Archive of Our Own ^beta

“ Lovers for the most

part are without hope: passion

also is just a bridge,

a means of connection. ”

- Marina Tsetaeva,  ‘Last Bridge’ (translated from the Russian by Elaine Feinstein).

 I

A portent heralding the chaos that would disorder his carefully regulated existence appeared unexpectedly at 3:55 a.m on Monday. A faint scent of something delicate, something entirely out of place, touched the old musty walls of the corridor with light fingers, and crept across the landing to his front door.  Sidney stopped outside his apartment and took a deep breath - once, twice, and then once again, before he took the stairs two at a time, travel mug of coffee clutched in one hand and keys in the other, leaping over the unsteady last step. What could it possibly be, what could be so subtle and yet so joyfully fragrant?  It reminded Sidney of someone he had once slept with; she had left before he woke, but the next morning his pillow had been faintly scented like this, sweet and musky, somehow light and dark at once, penetrating the fog of sweat and sex. He never saw her again, but carried the memory of that fragrance for days after. An intimate smell, so odd to encounter in the hallway outside his apartment with its faded paintings of small pastel dogs and uninspiring gardens hanging above the creaky wooden floorboards.  A new floor disinfectant, perhaps, that Mrs. Perkins was testing out? Sidney had never encountered a cleaning product quite so redolent with desire.

Shadyside was quiet in these early hours, the sun still dipped below the horizon.   Mornings were cool even in the middle of an unseasonably warm spring, but Sidney kept his windows rolled up, and the faint scent, or the ghost of it accompanied him through his drive to work, tickling at his memory.  Over the radio, his car rattled steadily, a slight clinking that was alarming enough to catch his ear, but not quite enough for him to actually find the time to do anything about it. He listened to the click-clack as he drove, worrying about garage bills and finding time to get the car serviced, the email from his father about next year’s research plan, and the patient in H344 who was still unresponsive.  Sidney pulled into basement parking, double-timed it to catch the elevator and then jogged lightly to the locker room to grab his coat. Around him, the faint scent from his hallway had been replaced with the sharp, sterile antiseptic of the hospital, a contrast that made him pause momentarily before Evelyn, harried after night shift, called out, “Dr. Crosby, over here!” Sidney grabbed his clipboard and list, sprinted out of the locker room, and with his first step under the bright hospital lights and onto the white tiled floors, forgot everything but the work at hand, the serious business of saving lives.

It was not quite four before Sidney finally had time to eat, and he made it to the cafeteria just to catch the last of the lunch service by virtue of taking the stairs down six floors instead of waiting for the elevator. He found Flower sitting at their usual table, balanced cross-legged on a plastic chair, three pudding cups in front of him and a spoon sticking out of his mouth while he read on his tablet. “Why are you here, you asshole?” asked Sidney, before shovelling his tuna salad into his mouth. “Don’t you sleep doctors do any work?” Flower glared at him, mumbled something incomprehensible around his spoon and went back to his reading. They ate in silence, Sidney scanning his to-do list, written hastily before rounds and much amended since, while Flower compiled his own, pristine list across the table. “See you tomorrow?” Sidney, swallowed a mouthful hastily, and reached out for the last of Flower’s pudding cups only to have his hand slapped away. “Leave my pudding alone and buy some milk,” Flower bitched at him. “Kessel said you were out. He sends his love, too. I can’t believe I don’t live with you anymore and yet I’m a part of your grocery management.”

“Why are you so cranky? And incidentally, the only way I know Kessel still exists is the declining level of milk in cartons that I buy,” said Sidney. “I haven’t seen him in weeks. Should I be buying milk for a ghost? Maybe my apartment is just haunted.” It would, he thought, explain the scent in the hallway, but for the fact that Kessel’s ghost would probably smell more like pizza, antiseptic, and sports deodorants. “He’s at the V.A. this rotation, and doing that cool prosthetics study, you know that perfectly well,” said Flower, placidly opening his second pudding cup and tucking the third closer to his tray. “Sort out your milk situation or I’ll have to take measures.”  Sidney considered his options for possible distractions that would draw Flower’s attention away, while Flower slurped obnoxiously. “I met Kessel and the rest yesterday for practice,” Flower continued after swallowing, “you know, the one that you were supposed to come for. Seeing as you have the soft hands and the ‘C’”.

“I know,” said Sidney, aiming for contrite and mournful, and missing by a mile. “I was going to come but then Mario paged me and said I could scrub in on his craniotomy. It was a thing of beauty. We were there for five and a half hours.” “We can’t all have world-renowned neurosurgeons as our mentors, pulling us into cool surgeries at the drop of a hat” said Flower, scowling in the face of Sidney’s evident smugness. “So the rest of us do our own shifts and then we go out and play some hockey. Without you.”

“Worth it,” said Sidney, feinting left for Flower’s cherished collection of gel pens, and then smoothly palming the last pudding cup when Flower dived to protect his stationery. “Asshole!” said Flower, his outrage mounting as Sidney waggled his fingers and said. “Soft hands, remember,” before thoroughly defiling the pudding cup with his tongue. He ignored Flower’s vocal protests and the disgust of a couple of gen. surg. residents at the opposite table, eating his pudding and working through the dosage plans for his ongoing clinical study. Flower subsided, but only momentarily, eyes narrowed as he plotted revenge. It would have escalated, as it usually did, but all three of Sidney’s pagers (personal, team, on-call) went off at once and he grabbed his list and fled, leaving his tray and the half-empty pudding for the long-suffering Flower to dispose of.

“Milk,” yelled Flower, as he sprinted off, and Sidney waved in response, groceries already forgotten as he rounded the corner because the patient in F457 needed immediate attention, his attending wanted him for rounds in another twenty minutes, he’d been paged down to the E.R. for a consult, and Sidney still had 80% of his to-do list left before he reviewed a pile of lab reports. A lesser man would have flinched, but Sidney went headfirst into the pressure and loved every minute of it.

“You’re a workaholic,” Flower often told him, sometimes in disgust, and other times, in admiration, and it was true, insofar as it took four weeks before Sidney finally managed to catch up with the rest of the team for hockey practice. In the interim, he forgot the milk four times and ignored a series of increasingly passive-aggressive post-it notes from Kessel about Roommate Responsibilities and Grocery Shopping Allocation. He drank his coffee black out of spite, shuddering through the last few mouthfuls, and probably as karma, finally had to have his car towed to a mechanic after it broke down on his way in to work, making him late for rounds for the first time ever. “Saint Sidney, late!” gasped Hagelin, pretending to clutch his nonexistent pearls. Sheary looked terrified, but then he usually did. “My car broke down,” said Sidney apologetically to his attending, but Coffey, not known for patience at the best of times, dressed him down thoroughly, much to Burns’s ill-disguised glee. “Can’t say I didn’t deserve that,” said Sidney ruefully, to Hagelin and Hornqvist later, “My car’s been rattling for a month, but I haven’t done anything about it.”

“If perhaps you left the hospital now and then, you might have the chance,” said Horny, shrugging. “Could have been worse,” he added, and indeed it could have, but Coffey had not yet figured out that assigning scut work and extended hours to Sidney was not actually a punishment. “He should have exiled you from the hospital for a week instead,” was Mario’s conclusion, as he stopped by one evening after an emergency call, while Sidney sat on night float, juggling three teams’ worth of patients with reasonable aplomb and minimal, totally justified, panic.  “That would have taught you the error of your ways.”

“Don’t tell him,” said Sidney, grinning up at Mario and gratefully accepting an invitation to scrub into surgery later that week, to be followed by dinner at the Lemieuxes and some light debate on a recent gene therapy study from Hopkins after. “My kind of dessert,” said Mario, and then added, “There will be cheesecake,” laughing at Sidney’s sigh of relief, while Burns scowled over his charts and mumbled about favouritism. “Don’t overdo it, Sidney. Lesser men than you have burned out,” said Mario, a parting shot over his shoulder as interns scattered in his wake. “Sure, sure,” said Sidney, filing a stack of patient charts and getting on his feet again. “I need a consult in the E.R., stroke victim coming in,” Chu said as she sprinted past, and Sidney, already moving, said “On it,” before Burns could so much as open his mouth.

Despite his best efforts, and probably due to the new rules that set limits on resident hours in the hospital, Sidney found himself with a rare free evening a few days later. Hoping to make the best of it, he  caught a lift home with one of the CRNs, a pretty, wry woman called Shawna, but struck out embarrassingly hard. “Your reputation precedes you,” she said to him primly, her hands placed firmly on the wheel. Sidney, always a fan of competence and good form, tried to look sunny and innocent, leaning into the car window as she idled the engine. “Oh, come on,” he said, turning the smile up to full wattage. “We’re young still. It’s just a date, not an offer of lifelong commitment,” to which she noted, acerbically, “It never is, with you, Dr. Crosby, and some of us are looking for more than one night.”

“It’ll be one really great night though,” tried Sidney, but she patted his hand condescendingly and drove off. Sidney watched her go, rueful but not particularly heartbroken, before turning back to the house. The old Victorian stood quietly at the end of the leafy lane, and on the ground floor, Mrs. Perkins’s blinds were down, although Sidney could hear the faint sounds of piano music and voices filtering out onto the stoop. He remembered, abruptly, that he’d intended to ask her about the flower scent. It was there, lingering in the corridor every day for the last month as he sprinted out before dawn, and was still faintly there with its dark musky echoes, on the days he actually made his way home late at night. Kessel insisted that he couldn’t smell a thing, but Sidney had always had a sensitive nose, overwhelmed by buffets, summer gardens, and embarrassingly, by bad infections in the clinic. Laughter broke out when Sidney stopped by Mrs. P.’s front door, her light tones followed by a rich, deeper chuckle, and Sidney decided to postpone his weird supernatural inquiries until she had no guests. He took the steps two at a time and grabbed his gear, dragging a protesting Kessel off the couch, and made him drive them to the rink before Flower lost his temper for real and expelled Sidney from the beer league team altogether.  

“You don’t deserve a ‘C’” Hags complained, as Sidney taped his socks, moving quickly as everyone else was dressed and they only had the rink for an hour. “Honestly, we have a title to defend, and here you are, showing up for one practice out of eight.”

