#sidolli

Olli’s an easy kid to like. He works as hard as any nineteen-year-old Sid has ever seen, himself included. He’s quiet around the locker room - head down, focused, maybe still a little bit in awe - but take some time with him and you can tease out this goofy grin that makes you happy just to look at. Once he gets comfortable with you, he will start teasing you, in the broadest possible way but so pleased with himself that you can’t help but laugh. He’s kind of a slob around the house, but he acts with alacrity on any housekeeping suggestions Sid makes. Sid gets the impression he’s a little embarrassed about the messiness. Which, Sid’s lived around hockey players all his life; he’s not going to judge.

Olli keeps to himself. Jussi and his wife have taken Olli in wholeheartedly, and Olli hangs out with Beau and Bortz sometimes, as two of the other young guys on the team - even though they’re grizzled veterans compared to him and still don’t get half his minutes - but he rarely begs out of a quiet evening with Sid to spend time with them.

Sid invites him along to dinner with the Frenchies, on impulse during a homestand. At the restaurant, Olli turns as shy and serious as the day he showed up at training camp, eating his food and listening hard and not saying a word, even though everyone tries to stick to English for his benefit, although they tease Sid by pretending it’s for him. Sid, who thought he’d gotten to know Olli pretty well at this point, finds he has no idea how to draw him out. Most of what he might say to Olli is just between the two of them: laundry, the rattle Olli had complained of in his Range Rover.

He shouldn’t have brought him, Sid thinks. He should have known better. Olli’s a teammate, but right now he feels more like a tagalong significant other, and he doesn’t deserve that.

But then Tanger starts asking questions about the D, about how things are working down on the ice - “How are you and Brooksie?” And finally Olli relaxes. Hockey: the great equalizer.

“I’m sorry I dragged you out,” Sid says in the car. “That was probably boring, right?”

“Oh,” Olli says quietly. “It was fine. I didn’t mind.”

He refuses to say more, and Sid gives up on it eventually, even though he wants to shake Olli until he tells Sid what he really thinks. Sid gets that way a lot. Olli’s so closed off all the time, and you’d think being able to smell some of his moods would help, but it doesn’t, really. Knowing he’s upset doesn’t make it any easier to find out why.

And it’s not Sid’s business, anyway. It’s not fair to Olli that Sid can smell his moods. He certainly doesn’t owe Sid anything just because they accidentally bonded and then were foolhardy enough to keep it through the end of the season.

Sid has no right to ask Olli to share himself with Sid. He has to keep telling himself that, over and over. “It’s not my business,” he tells Flower, when Flower takes him out for late lunch.

“But you want it to be.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want. It’s what’s best for Olli that’s important, since I fucking dragged him into this in the first place.”

“So it matters what Olli wants, is what you’re saying.”

Sid stops up, sandwich halfway to his mouth. “Yes?” he says, because that seems like the correct answer.

“So what does Olli want?”

Sid snorts. “To get this farce over with. To not have to be tied to me all the time. Fuck.”

“Did he say that?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“I don’t know, Sid. Is it obvious because he said it?”

“You’re not saying he wants to keep the bond,” Sid says, bewildered.

“I’m saying it is just possible there might be something he wants from you between now and the end of the season besides you being sorry for shit.”

Sid opened his mouth and tried a couple of times to form words. Finally he set his sandwich down. “Like what?”

“Well, I don’t fucking know, Sid, I’m not the one fucking bonded to him. But you should know, if you’ve been listening.”

“I guess I should,” Sid said, heart sinking. “But I told him, if he wanted to talk to me—”

“And what did he say?”

Slowly, Sid said, “He said I don’t talk to him.” He waited for Flower to jump on that, but Flower left Sid to stew in his own chagrin until finally Sid said, “So I guess he’d like me to do that.”

“Hmm,” Flower said. “<i>I’m sorry</i> doesn’t count as talking anymore.”