of giving him the privacy he clearly needed to clean up. It took him fifteen full seconds of running and staring at himself in the mirror opposite to realise why that didn’t make any sense, but by then Rozanov had finished tending to his nose and was increasing his own machine’s speed again, their footfalls falling into rhythm.

Emily placed a gentle hand on Rhonda’s shoulder before stepping around the corner and into the employee bathroom. Once there, she pulled her phone out and texted Elijah back – first, a good morning, and then, a reminder to get a flu shot, something he definitely should have already done, right? They had talked about it at least twice. The restaurant was a cesspool when it came to illness, Emily had come to realize in the six months the two of them had been dating. Close quarters, no one able to take a sick day, and long and late hours basically guaranteed that at least one person was sick at any given time, and this flu season really was shaping up to be… intense. Emily bit her lip as she typed; Elijah was a smart guy, with self preservation, she reasoned with herself. Certainly he’d already done it.

Pressing send on the message, she stepped back out into the hallway and grabbed the clipboard again, cracking her neck on the way to the waiting room. Only two hours into the shift, and she was already on her fourth clipboard. It was going to be a long day.

***

good morning <3. hey, random, and I know we talked about it a few weeks ago, but make sure u get ur flu shot if you havent already, its a srsly rough season this year xx

For the tenth time in two minutes, Elijah reread the text from Emily with his heart in his throat. Fuck, he knew he’d been forgetting to do something this past week – now, he remembered what it was. They had talked about flu shots when Emily got hers, courtesy of her work, last month; Elijah had promised he’d get his in the next few weeks, despite how busy the restaurant was. He did not.

Elijah slipped his phone back in his pocket, making a mental note to find the time today or tomorrow to get the shot. It would take less than thirty minutes, he reasoned with himself. Even he had thirty minutes to spare during the day. Thinking better of it, he pulled the phone back out, sitting back in his seat and perusing the closest pharmacy’s website for open flu shot slot times. There was one tomorrow afternoon, three pm – perfect. Before service, after manager meeting, and the pharmacy was barely a five minute walk away. Why hadn’t he done this earlier? Elijah pressed the time he wanted and began filling out his information, when he heard the back kitchen doors open and slam shut.

He heard Greyson before he saw him.

“HTTSHHH-uhh! Hhh… hh -! HRRTXXCH-ue!” The two massive sneezes were followed by a round of coughing, deep and chesty, the type of cough that you hear from the person next to you on the bus and start to hold your breath. Elijah’s head whipped up from his phone, mid-typing. No, he thought to himself, standing to walk toward the sound of Greyson’s suffering, please no.

“That had better not be you, Greyson,” he said, heading towards the back kitchen, phone long forgotten. Elijah thought back to Monday, when Greyson had texted him asking about the place that sold great miso soup near Elliot’s.

It’s called koi fish, Elijah had texted back. Why?

Because Reed was sick. He had the flu, they’d gone to urgent care to confirm, and he was completely miserable and refusing to eat anything. A pit had formed in Elijah’s stomach even then; Greyson, god love him, was absolutely unable to escape anyone near him getting sick without also succumbing. At this point, it was nearly a joke, a bit in the restaurant: if you have a cold, just go breathe near Chef for a minute. He’ll absorb it from you in a matter of moments, and you’ll start to feel better immediately. A rhinovirus succubus.

Please wash your hands while you’re taking care of him, Elijah had texted his friend. Sequester yourself if you have to. We have such a busy week.

Greyson had agreed, said he was being careful. He’d gotten a flu shot! He’d done everything right! He was a chef, he had to update his ServSafe card every five years to prove he knew how to keep his food from making people sick. If anyone knew how to keep from getting sick, surely it was him. And during Tuesday service, he was fine. Elijah thought, stupidly, that maybe they’d made it over the hump, so to speak.

But then yesterday – Wednesday – came around, and he’d been a little off during service. His consonants had been a little muted, his voice a little thin… but surely he was fine. Right? Surely he could make it through one illness his boyfriend had without catching it. Certainly he could.

When Elijah turned the corner into the prep kitchen, his heart, once lodged in his throat, immediately fell to the pit of his stomach. “Jesus Christ,” he said, taking the chef in.

Greyson looked miserable. His coat was zipped up to his neck, the hood slung over his head doing nothing to conceal his red, watering eyes and chapped nose. Clearly he could barely breathe; his mouth hung open, and when the coughs finally settled he was left wheezing into his sleeve, his breath just a catch away from the coughing fit beginning anew. “Hey, boss,” he managed, pulling his sleeve under his running nose. “How goes it?”

