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“Of course you have to have socks,” Dima says. He’s a well-dressed Siberian man, and the corners of his mouth are pulling down in pain.
V’s on the floor, getting to know one of the puppies with the big velvety ears while they wait. “It’s hot, though,” he says. “They get…sweaty? I don’t like them.”
“That’s what socks are for,” Dima says. “You ruin you shoes, that’s disgusting.”
“They’re shoes,” V says, with the serenity of a teenage athlete who really believes they’re pretty clean because everyone they know is worse. “Anyway I don’t bring any, I don’t need if it’s just going to be hot.”
Dima blinks helplessly, unable to ignore someone being stupid about the weather. “You want to be prepared, you know,” he says. “You don’t know it’s going to rain, get cold or what.”
V blinks back. “It’s always hot here,” he says, just south of scathing.
“If he don’t want, that’s fine,” Evgeny says, just to stop them, “You gonna upset dogs,” and nods to the puppy whose ear V’s still holding without paying attention, a little too close to a pinch.
V fixes on him. “Yeah?”
“Oh, you gonna look stupid, I’m not say it’s good. But, fine, if you want,” Evgeny tells him.
“I am not,” V says roundly, and goes back to stroking the puppy’s ears carefully with his thumb, ducking his face to hide some kind of smile.
He does, and he does regret it a bit, later, when he sees the photos, Evgeny can see it on his face. But he laughs and maybe he doesn’t do it again, and maybe he leans closer into Evgeny’s shoulders after that.
—
Other people start to hurt more as you grow up. It’s not the ways they try to hurt you that change—some of those get easier to shrug off, and some, maybe most, stay the same. You just start to hurt looking at people, knowing the thing that's wrong before they do because you’ve known it before.
“Hey, hey,” Evgeny says, nudging into V’s side until he turns just enough. They have the ice for another twenty minutes or so, until Milo the night guy comes to tell Evgeny they really have to close, but even he can admit they’re done skating for the night.
V says, “Hey,” back, but it’s a small one even for him.
“You wanna hear a joke?” Evgeny offers, wrapping an arm around him.
V says, “Okay,” which is how Evgeny knows he doesn’t really, but he’s trying not to look sad.
“So, this one time, Sherlock Holmes and Watson are gonna go camping,” Evgeny starts.
“You told that one, ” V says. “On Tuesday.”
“Is what you think. I’m Russian, I know three versions of that joke that are much better.” Evgeny bumps his cheek against V’s hair. “So what’s up? Just long winter?”
V snorts, a harsh sound for him, and like it’s been surprised out. “There’s not even winter here,” he says. He looks like he wants to swallow it, but then he doesn’t, and he sets his jaw, glancing at Evgeny.
“You miss Prague winter? Lots snow?”
Twenty-five isn’t old until you’re older than people you used to admire. It starts to ache, looking at some dumb little kid far from home and seeing your best friend or big brother.
“It’s, like, been years,” V says, like he’s shrugging it off, but he only really shrugs a little closer into Evgeny. “It’s not, like, anything new now or anything.”
Evgeny considers the rafters. “Mm,” he offers. It doesn’t feel bad, just because it aches. It aches like practice, like staying up all night to skate with quiet wrapped around you like a scarf, or meeting someone you haven’t seen for years.
It was something you were supposed to be relieved by, getting to come to Washington over any other city. Washington was a Russian’s team, practically a Russian team. Be glad, he’d been told, and at least there were other Russians, Evgeny had obligingly tried to think, but no one else was from home.
Alex ran over all his vowels with his accent, and he didn’t understand why Evgeny expected to find honey at breakfast in the mornings or why he had to start carrying it with him when it was never there. Dima loved birch trees and road trips when they flew over familiar open plains, and tried to make Evgeny look at particularly beautiful flat places while Evgeny wished for real mountains again. There’d never been anyone here for Sanya to talk at about rugby, or smoke with on stupid cold mornings, or who’d remember his city with him when the rivers froze.
You grow up and you turn into someone who’s missed things.
