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‘Hey, creature, you a real creature now huh,’ Army wrote, and although it was so fucking stupid, it also wasn’t the least-funny joke Sid’s heard this week, so he sent back a thumbs up.
“So, do you need like, new porn, now? Like, do pussies still do it for you, or - ” Horny asked, slurred, and really Sid thought he was the one who deserved alcohol, as the Conn Smythe winner, and also so he didn’t have to remind Horny that pussies never did it for him. He can’t have alcohol though, the only Stanley Cup winner captain ever that’s done the cup party entirely fucking sober because puberty showed up when he’s fucking thirty. The itching was already horrible without adding an allergic reaction to alcohol to it.
“What would you do if he did?” Pascal asked Horny, sounding, horrifyingly enough, entirely genuine.
“Oh, I know a guy,” Horny promised solemnly and Sid can’t, he, no –
“Absolutely fucking not,” he said, firmly.
Geno showed up in a t-shirt that looked like it could be a band shirt if bands had lizards in them and the tightest jeans on the planet and immediately draped himself over Sid. “Want to go stand under shower?” he crooned into Sid’s ear, like the siren that he swore he wasn’t.
“Yeah, please,” Sid said and resolved to cover up for Geno when he snagged the entirety of the most expensive bottle of vodka.
When they reach the guest suite that Sid moved back into for the hopefully-short period that he had to go through the molting process, he saw Geno had not only locked everyone else out, he had also sneaked up an entire tray of those little mushroom things that have already been finished in the first thirty minutes.
“Geno, you genius,” he said and fell on them, until Geno nudged him firmly into the bathroom where the bathtub was already filled up. They took the vodka, Sid’s secret stash of milkshake, and the tray into the bathtub, which barely fit Sid, and definitely doesn’t fit Sid-and-Geno without playing Tetris but Geno slotted himself behind Sid and scratched gently down the side of his spine where it was as itchy as if he had the mumps again except worse. “Oh,” he moaned, “do that again.”
Geno was the only one who hadn’t made fun of him, other than a texted???? and a series of truly inexplicable emojis, while Flower decided to fill the back of his car with cake, and also sent a message to everyone that said gender reveal: it’s a squid so Geno is his best friend now, Sid had decided. He didn’t share the cake with anyone, because none of them deserve it, but he’s going to share the last bit with Geno because it was really good cake and Geno deserved it.
“Hey, do you think I could have a sip?” he asked Geno, nudging back after Geno’s finished having a swig of vodka.
Geno, who has never once been the voice of reason ever, asked, “What if you itch?”
“You scratch me.” Sid said. “C’mon, I’ll share cake with you,” he decided not to admit he would have shared anyway. “Anyway there’s only, you know, a ten percent chance of bad reactions. In kids! It’s probably less than that in adults. And ten percent is basically nothing.”
Looking dubious, Geno nevertheless handed the vodka over and they finished off half the bottle, all of the mushrooms, most of Sid’s milkshake, and also the rest of the cake, before they stripped off and got under the covers together.
“You’re like, so warm,” Sid said, patting Geno’s face, or his chest, or some part of him. “So warm. We should do this every day. Every night. You know what I mean?”
He fell asleep with his arms around Geno, because the bed was big but it wasn’t Sid-and-Geno big.
It turned out the chances of an allergic reaction to alcohol was considerably higher than ten percent for adults who are molting.
“Less than one percent of the population worldwide has the transformation process after turning twenty-two years, and most of them have it before they turn twenty-six,” the specialist, Sofie, told him exasperatedly. “You are, frankly, a medical anomaly.”
“He been that all his life,” Geno explained for him sheepishly while Sid tried not to pout or poke at his swollen face.
Geno charmed the creature expert, until she grudgingly conceded that there’s probably not much they can do for Sid in the hospital, and he might as well go and be ugly and miserable at home.
“Not ugly,” cooed Geno, “you cute, like little bunny.” Geno took him to his own home after pointing out that Sid’s house had nothing because he has been living with the Lemieux’s again.
“Temporarily living with Mario,” Sid said.
“Temporary,” Geno says.
“It means for a short bit, not forever,” Sid explained.