“He’s probably forgotten how to skate, we’ll just have to expel him from the league,” said Tanger, attempting unsuccessfully to give Sidney a face-wash. “Ah, come on,” said Sidney, grinning, standing up in his skates, ready to give as good as he got, but Flower leaned over, and murmured, “Hang on after practice, I’ll give you a lift back,” which was long-standing code for We Need To Talk. Sidney turned away from the quarreling crew to frown at Flower. “It’s not bad news,” said Flower hastily, “I just want your advice on something.”

“Should never have picked anesthesia, but you’re a lazy boy,” said Sidney promptly, and accepted the inevitable, but vengeful, butt-slap before they filed out to the rink. When he hit the ice, though, it felt like that first walk through the ward, that first step into the O.R., the tiredness and sleep deprivation peeling off, the feel of the scalpel not unlike the feel of his hockey stick in his hand. It felt like coming home. A series of showy goals and drills later, he was sweaty, tired, and the most content he had ever been outside a hospital. “Fuck off,” said Flower, disgustedly, after the third goal that Sidney batted straight out of the air and past his shoulder, right into the back of the net. Tanger lunged for his shins, but missed as Sidney circled around, chewing at his mouth guard, grinning at his boys. “Beer league champs 2017?” he asked, and there were an equal amounts of cheers and ‘Fuck, yeahs!’ before he bullied everyone through a set of drills once again.

“You, my friend,” said Tanger, very seriously, half asleep on the bench with his beercan clutched in his hand, after their ice time, “are the only person to play in a beer league and not drink beer. It’s un-Canadian. They should revoke your passport.”

“He thinks he’s on call 24/7. Hospital administrators hate him. RNs love him, but does he love them back? Attendings are torn between suspicion and adoration, and his fellow residents straight up want to murder him,” Flower intoned from behind them. “Accurate, especially when it comes to Burns,” said Cho, returning from the women's’ showers and efficiently ducking the used glove that Sidney threw at her, grinning at his team, sweaty and slightly drunk in the crappy changing room with its peeling linoleum and faded paint.

He joined the Flower for their post-practice conference, skulking in the arena seats while another group took the ice. “Who are these guys?” asked Sidney casually, watching them skate loosely, warming up. Flower shrugged, passing Sidney another bottle of water before settling back into his seat. He stretched his legs out, pulled his cap over his head, eyes already closed, and then yelped when Flower dug a vicious finger into his thigh. “Stay awake,” hissed Flower. “For ten minutes while we have this conversation, and then you can sleep.” “Sleep, wha’ is tha’” slurred Sidney theatrically, but sat up, reluctantly, opening his water while Flower aggressively jabbed at his carton of orange juice with a flimsy straw.

“Well?” asked Sidney, and turned to look at Flower curiously. “Vero and I are thinking of having a baby?” said Flower, uncharacteristically blunt. “Tell me honestly, what do you think? Are we being idiots?” Sidney turned around in genuine surprise, clutching both of Flower’s hands in his own. “Well,” he said earnestly,“I have some helpful textbooks that you can look at, and some audiovisual material, too, but when a man and a woman love each other very  - Ow, you son of a bitch, that hurt!”

“Be serious,” said Flower, unexpectedly releasing Sidney from the headlock he had trapped him in. It was not the freedom but the phrase, fitting so awkward in his wide, smiling mouth that made Sidney apologetically turn to him and said, “Okay. I think it will be great. You’re both great people and you’ll be great parents. What’s the actual problem here?”

“You know what it is,” said Flower. “The hours, the emergencies, the cancelled dates, the constant putting of patients before personal lives. Is it right? Is it fair to the kid?” Sidney winced, but Flower didn’t seem to notice, chewing on his lip, tossing his cap from hand to hand. Out on the ice a disorganised practice was underway, a couple of people passing pucks back and forth, and one lone skater gracefully cutting loops at the end of the rink in  lazy, easy circles, bending as though to test new blades. Sidney watched him, tall and graceful, skirting around the other players and stickhandling with an ease borne of long hours of practice.

“You know how I feel about this,” said Sidney, finally. “Yes,” said Flower. “You are a rock. You are an island. No one can touch your heart, etc. But for the rest of us mere mortals, these are real problems.”

“What’s good for me isn’t necessarily good for you,” said Sidney. “I mean, Ying had a baby in her third year, went on to be Chief Resident, won the best peds CT fellowship, did multiple groundbreaking surgeries, and is now an attending in the LA Children’s Hospital. You’re not even carrying a child. Vero’s doing the hard work here. If she can do it, and Ying can do it, can’t you? Chu’s wife, Caroline, she had a baby last year, and they seem to happy enough. And Chu’s in trauma, which are far worse hours than the chill life of an anesthesiologist.”

There was a pause, and then - “Tough love,” said Flower, sounding more like himself.

“You know it.” They sat, companionably watching the skating figures below. “Are you watching this guy?” asked Sidney abruptly, and Flower looked up from his reverie. Sidney pointed, to where the lone skater had gone from skating easy loops to practising a series of vicious shots against the goalie. “Look at the release on that slapshot.” They watched as the goalie tried to block it unsuccessfully several times in a row, and finally sat in protest on top of the net, drinking a beer, his gloves discarded in an evident huff. “He’s pretty good,” conceded Flower. “Look, Sidney -”

“It’s fine,” said Sidney. “I’m happy for you.”

“Yes,” said Flower. “I know, thank you. But I know your father -”

“He’s a good man,” interrupted Sidney, still watching the ice. God, what a shot. Who was that guy? He had skated between the admittedly inebriated defence and slapped one past them right into the net, setting up his office in the zone with a swagger. “My dad’s a good doctor, a good man, but he was never around,” he said, keeping his eyes trained on the ice. “It was a different time. Things are different now. There’s no reason why you can’t be a great dad, even if you don’t have the time you would have had if you had become, I don’t know, an insurance agent or something.”

He turned to Flower, taking his hand in seriousness, this time. “It’s going to be hard. But I know you. You’re going to be a great dad. Your kid will be lucky to have you.” Flower sniffled and Sidney hastily staving off the forecast of tears and soggy emotions, amended, “Well, lucky your kid will be to have Vero, mostly. You’re not that great,” and accepted the squawk and the smack he got in return in good grace, as they shuffled out..

Walking out of the arena, Sidney suddenly stopped, because there it was, the faint scent that had been edging at his senses for the last month, lingering long after he left his house, and increasingly feeling like home when he returned. “What is that smell?” he asked Flower, who was busily texting someone - Vero, no doubt. “What smell,” asked Flower, incuriously, smiling goofily at his phone, and Sidney said, feeling slightly ridiculous, “I’m being haunted by this scent. It’s like - it smells like summer but sort of darker? Like midnight, but warm, with the windows open -  I keep smelling it at home, and Kessel says he can’t smell anything. And it’s here now too. I swear I can smell it.”

“I’m telling Kessel you’ve lost your mind, finally. Saint Doctor Sidney has cracked under the pressure. You’re going to move to a remote village and become a G.P. because you can’t stand people and the sight of blood makes you faint,” Flower had gone from morose and afraid to straight joy, an effect that Vero tended to have on him.

“Shut up ,” said Sidney, “You’re a child, I can’t believe that anyone is letting you have a child of your own,” and Flower and he shoved at each other all the way out of the rink, ignoring the disapproving folks lined up for their sticks and pucks classes. Kessel was going to have a field day with this one, thought Sidney ruefully, and braced himself for the ribbing to ensue. “I’m going to prank Kessel brutally,” said Flower. “Help me execute a long con and we’ll say no more about it.” It was a deal that Sidney could live with, so he and Flower put their heads together before he went home to shower, and then back to the hospital for a few solid hours of lab work before he caught some sleep.

It was two months before he actually made it to Mario’s for the promised cheesecake and conversation about the Hopkins’ study. Sidney wondered if it was something in the air, a ghost or a curse, before reminding himself forcibly that he was a surgeon and a scientist. And for all that ghosts didn’t exist, the data was insufficient on the psychosomatic effects of curses, particularly those that reeked of domesticity and forced people to have conversations about feelings when they just wanted to eat their desserts in peace.

“I’m sorry I was so late,” he apologised, for the fifth time, “I got held up on this really interesting case -”

“Nathalie understands,” interrupted Mario, a glint in his eye that boded ill for Sidney’s attempt to change the topic. “I was fortunate to marry someone who put up with dinner going cold almost everyday of the week. And so is Marc-Andre. And indeed, so is Remington, as I understand her husband will take a year away from work to stay at home with their baby.”

“Um.” Sidney, trapped, elected to fill his mouth with cheesecake instead of responding.

“I know we have had this conversation before,” Mario pushed his plate aside. “But I see myself if you and I worry that you are sailing too close to the edge of what you can achieve. Every man has his limits. There’s no sin in taking time out for yourself: indeed, to survive in this field, we must. Take up a hobby. Go on a date. Socialise. Learn to cook.”

“I play hockey!” protested Sidney.

“In the same manner that you do surgery,” Mario noted. “Take a break, Sidney. I don’t want to see the brightest mind in my program suffer through a break down. Learn to pace yourself. And maybe sign up for one of those online things, meet people.” Petulantly, Sidney scraped his plate for the last remnants of frosting, accepting a second slice of cake from  Nathalie.

“Sidney,” said Mario. “If you didn’t want someone in your life, I would not be having this conversation with you. And as your mentor, I should tell you that generally speaking, the stability of a marriage and  children is seen as a good sign by interviewing boards.” He left the table, taking his coffee cup with him out onto the deck. “I’m not going to marry someone for professional advancement,” muttered Sidney, following him out and flopping down on an armchair.

“But you would, for love?” asked Nathalie, slipping her arm around Mario’s waist and smiling when he dipped down to kiss the top of her head. Sidney looked away, rubbing his hand over his chest.

“He might yet,” Mario nuzzled her head and they stood, arms around each other. “Wouldn’t that be lovely?” said Nathalie, mostly to Mario, and Sidney didn’t let himself think about whether it would, there on the patio, with the cool night breeze, and the loamy, sweet smell of the backyard drifting over them.

Sidney went back to his apartment that night, his car quiet and smooth on the drive and a box of leftover cheesecake carefully stowed on the passenger seat. He felt, as he often did after serious conversations with Mario, a little flayed, as though his heart was hanging out of his chest for everyone to see, and troubled by thoughts that he liked to keep tucked away for his own peace of mind. It was preoccupation, then, that made him miss the sound of a tread above his, but he heard the door of the apartment opposite click shut just as he turned onto the landing, catching a glimpse of a dark head, a tall body, before the door shut with a click. A new neighbour then, thought Sidney, taken aback, because it meant that someone had finally convinced Mrs. Perkins  to rent out the small one bedroom apartment after three long years. Not just anyone, this new neighbour, but someone special, deserving of the apartment that should have been her son’s. In the empty hallway, the now-familiar scent was fresh and intense, as though the ghost had been waiting there for him, smelling like light summer and wanting. Sidney stood for a moment, sniffing deeply, and then, shaking his head at himself, took his cheesecake and his fancies off to bed.