“What's best thing in Prague right now?” he says. “Like, if you’re there now, last time you were home for winter, what’s there?”
“Grandma,” V says, quick and careful at the same time, and Evgeny remembers that too. Being twelve and a thousand miles of train tracks away from home, not being able to run into her arms for the first time; nine, and sitting on the floor of the older boys’ dormitory, biting into honeybread from the grandmother’s care package Sanya had been willing to share and feeling something like secondhand love, even if it had gone a little stale. “Before I left, you know. I’d always be visiting her, holidays and everything, help in the kitchen.”
“Yeah,” Evgeny says, and lets his cheek rest back against the crown of V’s very blond hair. “I tell you about the drunk man who goes to the zoo?”
—
Jakub’s grandmama is a nice woman, who raised a nicer boy on purpose. It’s not hard to find her on Czech Facebook, and she considers his request for a few days before she grants him a recipe, with deliberately thin instructions to test him the way grandmothers do. He picks up ingredients at the Russian grocery because it doesn’t really matter, and drops them in Alex’s kitchen because it’s there and free.
“Oh, I’m sorry, were you using this?” he says, and points out the stove. “You know this can make fire, yeah? Dangerous for you to leave it just lying around the house.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Alex says, screwing the cap off a Gatorade with his teeth, and only remembering to leer after he’s done. He wanders off to do something in the backyard that Evgeny isn’t worrying about while the condensed milk cooks, and comes back like he’s been called as soon as it’s whispering hot. Of course he’s lost his shirt.
“You try to touch this, and I’m gonna save the caramel and not you,” Evgeny warns him. Alex only hums and muscles in behind him anyway, hand on Evgeny’s lower back and bumping against his shoulder blades, trying to push his head down to give Alex a better view, so Evgeny adds, “I worked for it.”
Alex ignores him, although his hand is still close and warm through Evgeny’s thin t-shirt, which means he’s actually thinking. When he isn’t he talks, or gropes people with more purpose. The caramel can come out of the hot water now, and he lets the movement shake him off as Evgeny fishes it out with tongs and sticks it in the fridge, although Evgeny hadn’t particularly meant for it to.
He comes back the next day like he’s surprised to discover his kitchen all over again, and inspects all the ingredients while Evgeny measures and mixes and melts more butter over low heat.
“You did that part already. Two times,” Alex observes.
“Three sticks of butter. Now you know why it’s so good,” Evgeny says. “Give me those, I need that.”
Alex licks the mixer beaters resentfully one last time, but surrenders them. Evgeny flips them so he can lick off the last of the caramel and butter, and rinses them before returning them to the cake batter.
“You’ve been good with the kids,” Alex finally says. “Gonna be a leader like me.” Maybe you have to know his soft long vowels to know he isn’t saying it with any particular tone.
“Not really,” Evgeny says, eyeing the first layer in the oven. “Not like you at all.” The color’s still fine. Alex is perched on a stool at the counter, kicking his feet but still watching Evgeny.
They’ve argued about this, maybe, or maybe it’s not arguing. Evgeny’s said, “No I’m not,” but he hasn’t said, “I won’t be you,” when he meant it. It gets easier to find your words, easier to tell people what they meant to you, as you learn that little shades of your words mean more, and you learn to shape them better even while you learn there’s never a guarantee you can make someone else hear them.
“What, like I don’t…” Alex asks, and rolls his shoulders.
“You don’t,” Evgeny agrees. “You are, a lot, Sasha. But you don’t do lots of things.”
“I don’t cook.”
“I thank God,” Evgeny says.
“So, what, I’m just a poster to the kids? Like you had on the wall when you were little?” He picks up the mixing spoon, flipping it. “Or, so, what, kids don’t want yours too?”
Evgeny eyes him. You’d have to have the self-confidence of a saint and be an asshole to call yourself like Nick Backstrom, and Evgeny had never meant to ask for such an endorsement, but Alex called him. Alex likes everyone, responds to anyone, which might make him hard to read except that when he wants someone he makes himself relentlessly clear by calling. He has friends he remembers to hug when he sees them and friends he still texts across 12 hours difference and years, and Evgeny makes the list. Alex has wanted him in Washington and nationals and on any team that Alex puts together from before the first time they met, and Alex is twisting his fingers into his temper right now because he hates his list being misread.