“I know what temporary mean, Sid, I not think you do,” Geno replied, which was mean, and also the only reason Geno wasn’t still living with the Gonchars was because they were in Ottawa now.
“And Gonch said two kids was enough for him,” Sid finished and then immediately felt like he had lost the argument somehow as Geno pouted out into the windshield.
He would have apologised but Geno immediately went from a conservative-for-him 20 over the speed limit to about twice the speed limit and Sid squeezed his eyes shut and held on to the door.
They had just reached Geno’s and Sid was trying to navigate getting into the house without getting tripped or facewashed by Geno when he got the call for quarantining.
"You have got to be kidding me," Dad said.
"Not now, dear," Mom said distractedly. "Now Sidney, how long did they say you'll be... " she floundered until Dad supplied 'infectious'.
"We don't know, probably until I'm through my first molt," Sid said miserably, discreetly rubbing his spine against the back of the chair while Geno wasn't there to stop him.
"Well, surely it can't infect us, we're too old," Mom said.
Dad's face of doubt probably mirrored Sid's own, but he agreed, "Yes, just come home." More practically he added, "Anyway you can't be alone while molting."
Mom nodded. "We'll tell Taylor to not come back."
Geno arrived with an ice pack and would have promptly left on seeing the ongoing call if not for Mom saying, "Oh Evgeni, hello."
"Hello, Mrs. Crosby," Geno said, "and Mr. Crosby," as a clear afterthought.
"I am glad to see you're with Sidney. How could you let him have alcohol? You should have known better," Mom said sternly.
"Mom, don't blame him. It's my fault," Sid moaned.
Both his Mom and Geno ignored him. Geno nodded gravely and said, "I'm know better now, Mrs. Crosby."
"Oh, just call me Trina, Evgeni," she said, like she always did.
"No, don't," Dad added like he always did.
"Of course, Mrs. Crosby," Geno said smiling sweetly.
Sid sometimes wanted to bite him. Was that a sign he was going to be a wolf? A vampire?
"Vampires don't molt dear," Mom said patiently.
"Evgeni, aren't you at risk? Maybe you should go," Dad said.
"Dad, he's not at risk," Sid said. “And also it’s his house.”
“His house,” Dad repeated, “what are you doing in his house?”
"Not now, dear," Mom said. "Evgeni, do you think you could take care of him until he comes back home?"
Geno blinked at this and asked, "How he go home, Mrs. Crosby?"
"Plane," Dad said impatiently. "You don't think he's going to walk, do you?"
"You quarai-quarantine on flight?" Geno asked.
They all stared at each other for a moment. "Oh, no," Sid moaned.
"Oh, I'll go to you instead," Mom said.
"No," Sid and Dad protested together.
"With your hip, you'll both be housebound," Dad said with his usual bluntness and then says, "I'll go down. We'll have a nice time of it, right, Sid?"
And the thing is, Sid loved his dad, adored his dad really, took him as a role model, and when they're able to go out and fish and grill the fish, or go out and golf, or go out and watch a hockey match, they do, in fact, have a nice time of it. Being stuck indefinitely in the same house as Dad with no other company on the other hand... he took a deep breath, decided that he shouldn't be ungrateful but also no, absolutely not.
Geno smiled sweetly and said, "Mrs. Crosby, I'm here for Sid."
Dad made a sound about halfway between a sputtering firecracker and a wet cat.
Mom brightened and said, "That's true. Of course you'll take care of Sid. Really, my mind, sometimes I forget you boys are-"
"Mom," Sid said urgently before his mom said something that he would be unable to pass off as cultural differences to Geno, who was now pretty in-tune with North American vibes and had even learned to quote Tupac.
"Yes, yes," Mom said and started rattling off a list of absolutely essential supplies for molting that Geno nodded peacefully to but had clearly no idea of remembering or even understanding.
"Incense?" Sid repeated. "Mom, where are you getting these?"
"Don't you remember the witch in your class, dear?" Mom said.
"The one who turned Janey into an owl?" Sid asked.
"Yes! So powerful."
"I think she wanted to be a swan," Sid pointed out but was ignored.