II

Half a weekend off and no at-home call once a fortnight added up to what tired surgery residents called a ‘Golden Sunday’. This was a rare opportunity to take care of the tasks that built up when you spent ninety hours a week at work; laundry, groceries, paying bills, meeting your landlady, and of course, the hours devoted to all the studying, reading, and note-writing that the regular schedule didn’t allow. Emotional conversations, however, tended to bring out everyone’s demons - rather than spend them in his apartment, sniffing the corridor for that mysterious, lingering scent and then heading to his bed while feeling like a creep, Sidney spent his Saturday night pacifying his particular demons by getting increasingly drunk and lonely. It was the sort of coping mechanism took you from the kind of bars you begin your night with, to the kind of bars that you can only end up at, full of the promise of future hangovers and regrets, but remarkably anodyne in the present.

He resurfaced on Sunday morning, fortunately in his own bed, with a pounding headache and a curly mop of black hair tucked under his arm. Minor investigation revealed that the curly mop of hair was attached to a soft-featured, beautiful man, his mouth open slightly, brown, soft-skinned and elegantly sprawled over Sidney’s bedsheets. “Fuck,” said Sidney, accepting regrets and a hangover as his due. “Mmmm,” said the man in response, stirring himself enough to send a wandering hand between Sidney’s thighs, and Sidney postponed his plans for coffee in favour of a coping mechanism that offered more orgasms and less alka seltzer. Showered and revived, Sidney did a quick sprint down to the local bodega for some creamer, stopping by the stuffed mailboxes on their small front fence. Bills, bills, and more bills, and a hastily taped sheet with sprawling black capitals telling Sidney that he did indeed, have a new neighbour. “Malkin” - that told him nothing, so he took his inquiries to Kessel, who was a fount of useless gossip at the worst of times, and a semi-competent orthopaedic surgeon when could bestir himself to stop complaining about groceries.

“Did you know that we have a new neighbour?” Sidney asked him, dropping his mail on the kitchen counter and smiling politely at the curly-headed man, nameless and beautiful, sipping a glass of water in their kitchen. “Jesus Christ, Sidney, he’s been living here for weeks.” Kessel disgustedly poured himself a bowl of Froot Loops, retrieved the milk carton from the fridge which proved to be empty, and then groaned when he saw a bottle of vanilla flavoured creamer in Sidney’s hand. That took care of Kessel; now to evict his guest from last night. Sidney turned to him, an old hand at gracefully extricating himself out of these circumstances, but was nonplussed when the man beat him to it. “Thanks for a lovely night,” he said, putting his glass into the sink. “I know you said you don’t do repeats, but if you change your mind, my number is on the fridge,” and departed before Sidney had the chance to open his mouth.

“So, this Raoul ,” said Kessel, gearing himself up for what was obviously going to be an extended mocking session, but Sidney pointed one threatening finger at him, said “ No ,” dropped Raoul’s number in the dustbin, and decided to forego laundry in favour of going back to hospital. God knows, Burns was probably about to cock something up and could use some supervision. As it turned out, Sidney was glad he did, because Julie, the only person whose hours were possibly longer than his, paged him down to the E.R. a few hours later.

“You wanted a consult?” Sidney poked his head into Room 5, and then sent the rest of himself tumbling after in alarm, because there on the exam table, white-faced and shaking, with five stitches in her left arm and her ankle in Julie’s hands was Mrs. Perkins. “I’m fine , Sidney,” she promised, her voice quavering, but Sidney, over her protests and Julie’s, insisted on examining her pupils again. “I tripped on that loose bottom step,” Mrs. P. confessed. “You have to be careful,” Sidney told her, his heart in his mouth, because he loved Mrs. P., her short white hair and her cheerful back garden, the way she waved out to Sidney everyday and played the piano and told him improbable stories of her wild youth. Sidney gently helped her to her wheelchair after Julie cleared her to go home with instructions to rest, ice and elevate her ankle, along with a prescription for mild painkillers.

Mrs. P, full of thanks, mildly embarrassed at all the fuss, and vigorously refusing to let Sidney drive her home, told him “Geno brought me, and he’s getting me a cup of tea and calling my daughter - he will drive me home again.”

“Wait - who?” said Sidney, but she was already waving to a tall, dark-haired man walking across the waiting area towards them, his tousled head towering over nearly everyone else. Sidney took in his gentle eyes, his wide, mobile mouth, the way his long-fingered hand curled carefully around Mrs. P.’s good arm, tucking her prescription into her purse and handing her a cup of tea. “Oh, boy,” muttered Julie, behind him, and Sidney jumped, startled. “I’ll come by to check on you later, Mrs. P.,” he assured her, relieved to see her waving cheerfully as she went, accompanied by - “Who the hell was that?” hissed Sidney, to Kessel, who had managed to show up, as usual, well after he was actually needed. “Bye Geno, bye Mrs. P.!” Kessel waved back politely and turned to Sidney with a look of now-familiar disgust. “Seriously? Our neighbour. You know, across the hall. Dr. Evgeni Malkin. Geno.” Sidney followed Kessel down the corridor. “Wait - he’s a doctor? The new endocrinologist that Coffey was talking about? Why didn’t you tell me? How do you know him anyhow?”

“Not that kind of doctor, Sidney,” said Kessel, using his patient voice, which was a sure sign that he was rapidly losing patience. “And I know him because he’s been living across the hall from us for oh - two and a half months. You would know him too, if you managed to unpeel yourself from the hospital for more than four hours at a time.” Kessel jabbed at the elevator button. “Geno’s a nice guy. He’s a professor, literature, I think, at CMU.”

“Wait, what was his name again?” tried Sidney, but Kessel was already stepping off the elevator, heading back to ortho. Sidney jogged back up to the fourth floor, taking the stairs, feeling a little bit like he had been hit by a freight train. But when he checked his text messages later, Kessel had sent a link to their group text, to Dr. Malkin’s profile on the CMU website. A visiting lecturer in Slavic languages, M. Litt, D.Phil. in Russian literature from Oxford - impressive!- and a photograph, Dr. Malkin with his dark eyes and smooth skin, that wide, mobile mouth at rest, looking into the camera. An attractive face, thought Sidney, unwillingly, and then twitched at Chu’s next message (“CROSBY’S NEW CRUSH - HOT RUSSIAN NEIGHBOUR”). “Sounds like a bad porno,” Tanger responded. Flower’s reminder about hockey practice only invited a series of increasingly distasteful hockey-related jokes, themed around Sidney’s five-hole and Russian rules of play, so Sidney turned off his phone and went down to the lab before the conversation devolved any further.

For all Flower’s dire warnings, Sidney was the only one that did make it to the next practice, largely because Coffey groaned, “Take an evening off , and go home, Crosby,” sick of his increasingly inventive excuses for circumventing the limits on residents’ hours. Sidney ended up alone at the rink, pulling on his skates in the locker room, and wondering about possible avenues to treat an S1 extradural tumour in an eleven year old whose family refused blood transfusions on religious grounds. Her mother had said she chewed on ice a lot, and blood tests had confirmed anemia. Spinal nerve sheath tumours were so rare that Sidney was confident he’d exhausted all the available literature that was useful - but there must be something . He closed his eyes, just for a moment, to think about it, and -

“Hey,” said a voice, clearly at the limits of its patience, and Sidney blinked. The man standing in front of him was backed by a crew of half-dressed hockey players, their expressions ranging from amused to actively annoyed. “It’s our ice time,” said the man, in the long-suffering tones of someone who had presented this fact several times, to no avail. “Oh,” said Sidney, dumbly. “Oh! Oh! Damn, I missed my half-hour window.” He glared down at his skates, still unlaced, as if they were to blame.

“You’re with that medical crew, right, the hospital team?” said the man, pulling on a jersey with a  C on the chest. “Er - yes? The - uh - Haemoglobin Trotters,” said Sidney, sheepishly, starting to untape his socks. The guy snorted. “Alex,” he said, holding out a hand. “We’re a group of guys from Polish Hill, and today we’re one short. Our first line center had to grade papers or some crap. You want to skate with us?”

“Er - sure,” said Sidney. “Just don’t tell my team I skated with the enemy. I’m pretty sure we thrashed your division last year, although I missed finals because I was in surgery.”

“We don’t talk about that,” said Alex, to bitter, vocal agreement from his team.

“I’m Sidney.” He held out a hand belatedly, to Alex, hastily withdrawing it when Alex indicated the athletic cup he was holding in one hand and the used socks in the other. “We know who you are, Sidney Crosby,” said one of the other guys, as he taped his socks. “Trust me, we know,”

“You have the skating slot before us,” said another guy. “We’ve seen you play.”

“Um.” Sidney laced up his skates and tugged on his helmet.

“But you might find it harder this time,” added the first guy, slapping Alex’s butt as he stomped past. “Our 1C is pretty damn good this year.”

“You mean the one that isn’t here today?” Sidney followed them out and onto the rink.  

“Like the rest of your team,” agreed Alex, showering Sidney in a spray of ice, and Sidney laughed, stole the puck, and deked it around both of them, slapping it in five-hole before their goalie had time to grip his stick.

“It’s only hockey,” said the Polish Hill team goalie, when they shuffled back into the locker room an hour later, sweaty and tired. He sounded completely beleaguered. “Why you have to be so mad? So angry? So much fighting?”

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” smirked Sidney, to a chorus of groans, unlacing his skates and deftly dodging the ball of tape that Alex sent flying at him.

“Just you wait. Zhenya’s gonna kick your ass,” said the goalie, mournfully.

“This so-called Zhenya’s gotta show up first,” said Sidney, and bolted to the showers before he was murdered by the bevy of beer-drinking Russians. Skating always cleared his mind: Sidney could see a path to treating the tumour he’d been thinking about, and he hurried through showering, changing, driving back impatiently to the hospital. “I thought I told you to go home, Crosby,” said Coffey, equally beleaguered, but Sidney slapped down a clipboard in front of him, sketching out his plan and they bent their heads together over it for the next half an hour, rolling her into surgery for mostly-successful resection the next morning.

