71tenseventeen

Sid snags a cane off the tree as he passes it on the way to a team meeting and grins back at Geno’s hiss of disapproval. “What? That’s what they’re there for.”

“No. For pretty,” Geno says, fighting his brain for a few English words. He puffs up, knowing he was understood, when Sid’s smile grows petty and impish.

“They won’t miss one,” Sid says as he unwraps the straight part of the candy cane first and pops the end into his mouth. It sticks out like a pipe.

And that’s the beginning of the end for Geno.

Unlike the small candies Sid routinely shoves into his cheek, the candy cane moves with the motion of Sid’s mouth. He absently pushes it between his pursed lips and pulls it slowly out again while he listens to the coach go over plays. Geno’s eyes follow every obscene movement, fixated on the disappearing red lines, the tip of Sid’s tongue when he adjusts the candy in his mouth.

Sid’s eyes flick over, undoubtedly feeling Geno’s stare. Geno tries to look away, appropriately ashamed of himself, but his eyes draw back to Sid’s mouth. He knows Sid is watching him. He knows he should turn his attention to the coach, the plays.

Sid tugs the candy cane all the way out until just the tip remains inside. He presses on it, pushing his plush lower lip down so Geno can see his tongue. When he shoves the cane back into his mouth, Geno watches it glide up Sid’s artificially red tongue, tinged from the stripes. Sid closes his lips around the cane with just the curved end sticking out, like he’s deep throating it. There’s absolutely no doubt in Geno’s mind that Sid’s performance is intentional, especially when he dares a glance up and sees the mischievous smile in Sid’s eyes.

Geno is hard under the table. He’s so fucking glad they have a long time left in this meeting because his sweats would hide nothing from the team.

On the other hand, he wishes they had less time because he’s very interested in where Sid wants to take this.

Sid spends half of the meeting fellating the candy cane before he whittles it down to nothing. He pops the last small piece into his mouth and meets Geno’s eyes with a shrug to say, “That was fun.” Geno slumps in his chair, both relieved to be free of the sexual teasing and disappointed that it’s over. Sid’s never flirted with him before. Who knows if he ever will again. Maybe he was just feeling playful. Maybe it meant nothing.

Those worries don’t last long. On the way out of the meeting, Sid finagles to walk beside him and says, “I was thinking about taking another candy cane from the tree. That one was really good.”

Geno’s mouth dries up. Sid is saying something under his words. He hardly dares to guess what it is.

“Only—you said I shouldn’t. So I was wondering if you might have something else I could suck on.”

The English words bounce around out of order and settle down in his mind. He’s positive he understands Sid’s meaning, but the boldness of the offer makes him hesitate. “You want,” he says, glancing down significantly.

Sid’s smile is both beautiful and naughty. He shrugs. They’re approaching the tree. “Up to you. I can snag another one or—”

When Sid reaches toward the tree, Geno touches his hand to stop him. He probably turns tomato red when he says, “Don’t want candy. Want me.”

He turns his eyes back to the lake, stretched out in a frozen expanse through the trees. If he holds his breath, the only sound is the faint rustle of leaves.

The snow does nothing to turn down the worried static in Geno’s mind. If anything, the quiet landscape allows his imagination to run rampant. Are they breaking up? Sid invited him here for Christmas, a rare few days between games over the holidays allowing the quick visit. On the phone, it seemed like Sid wanted him here.

Pinpricks of cold pain poke Geno’s skin on his hands. He shoves them in his pants pockets, but it won’t help much. He stormed out without a coat or a plan, running from Sid’s irritable words. <i>You don’t know what it’s like to lose everything.</i>

Sid lost a lot when he got hit, when he couldn’t come back, but surely not <i>everything</i>.

The door sounds a football field away in the quiet, whispering open and thumping shut. Geno can’t move, frozen by the soft crunch of footsteps through powder snow. He jumps at the touch of a hand on his back and forces himself to look.

Sid’s smile is complicated—remorseful and worried and hopeful at once. He holds out a steaming mug for Geno. “It’s decaf.”

Geno takes the tea and wraps both hands around the mug. The heat awakens his fingers. When he sips it, he finds that it’s herbal tea, but it’s nice and warm.

“You don’t have to freeze to death to prove your point,” Sid says, eyes smiling without letting go of the melancholy.

“Not freeze to death,” Geno says, sipping his drink. “Just need little break.”

“I get it. I’d want to get away from me, too.” There’s a joke in the words, but it’s a bitter and self-deprecating one. When Geno looks, Sid grimaces. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” Geno asks, a sniff in his voice. He’s testing Sid, and Sid knows it.

“I know I didn’t lose everything. Just hockey.”

There’s no mistaking the heartbreak in Sid’s tone. <i>Just</i> hockey. Geno softens and leans into him. “Not just hockey,” Geno says. Sid’s eyes meet his with grateful understanding.

“I just—never thought it would end like this. I guess I’m not processing very well. Maybe coming home and getting away from it wasn’t the best plan.

Sid left Pittsburgh so abruptly. One day he was there in Geno’s life, and the next, he was gone. “Maybe it’s better you come back. When you mean to me in Pittsburgh, it’s not so cold. I can stand outside long time.”

A crack of a real smile at Geno’s forgiveness. Sid turns to face him, studies him for a moment, and then leans in. He drops a lingering kiss on the tip of Geno’s nose. “I don’t know,” Sid says with fondness shining in his eyes. “You’re super cute with the Rudolph look, shivering out here.”

So for this one, I think our setting is the Kingdom of Canada, a modern-day semi-constitutional monarchy that wrested its independence from Britain at some point and promptly established its own royal family.