What Sid missed, more than going out for a run or buying his own groceries or being able to open his own (or Geno's) front door, was hockey.
"I’m shocked," Marc said.
Sid sneered. "Like you would do much better," he said, only in French, so it came out sounding something nothing like that.
"I'm going to pretend that you’re talking like that because of the molting," Marc replied. "Otherwise, I'd have to kill you for Canada’s honor."
"I'm Canadian, asshole," Sid snapped. “I’m a Tim Horton’s partner, I’m pretty sure that makes me twice as Canadian as you.”
"You’re from the Maritimes. If you hadn’t gotten that golden goal, we would have kicked you out years ago," Marc said. "Have you figured out what Geno is yet?"
"Like I would tell you," Sid said sniffily.
"Oh, you haven't," Marc sounded disappointed. "Call me if you -"
Sid hung up.
Marc messaged to ask him what he was doing about groceries. Sid would take to his grave the fact that he had to Google Translate the message to English.
‘I’m at Geno’s until I can go out again,’ he writes back.
Marc called him up and then laughed at him for half a minute until Sid hung up again.
Sid eventually decided that hiding wasn’t helping things any, and also that he needed Geno’s fingers to deal with the itching over his spine. He wandered across both floors of Geno’s house until he came across him in the kitchen and came to a dead stop.
“You’re wearing glasses,” Sid said accusingly.
Geno blinked at him. “At home, Sid,” he said, gently, like he thought Sid had somehow missed that Geno was wearing an old t-shirt that was so worn it barely had a collar anymore and boxers that showed moose knuckle.
“I haven’t done anything to deserve this,” Sid muttered to himself. Not for the first time Sid considered whether he had been cursed. It was probably Giroux’s fault. Sore loser.
Geno was halfway to a pout. “You not like glasses?” he asked.
“I like them,” Sid reassured him with a bit more emphasis than he had meant to and to distract from that, he asked, “What are you up to?”
Geno glanced at the laptop and then said, slower than it really required, “Recipe.”
“Recipe?” Sid asked, doubtfully.
“Recipe,” Geno said firmly.
“If your kitchen burns down, you can’t call in the renovators. I guess we could go live in my house, but I don’t have a kitchen either,” Sid pointed out, a reasonable concern in his opinion.
Geno rolled his eyes. “We go fishing tomorrow, okay? Then we grill. I book out nice spot.” He grinned smugly. “I’m best.”
“You are,” Sid said fervently, after three days of sitting at home and trying not to google what creatures he could be. “You really are.”
Geno went a little pink in the cheeks. Sid wanted to lick them and see what they tasted like.
“Want watch TV now?” Geno asked.
“Let’s play Mario Kart,” Sid said, needing something to take his distractions out on.
“You not whine when you lose then,” Geno said, like he wasn’t the whiniest of anyone Sid had ever met, including the Dupuis toddler who was three years old and couldn’t be separated from her Penguins onesie, but got up, shutting his laptop, to move towards the door and Sid.
“You whine when you lose. And then you cheat. Every time you lose at cards, Kris has to stop you from messing up the whole table,” Sid said.
“Lie,” Geno said indignantly, putting one arm around Sid to herd him out.
“Dumo said he’s going to fine you if you do it again,” Sid said and tried not to notice where Geno’s long fingers had hooked into his sweatpants and were pressing into his hips.
“I’m fine master,” Geno said smugly.
“You even cheat at being fine master,” Sid said, which would usually have prompted an indignant rant from Geno but now just made him huff softly, chest rising against Sid’s back.
In Geno’s entertainment room, by far the fanciest room in the house, Sid came to a stop.
“Did you have that many cushions yesterday?” he asked, squinting. “Why does that one look like it has moss on it.”
“Not moss, Sid,” Geno said.
“Is that velvet?” Sid asked and was briefly overwhelmed by the many chirps this called for.
“Sit,” Geno said and tripped him into the pile before he could get out any of them.
Sid dragged himself out of the pile spluttering and then collapsed again when Geno dropped gracelessly on top of him and then gave him a wet willy, making him giggle.
“Get your fat ass off me,” Sid said, thumping whatever he could reach.
“No, you need relax,” Geno said, rearranging himself more comfortably. “Why you not relaxing?”