Sidney eventually did make it home, with a bunch of flowers and some fruit for Mrs. P. The group text had blessedly moved on from Sidney’s romantic life (non-existent) to Kessel’s upcoming fellowship applications (hopeless), and a reminder from Flower about the next evening’s hockey practice (containing four dire threats couched as passive-aggressive comments about work-life balance). Sidney glared at his phone, which was probably why, after all his cautioning Mrs. P. to take care, he tripped, nearly face-planting into the staircase, and finding himself instead in the teetering embrace of six foot-plus of mildly alarmed Russian muscle and flesh, warm and steady against him. Sidney clung instinctively, snuffling closer for a moment and was neatly and rapidly disentangled and back on his feet, face to face with Dr. Evgeni Malkin, M.Litt, D.Phil, recently of Oxford and now of Pittsburgh. “You okay?” asked Malkin and Sidney said “Buh?” cringing as Malkin raised an eyebrow at him. “Fixing the step,” said Malkin. “I put a sign on front door? Be careful.”

“I didn’t see it.” Sidney belatedly tacked on a “Sorry,” as he took in the hammer in Malkin’s left hand, the- oh god - toolbelt slung around his waist, and the dust on floor around the two-by-fours that Sidney had tripped over. “So Edith does not fall again,” Malkin added.  

“Edith - who - oh, Mrs. P.” Sidney had blanked out. Malkin was so, very tall.

“Yes,” agreed Malkin, patiently, and then waited. Sidney looked at him, at the fucking toolbelt around his waist and then awkwardly offered a hand. “I’m uh - Sidney Crosby. I live in 2B. Across the hall from you. With ah - Kessel?”

“Evgeni Malkin.” They shook hands. “Call me Geno,” he added.

“Geno.” Sidney repeated, obediently, and then, reflecting back on what he had just said, blurted out, “I mean, Kessel is my roommate, I’m not living with him, I meant. We’re just roommates of the - er - platonic variety. Which is not to say that I’d object to having a male roommate of the  - er - non-platonic variety - it’s just that Kessel and I aren’t - you know - I just thought I should clarify.”

Geno stared, apparently in awe, at the avalanche of words pouring uncontrollably from Sidney’s mouth. Sidney forced himself to stop talking, oh my god, and then pointed awkwardly at the staircase. “I should - ah -”

“Nice to meet you, Sidney Crosby,” Geno, smirking a little, stuck a thumb in his toolbelt as he stepped aside, and Sidney gratefully escaped up the stairs and into his apartment, where he could bury his head into his pillow and hopefully never emerge again, but for a notation on his chart that said, time of death, four p.m, cause: acute embarrassment. “I’m a surgeon ,” he mumbled, into his pillow, sliding from sulk to sleep in moments.

“I hear you cheated on us.” Flower sneaked up on Sidney in the residents’ lounge on the fourth floor a few days later, making Sidney shriek and fumble his tablet before Chu opened one baleful eye at them. They left her to her nap and fled, Hags falling into step behind them in the corridor. “You adulterer,” he said to Sidney, haughtily, and Horny popped up in front of them, leaping out from a utility closet to point a finger at Sidney and accuse him of being a strumpet.

“Help,” said Sidney dramatically, to the nurses’ station. “I’m being ambushed!”

“Oh, you , Dr. Crosby,” said Luis, looking up from the charts Sidney had just dropped off. Sidney winked at him, and Luis pinked prettily. “Stop flirting for half a moment, you - you - scarlet surgeon,” Tanger wrathfully bopped Sidney on the head with a rolled up newspaper. “Bad Sidney!”

“You cheated on us,” persisted Flower. “With a team of Russian hockey players. From Polish Hill.” Cullen, not looking up from his paperwork, advised Sidney to join a monks’ order, the final resort for a person of fallen virtue. “Okay,” said Sidney, struggling ineffectively in Kessel’s sneaky surprise bearhug grip. “First of all, they’re not all Russians. Second of all, their team is called ‘Victorious Secrets’. Third -”

“Victorious Secrets, no fucking way,” Tanger, delighted, bopped Sidney with his rolled up paper again. “They have pink jerseys,” Sidney playing this fact like a trump card, wriggled, but Kessel had him pinned completely, and he couldn’t escape. “Come off it,” put in Horny, admiringly. “With lace?” “With black lace,” he confirmed, aiming for Kessel’s instep with the heel of his foot, and missing.

“The magic is gone,” said Flower mournfully. “Why didn’t you tell me you wanted pink satin and lace? I’d have dressed up for you, darling.  Years of faithfulness and it’s come to this?”
“All those times I waited at the dinner table for you,” added Kessel, pretending to sob. “Bought your groceries, made you pancakes, did your laundry….”

“Did our marriage vows mean nothing?” Hags wrung his hands.

“Maybe you need me to take a firmer hand with you,” Horny tried to loom, boxing Sidney and Kessel in against the corridor wall, sending Luis and the rest of the nurses’ station into peals of laughter.

“So you better not take up with any more Russian hussies, tarted up in pink and lace -” Flower tried his level best to look intimidating and failed comprehensively.

“You’re all disgusting.” Burns, skulking in the corridor, turned his nose up at them.

“Speak for yourself. Personally, I’d look fantastic in lace,” sniffed Tanger.

“Well? What do you have to say for yourself, you hussy?” demanded Cullen, abandoning his charts and coming over.  

“Hi, Dr. Lemieux, ” said Sidney equably.

“Gentlemen,” said Mario, blandly, sweeping past and scattering residents like roaches. Flower yelped, Hags ran away, Tanger dived behind the nurses’ station and ended up in Luis’ lap, getting smacked on the head with his own newspaper. Out of the corner of his eye, Sidney distinctly saw Cullen try to salute and end up smacking himself in the head instead. After a long, telling pause, Mario said, “Sidney, you’re accompanying us for evening rounds.”

“Yes sir. ” Sidney, smug, wriggled out of Kessel’s slack grip and straightened his coat.

“Come along, comrade, there’s work to do,” said Mario in a passable Russian accent, and Sidney went, giggling.

It took almost a month before the penny actually dropped, which Sidney later ascribed to extreme exhaustion and preoccupation with his patients, who were of course his priority, and everyone else attributed to Sidney’s sheer single-minded ability to ignore everything that wasn’t surgery or hockey. But in the interim, it was though someone had opened a tap; Sidney went from being largely unaware that he had a neighbour to finding Geno coincidentally everywhere that Sidney was himself. Checking on Mrs. Perkins’ ankle, Sidney sniffed hungrily at the mouth-watering scents in her apartment, and of course, it was Geno, popping out of her kitchen, looking absurdly charming in his thick-framed glasses and Kiss-The-Cook apron, holding a steaming pot and smiling at them. Mrs. P. and Sidney ate massive bowls of chicken noodle soup, and Sidney tried not to look too closely at the flex of  Geno’s forearms flexing as he lifted the soup pot, as he gently placed an ice-bag on Mrs. P’s ankle, as he clasped Sidney’s cold hand between his two warm ones to say goodbye.

It was no surprise either, that in the musky, old-sweat scent of the locker room, Sidney and his team got dressed even as the Victorious Secrets team undressed, and their long-limbed new center, Sasha’s good friend Zhenya, turned around, and was none other than Sidney’s neighbour Geno. “How could you possibly not know this, he’s our neighbour ,” bitched Kessel, while Alex pointed and laughed at Sidney. Geno had his tongue poking into his cheek, eyes twinkling at Sidney as he pulled his jersey on, and oh God, Sidney looked at the little black lace edging it, handsewn by Alex’s grandmother, and then returned his gaze to his own socks because he knew his face was bright red and he couldn’t do a thing about it.  

“You’re - uh - really good,” he said to Geno, the next time, because he might or might not have stayed a little late to watch them practice, seeing Geno loose-limbed and easy, skating on the ice like he was born to do it, like he belonged there. “Thanks,” said Geno, politely, and turned around, stealing the puck from Alex and flipping it over, between his legs and out. “Oh, boy,” muttered Flower and Sidney pre-emptively jabbed him in the ribs, ignoring his squawk of protest, and headed back on the ice. It’s not as though Olli (the new cardio intern) and Julie weren’t good - they were - there’s a reason their top line terrorised the league last year, but Sidney couldn’t help but think of what it would be like to skate with someone of Geno’s size and skill, tape-to-tape passes across the ice, neatly back and forth and into the goal. “Sure, you want to play hockey with him,” said Tanger, ignoring Sidney’s rapturous breakdown of Geno’s last practice. “You want his puck in your goal. You want to handle his stick. You want a ride on his Zambon-” Sidney escaped into the shower before Flower picked up the thread.

Sidney began to see Malkin on the stairs as he left for work at five a.m. “Weather so nice, going for a run,” said Malkin, and took off down the road in front of Sidney. Sidney drove to work, keeping safely within the speed limit, hands at nine and three, eyes on the road, trying not to thinking about Geno doing a series of rapid and bendy series of stretches on the front stoop. There was no actual escape: Sidney began to find Malkin on his couch when he returned from the hospital, watching the game with Phil and tipping his throat back to get the last of the beer out a can dwarfed by his long-fingered hands. He was huge, tanned and smiling, leaning back on the cushions and crowing when the Steelers score against Kessel’s team, his t-shirt pulling tight across his chest.

“Disgusting,” said Kessel, and he meant the way Sidney sent small glances towards Geno when Geno wasn’t looking, taking in the sprawl of his thighs and his wild hair falling into his face, but Geno took it as misery over the Steelers unexpected victory, and did a graceless victory dance in the hallway before going for the night. “Hopeless,” said Kessel, looking at Sidney’s face, as dumbly waved goodbye to Geno long after his back had disappeared into his own apartment. “I forgot the milk,” said Sidney, and went to bed, ignoring Kessel’s “Goddamit, Sidney, again?” and burying his face into his pillow, burning. “For fucks’ sake, Crosby,” he muttered but what happened in his bed alone was between himself and God and harmed no one, so Sidney closed his eyes and thought of Geno’s tousled head, his kind eyes and big hands and sweet, enticing smell, and came, too sated to be entirely regretful.  