“I think it’s gonna be a couple more years. 12 year-olds, maybe, but V’s not actually young enough he was watching me like he was watching you,” Evgeny says, sliding in another tray and glancing at him sidelong. “Alex, chill.”
“You said it,” Alex grumbles. “Don’t say dumb shit.”
“I said you don’t tell jokes, Alex. You don’t, you don't need to, you’ve been their hero for years just for being and you still are when they get to come here and see you all the time. They want to chase after you, maybe not have you there watching them, asking are they okay, knowing they’re not and making them talk or feel better about it.” That’s the last layer out, but he’s not taking a knife to them while they’re hot and Alex is in a grump, so he fans them out across the counter. “You’re good at being big, you know? And that’s…I don’t know, little distant.”
“Now I’m not funny,” Alex says, but he’s done fiddling with the spoon. “What next?”
“Nuts, I think,” Evgeny says, and he knows to skip back almost out of reach when Alex lunges for him. Alex gets a hold on his wrist and then his arm across the counter, enough to tug him away from the unprotected cakes and around to Alex’s spot at the corner, and then hooks a foot behind his knee to hold him there.
Evgeny leans in to bump his nose against Alex’s forehead, because his hands are still dusted with flour, and then changes his mind and pats Alex’s hair anyway, liking how it catches in the fine strands and makes you see the silver shine. “I’m not gonna get less silly just cause I’m grown up,” he says. “Come on, Alex. Silly is how I could be grown up before I was one. It’s just not how anyone can be you.”
Alex lets flour drift across his cheeks, settle on his lip like snow. He doesn’t mind, doesn’t give a flicker of attention to it, and that’s the look that makes him.
Evgeny hadn’t actually had a poster, like Mishka on the first floor or Natasha from the next apartment block did, which everyone agreed had been very cool. Evgeny had had Youtube, clips from highlight reels, his friends lying on the floor together painting Alex in a thousand stories.
It’s still like a fucking fairytale, every day.
Alex shakes off the look, and a little of the flour, blinking slow. “Yeah, I know,” he says. Evgeny turns the wrist he’s still holding, and Alex draws his fingers slowly up his arm. “Thoughtful,” he says, like he’s only renaming what Evgeny already said. “Not so bad if I were a little more that way.”
The corner of his mouth tilts and Evgeny pokes at it, a little sticky with caramel and dry with flour, until he parts his lips, baring a tooth instead, and Evgeny presses his fingertip against its point.
“You are, enough, for enough of us,” he says. “You’re just something else, also, for more. Let the kid have a few years and he’ll get used to it.”
Alex lets his mouth fall closed, pulling back a little and pulling Evgeny in at the same time. “Yeah?”
“It won’t work like that,” Evgeny tells him, letting Alex pull. “I don’t mean he’s gonna stop looking up at you, just meant he’ll learn to…be ordinary with you too. Hang out, listen to you fuck up good songs, sit out hurt together. That’s real. But I think you think admiring you isn’t real, real things will kill it. They don’t.” He flips a hand over his eyes. “It’s just like sunglasses.”
“Are we done talking about Jake?” Alex says after a while. “Because he’s….”
“Homesick. Be nice,” Evgeny tells him.
“You are already,” Alex says back. “Is a baby, I was gonna say. Very blond. And I’m hungry.”
“You’re between me and the nuts,” Evgeny says. “I told you.” Alex bites at his finger, and then tries to lick a little of the flour off. It wasn’t what Alex was going to say, really.
Alex digs his heel into the soft skin behind his knee, until he lets himself tip into Alex solid weight to balance. “I don’t see a problem,” Alex says, and Evgeny gives up and kisses over each of Alex’s foreign and familiar blue eyes, then stops just over his mouth before Alex can bite him again.
“Or a cake, either,” he says, and steals the mixing spoon back.