“Dude,” Elijah said, crossing his arms from the entrance of the back kitchen. “What did I tell you about sequestering yourself from Reed? Did it look like he was having so much fun on his death bed you needed to join him?”

Shrugging, Greyson turned on the water at the sink and thoroughly washed his hands before turning back to Elijah. “I got mby flu shot,” he wheezed, attempting to clear his throat. “I figured I’d be finde.”

Elijah closed his eyes, gathering himself before responding. “It’s not a magic spell, Grey. If you’re making out with your flu-ridden boyfriend, you’re going to get sick even if you had the shot. Everyone knows that.”

“Huh. Weird. They didn’t teach us that in culindary school. It’s almbost like it’s fuckigg food college. Ndot all of us went to three years of mbed school, Doctor Elijah. Ndot all of us are fuckigg a ndurse. Hh -!” Again, Greyson turned into his coat sleeve bracing himself on the sink with his free hand to keep from falling over. “HRTTTSCHH-ue! Huhh – HUHHTSCHCH-ueee!”

“Christ,” Elijah said, cringing. “Bless you. That sounds fucking painful.”

“It – hh -! Hh… hnng. Snrf. It is,” Greyson said, trying to sniff back some of the congestion and instead coughing hard enough that Elijah felt his chest contract in sympathy. He dipped out of the back kitchen, grabbed a water bottle from the beverage fridge in the server station, and brought it back to Greyson, who drank gratefully until the fit abated. The chef took a slow, deep breath, testing the waters of his lungs, and let it back out. He nodded at Elijah, as if to say good for now.

“I’m not a doctor, dickhead,” Elijah said when Greyson regained control. “They literally tell you that when you get the flu shot, don’t they?” Greyson raised an eyebrow.

“Whend’s the last timbe you got a flu shot?” he asked, rubbing his chest with a closed fist. Elijah flushed red and, realizing how close he was to Greyson, took a big step back.

“It’s been a while,” he admitted.

“Clearly,” Greyson said, moving out of the back kitchen and heading towards the office. Reluctantly, Elijah followed him – whether he wanted to sit next to the chef, breathe his germs in, or not, he did have to finish the schedule and the only place to do it was the office. They sat heavily in their chairs, Greyson’s rheumy eyes meeting his boss’s. “And also, I wasnd’t mbaking out with Reed, I was takigg care of himb. Tryigg to be a good boyfriend or whatever.”

“Mmm,” Elijah nodded. “You know you can be a good boyfriend without laying on top of him, yeah? You can take care of him without being attached at the hip.”

Greyson scoffed, coughed, and put his head on his hand, elbow resting on the desk. “Mbaybe you and Embily can take care of each other through a plastic bubble, but that’s ndot how Reed and I fly,” he said, eyes drooping towards closed. Elijah went to answer, but was cut off by a hastily-covered – “HTTSZZCHH-uee! HhhRRTSCHHH-uhhh!”

Watching the droplets rush from the chef’s mouth into the air surrounding them in the office, Elijah remembered the disclosure agreement on the bottom of the form he filled out for the flu shot he was clearly going to desperately need. Any persons with cold or flu-like symptoms will not be permitted to receive the flu shot. Shit. He needed to get out of Greyson’s metaphorical splash zone, and quickly.

“Bless you,” he said again, while Greyson pulled a single tissue – then, thinking better, a whole handful – out of the box. “Grey, you are not well enough to be here. You need to go home, when does Matt get in?”

Greyson cringed as well blew his nose. “Yeah, that’s the thigg,” he said, pressing his fingers into his face where his sinuses resided. “Mbatt’s sigck too. I, uh, mbay have recruited himb to help mbe with Reed while Mbark is away.”

Groaning, Elijah sat back in his chair and pulled a hand warily down his face. Fuck. “So he isn’t coming in, then?” he asked, prompting a laugh from Greyson.

“Ndo, he’s combing in. I can’t do this ndight by mbyself, ndot like this. I figured the two of us incapacitated equals about onde of us healthy.”

Great, Elijah thought, giving Greyson an incredulous look. Surrounded by sick people all night. “You’re going to get your whole staff sick,” he warned his friend. Greyson shrugged.

“Is what it is,” he said, pulling another handful of tissues from the box. “Juuhh – just - HNTSZZCHH-uee!” he collapsed forward into the tissues and let out a little moan of frustration, before blowing his nose and tossing them aside. “Just have to tell themb ndot to get too close,” he croaked, coughing into his fist.