August turned to September, and Sidney moved to his next rotation. Poulin was far tougher than Coffey about keeping within the AMA limits for resident hours, and Sidney found himself home more than usual, taking the time to actually cook meals, read journals, and work on that case report that Coffey suggested that they publish. Coming home from the grocery store, one evening, he stopped automatically in the hallway to take a lungful of that deep, intimate scent, when the door to 2A swung open and Geno stepped out, juggling a folder in hand and his keys in the other. The scent immediately deepened, and Sidney turned towards it - him - instinctively, and then stepped back, because Geno was looking at him with one eyebrow raised, his mouth quirking as if he were trying not to laugh.

“You - uh - look nice,” said Sidney, awkwardly, because Geno did. He was wearing a three-piece suit in some sort of warm, brown material, and a deep green tie, polished Oxfords on his feet. His glasses were somewhat askew, but the entire effect was charmingly old-fashioned, a look that invited rumpling. Sidney clutched his groceries helplessly.

“Thank you,” said Geno, managing to lock his door without actually dropping anything. He turned around - and God. “Hot date?” asked Sidney, and immediately regretted it.  

“Faculty dinner,” said Geno, after a slight pause.

“Right,” Sidney prayed for the earth to swallow him, and when it didn’t, pointed awkwardly at his own door. “I should - ah -”
“Good night, Sidney,” and fuck, that was definitely amusement, and Sidney should stop making such a complete fool of himself, but - “You smell nice,” he found himself blurting, appalled but unable to stop.

“Thanks, again,” said Geno, and he was definitely laughing at Sidney, so Sidney regathered the shreds of his dignity and backed into his apartment, walking straight into Kessel, who was loitering at the doorway.
“Pitiful,” muttered Kessel as he steadied Sidney and retrieved the groceries. “Did you remember the fucking milk?”

“Bye, Phil. Bye, Sidney,” said Geno, and disappeared down the stairs, two at a time.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake Sidney,” Phil, holding a quart of soy chocolate milk, groaned in disgust. “How the hell am I supposed to put this in my coffee? What does a man have to do get some whole fucking milk around here?”

“Bye, Geno,” said Sidney, dumbly, but he was gone.

“I’m going to burn your bed,” Kessel disappeared back into their apartment, and Sidney hastily followed.

“He’s single,” reported Flower, when Sidney finally made it to the rink, three weeks later.  Sidney wanted to ask who Flower was talking about, but long experience told him that encouraging this drama only made his life harder. Their practice time was over, but there was still open ice time, so Sidney skated lazy circles around the rink, enjoying the sensation even with the terrible, rough ice.  “Your hot Russian neighbour, he is single, and he likes men,” persisted Flower, keeping pace with Sidney and occasionally checking him into the boards with more affection than usual. Sidney ignored him in favour of a loop back around the ice. Cully had brought his adorable tiny children and he scooped one of them up for a piggyback ride around the ice. “Mrs. P. says he’s a nice boy, your next door fellow,” reported Cullen, when Sidney returned the laughing four-year old in his arms back to her doting papa. “Oh god, not you too.” Skating away and back to Kessel and Tanger, who were loitering at the side of the rink, he was waylaid by Tanger, who asked, in all seriousness, “Would it be so bad?” He’s well-educated, he’s reasonably good-looking, he took his landlady to hospital and looked after her so he seems superficially decent. Apart from a regrettable choice in football teams, you could do worse. You have done worse.”

“You know I’m not going to settle down,” Sidney felt like he’d been saying this for centuries, screaming into the well-intentioned but oblivious abyss composed of his intimate circle of friends.  

“Blah blah my work is my life blah blah,” Tanger rolled his eyes. “A date is not settling down. A date is - exploratory. And if you just want one night of Russian pleasure, then so what?”

“Don’t encourage this crap,” said Kessel. “He’s my neighbour too: once Sidney hits it and quits it, I’ll still have to live across the hall from him, and he’s a nice guy. Don’t fuck with my domestic peace. I won’t be able to go across the hall and borrow some milk when I need it after Sidney dumps his ass cold the next morning.”

“I hate to admit it, but Kessel’s right,” Sidney pointed out. “Let it go, guys. You know. Don’t shit where you eat, and all that.”

“If that was true, you would not have banged half the staff at the hospital,” noted Flower, sneaking up behind Sidney and stealing his helmet. Sidney yelped and took off after a whooping Flower, and that, for the time-being, was that.

The penny eventually did drop, and now it felt a little awkward, to stand in the hallway and inhale, as he used to do before Sidney could connect that sweet, musky fragrance to an actual person, to Geno’s flesh and blood, his limbs and muscled back and long, clever hands, tossing the puck to Sidney over the terrible rec center ice, holding a can of beer, juggling keys and coffee and files on his way to work. Sidney slipped in and out of the hallway quickly these days, running to work and dragging himself back home again, catching faint traces of the scent, quick glimpses of Geno flashing a smile as he headed for his run, or to work, waistcoats and blazers and polished shoes, charmingly professorial.

Coffey had nominated Sidney for an award for the highest-performing resident earlier that year, which had set off a complicated series of events that culminated in seven abysmal days writing grant proposals, eventually paying off in the form of a drinking session till five in the morning on his only day off after the NIH agreed to give him a bundle of money to study the surgical management of certain specific presentations of middle cerebral artery aneurysms. It was a cool October morning, the sun barely peeking over gray clouds, but he had an entire day off, so he and Kessel walked home, bumping shoulders. “I’m so fucking proud of you,” says Kessel. “Fucking stick it to Burns, he’s a dick.” “Eh, not my type,” shrugged Sidney, which sent Kessel into fits of giggles in turn. They both pulled up short at the top of the stairs, where Geno was standing on the landing, untangling his earphones. “Going for a run?” asked Phil, but Sidney was completely undone by the sight of Geno’s very new and tiny running shorts. “Run,” confirmed Geno. “Welp, bye,” Kessel, disappeared into their apartment, slapping Sidney’s back.

“No Luis?” asked Geno, politely refraining from commenting on how Sidney’s gaze was wavering between his thighs and his hands, still untangling the earphone cords that he was holding. Luis, beautiful, fine-boned and soft, had spent three nights in Sidney’s bed before Sidney politely discouraged him from returning, but not before he’d had a chance to get an eyeful of Geno stretching on the front stoop, politely shaking hands before Sidney made excruciatingly awkward introductions.  

“No,” said Sidney hoarsely. “No, that was a - Luis was a - one time thing. Three times. Three and a half. We’re not.” he stopped. “I'm very drunk,” he confided, because it was as reasonable an explanation as any.  

“Ah,” Geno looked amused, and so gorgeous, standing there with his long legs and dark eyes, earphones in his hands. Everything about him was just enfolding Sidney in a haze of desire, from his rolled-up socks to his tousled head.

“Look,” Sidney, with a recklessness borne of one tequila shot too many stepped towards him. “Look, you’re so beautiful. I don’t know if you like men, or if - but you should know that I - ”

Geno held up a hand and Sidney stopped short, horrified at himself, and also very nauseous.

“Tomorrow,” said Geno, and when Sidney continued to look blank, he took Sidney by the shoulders and propelled him to own apartment door, gently pushing. “Drink water. Sleep. Have coffee. If you still want, then ask me tomorrow.” said Geno, and closed the door in Sidney’s face. Sidney stood, dazed, and then opened it again. “Tomorrow, Sidney,” said Geno, and turned around to sprint down the stairs, two at a time. Sidney watched him go, dozing against the doorframe until he found himself sliding to the floor, and hauled off to bed.

III

“Exactly how many languages do you speak?” Sidney marvelled as Geno finished ordering for them in Polish. They were crowded in, knee to knee at a small plastic table in a deli off Liberty Ave, the place redolent with the smell of good cooking, steamy and warm in the cold November afternoon. “Four,” confessed Geno, briefly burying his nose in the steaming warmth of his tea mug, and then reappearing, pink-faced and warm. He counted off on his fingers, “Russian - best language. Polish - second best.  Ukrainian and French - I learned in college.”

“And English, obviously,” said Sidney, as a waitress slapped down two trays before them.

“Eh,”  said Geno, making a see-saw motion with his hand. “English, so-so.”

“Oh, come on. Your English is pretty good,” Sidney hovered, one hand curled around the warm bowl of soup.

“For Ph.D, in Oxford, my dissertation is English, and viva, is also in English. I can speak English,” said Geno, thoughtfully, and paused again, “but I have to think a lot or I make mistakes. Think in Russian. Talk in English. Slow. Not as good as Polish or Ukrainian or French. And need help with ah - proofreading -  when I write.”

“Oh,” Sidney, enlightened, reinterpreted the pauses in his conversations with Geno: not, as he’d thought, the signs of thoughtful consideration alone, but a translation machine running, as they talked. “I speak a little French,” he told Geno, unfolding the napkin on his lap. “I grew up in Canada, I had to learn.”

“No, Sidney, you don’t,” Geno, very amused, uncapped a bottle of water and handed it to him. “I hear you talk to Flower. Is something. Not English. But is not French also.”

“Oh, eat your food,” said Sidney pretending to be miffed. Geno stuck his tongue out and charmed despite himself, Sidney ducked his head and dipped into his bowl of soup, smiling. Geno picked up his knife and fork and went about systematically demolishing a platter of meat, flirting cheerfully and indiscriminately with the waitress and the octogenarian owner of the deli, and later, making horrid faces at the tiny child at the next table, and ruefully smiling when the child’s mother caught him at it. Sidney drove them back home, and they parted in the hallway, chilly November weather preventing them from lingering too long.

“Bye, Sidney,” said Geno, pink-cheeked and smiling.

“Bye, Geno,” said Sidney, and shut himself into his apartment before he could let his feet carry himself over into Geno’s arms.

“You really like Russian food?” asked Geno, later, and seemed pleased when Sidney said “I fucking love it.” “Sorry, Phil, no milk at home,” Geno shrugged, and Kessel literally went down on his knees, head pressed to the refrigerator. “I need coffee,” he moaned. They both ignored him. “Smells okay? You know, the food,” Geno persisted, and Sidney, baffled, said, “It smells like food, Geno. Smells delicious!” Geno nodded and took off, but clearly he’d been doing research, because November took them over all of Polish Hill and beyond, Geno and Sidney visiting a succession of tiny delis and friends’ houses, and Geno introducing him to the intricate and varied differences between Ukrainian, Polish, Russian and Belarusian cuisine.

