#costco

Ilya is 18 or 19, he's on his own for the first time in his life, in a brand new country, and he's pretending to manage on his own and he's totally fine and no one should even think about worrying about him because he's fine. And the other Boston players don't quite know what to make of this brash, cocky kid who doesn't deign to speak more than a few words to them (he gets nervous and English sucks and it's easier to come off as arrogant than stupid), and the worst part is he can back up all of his shit talking on the ice so Boston can't even be super mad at him, but still. A couple of the older players are waiting for him to break and realize he isn't all that and he'll have to face the reality of the MHL.

And then a player texts in the groupchat like, hey I'm going to Costco, anybody need anything? And some of the players have like real requests for snacks for the locker room or something, and Ilya thinks okay. Grocery store. Got it. And then someone is like I need AAA batteries, and he's like okay groceries stores are different in America, probably batteries is normal. And then someone is like lemme know if they have any lawn chairs (mostly as a bit), and then someone else is like man i need to get new tires for my car, and someone else goes my sister in law got a great car insurance from them, and Ilya finally is like wtf is this store??

Cue the entire team dragging Ilya to Costco to get "the real American experience" (Cliff Marlow's words), and Ilya is just. Blown away. He gets a massive container of goldfish and huge cut of beef he's not even sure how he's going to cook and some random Costco shirt jacket because "it's only fifteen dollars???" and he's so polite to the people giving out samples, and someone has to talk him down from getting one of those massive safes because the car isn't big enough so he settles on a huge costco sheet cake, and he's just so gleefully amazed by this insane bulk store, easily one of the most important things Americans have ever invented. And the rest of his teammates are realizing for the first time that this is just a teenager. They realize they've never seen his face this open or laugh this much and they didn't notice how much tension he had before until its gone.