“Yeah,” Elijah said, looking down at the confirmation email from the pharmacy. “I’m sure that’ll work perfectly.”

***

Post-shift, and finally back at her Brooklyn fifth floor walk-up, Emily poured herself a glass of wine and sat heavily on the couch. What a day, she thought, downing half the glass in one large gulp.

The twelve-hour shifts she’d agreed to back in July were starting to wear on her. Sure, she only had to work four a week, and eight of those hours were guaranteed overtime, but christ those four days never got any shorter. Not getting back to her apartment until ten p.m. when she left for the day at seven a.m. had her feeling like Elijah and all the other restaurant workers – a creature of the night, relegated to only seeing the outside when it was dark. Less person, more vampire.

Speaking of Elijah, she thought, pulling her phone out and frowning at the screen. Her boyfriend hadn’t texted her since this afternoon, and even that text seemed hasty and distracted. She’d asked how his day was going, and he sent back the emoji that looked like it was gritting its teeth, followed by two words: Had better. To that, she sent a simple ? and had been left on read.

Now, with the restaurant closing in the next half hour, surely Elijah had some time to talk. Without thinking, she clicked on her boyfriend’s contact photo – a very Elijah-coded shot of him mid sip of a cocktail with a hand help up to the camera – and hit the call button.

Almost immediately, Emily was sent to voicemail. Confused, she pulled the phone away from her face and studied it, eyebrows furrowed. Again, she clicked the all button.

Again, voicemail.

This time, though, a text from Elijah popped up.

Elijah

10:21PM

Hey babe, sorry, we’re still finishing up service and Grey had to go so I’m cleaning on the line. Are you okay?

Emily cocked her head to the side at this message. Cleaning on the line? Where the hell did Greyson have to go that meant Elijah had to get on-line? She clicked the text box to reply.

Emily

10:22PM

yes, all good. what happened to greyson?

A few minutes passed before Elijah finally texted back.

Elijah

10:31PM

I sent him home. He and Matt have the flu.

A sigh escaped Emily’s lips as she read her boyfriend’s message. Of course the chefs had the flu. She put her wine glass on the coffee table and typed out another text.

Emily

10:34PM

oof, the worst im sorry. good thing u got the flu shot, right?

Another five full minutes went by without an answer. Finally, as Emily got up to pour herself another glass, a text pinged through. She looked down at the phone – Elijah had ‘liked’ her message, but didn’t send anything back. Emily pressed her lips together and put the phone down. Self-preservation, she thought to herself for the second time that day. He does have it… right?

***

T-minus six hours until the flu shot appointment.

Elijah let himself in through the back door of the restaurant and immediately pulled a hand down his face, still exhausted from the night before. He may as well have not even left; by the time the line was clean and the paperwork was done, it was nearly three in the morning. The seven a.m. wakeup call to come back in had come in the blink of an eye.

Slowly, Elijah made his way to the office at the front of the kitchen, typing out a text to Greyson as he did.

Elijah

8:55AM

Are you alive?

The evening previous, to call Greyson alive would have been more than a stretch. The chef had made it through about half of service, coughing and sneezing and wiping away fever sweat, but by the time eight o’clock rolled around, he was swaying on his feet. Dishes were leaving the kitchen ungarnished, temps unchecked, and seat numbers given to food runners forgone. Elijah knew if they wanted to keep their Michelin star, he needed to send his friend home. Greyson was entirely too sick to put up a fight; he’d yanked his apron off, donned his coat, and left the building without even saying goodbye to the cooks.

In Elijah’s hand, the phone buzzed.

Greyson

9:01AM

barely lol. fevers down tho, so ill be in later. like noon.

Relief washed over Elijah as he read; Greyson was able to text, he was up at nine a.m., he was joking around. Most likely, the worst was behind him.

Elijah

9:02AM

Matt?

Once Greyson was gone, Matt tried to step up to the plate and take over expo, but the poor kid was down just as bad as Greyson, and Elijah had to send him home about thirty minutes after the executive chef. Whatever Reed had passed along to the chefs was fucking lethal.

Greyson

9:05AM

mmm havent heard from him yet. probably not coming in tho. like I wouldnt bet on it

Elijah sighed; well, one was better than none, he supposed.