“Can’t stop eating pierogi,” said Alex, amused, watching the two of them in his grandmother’s kitchen, sitting side by side at the red-checked kitchen table, their mouths stuffed full like plump birds preparing for winter. “Mmmpfh,” said Sidney, and returned his attention to his plate, even while Alex and Geno sniped at each other in Russian. “I can’t tell if you hate him or love him,” he said to Geno as they walked back home, feeling distinctly full and content. “Is like my brother,” Geno answered, long strides eating up the pavement. “So both. Hate and love.”

“Sounds complicated.” Sidney hurried to catch up with Geno’s strides, and Geno slowed down automatically, his elbow half-cocked. Sidney slipped an arm through, still self-conscious, but rendered half-senseless each time Geno performed these tiny, nearly thoughtless acts of courtesy.

“I’m a complicated man,” said Geno, loftily. “Very complicated. You can’t understand.”

“Why not?” Sidney pointed out. “It’s not like it’s brain surgery, or anything.” Geno stole his hat for that and held it above his head, far out of his reach, waving it and smirking when Sidney tried unsuccessfully to grab it out of his hands.

“Asshole!” Sidney didn’t attempt to jump on the icy pavement, but stood there, laughing and bare-headed and closed his eyes when Geno reached out one huge hand to gently brush the snowflakes out of his hair before fitting his woollen cap back around Sidney’s head again. “Complicated asshole,” said Geno, holding out his arm again, and Sidney took it, red-cheeked and giggling as they walked home.

On three separate occasions, Sidney abandoned Geno in restaurants with no more than a quick bye, his pagers vibrating in his hand, his car keys already in the other. “Go!” said Geno, each time, and Sidney came home late at night, blearily staring into his fridge to find take-away containers of rich beef stew and haluszki stocked on the shelves, marked with green post-its that said things like, “Sidney, eat this! Kessel, don’t touch!” followed by eyeless smileys. “I’m really sorry,” Sidney texted Geno, each time, and each time, received a “No sorry. Do good work. Save life. Eat okroshka,” from Geno. And here was the rub, because Geno was almost too perfect, unfailingly forgiving in the face of Sidney’s demanding schedule, never cross for being abandoned at restaurants and in concert-halls and once, notably, on the ice, while Sidney fled to the hospital, summoned by the demonic beeping of his pager. With Geno’s spare key on a peg in their hall, Sidney could have - and should have -  returned the favours of food, but each time he found himself able to go across to sneak takeout into Geno’s fridge, Geno was there, his students’ papers spread out on the carpet. Sidney started bringing along his journals and books, and they sat companionably, side-by-side, eating drunken noodles and doing their reading, classical music playing quietly in the background. Sometimes Geno slipped in records from raided from Mrs. P.’s extensive collection of 70s and 80s glam rock, sometimes Sidney took revenge by making him listen to American pop music on the radio, ignoring all his protests to the contrary (“Such bad song, so bad, please, Sidney.”).

“Haven’t seen you around lately,” said Kessel, offhanded in a untrustworthy, pointed sort of way, as Sidney poured the last of the milk into his coffee and put the empty carton back in the fridge. “You saw me yesterday at the M&M seminar, and you saw me again the same evening at hockey practice, and you’re seeing me now,” he pointed out, turning on the washing machine and shoving an entire pile of Kessel’s papers off the top of it and into empty laundry basket. “Where’s Geno?” asked Kessel, and Sidney answered unthinkingly. Kessel listened to Sidney’s explanation of Geno’s Thursday office-hours open door policy and the related story of his student of Ukrainian descent who was very good at literature but very bad at life and frequently turned to Geno for advice over unbelievable personal catastrophes. “Right,” said Kessel, when Sidney finally fell silent, still smiling over something Geno had told him about Pavel’s midterm and an unfortunate encounter with a goat in downtown Pittsburgh. “So when you say you’re not dating him -”

“I”m not,” said Sidney firmly. “We’re - we’re bros. We hang out. We’re friends.”

“No,” Kessel tapped the table. “Geno and I are bros. You and I are bros. But you and Geno are definitely not bros.”

“Fuck off,” muttered Sidney, emptying Kessel’s papers from the laundry basket and putting them back onto the top of the washing machine. The spin cycle began, sending half of the papers go flying. Sidney ignored them in favour of dumping half a dozen dishes into the dishwasher. It was easier, at some level, to ignore how very much he and Geno were not-bros if he didn’t think about it too closely, letting it edge around his perception and colour every moment they spend together with an illicit sweetness instead of actually acknowledging any of it.

“Sidney,” said Kessel, using his serious voice, a voice that Sidney had only heard twice in the five years they’d known each other, so Sidney put down his dishcloth and listened, unwillingly.  “Look, he’s clearly into you. And you’re into him. But if you’re just going to fuck around, then you need to back off.”

“Fuck off , Kessel,” Sidney went back to swiping ineffectively at dishes, but he knew Kessel was right. He knew it when he used Geno’s spare key to leave a Gary Glitter LP hidden inside a sleeve of Brahms’ piano concertos after end-term exams ended. He knew it when he let his eyes linger over the curve of Geno’s spine as he changed in the locker room at the rink, knew it from Flower’s pitying looks, and Alex’s amused teasing, and from standing in their common hallway, inhaling the new, woody, citrusy scent that Geno had taken to using in winter.

But if knowing and believing lay on opposite ends of the continent of human experience, an ocean of uncertainty between them, he bridged them the gap with one, terrifying leap when when Geno kissed him, cold mouth in the winter snow one evening as they tramped home from a grotesquely bad stand-up act at Nooch’s.

“Sidney,” said Geno, and kissed him again, and it was almost too icy and perfect, his mouth gentle on Sidney’s, mapping Sidney’s face in tiny, tender kisses that laid bare his strong and true heart, beating steady under Sidney’s palm.

“I can’t -” Sidney, undone, shivered.

“Can,” said Geno, sure and smug, and leaned in again, and Sidney helplessly rocked forward, feeling his blood quicken as Geno tugged him closer, pressed together in one electrifying line from knee to hip to chest to mouth.

Geno, sighed his name, and then, more insistently, said “Sid.” Dazed, Sidney opened his eyes, and fuck, that was his pager in Geno’s hand, buzzing malevolently. “Go,” said Geno, gently, and Sidney grabbed his pager, and turned, looking back to see Geno standing on the stoop, snow in his hair. “Go,” said Geno again. “Tomorrow,” promised Sidney recklessly, and Geno’s face did something, an almost-smile lingering, his eyes flashing at Sidney He raised a hand to his mouth, red from kissing, and Sidney swore viciously, stumbling down the path and back to his car, driving to the hospital, tremulous until he entered the hospital and everything faded but the patient on the table, the scalpel in on the tray, the life in held in his steady hands.

In the sobering dawn light, forty-eight hours later, Sidney knew with absolute clarity, in exactly the same way that he knew where to cut and how with his scalpel, in the way that he knew not only where the puck was but also where it was going to be, that this thing with Geno couldn’t work. The conviction dogged him through changing, through his drive home, through the cold, November streets of Shadyside, right until he was standing outside Geno’s door, heart in his hands. Geno opened the door before he could knock, dressed in a green and grey checked waistcoat over gray trousers, a deep maroon scarf in his hands. “Geno,” said Sidney, pitching slightly to the side, into his doorway, too exhausted to even stand.

“So tired,” Geno clucked, putting his warm hands on Sidney’s shoulders, and Sidney curled helplessly into them. “Here, come.” He let himself be lead through Geno’s living room and into the quiet, unknown bedroom beyond, sitting on sheets that were still warm as Geno tugged off his boots and socks and coat, and tipped him gently into bed, smoothing one hand down the length of his spine as he tucked the blanket around Sidney. “Sleep,” said Geno, and Sidney let himself fall downward, eyes closed against the world and Geno’s face hovering above him.

He woke, gasping, hours later, from a cold, nightmarish dream, sterile and empty rooms stretching out infinitely, not a soul in them alive but Sidney, walking between the bodies, each toe-tag dangling a new name, a new heartbreak, when he turned it over. A hand resting on his hip steadied him: his eyes open to soft cotton, and Sidney tilted back to see himself curled up against Geno’s thigh, one hand clutching a bony sweatpant-clad knee. He uncurled a little, and Geno’s hand came down to rest in his hair, carding gently. He had his black-framed glasses resting on his nose, a book with Cyrillic text on the spine resting in his hand, as he looked down at Sidney. “Only eleven,” said Geno. “Go back to sleep.” “One o’clock,” mumbled Sidney, and curled back around Geno’s thigh shamelessly, dropping into sleep again.

At one, Geno woke Sidney gently, with gentle hands and an quiet voice, and left him to commune with a mugful of coffee, doctored with milk and no sugar, exactly as he liked it. Sidney retrieved his phone from where he’d apparently left it, on Geno’s bedside table, and quickly checked his texts and emails. No major emergencies seem to have unfolded in the six hours that he’d been asleep, so Sidney drank his coffee, responding one-handed to the ones that couldn’t wait. Geno was clattering around in his kitchen; Sidney could hear music filtering through the bedroom door, something inoffensive and quiet. He put down the coffee and snuggled back into the sheets, inhaling deeply - but they smelled of nothing more than the clean detergent and something Sidney recognised as faint traces of himself. “Go brush teeth, lazy” said Geno, reappearing to take away the coffee mug. “Come back for pancakes.” Sidney sat up guiltily and then sprinted back to his own bathroom to brush teeth, have a quick wash and back across to Geno’s.

Breakfast - or more accurately, lunch, was a slow-moving epiphany - Geno’s hand curled around Sidney’s elbow, his foot resting over Sidney’s, a smear of syrup beside his mouth that Sidney reached over and swiped away with his thumb, the weak December light catching Geno’s dark eyes. Geno chattered to him about spring term syllabi and the lectures he’d be delivering in February and March, about his parents’ planned trip up to New York for New Years’, and about his latest feud with Alex. Sidney sat and soaked it in, this island of peace, sitting calm before the inevitable storm, and listened. “Sidney,” said Geno, with intent, the plates had been deposited in the dishwasher and the syrup cleared away. He boxed Sidney in against the kitchen counter. “Is tomorrow,” continued Geno, and commenced kissing a path down Sidney’s neck, stopping to return to the very edge of his mouth, the point of his jaw, mapping tender, wet-mouthed desire onto him. Sidney shivered, and then, his entire body protesting, made himself say, “Wait.”

