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In Sergei Fedorov’s defence, all he could really see was blond hair. Given his history, he had every reason to assume that it belonged to someone who would be down with a little good morning grinding.
It turns out that Steven Stamkos is not that kind of girl. Who knew?
Apparently, Stamkos responds to spooning attempts by throwing every appendage out, starfish style. That, Sergei notes, might be his problem. Stamkos manages to nail Sergei in the groin and the shin, as well as banging his own hand into a lamp and a glass of water.
And he kicks John Tavares out of the bed. Again, who knew?
“Stammer,” Johnny says sagely from the floor, “Chill.”
“Agrasmana?” says Stamkos wildly.
“No, we’re at Sergei’s,” answers Johnny, which Stamkos accepts with a nod.
Johnny is Sergei’s favorite.
“Well,” says Sergei, “Something must have been in the air in Canada today. Or I guess yesterday.”
“I guess,” Stamkos says glumly, which means that he knows why he’s here. It's always so much easier when they know why they’re here.
Johnny says nothing about this, because he’s already disappeared inside the walk in closet to making banging sounds.
“I moved your stuff one drawer up,” Sergei yells. “I needed the drawer they were in for a….thing.”
Stamkos makes a face, which Sergei ignores.
“Got ’em, thanks,” Johnny answers. Then he reappears, walking and pulling on Oshawa Generals sweatpants.
“You keep clothes here?” Stamkos asks. Johnny looks up at him blankly.
“Long distance is hard.”
“Poor baby,” says Sergei. “Come here and tell me all about how bad you are at phone sex.”
“I don’t see why we can’t just use skype,” Johnny says. “What’s the point of getting off if you can’t see each other?”
He flops onto the bed, and then starts to wiggle around wildly. Stamkos and Sergei have enough time to glare at him, then at each other, then back to Johnny, then back to each other to shrug, before both Johhny and Brad Richards pop up in a mess of blankets.
Now Sergei is starting to worry about the structural integrity of his bed.
“This is not where I used to wake up,” says Brad Richards.
“Its a numbers thing,” says Sergei. “You’re here now because you wear number ninety one now. You weren’t wearing that before, were you?”
“No,” says Brad Richards. “I used to wear nineteen. I had to switch this year.”
“Where did you go before?” Sergei asks.
“Joe Sakic.”
“Does no one go to Stevie?” Sergei wonders.
Brad shrugs. Sergei’s almost positive that the bed creaks, which motivates him to start herding them all down the stairs toward the kitchen. After some gymnastics, he manages to find a dusty box of corn flakes. He holds it out to where the three of them are huddled.
“Joe used to make muffins,” Brad notes.
Sergei shakes the box at him.
-*-
Sergei claps his hands.
“Ok, I have things to do today, so we’re going to do this as a group. In the interest of time.”
“Do what?” Stamkos asks.
Johnny rolls his eyes, Brad looks vaguely concerned, and Sergei scoffs.
“You are much smarter than that ok, don’t play games with me. I’m Russian. Now tell us why you’re fighting with who ever you're fighting with and we’ll fix it,” Sergei directs.
Stammer looks sufficiently abashed, which is all Sergei wanted.
“I just said something stupid, that’s all,” Stammer says while looking directly at Sergei’s elbow.
“How stupid?” says Johnny with all the apprehension of someone who knows exactly how stupid his friend can get.
“I was just, you know-” he mimes a blow job, which Sergei marks down as his first strike- “and I said something dumb after.”
“What did you say Stamkos, I am not a mind reader,” Sergei says.
“You could be!” Stammer attests.”I don’t know how this works, maybe the magic does make you a mind reader.”
Brad looks like he’s actually considering this possibility.
“What did you say?” Johnny presses, because he’s Sergei’s favorite. Sergei refills Johnny’s coffee cup for his services to Mother Russia.
“I just made some crack about pubes and gray hair and hair dye,” Stammer mumbles.
Brad looks like he's considering something, which concerns Sergei, but he focuses on the idiot at hand.
“Why would you do that?”
“I dont know! I wasn’t sure if it was a buddies thing or if… I just panicked. Then he got mad and drove me back to my hotel even though I was supposed to stay over with him.”
“Last night?” Brad prompts.
“Yeah,” says Stammer. “I was in New York.”
Brad’s face does… a series of things. Sergei would be hard pressed to come up with a word for what it looks like. Kind of like someone who’d eaten something very sour, while sky diving. He looks over at Johnny. Johnny shrugs, and refocuses on his coffee. Sergei takes a moment to consider getting his camera, but then Brad starts making sounds. Sergei feels obligated to stay in case it's a cry for medical attention.
“Are you… were… did...you did not… don’t tell me that you,” Brad starts huffing, and that must mean something in Canadian because Stammer suddenly also makes a face and puts his head on the table.
Sergei looks over at Johnny again, and is relieved to see that Johnny is just as confused about this as Sergei is. He makes up his mind to make Johnny something nice for dinner.
“This is not how working as a group goes,” Sergei says. “Come on, we have two more people to get through and Johnny needs a lesson on how phone sex works.”
“I do not,” Johnny mumbles. “Sam needs a lesson on keeping his laptop charged when he know we have a specific time set aside.”