He stood from the desk and turned to the kitchen, moving slowly to turn on the lights and the gas and to crank up the heat. Outside, snow had begun to fall, and for once he was grateful; maybe it would be a slow evening. Maybe they could all get out and get to bed before three in the morning. Elijah’s bones ached with the desire to crawl up in his bed, Emily’s warm frame wrapped in his arms, nothing to do but listen to the snow outside and… and…

“Hhh…” Elijah’s breath caught, and he pressed his tongue hard against the back of his teeth to quell the itch in his sinuses. No, he thought, pinching his nose hard between his thumb and pointer finger. Not now.

It would have been a lie to say that Elijah felt… completely put together. Try as he might, he was just unable to ignore his body in the way that Greyson and Matt always seemed to; he was hyper-aware of it, in fact, tuned in to even the smallest twinge of difference. He’d felt it yesterday, just the tiniest bit off; he knew the second he swallowed and it went down a little weird. Oh, he thought to himself as he watched Greyson and Matt cough themselves dizzy. It’s so over.

Then, despite the late night, Elijah had gone home and tossed and turned in his bed from four until six in the morning, unable to breathe out of one nostril or the other, sitting up every few minutes to guzzle water, his throat dry and sticky despite the wild amount of liquid he was ingesting. As he lay pre-feverish in his bed, he thought of Emily. He thought of the busy-as-fuck week they’d had. He thought of Greyson.

Greyson was sick. And Matt was sick. And Elijah was getting a flu shot today, and Emily had warned him about the flu not just yesterday, but multiple times since fall had turned to winter, and he could not be sick. So when his alarm went off at seven, Elijah took the hottest shower he could handle and looked himself in the mirror. “You are fine,” he said to his reflection. “You are not sick.”

Manifesting had always been one of his strong suits, after all. Had he not manifested this life he made for himself? Manifested the restaurant and its accolades? Manifested his nice apartment, his happy life? Sure, some would say that he worked his ass off for it, had scrimped and saved and worked two or even three jobs at a time when he was young, learned how to wire and plumb and interior design when he finally saved enough to buy the restaurant so that he wouldn’t have to pay someone to do everything for him. Some would certainly argue that he even had to work to be happy, to feel deserving of all that he had, but who were they to say those things? It was all manifestation, baby. One hundred perce -

“HXTSH-uhhh! NTSHH-ieuu! Hh - ! HhIGTXTZCH-uee!” Elijah attempted to stifle the sneezes into the back of his wrist, an effort that left him groaning at the pain behind his eyeballs. Can’t manifest health, he thought, then quickly pushed the thought away. Yes, he could manifest health. Of course he could. Mind over matter.

Elijah sniffed experimentally, testing to see how congested he really was. The sniffle barely moved any of the sludge beginning to build in his sinuses, and in fact only managed to make the constant buzz at the back of his nose and throat burn stronger. Again, he pinched his nose shut, this time managing to fully stifle two, three – four – shit – five sneezes in rapid succession, leaving him panting and stuffed up to the gills in the wake of the fit. Who the hell was he holding them in for, it’s not like anyone else was here. But Elijah knew, he was doing it to prove a point to himself – that he was well, that he was fine, that this afternoon he would be allowed by the pharmacy to get the flu shot. Manifesting. That was the reason. He checked his watch, and sighed.

Five hours, twenty-five minutes until the appointment.

***

Emily was sure this week was never going to end.

Eight hours into her fourth twelve-hour shift in a row, and she was the kind of tired you feel in the depths of your bones. The waiting room never got less full. The people never got kinder. At every new patient, every new throat she had to swab and temperature she had to take, she could feel herself untethering more and more. It was barely December – was this going to be the way it was all winter? She shuddered at the thought. Maybe she needed to take a mid-winter vacation.

Also, why the fuck wasn’t Elijah texting her back?

For the third time that hour, Emily checked her phone. No text from Elijah. She checked his location – still at the restaurant. It was two p.m., for god’s sake, it’s not like they were in service. What the hell was he doing?

The thought that she had often, the one she got whenever things seemed to be going well in a relationship, slipped into the back of her mind. Maybe he’s just done. Emily bit her cheek at the thought; much as she wished she could count it out, call it nonsense… it would honestly make sense. Elijah was chronically single, as Greyson put it when they all went out back at the beginning of her and Elijah’s flirtation.

“I mean, same,” Emily had said, smiling. Greyson had put his drink down on the bar top, turned away from the seat Elijah had just left to go use the bathroom, and looked at Emily, his face set into a serious look.

“No, like… look, Emily, Elijah does really like you. And like, I’ve known him for almost ten years and he’s never liked anyone, so that’s huge. But when I say he’s chronically single, I mean he doesn’t know how to be in a relationship. At all. He’s quite literally married to that restaurant. He’s there over a hundred hours a week.” He’d picked the drink back up, swallowed the remainder of it, and shrugged at her. “Just… I mean, just don’t be surprised if he picks it. When he picks it. He picks it over everything. And I don’t want you to get hurt.”