Sid bucked up but couldn’t get him off and finally gave up and sunk into the pile that absorbed him like quicksand. Just when he was getting really comfortable, Geno got up, elbowing him in the kidneys as he went, and chose Yoshi like an asshole before Sid could haul himself up, even though he knew Sid always played Yoshi. When he lost, he blamed it on choosing Yoshi but wouldn’t change it back.
If Sid had ever had a cat, he thinks this is what it would have been like.
After they had played for almost an hour and the meal-service had dropped off their food, Sid conceded privately that the moss looking cushion really was nice. It even helped his itching somehow, through magic that Geno wouldn’t reveal, conveniently losing his grasp over English when Sid asked.
“That doesn’t work on me, I’m not press,” Sid told him, but wanted to kiss off the smug look on his face anyway as he hauled off the cushion to take to the guest bedroom.
Sid had kissed Geno once. Or, no, he had kissed Geno a bunch of times. He had smooched his helmet on the bench after goals; he had kissed his cheeks after Geno had kissed his, as a Russian greeting; he had even pressed his lips to Geno’s forehead, once or twice, when he felt tender and had nowhere to put it. But he had kissed Geno’s lips only once, their first year together on the Penguins, when Geno was in tears and Sid didn’t know what to do but listen to Russian he couldn’t understand and talk in English Geno couldn’t understand and one time Geno had turned to face him just as he had moved forward to emphasize something and he had landed on the corner of Geno’s lips and one of them had moved unintentionally until their lips were aligned and without meaning to, Sid had just lightly pressed in. All he remembered of it was that Geno’s lips had been chapped and that Geno’s eyelashes seemed to throw a shadow on his cheeks from that angle.
In the dim light early next morning, he only wanted to kiss Geno even more, even when Geno shoved his face back under his pillow and threatened Sid with one of his nuclear farts when Sid pulled it off him.
“We have to leave now to miss traffic, G,” Sid said.
“I make you miss,” Geno muttered and slapped him away.
“We have to go get my fishing stuff, too,” Sid added, while walking out. He had known Geno for the best part of a decade now, this was only the opening move. Sure enough, when he came back, Geno had turned on to his back, shirt rucked up and pale belly rising up and down. His snoring was louder like this.
“So I’m eating all the bacon then,” Sid said.
Geno murmured something rough and inaudible then turned to his side. His boxers had ridden up until the crease between his thigh and ass was visible.
Sid reminded himself that he had seen Geno’s ass plenty of times, but it didn’t help. Annoyed now, he thought he would eat all the bacon.
“So waffles and bacon are mine, you can have the cucumber sandwiches,” Sid said.
“Sid,” Geno moaned, only it was something like Seeeed in a heavy, hoarse voice. “Why you so mean?” He wiped at his mouth and blinked until his eyes were only half-shut.
“Bacon’s no good cold,” Sid said self-righteously and fled from the sight.
Geno got down early enough that there was some bacon left in the pan, and he stole some off Sid’s plate too, and Sid graciously let him, even though Geno would have stabbed Sid’s hand if Sid tried to steal something off his plate.
When they got to Sid’s house to ransack through his closet and then his storage room, Sid looked at his bedside table and said, absently, “Should I get your guest room a lamp?” and then immediately found his fishing rod and the better pair of sunglasses and didn’t remember to confirm with Geno.
“Ugly,” Geno remarked at his sunglasses.
Sid rolled his eyes. “Sorry it isn’t gold and bedazzled. I think it’ll work.”
“Fish run away when see your ugly sunglasses and shirt.”
“What’s wrong with my shirt?” Sid protested. “Nate likes it. He bought one too.”
“Nate buy like, poison, if he think you like,” Geno said snidely, which wasn’t any meaner than Geno usually was, but not usually over Sid’s boring clothing.
Sid rolled his eyes and said, “I’ll save you a bottle too, eh?”
Taylor called him at her regular time. With his schedule and her classes and practice a regular day to call never worked out but they tried to call at the same time, and about twice a week it worked out that they were both free.
“I hear you’ve finally shacked up with Geno!” she said as soon as he picked up the phone.