“Why is you face doing what it is doing?” Sergei asks Brad.
“He was blowing Marty!” Brad says, in a tone that Sergei would personal reserve for yelling at a supervillain who wears eye patches.
“Its just, a thing,” Stammer tries to explain. “I like him.”
“I once saw him wear the same pants for twenty three days in a row. Not because he was on a point streak or anything. That’s just something he did. And you put your mouth on that,” Brad accuses.
“Aren’t you and Marty friends?” Johnny asks.
“Yes!” Brad yells. “He’s like my best friend. Why would you do that?”
Stammer does something with his shoulders that everyone seems to accept as an answer. Or at least Brad doesn’t question him any more.
“Ok but the real problem is why is he mad?” Sergei redirects.
Brad heaves a huge sigh. Probably the biggest sigh that Sergei has ever heard. He’s impressed by the breath control.
“Look, I didn’t know that it was you,” Brad starts, “But lately Marty’s been a little obsessed with figuring out age gaps. Like what the half your age plus 7 thing is, and what cultural references are now old and whatever. I think he feels guilty about the age difference.”
“I’m not that young!” Stammer says indignantly.
“Ok but if you have to say that then there was a question in the first place,” says Johnny. “That’s probably all that it takes.”
“I mean, he likes you. He definitely likes you. I didn’t know it was you,” Brad says again, prissy. “Maybe just don’t remind him of the age gap.”
“Maybe you should dye your hair grey instead of the other way around,” Sergei suggests.
Apparently that is not the answer.
-*-
Brad insists that they all deserve a drink for having to know what Marty does with his dick, which Sergei doesn’t understand. He never minded knowing what his friends did with their dicks. He knows a lot about Pavel Bure’s dick.
Then Brad is peeved that they have to drive to the store to get the liquor. Sergei is going to have to have a talk with Joe about spoiling his visitors.
After he’s been placated by way of very very nice vodka, Sergei decides that Brad deserves the hot seat.
“Brad,” he announces loudly enough that Stammer and Johnny look up from their video game. “Tell us about your feelings.”
“Its… Well, ok,” starts Brad, which is Sergei’s cue to settle in for a long haul. “Vinny has a chance to retire, and I think he should.”
That was a much shorter explanation than he was expecting.
“Ok….. and?”
“And…. look if he retires, than we could buy a house and live together and he’d be home a lot and we could, maybe,” Brad drops his voice to more of a whisper, “be ready to have a baby.”
Oh no. Oh god. Children. Sergei wasn’t prepared for children. He bought a bigger bed and he gives bad relationship advice. That’s what he didn’t sign up for. Babies are different. Why did it have to be babies? Why did it have to be Brad? Why did Tarasenko have to be so stable?
“And you…. want kids?” Stammer starts.
“Yeah. We’re 35, and we talked about it! He wants kids too. Its just, you know, a baby. That’s a whole person, you have to be ready for that. I think if he retires we’ll be ready. I don’t know what he thinks.”
“There!” Sergei shouts. “There is your problem. Find out what he thinks, problem solved.”
“I just,” Brad sighs, “We’ve talked about it. We talked about it when we were at school. And then again every time we signed somewhere new. I know he still wants kids. It's not that. It just wasn't the right time any of those times. But now he could retire.”
“Well he doesn’t have to retire for you two to have a baby,” Stammer points out, “And for the record I don’t think he wants to retire.”
Brad makes a ‘hmm’ sound of agreement.
“See I know your’s too,” Stammer points out vindictively.
Brad makes a more reluctant ‘hmm’ sound of agreement.
“So you could both have the baby and neither retire,” Johnny surmises.
“Is that fair to the baby though?” Brad muses, “Is it fair to us, we’d each miss half of the baby's life for like, at least two years? Probably more. And we’d have to spend all our free time traveling and I don’t know if he’d want to stay in Philly….”
“I think those are questions you should ask Vinny,” Sergei says, and this time he actually means it as real advice.
-*-
Later, Sergei is recovering by lying on the floor with a vodka when he feels someone’s head on his chest.
“So what’s up with you?” he asks.
“Nothing,” Johnny sighs. “I just miss having real sex. I probably shouldn’t have snapped at Sam. I’ll apologize.”
“Good because I wasn’t really going to give you phone sex lessons.”
-*-
There, Sergei thinks later, all the little monsters done and dusted. All he has left is half a bottle of vodka and some OHL sweatpants to clean.
Somewhere down the bed, Brad twitches into Johnny, who rolls into Stammer, who starfishes again and smacks Sergei in the stomach.
Sergei takes a deep breath. In the morning, after a cramped, violent and painful night of sleep, then all he will have left is a half bottle of vodka and some OHL sweatpants. And a bruise.
-*-
In the morning, they are gone. They are blissfully not there, and because of the time difference Sergei won’t have to deal with their text message updates for at least eight more hours. What a wonderful feeling. He’s happy again.
Sergei stretches his legs, and kicks a body.
“Fuck,” he says, as an inked arm reaches to pull the blanket down.
“Muffins?” says Tyler Seguin hopefully, as he emerges from the blanket cocoon.
“No, Tyler,” Sergei sighs at the ceiling. “I tell you this every single time. No muffins.”