That had stuck with her, much as she didn’t want it to. Emily wasn’t the type of person who needed constant validation, truly; she was independent, she loved her space, and she knew Elijah was the same. It was something she enjoyed about their relationship, the fact that they didn’t have to be in constant contact or see each other more than once a week. It worked for them. But she couldn’t deny, six months into the relationship, that Greyson was right: Elijah did pick the restaurant over everything. Dates were often canceled, sometimes at the very last minute, and holidays and birthdays were a moot point. Elliot’s came first, always. And that was okay with her, really, she understood. Elliot’s was Elijah’s lifeblood, what he’d always dreamed of. She was proud that he was so passionate.

She just wished, sometimes, that he could be… more human about their relationship. Like now. When he was refusing to text back. She looked down at their text thread again – three texts from her, sent hours apart, two this morning and one an hour ago on her lunch break. No response. Fucker, she thought, annoyed. Again, the thought: maybe he’s just done. Emily sighed, clicked her phone off, and put it back in her pocket, heading towards the front for another patient clipboard.

Maybe. But she really, really hoped not.

***

“Elijah.”

“Sshh. I dond’t wandt to hear it.”

“Lij, c’mbon mban, you kndow they’re ndot going to let you -”

“Greysond. Shut the fuck up. Can you watch the servers for an hour while I’mb gone?”

“I mbean -”

“Can you?”

Greyson gave Elijah a withering, pitiful look. “Obviously I can,” he said, coughing into his elbow. “But you’re quite literally about to be turned away at the door,” he finished, voice croaky and waterlogged. Elijah placed an overly warm hand onto his own throat to keep from dissolving into his own coughing fit. He shook his head.

“I wond’t,” he said, “because I’mb ndot sick.”

The day had been… humbling, to say the least. Elijah had tried his best all morning to heed off the oncoming illness; downing tea and ignoring the constant itch in his sinuses, sucking on endless lozenges and then finally, after a couple hours of insisting to himself that he did not need it, giving in and shooting back double the recommended dose of dayquil. By the time Greyson trudged in at noon, Elijah could feel the mask slipping more and more with each passing minute.

“Oh, ndo,” Greyson said when he walked into the office and found Elijah doubled over into his elbow, coughing up a lung. “You sound like fuckigg shit.”

Painfully, Elijah rolled his eyes at his friend. “Pot, kettle,” he said, yanking a tissue out of the nearly depleted box just in time to – “HRRTSHHH-uhh!”

Greyson grimaced while Elijah blew his nose uselessly. “Bless you,” Greyson said. In return, Elijah flipped him off. “Sorry.”

Annoyed, Elijah tossed the tissue into the trash can by their chairs and squirted hand sanitizer onto his hands. “How are you feeligg?” he asked, ignoring Greyson’s blessing.

“Bad. But probably better thand you.”

Elijah deadpanned his friend, pushed up his glasses, and sat back in his chair, an attempt to look blasé. “I feel finde,” he said, trying to clear the congestion from his voice. “I amb fine.”

A soupy-sounding laugh escaped Greyson’s lips, followed by a crunching, painful cough that lasted entirely too long for Elijah’s liking. Despite his aching limbs, the GM pushed himself to a stand and went to the server station to make Greyson a tea, sickly sweet with honey, the only way the chef would drink it. By the time he returned to the office, Greyson had managed to collect himself.

“Thangks,” he said, taking a sip. “Where’s yours?”

Without meaning to, Elijah’s eyes panned over to the two empty coffee cups by his computer monitor. Greyson smiled and hummed to keep from laughing, to save his fucked-up lungs. “You sound like you have fuckigg pneumonia,” Elijah said, an attempt to change the subject. Shrugging, Greyson sipped his tea.

“Ndah,” he said, rubbing his chest with the heel of his hand. “Reed sounded the sambe the first few days; I’mb okay. Pneumonia feels way worse thand this.” If he wasn’t worried about collapsing into his own coughing fit, Elijah would have laughed.Only Greyson would have that reference point.

“You’re sickly. Like a Victoriand child. Has andyone ever told you that?”

Greyson raised an eyebrow. “Yeah,” he said, a smile dancing on his lips. “I thingk that’s fairly well-established. I also thingk,” he said, reaching over to press the back of his hand to Elijah’s forehead, “that you’re deflecting.”