“Come on,” Sid said.
“What’s his creature? Maybe you two can have beautiful hockey playing babies together,” she continued.
“That’s literally not how any of this works,” Sid said, and checked whether he had accidentally forwarded her any of the weird creature porn Horny had been sending.
“I’m so happy you’re not going to die alone and miserable!”
“Surrounded by three Cups and two Olympic medals, thanks,” Sid said. “I’m in the car, I’ll call you back.”
“Tell Geno if he doesn’t treat you well, I’ll steal all his rings,” Taylor yelled.
“What she say? I always treat well,” Geno said indignantly.
Sid’s heart thumped. “Except when your driving is going to get us both killed,” Sid said, instead of explaining what Taylor had meant.
Sid took a shower to try to get the smell of the Allegheny off him and walked back out to find Geno trying to shove a table into place beside the guest bed.
“Is that my table?” Sid asked, unnecessarily, because not only did it have chipped off bit from the time his sister had dropped the whole drawer on the floor, but the gaping open drawer showed his stuff, including his flesh colored-with-realistic-veins dildo.
“Is that my lamp?” Sid asked instead of shutting the drawer or hiding the dildo in his pocket or saying, ‘that’s the only one that didn’t trigger an allergic reaction.’ Probably Geno didn’t want details on how he chose his dildos. Probably Geno didn’t even realise it was his dildo.
“And your dick,” Geno said, helpfully.
“My dick’s right here, if you want to see what a real one looks like,” Sid said, cupping it, because obviously he couldn’t let go of an easy opening like that but he could feel himself going red as hell.
Geno finished shoving the table into place and said, “Seen it. See it every time in locker room because you never wear pants on your gia-“
“It’s gross, wearing pants when you’re wet,” Sid protested over ‘giant ass.’
“But could see again,” Geno finished. So maybe he had realized what Taylor had meant.
Sid stammered, “What, really?”
Geno rolled his eyes. “You tease, Crosby?”
“I’ll show you tease, Malkin,” Sid said and tried to kiss him. He bumped his nose into Geno’s chin first, because Geno was still blinking at him, and then they bumped noses because Geno was always all go before he even checked out the ice, but then Geno raised his hand to cradle Sid’s face, and Sid grasped the back of Geno’s neck to keep him firmly in place and Sid could finally lick over the bow of Geno’s fat lower lip and into his wet mouth until they were pressed right against each other. Geno dropped back onto the bed, pulling Sid on top of him.
Sid ground down onto Geno’s stomach, dick already half-hard from Geno moaning softly into his mouth.
They broke off for a moment as Sid tried to scramble into some position where he could both feel Geno’s lips against his and have leverage to rut against him.
Geno laughed, voice already pleasantly hoarse with arousal. “You not tease. Crosby, you slut.”
“Bud, you haven’t even seen the half of it,” Sid told him, and then kissed him again before he could say something else stupid.
“Is that a liver?” Sid asked.
“No,” Geno said indignantly. “It’s kidney. And some fish guts, from, like, our fishing trip.”
Sid looked from the dripping misshapen thing in the Ziploc bag to his bed and wondered for a moment if this was a symptom of the transformation, hallucinations or something.
Geno ducked his head and glanced up through his hang-dog eyes, as sweet as caramel, and for an insane moment Sid genuinely considered letting Geno putting a bag of actual fucking animal insides on his bed.
“Are you infected? Is that possible? Maybe creatures can get infected too,” Sid said.
“What you mean?”
“By me!” Sid gestured. “I didn’t ask the creature doctor- the EIC doc whether other EI’s could be infected by me.”
“EI?”
“Extra-Interriora, like us,” Sid said, certain he was saying it wrong but confident that Geno wouldn’t know.
“Extra-Interrorium,” Geno corrected. “I’m not creature, Sid.”
“Huh,” Sid said. It occurred to him that Geno had been looking very pale, even for this time of the year. “So I’m gonna call the EIC and you’re gonna throw that in the trash can.”
“Sid,” Geno pouted and gestured at where he clearly still hadn’t gotten around to wearing underwear under his low-slung trackies.