Geno waited, patiently, one hand on Sidney’s hip, one still resting on the counter, eyes soft. Sidney resisted the urge to lean forward into Geno and said, “Look - I really like you  - but you know that this is going to keep happening. My pager will go off in the middle of dates. My patients will have to come first, all the time, every time. I can’t promise -”

“Sidney,” Geno interrupted, sounding, if possible, even more fond than usual. “I know. Flower tells me this. Tanger tells me this. Phil tells me this. Even Luis tells me this.”
“Wait - Luis?”

“Luis,” repeated Geno. “You remember. Nurse. From hospital. Green eyes? Three-and-a-half times?”

“What - wait, never mind. The point is -” Sidney, flustered let go of him, but Geno only used his shifting center of gravity to tug Sidney in, a smooth move that landed him between Geno’s thighs and in a deep embrace that smelled of allspice and winter, and something distinctly Geno underlying all that.

“This is the point,” Geno leaned down and kissed Sidney again, a warm, inviting kiss, faintly tinged with coffee and syrup. Sidney leaned  up and desperately kissed back and then said “Geno” again, but Geno hissed with impatience and began unbuttoning Sidney’s shirt, intent hands and sipping mouth.

“Think too much,” murmured Geno. “Maybe we fuck and don’t like, don’t do again. Is not marriage and baby. Sidney, we see how it goes. One day at a time. First today. Then tomorrow.”

“I can’t promise -” said Sidney again and Geno released him, only to cup his face. “Sid,” he said. “I can’t promise also. I’m a visiting professor.” He went back to unbuttoning Sidney’s shirt, tossing it on to the kitchen floor when he had peeled it off Sidney. “One year appointment, only. Enter grades in May and then - who knows. Maybe New York, maybe Oxford again. Maybe Paris.”  

“Maybe Russia?” asked Sidney, pulling his own t-shirt off and reaching for Geno’s.

“Not Russia,” said Geno, shortly and stepped back. “Bedroom,” he said decisively, over his shoulder, abandoning his t-shirt over the sofa arm. Sidney followed at his heels.

“Geno,” said Sidney, pinning him back into the sheets and mouthing at his bare chest. “I like you so much.”
“Sidney,” said Geno, mock-seriously. “I like you too. Now stop whining and take off pants.” Sidney took off his pants.

No lunchtime revelations could have prepared Sidney for this: the breath punched out of Geno’s lungs in a wordless gasp as Sidney slid deep inside, the way his hips canted up when Sidney pulled, the way he turned as Sidney made him turn, bending his long body to Sidney’s every desire. With each touch, he discovered something new that he wanted, a hunger that came up from the belly and out through possessive hands. Later, smug and sweaty in the sheets, a revved-up Geno already in the shower, Sidney prodded the fading impression of Geno’s fingers on hips in a daze. “So, tomorrow?” asked Geno, reappearing stark naked and rubbing at his head with a towel, watching as Sidney took in his long torso, the sweet yielding flesh of his midriff, the trail of hair down his chest. “ Today ,” said Sidney, fervently, and Geno smirked, leaning against the bathroom door until Sidney crawled out of bed and fitted himself between Geno’s long legs, mouthing and biting tenderly at the thighs that had tormented for weeks.

In December, Sidney went from the hospital to home in a haze of sexual enlightenment, as each encounter with Geno only built on the last one to get better. “It’s almost as though regular sex with someone you like is more satisfying than casual encounters with people you don’t care about,” said Flower, cross-legged in the cafeteria, his gen pens safely tucked in his coat pocket. “I’ve been emotionally deprived all my life,” said Sidney. “You should give me your pudding, I’ll feel better.” “Eating your pain away, doctors?” asked Burns, snidely, as he passed by, but Sidney and Flower both ignored him in favour of their ongoing detente. “I’m eating for two,” said Flower, with dignity, playing his trump. “You can’t mean?” asked Sidney, but Flower’s pleased, smiling face was enough to tell the whole story, and Sidney carried the joy of that back all the way home to Geno, who broke out into an impromptu dance, scattering his notes as he caught Sidney around the waist and dipped him extravagantly on the landing, to Mrs. P.’s applause.  

They skated as often as they could, passing clean and perfect to each other, occasionally playing scrums with each other’s teams and sometimes just one-on-one. “When I’m small,” Geno said, facedown in Sidney’s bed, lifting his head just enough to be understood, “I think, play hockey.” He paused before he continued, mouth moving silently before he arrived on exactly what he wanted  to say. “When I’m young, I want to be a hockey player one day. Professional. Superleague.”

“Me too,” said Sidney. They’re sprawled out, apart but with fingertips touching, sweat cooling on both of them under the covers. “What happened?” asked Geno. “Medicine, not hockey?” “Well, it’s a long story,” said Sidney, reluctantly. “I wouldn’t know where to begin. My dad’s a surgeon. I guess I followed in his footsteps.” An easy, practiced formulation, one that Sidney had uttered endless times, but still awkward in his mouth.

“Nice,” said Geno, reaching out, but Sidney was already rolling away to pull on his shirt. “What about you?” asked Sidney, casting about for his boxers. “How come you’re not in the KHL?” “Long story, don’t know where to begin” said Geno promptly and then dodged the pants that Sidney threw at him. “Hockey not for guy like me. KHL not for guy like me.” Geno rolled away from Sidney, who was standing with one knee on the bed, about to reach out for Geno. There was a world of hurt behind that statement, so close to the surface that Sidney could almost taste it, metallic and painful, but he was well aware of his own monsters, lurking beneath the surface of innocuous personal histories and so he let it slide, retreating even as Geno returned to his apartment for a quick shower.

Over breakfast they changed the topic by mutual unspoken consent, debating prospects for the Downtown Pittsburgh Beer League over a fry-up in Sidney’s kitchen. “I like Talbot’s play,” said Sidney. “Talbot!” Geno made a dismissive sound. “He’s little bit - how you say - bad hands.” Sidney laughed, protesting, as Geno demonstrated one of Talbot’s more disastrous plays with a bottle of ketchup, a fork, and the remnants of Sidney’s bacon. The debate was vigorous; as a result, the rest of the morning was spent in cleaning syrup off most of the kitchen surfaces and part of the floor. “Obscene,” said Kessel, arriving home to take in the sticky handprints on Sidney’s pants and the pile of discarded paper towels on the floor. “Grotesque.” He opened the fridge, shaking the empty milk carton, and then put it down on top of the sticky paper towels with a low, sad sound of defeat. “Like cow, moo,” said Geno, sending Sidney into fits of giggles and Kessel into a positive snit.

Winter break at the university meant that Geno spent his time curled up in a chair by the window, reading most of the day while stews and roasts cooked, the oven filling his apartment with mouth-watering scents. Besieged by flagged books and carefully ordered stacks of notes, Geno wrote steadily from within his fortress of dictionaries. There was usually something in the fridge for Sidney when he came home; he fell into the habit of slipping into Geno’s apartment before going to his own. Geno, in response, began to leave post-it notes on the fridge door to prevent Sidney from waking him up with the clatter of things falling to the floor: “Red lid, second shelf, pierogi,” and “5 min, microwave this.” Sidney pulled each note off the fridge with an illicit thrill of pleasure, standing in the dark kitchen and eating right out of the container, feeling sated in more ways than one.  

Geno bore Sidney’s comings and goings at strange hours with good-humoured tolerance for the most part, sighing a little in irritation when Sidney crawled into his bed and shoved his cold nose into Geno’s armpit, but holding out one arm nonetheless to pull him in close. “Like cat,” he would mumble, letting a hand sink into the nape of Sidney’s neck, scritching there till Sidney arched comfortably and settled against Geno. “No,” he would add firmly, catching Sidney’s questing hands in his and holding them between their bodies. “Sleep now. Sex later.” “Tomorrow?” Sidney, eternally hopefully and inescapably wired after a four-hour spinal surgery would extract the promise, Geno yawning a confirmation, already half asleep. When the next day found Sidney actually still there and not at the hospital, Geno, more often than not, would make good on his promises, once pinning Sidney down and lazily rimming him for ages, bringing him to the brink over and over until his eyes were wet, his mouth open, every muscle and nerve alight with Geno’s fingertips brushing over them in slow, deliberate touches for hours on end. Sidney stumbled back that day to his apartment on wobbly legs to shower and change, oblivious to Kessel’s slow whistle as he went past, or to Tanger’s admiring string of curses at the line of hickeys dotting the back of Sidney’s neck, dazed and smiling to himself in wonder.

There was only the rare occasion on which Sidney’s wandering hands were met with a firm denial: once was on the eve of a set of fellowship deadlines (“Go away , Sidney, no distraction ,” snarled Geno, followed by a stream of infuriated French cursing that a giggling Flower and Vero declined to translate as they dragged Sidney back to his own apartment) and another odd day, when Geno opened the door to Sidney, phone tucked against his shoulder, his hand making an abrupt, angry gesture of denial as he talked on the phone in Russian. His eyes were red-rimmed, lashes spiky, and he shook his head and shut the door again, leaving Sidney on the landing, clutching a small bag of Chinese takeout and the urge in his heart to commit grave violence on whoever it was that had put that look of blank desolation on Geno’s face.

“Not important,” said Geno, when Sidney asked him later, if everything was okay, and Sidney didn’t pry, for he knew in his heart that he didn’t have the right to. Everything he and Geno had was borrowed happiness; for Sidney would always choose work over Geno, and Geno would leave Pittsburgh at the end of May regardless of Sidney. Sidney had always believed that his disinterest in other people’s emotional tangles was an advantage and not a liability, but for the first time, a small, unnerving hunger about the minutiae of Geno’s life made these distances hard to stomach. Sidney wanted to know everything, with the hunger of a man who had been starving his whole life, from the names of the small bottles of cologne lined up on Geno’s dresser to the contents of the books that made him smile reflexively to himself, pencilling small exclamations and tick marks besides passages incomprehensible to Sidney.

“Translate that for me,” he had asked, once, seeing Geno wholly absorbed in a book of poems, soft-eyed and languorous in bed on a late Wednesday afternoon. “Can’t translate,” said Geno, eyes never leaving the page. “Too beautiful. English, it cannot understand. Will spoil it.” “But I want to know ,” said Sidney, well aware that he was both, perilously close to whining, and also hovering on the unspoken line of intimacy from they were beating a constant, wordless retreat. “Can’t,” said Geno, and it was the gentleness, more than the refusal that made Sidney burn. For once, the hum of his pager was a welcome sound from the depths of Geno’s bed, and he bolted, but not before Geno had caught his wrist, and dropped a soft kiss on the palm of his hand. “Drive safe,” he said, and Sidney stood for a moment, watching him ensconced in the blankets, wearing a gray waffle shirt, huge and warm and smelling sweetly of vetiver, before he turned and fled, mind already drifting from Geno to the aneurysm awaiting him.