Elijah tried to pull away quickly, but his reflexes were slowed by the ache in his joints. “I’mb getting a flu shot at three, and they wond’t give it to you if you have...symptoms,” he said swatting at his friend’s hand, a poor attempt to ward off the accusation of illness. “I cand’t be sick.”

“Uhh,” Greyson said, pressing his lips together. “I mbean, I thingk your body doesn’t really give a fugck about what your plans for a flu shot were. Clearly,” he said, motioning to the GM as if he was flu-incarnate. “Also, didn’t Embily tell you to get a flu shot, like, two mbonths ago? Why are you just ndow going?”

A flush burned across Elijah’s face. “I mbay have forgotten. Like. Every time she said it.”

Greyson bit his cheek, a laugh catching in his throat. “You’re a bad boyfriend,” he joked, kicking Elijah.

“I’mb workigg on ihh – hh…” Elijah’s hand flew up to his nose, once again pinching it to keep the sneeze at bay. Not just to prove that he wasn’t ill – though that reason still stood – but because they were just exhausting. Grating and throat-scraping and seemingly endless. Before the chef had arrived, he found himself doubled over, sneezing so hard that his vision began to dance at the corners of his eyes. Passing out was not in the cards today.

“Good luck with that,” Greyson said, turning away from his boss to turn his computer on. Then, as he watched Elijah struggle out of the corner of his eye – “Lij, just let yourself -”

“HRTSCHHH-uee! GTSXXCHH-uhh! HhhhITSZCHHH-ieuuu! ITSZCHH-ieuuu! ITSZCHH-uhhh! Huh -! HuhhhETSZCHH-uee!” Again, Elijah found himself doubled over into his lap, the sneezes painfully and uncharacteristically unrestrained. Panting, he grabbed the last three tissues from the box and wiped himself up, afraid blowing would set him off again. He coughed into the handful of tissues, swallowing compulsively to try and make the fit stop quicker.

“Wow,” Greyson said. “There is ndo way in hell they’re goigg to let you get that flu shot.”

The next few hours had gone as terribly as Elijah could’ve imagined they would; he felt like fucking dog water, a descriptor the servers loved to use that felt so apt he couldn’t help but pick it up. Sludgey, tepid, nasty. The fever he’d felt warming the back of his neck at the beginning of the day now felt like it was boiling his brain, turning it into soup. The cough felt constant, and he suddenly understood why Greyson was spending so much time rubbing his chest – it hurt, hurt like a gorilla was sat between his neck and stomach. And then, there was the – the…

“IGTSZCHH-uee! HhhRRTSCCHH-ieuu! Huh -! Huhh…! HuhhhETSZCHH-ieuu!”

“Bless you, Elijah.” Matt, who they thought wasn’t going to make it in, had come around two, and pointedly blessed his boss literally every time he sneezed. Greyson, who had given up on getting Elijah to admit to having the flu, had stopped an hour in and gone to the back kitchen to prep. Matt wasn’t giving up nearly as easily.

“Boss, you ndeed to take some more medicinde,” Matt said placing the dayquil that he and Greyson had just taken doses of on the desk beside Elijah. The GM shook his head.

“’m okay,” he said around the congestion in his throat. “Thangks.”

Matt sighed stuffily and shook his head. “I’ll leave it there just in case,” he said, turning to go back to prepping the line.

The cherry on top of this shitty day, though, was Emily texting him.

Emily

8:41AM

morning <3 hope you have a good day

Emily

10:12AM

are greyson & matt coming in today? fingers crossed it isnt too busy tonight!

Emily

1:20PM

this place is a fucking madhouse. think im getting misophonia from hearing so much coughing lmao

Emily

2:48PM

hellooo? earth to elijahhh

He wanted to text back, truly, but every time he opened their text thread he felt that familiar sense of dread; he’d promised her he’d get a flu shot, promised he’d stay healthy. And, of course, he’d managed to somehow fuck it up. There was little more he wanted than to text her, I’m down so fucking bad can you please come to my house tonight? To say, I feel like I’m dying and all I want is to be in bed with you. But he didn’t; he couldn’t. It wasn’t fair to her.

And now it was nearly three, and Greyson was stood in front of him telling him he was going to be turned away from the pharmacy. Which of course he was right, of course he was sick, but for Emily and for his own stupid pride, he just could not admit it.

“I’m ndot sick,” he said to Greyson again, donning his coat and slinging his backpack over his shoulder. “So please, watch the servers. I’ll be back whend I’mb done at the pharmacy. Okay?”