Canada is known for its educational institutions—so much so that a young man from Siberia, from a good family but not a great one, might travel across land and sea to the capital of Canada for university, as opposed to attending one of the myriad of options in Moscow.

Zhenya likes Canada. The elected officials mean the people are represented, more or less, and the Crown is less prone to the wild excesses of Russian’s ruling class (although, to be fair, Zhenya is not sure how much of that is the absolute nature of the monarchy, and how much of it is down to Sasha just being...Sasha). The King and Queen are fair, and kind, and the Crown Prince…

Well. Zhenya met him at school, in a math class they were both taking out of requirement and not interest, and he was immediately infatuated.

Sidney is kind, and quiet until you get to know him, and perhaps a little too serious, but—he’s got the weight of an entire country on his shoulders, after all. It’s understandable.

Zhenya still thinks he needs to laugh more.

After graduation, Zhenya had always planned to return to Russia, to take his shiny new degree and put it to use, but when he talked about his plans with Sidney, and Sidney had looked at him like his world was crumbling and said, what if you stayed here instead, and you could come work for me, well not for me, for the palace, and you could keep going to school, like you’ve talked about—

Zhenya breaks his father’s heart, when he announces his intention to stay in Canada and keep going with his studies, but his mother understands, he thinks. Even if she didn’t, Zhenya was never going to say no to Sidney, not when he really asked for something. He so rarely asks for anything.

And so Zhenya starts earning a salary. His official title is Personal Aide—what it means in practice is that he’s set up in a suite of rooms connected to Sidney’s through a shared sitting room. He has Sidney’s calendar on his phone, and he’s copied on all sorts of emails, but his main responsibility is essentially making sure Sidney doesn’t worry himself into an early grave (he’s already started on the grey hairs). Since this is something Zhenya has been doing since they met, he finds his job entirely unchallenging.

His educational path takes him to mostly self-study, with monthly meetings with his advisors, so he’s got plenty of time to stick to Sidney’s side during the days, and they spend quiet evenings together, Zhenya doing his research and Sidney reading through laws and proposals and letters, all the daily tedium involved in preparing to run a country. Sometimes they’ll go to dinner with friends from school, and Sidney’s occasionally whisked off to formal events that Zhenya’s not high-born enough to attend, but they’re together a lot.

And it’s in those quiet still evenings where Sidney starts to confide in Zhenya about his other expectations, the ones Zhenya hadn’t known about.

Canada’s constitution requires its monarch to be married. Zhenya had known this in the abstract; he’d been more focused on the fact that it explicitly stated that the nature of the marriage didn’t matter, meaning, Canada allowed same-sex unions (another reason he came here for school, although one he’d kept to himself) than what it meant for his friend Sidney.

Sidney hadn’t dated in school. It would have been impossible for him. He’d hooked up plenty, but it had been discreet enough that one would be forgiven for assuming the Crown Prince was entirely chaste.

Zhenya knows he’s not. It’s a knowledge that burns him if he examines it too closely.

It is Sidney’s parents’ wish that he begin courting soon, Zhenya learns one night over hushed conversation; they’d like him to be settled and happy in his marriage before the throne is his, to minimize stress and provide him with solid support during the transition.

It makes sense. It makes all the sense in the world, Zhenya knows this. He just—hates it. He hates the idea of someone else staying up too late with Sidney, listening as he whispers out his fears and hopes and dreams. He hates the idea of someone else being the recipient of Sidney’s private smiles and rare, subtle little eyerolls when he’s bored and restless.

He doesn’t know what will happen to him, when Sidney meets someone he could love.

The suitors start making appearances at the more informal events Zhenya attends. Some of them seem fine, he supposes, but he doesn’t like the way they look Sidney over; as if they’re picturing him as a pretty thing to dangle off their arms. He doesn’t like the proprietary way they glance around the throne room, the familiarity with which they address the King and Queen.

He keeps quiet, though. It’s not his place. And if sometimes he notices the Queen watching him speculatively, well—that’s not his business either.

Luckily, Sidney sends them all home after no more than a day or two; the only ‘suitor’ that stays for longer is Sasha, and that’s because he’s not really there to try and woo Sidney, but had instead leapt at the trip as a chance to visit with Zhenya. Sidney had watched them greet each other with a small smile, and then proceeded to disappear for the entire week that Sasha was there. Zhenya had appreciated the time with his friend, but he’d hoped they could get to know each other.

Once Sasha leaves, Sidney is strangely cautious, withdrawn, but he soon returns to his normal self, and Zhenya shrugs and puts it from his head. There’s a new suitor expected any day, after all.

This one doesn’t take, either. Nor does the next one, or the one after that, or the one after that, and Zhenya...wonders, a little.

But he’s held Sidney’s confidence for years now. The increasingly pointed looks from the Queen, the King’s efforts to single Zhenya out and get to know him—none of that means a thing if it’s not what Sidney wants, and if Sidney wanted Zhenya, surely he must know he could have had him from almost the day they met?

I’d be so much better for you than any of them, Zhenya thinks to himself as he watches the second son of some North American dignitary squire Sidney about the gardens. His hand is too low on Sidney’s back. Zhenya turns the page on the book he’s pretending to read.

It would be wrong, to use what he’s learned of Sidney over the years to try and win his heart. It would be—dishonest, a betrayal of their friendship. Zhenya could never do that to Sidney. Plus, he’s from a good family and not a great one, and good isn’t enough for the Crown Prince. Isn’t good enough for Sidney, who is kind, and quiet until you get to know him, and perhaps a little too serious, but—