Sid stumbled on nothing at all as he ran out of the room already pressing the phone. “I think I infected my teammate through my dick,” he said.
“Uh, wait a moment sir,” the receptionist on the other side said and then didn’t bother muffling the phone before yelling, “hey, Dana, does this count as a STD or an internal wound?”
Sid was doing his best to whisper at Geno because they were surrounded by surveillance, but as the heart rate monitor kept beeping, it wasn’t really as much of a secret as he would have liked it to be.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” he said finally, miserably, after Geno didn’t respond to taunts about his stupid statues, his golf swing, the weird way Ovechkin tried to loom over him despite being six inches shorter, or his dumb silk printed t-shirts.
Geno tossed the water bottle in his hand at him.
“Hey!” Sid said automatically, although he was too down-in-the-dumps to really put feeling into it.
“What you sorry for?” Geno demanded.
“Whatever you’re mad about.” After a moment, “Except bringing you to the hospital! Hell, G, your core temperature was so low you would have had a heart attack!”
“I’m mad because you think I’m too stupid say no to sex if not want,” Geno snapped.
Sid deflated. “I don’t think you’re stupid, bab – G, I just think your hormones are all fucked up and what if I’m like, a mermaid, or something. Maybe I really did talk you into – “ Sid stopped because he didn’t want to say it and Geno’s eyes were going all shiny under his angry expression. “I just think we should wait to – to talk until we’re both physiologically and psychologically stable in our creature forms,” Sid quoted the doctor exactly.
“Good little Crosby, coach’s pet, doctor’s pet, everyone pet,” Geno sneered and then turned his back to him and turned up the volume on his stupid Russian gameshow, drowning out anything Sid could have said. Sid tried to settle into the bed and wished he had one of those weird moss pillows or that Geno would stop giving him the cold shoulder, because his spine was itching again.
Geno only turned the volume down three hours and two different incomprehensible reality shows, one in English, later, when Sofie came in wearing a protective suit. “In light of your blood diagnoses, we’d like to try putting you both in different rooms for now.”
“Blood tell you what we are?” Geno asked skeptically, still more polite than he’s been to Sid the entire day. He’s already managed to sweet-talk every nurse on their floor through the little speaker that lets them communicate.
Sid thinks, a little sulky, that maybe Geno's the mermaid.
“Not always, Mr. Malki – Geno,” she corrected herself with a smile, “usually we can only get a general idea – cold-blooded, warm-blooded, dietary needs – but sometimes we can get a general idea. Geno, you seem to be a mermaid-type. Freshwater, riverine, we think.”
Geno nodded like he had expected that.
“What?” Sid asked. He had been joking.
“And we can’t quite figure out what’s going on with Mr. Crosby’s blood here. It’s not really matching anything that we have on file. The closest we’re getting is a salamander.”
“What,” Sid said, a little more urgently.
Geno nodded again. He didn’t even make a joke about Sid always wanting to be special, which meant that he was still mad at Sid, even though he had been doing the responsible thing.
“It’s possible that you’re suppressing each other’s first change,” she concluded. “So we’d like to separate you both. It’s only a matter of a couple of hours,” she said reassuringly.
Geno nodded again, like he was a bobble-head or something.
“Fine,” Sid said, more irritatedly than she deserved for trying to do her job and help them. “Thank you,” he added, hearing his dad’s stern voice in the back of his head.
He wore the protection suit she gave him, although she assured him it was just for safety, that there were no other patients in the corridors while they were moving him.
“Sorry, Sid, is my fault,” Geno said abruptly, miserably, just as they left the room.
Sid took a couple of more steps on autopilot before he processed this. “Uh, can you just,” he told the doctor, “I just, sorry, one minute, I really need to,” and he turned back and walked into the room where Geno had stuffed his head under his pillow like an idiot, like he always did when he was pretending he couldn’t hear people telling him to get the fuck up because the bus wasn’t going to wait for him. “Geno,” he said.
Geno said something under the pillow.
“Can you please get your head out, I’m not saying this to your bald spot,” Sid said.
As expected, this brought Geno out squawking, and Sid bent down, quick as lightning, to press a soft open-mouthed kiss to his bitten-up lips, and then just one more, unable to resist, on his flushed-pink cheek. “Baby, I’ve wanted to do that since you scored your first goal on NHL ice,” he said, and then darted back out.