Greyson just shook his head, obviously too tired and annoyed to continue to fight his friend. “Whatever, Elijah,” he said. “Good fuckin’ luck, bro.”

***

Thirty more minutes, Emily thought to herself. You can do anything for thirty minutes.

It had been just about the longest day of her life; she had to get off these twelves, they were quite literally sucking the life out of her. The stream of patients refused to let up, and all she wanted was a hot shower and a fat cocktail. And maybe Elijah to text her back, but at this point even that was neither here nor there.

“Em,” Rhonda called to her as she put yet another finished patient clipboard at the front desk. Emily grimaced at the sound of her name. Please, please don’t need anything from me.

“What’s up?” she said, trying to sound bright and happy, not like she was ready to lob someone’s head off. She walked towards Rhonda, who was holding yet another fucking clipboard.

“Room three was asking if you’re around,” she said, handing over the clipboard. Emily couldn’t help herself; she groaned aloud.

“Can Paul just tell them I left? Please? I only have thirty minutes left, Rhon. I’m so done.”

Rhonda shrugged. “Paul already said that you’re here, doll. Sorry. Just tell the guy you’re about to be off, let him know you’ll put the night lead on him if he’s so worried.” She held the clipboard out a little more forcefully, prompting Emily to, begrudgingly, take it.

“Fine,” she said, tucking the clipboard under her arm. “But if it’s that weirdo from last week who kept pretending to have a broken leg to see me, I’m calling the cops.”

Rhonda laughed. “Show ’em how it’s done,” she said. “I’ll take your name off the board for the rest of the shift.”

“You’re my hero,” Emily said.

Without looking at the clipboard – she could hear the coughing from the hallway, at this point she could diagnose the flu in her sleep – Emily knocked on the door of room three. She adjusted her mask, squirted some hand sanitizer on, and pushed through the heavy door.

“Good afternoon, Mr. -” she glanced down at the clipboard then, and stopped in her tracks. At the top of the patient intake form: Elijah Morrison. Emily’s head shot up from the clipboard and – oh.

There, on the paper-lined bench, sat her obviously very ill boyfriend. Beneath his glasses, Elijah’s eyes were lined with bags, his cheeks and nose scarlet from fever and constant rubbing, respectively. As she walked toward him, he removed the elbow he was coughing into and attempted a smile.

“Hey, Doc,” he said, his voice low and scratchy with illness. “I, uh… I thingk I mbight have the flu.”

A wave of deja vu passed over her, and Emily couldn’t help but to smile as she pulled down her mask. “Hmm, do you think?” she asked, placing a cool hand on Elijah’s hot forehead. “Jesus, baby. You’re burning up. What the hell are you doing here?”

Elijah managed a little laugh without coughing. “Grey wouldn’t let mbe combe back to work, said I’mb gonna scare off mby own customers. And I wanted to see you.” Ever the charmer, even when he’s on death’s door, Emily thought, shaking her head. “Is this how you talk to all your patiendts, by the way?” Elijah asked, grinning goofily – oof, that had to be a high fever for him to be making that face. “Kinda undhinged,” he said, tugging playfully at the braid she had hastily done this morning. Emily rolled her eyes, gave Elijah a little push.

“Yeah, that’s how most patients describe my bedside manner. ‘Kinda unhinged’,” she said, making Elijah laugh and then cough again, grating and painful. She stepped briefly into the hall to grab a cup of water for him, catching Rhonda’s eye as she did. Rhonda raised an eyebrow, pulled down her mask. I thought you were passing him off? She mouthed.

Emily sighed, shrugged. “It’s Elijah,” she said. Rhonda eyes grew to saucers. She shooed Emily back towards the room with her hand.

“I’ll mark the room as unavailable until you leave,” she said. Emily smiled. Truly the best, she thought as she walked back in and handed Elijah the cup. He drained it, finally catching his breath.

“Thangk you,” he said, grabbing her hand. “I’mb sorry.” Emily pressed her eyebrows together, confused.

“Why are you sorry?” she asked, taking his temperature and using the light on the otoscope to look into his ears and throat. Temp was high – 103.2 – but no ear infection, and it didn’t look like strep, so she put her tools down. “I can see why Greyson wouldn’t let you back, jesus,” she joked, hopping up on the bed to sit beside her boyfriend. “No need to apologize – I figured you’d probably end up sick, since Greyson is. You two are on top of each other like ninety percent of the time.”

Elijah shrugged, rubbing his nose and eyes – was he about to cry? Distraught, Emily started to say something, to take it back, when Elijah wrenched to the side, away from her.

“HHRDDTSCHH-ieuuu! RRTSCHH-uee! HTSZZZCHH-ieuu! Hh… hhITSZCCCH-uhhh!” Elijah folded in on himself over and over, the paroxysms so intense that they nearly moved the bed beneath them. Finally, Elijah sniffled, out of breath, and Emily jumped down to hand him a box of tissues.

“Thangk you,” Elijah said, stuffily. Emily nodded.

“Bless you,” she said as he blew his nose. “That sounded… painful.” Elijah laughed as he wiped his nose.

“That’s exactly what I said to Grey yesterday,” he croaked. Emily smiled.

“And?”

“And they are. Paindful. He said as mbuch.” Elijah shrugged. “He didn’t lie.”

“Mmm,” Emily hummed, placing the earbuds of her stethoscope in her ears and listening to Elijah’s crackling lungs. “You need to rest, by the way,” she said, taking the buds out and slinging the stethoscope around her neck to hold with both hands. “Your lungs sound rough. That could easily develop into walking pneumonia.”

“I also said that to Greysond,” Elijah laughed. Emily smiled again, a little sadly.

“It sounds like both of you need a day off,” she said, pointedly. A nod, a shrug from Elijah.

“Probably,” he said. There was a beat, then, a moment of silence before Emily couldn’t help herself.

“So, I assume you didn’t get a flu shot, like I told you to?” she asked, trying to play it off as light and playful, despite her worry. If Elijah didn’t get a flu shot, this was about to be a rough week for him. She made a mental note to ask when his symptoms started, to see if she could get him on Tamiflu. Elijah cringed.

“Yeah,” he said, “that’s why I was apologizing. I, uh, actually wendt to go get onde this afterndoon. But… they turned mbe away.” He smiled goofily again, shrugging. “Said you cand’t have a fever and get it.”

Emily pressed her lips together. “I could’ve told you that,” she said, sitting next to him again. “If you just asked.” Elijah nodded, turned to look at her.

“I’mb sorry,” he said. “I didn’t wandt you to worry. Or thingk I don’t listen to you. It just slipped mby mbind. But I should’ve just done it. I’mb sorry.”

Placing her hands on either side of Elijah’s hot face, Emily gently massaged his sinuses, nodded before he closed his eyes in relief. “Do you remember the first time we met?” she asked. One of Elijah’s eyes opened, just a bit.

“How could I forget,” he said. “I thingk it was ind this very roomb.”

“It was room nine. But close enough.”

Elijah smiled, hummed. “Dond’t mbake mbe laugh,” he said, closing his eye again. “Hurts.”

“Sorry,” Emily said, continuing to massage. “Do you know what I said to Rhonda, after you left that first time I saw you?”

“Mmmb?”

“‘That’s the hottest sick man I’ve ever met. I’d hate to see him well. It would be too much for my heart to handle’.”

This time, both of Elijah’s eyes popped open. “Yeah?” he asked. Emily nodded. “Well, Grey was basically mbarrying us the whole rest of the day. Called mbe ‘Mbister Doctor Embily’.” Emily’s face flushed – what happened to ‘he’s married to the restaurant’? – and Elijah chuckled. “That whole saga was so embarrassing,” he said, leaning his face onto Emily’s hand. He looked at her earnestly, then. “But I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

Emily’s heart thumped in her chest, butterflies swimming in the pit of her stomach. Maybe he’s just done, she’d thought earlier, but that wasn’t true. This man, this passionate and stubborn man… he couldn’t be just done. She wasn’t sure how she’d thought he could. “Lij?” she said.

“Yeah?”

“I want to kiss you.”

Elijah looked into her eyes, his bloodshot and watery. His nose was running, just a little, his glasses askew from leaning on her hand. She’d spent all day annoyed at sick people, going from room to room to room wishing them all away, but somehow Elijah – sick Elijah, contagious and fluish Elijah – erased all of them, the whole day’s worth. Sick or well, she could look into his eyes all day long. “You’ll get sick,” he croaked out, sniffling. She nodded, brought his face close.

“I could use a day off,” she said, bringing his face close and pressing her lips to his, the kiss too warm and too wet and somehow perfect, the perfect kiss for the moment. He kissed back, hungrily, until he had to pull away to breathe.

“Thangk you,” he said. “And sorry. For giving you the flu.”

Emily pushed Elijah’s sweaty hair out of his face. “It’s okay,” she said. “It won’t be too bad. After all – I got my flu shot.”