He could hear Geno falling out of his bed and smiled to himself, and then said, “Oh fucking assh-” instead of, ‘I’m ready to isolate,’ like he’d meant to, because he was suddenly much longer than he had been and also couldn’t really feel his ears.
“You transformed!” Sofie said.
Sid tilted his head at her. “What gave it away,” he tried to say, and let out a grumbling growl.
“It takes a while for some forms to speak human languages. It’s probably the tongue,” she said, sounding more excited than he thought a doctor really should about this. “Can you say ‘Hi,’?”
Sid tried to roll his eyes at her, failed, and then turned around to nudge at the door where Geno was. Geno opened it, looking vaguely blue.
“Sid, that you?” he asked.
Sid nudged him and he almost fell over. “Sid, you dragon,” Geno said, and then started laughing. “What you treasure, like, pucks and stinky old gear?”
Sid shoved him harder so he fell over this time but he kept laughing anyway. “Maybe trophies, like, maybe you have ‘cutest baby trophy’ as first treasure.”
“Asshole,” Sid sighed, only it came out kind of just like ‘sssshole’ and Geno kept on laughing until Sid would have loved to have a human mouth again to kiss him just to make him stop. And suddenly, just like that, he has a human mouth again, and human hands, and human eyes, and oh, Geno looks like the bottom of a riverbank in Nova Scotia on a very clear day.
Sid shut the door behind them and slammed a still-giggling Geno against it and plastered himself against Geno and then set his teeth into Geno’s throat, the only place not covered in tiny scales, because he knew for absolute sure what his treasure was and he had to make sure everyone else also knew Geno belonged to him now.
Geno slid down and spread his legs so he could hitch his hardening dick up against Sid’s thigh, fat but cool, he was cool all over. Sid’s mouth was watering with wanting to get a taste, see how it was different from human Geno. Geno made a weird half-purring sound and suddenly smelt like all the best things in the world, chocolate and mac and cheese, and banana bread. Mermaid, huh.
“You’re the slut,” Sid said, happily. “You’re such a fucking slut for me, baby.”
“Shut up, suck my dick,” Geno said, blushing, voice dipping into the weird purring register before he visibly gathered himself.
Sid got to his knees and pressed his arm over Geno’s stomach to keep him in place. “You can use the voice on me, but I’ll do whatever you want anyway, G.” And then, before Geno could respond, he ripped open Geno’s pants and swallowed down his cock.
It took a couple of weeks before Sid could think of anything except ‘Third Stanley Cup!’ and ‘Geno!’ and very occasionally ‘Food!’ but at some point he woke up in Geno’s guest room, where Geno had moved in with him, surrounded by most of his own bedroom from his own house, and decided probably he should ask.
“So, are the kidneys and fishguts a mermaid thing?” Sid asked.
“Early,” Geno grumbled and shoved his face under the pillow again.
Sid tugged the pillow away and Geno followed it, crawling onto him. “I’m just saying, if that’s your way of being attractive…” Sid wanted to forbid him, but his track record of winning at forbidding Geno anything was – bad, actually terrible, but he really didn’t want any animal anything in bed with him, he didn’t even like eating in bed, and Geno complained if his pillow was slightly flat, let alone about crumbs in bed, the princess.
“No, that was courtship, Sid, we not courting now,” Geno yawned his terrible morning breath into Sid’s face.
“Mermaid courtship?”
“It’s Interrorium courtship,” Geno said impatiently, finally opening his eyes.
“No, it isn’t, there’s no such thing,” Sid said flatly.
“Yes, is. I read online,” Geno said, and sneaked a hand out to give him a wet willie. “The cushion for rashes and make food and make comfy home in room–" Geno waved his hand and then made it abundantly clear that if Sid wanted him to do anything else productive, like get up from bed, he’d better offer up sexual favours.
Sid had a moment where he had to consider that Geno had been using creature courtship rituals off google on him, and then another where he had the horrible realization that it had worked and then decided that as long as neither Taylor nor Marc ever found out, he’d take it as a win.