A few days later, Sidney found Geno pacing his apartment in frustration again, the faint but unmistakable tracks of dampness at the corners of his eyes as he snarled into the phone and then finally slammed it down on the coffee table. “Should I leave?” asked Sidney, quietly, but Geno shook his head, his body a line of taut frustration, standing at the window with his hands gripping the sill. “Do you want to talk about it?” asked Sidney, with all the care that he could muster, and Geno turned around and came to him, sinking to his knees at Sidney’s feet. “Not important,” he said, resting his head on Sidney’s knees, and Sidney put his hands in Geno’s hair and held his precious head, fine-boned skull cupped in his hands, holding him the way you hold the fragile things you love, gently as they beat their wings in your palms.

“You can tell me,” he said quietly to Geno, and Geno visibly bit back his first response, pausing, as he did, to parse in English what was in his mind. They sat quietly, Geno coming down from his obvious unhappiness, settling into Sidney’s hold on him. Now accustomed to watching Geno’s internal translator at work, Sidney found himself trying to deconstruct this declaration of unimportance: Not important - in the scheme of things? Not important - in the long run? Not important - compared to - compared to something else important, naturally, but what? Not important to Geno? Clearly, that wasn’t true. Not important to Sidney? And here he stopped, because to go further down that path was madness, and worse, truth. “Come to bed,” said Geno, and Sidney went obediently, but later, pressing into Geno, his long body laid out beneath Sidney like a feast, Sidney wanted to dive in hands-first and pull out every single injury and hurt and joy in Geno and see it laid open to him: bone, sinew, nerve, and muscle, as if the body contained imprints of every love and wound it had experienced, stamped beneath the skin. Prends-moi , said Geno, panting in his ear, and for all Flower’s mockery, Sidney knew that much French, so he took from Geno all the things that he would not give, greedy with hands and mouth and tongue for his trembling, shivering cry of release.

Classes reopened in January; the week before that, Geno went up to New York to see his parents, who had flown down from Russia to visit him. Despite Kessel’s teasing, Sidney spent three nights of those nights Geno’s bed and the rest at the hospital. “His bed is more comfortable than mine,” he’d protested, but his excuses were transparent enough that Flower just shook his head. “What, no comments from you?” he’d asked, and Tanger had said something about low-hanging fruit before taking off down the corridor. “You haven’t been by in a while,” said Mario, joining the chorus of nagging that existed in counterpoint to Sidney’s whole life, soon after they finished removing 60% of a rather ugly astrocytoma from a seven year old, lying frail and tiny on the massive operating table. “I hear you’ve been seeing someone,” Mario continued, stripping off his gloves and dropping them into the bin. “Why don’t you bring him - or her - along for dinner, perhaps the following Saturday next?” “It’s not like that,” tried Sidney, but through a combination of blandishments, threats, and heavy-handed hints about dessert, Sidney found himself texting Geno and receiving a cautious assent for the following week.

Not much of a texter to begin with, Geno had been curiously incommunicado while in New York, but Kessel, sick of Sidney’s mood, had silently handed over his tablet, opened to a page of photographs, after an evening of especially performative sulking. Sidney scrolled through, looking at pictures of a smiling Geno at the Statue of Liberty with two people who were clearly his parents; Geno and his mother each holding a pretzel on Sixth Avenue; Geno standing beside a very large dog, grinning idiotically, flakes of snow dappling his dark winter coat; and finally, Geno with friends in some club, purple lights flashing, dressed in a tight, black shirt covered with fine, silvery lines and sweat trickling down his chest. “Wait, so this one is facebook?” asked Sidney, mostly to cover for the fact that his mind was stuck on the faint tracery of nipples visible through Geno’s shirt, the lines of his neck frozen on the screen as his head tipped back in laughter, the possessive arm of some tall, muscular, friend curled around Geno’s shoulders, fingertips resting on Geno’s exposed collarbone. “This is Instagram, for fuck’s sake, Sidney, make an account and stalk your man,” said Kessel and snatched his Ipad back, but Sidney had that photograph etched in his head already, Geno’s shoulders, his open, smiling mouth, his closed eyes.

Mrs. P. sent Sidney up with Geno’s mail the day before he came home. Prurience took the better of Sidney and he flipped through the envelopes: bills, bills, some communication from CMU, more bills, a letter from her Majesty’s Revenue Service - odd, and then a series of envelopes that made Sidney’s stomach flip dangerously: official looking letters from Oxford University, from the École Normale Supérieure, from Columbia, and finally, from Harvard. Well acquainted with his alma mater’s preoccupations with nostalgia and the destruction of rainforests, Sidney knew that Harvard tended to still send acceptance letters by post, but of the rest he had no idea. Sidney put the letters in a stack on Geno’s desk under the living room window, a small paper bomb of fellowship application results waiting to explode in his life, and padded into Geno’s bedroom. He picked a random bottle of Geno’s dresser and sprayed a little of the cologne onto Geno’s bed, and then lay down on it, the scent strong. It was the first one that he had caught traces of, in the corridor, before he had even known of Geno’s existence. How strange to think of his life like that: before and after Geno.   

Geno came home on Thursday afternoon: Sidney had planned on going to the airport because his afternoon was supposed to be free, but he found that he couldn’t make at the last moment. Olli dragged him down into a consult on which began as an intracerebral hemorrhage and went to present with intraventricular hemorrhage. “She’s non-responsive,” said Burns, standing there with pen twirling, doing nothing of value, and getting elbowed out of the way by Sidney. “We’ve got an INR of 3.6, and here are the scans, Dr. Crosby,” said Avery, the nurse on call. His phone was vibrating in his coat pocket; Avery reached in and turned it off while Sidney examined the scans. “Bleed in the left periventricular white matter, but that’s a fair amount of blood,” said Sidney. “Fuck me, let’s try and reverse the INR; push vitamin K and prothrombin,” he scribbled out the dosages and handing them over to Avery.

“She has a DNR, whaddaya gonna do,” said Burns over Sidney’s shoulder. “Fuck off please, Burns,” Sidney shrugged him off,  and directed his orders to Olli. “I’m going to intubate and then place an EVD, come on, let’s move.” Their attempt to drain and remove the pressure failed: Sidney spent an excruciating fifteen minutes with the grief counselor and his patient’s husband after her status was changed to Do Not Resuscitate later that evening. “I need some time,” said her husband, wretchedly. “She’s only thirty-five, I just need some time.” Sidney gripped his shoulder and said nothing; there was nothing, at this point, that he could say. “Keep the EVD in place and continue as I said, until the husband decides on care measures,” he told Avery, and then left further instructions for the night float to page him ASAP if anything - anything at all - happened.

He went home with his head in a fog, visiting and revisiting everything he had read on managing intraventricular hemorrhage. “Let it go,” Coffey had advised him, after reviewing Sidney’s plan of treatment. “You’ve done everything you could. Either she responds or she doesn’t, but you can’t move forward now if her husband decides to pull the plug. Go home , Sidney.” His feet led him automatically to Geno’s door, but he found it locked. Knocking received no answer, and neither did a text; Sidney stood there like a moron, before remembering - oh fuck - the airport. He fumbled out his phone and saw two missed calls from Geno and a text, sent somewhere around noon. Coming to airport ? it read - and Sidney thought of Avery, silencing his phone while he tried and failed to save Marsha Williams, 35, married, no children, from her inevitable and impending death.

“Fuck,” said Sidney, and sat down heavily on the steps, his head against the wall. He must have dozed off, because he woke when Kessel nudged him awake with one foot, looking as tired as he felt. “Come on, Croz,” said Kessel. “No sleeping on staircases after your second year of residency, remember? We’re doctors, not hobos.” Sidney stood up, checked his texts (Marsha Williams, still unresponsive, no instructions from the husband) and went to bed, stopping only to message Geno before he lay down. I’m really, really, sorry, he typed. I had an emergency , he went on, and then stopped. What more was there to say? This was the culmination of everything Sidney had feared, and yet, the moment his head hit the pillow, he was asleep, exhausted, as though sleep could restore a heart from fear and doubt.  

IV

Sidney was up and on his way out the door less than three hours later, paged in to check on a gliobliostoma that he had resected earlier that week: a five year old who had been doing promisingly for the last three days but was now unresponsive and crashing hard. Two tense hours later she was stable, but with severely compromised cerebral functions: Sidney held her mother’s hands in his at four in the morning, waiting until the counselor could take over and walk them through their options for long-term care.

Sidney went by Marsha Williams’ room, before Friday grand rounds officially started, but she, 35, married, no children, was the same, also unresponsive, her husband sitting bowed over her bed, his back a curved line of grief. He went through grand rounds with Dr. Ruggiero, visiting from the Children’s Hospital in LA, cringing as she endured Burns’s awkward attempts at kiss-assing and Coffey’s even more awkward attempts at flirting with an unshakeable dignity. Ruggiero ignored both of them, focusing her questions on Crosby, Hags, and Horny. Sidney sweated through the entire experience, and then resected a spinal tumour from a fourteen year track and field athlete under her eagle eye, earning a ‘not bad, Crosby,’ for his efforts. He saw patients, wrote notes, attended the weekly M&M, and had no time to prepare at all for the moment when Avery took him aside and gently told him that Marsha Williams, 35, married, no children, had spared her husband the agonizing decision of having to choose to turn off life support by shuffling off this mortal coil herself while Sidney was catching ten brief minutes of sleep in an on-call room.

Sidney called her death at 16:45, with tears in eyes, unable to account for why this one death, amidst all the others that thronged the corridors of the hospital each day, had hit him so hard. A particularly gruesome car crash on the I-376 brought him an entire flood of consults, and he did them in a daze, stepping aside only when Coffey intervened to say, “No, no , Sidney, go home ,” staring when Sidney put down his clipboard and went without protest for the first time in his life. “You can’t drive like this,” sneered Burns, as he sat, staring blankly at his boots in the changing room. “You’ll cause an accident. Haven’t we had enough for today?”

Sidney whipped around, his fists clenched, but Julie had stepped between them with a grace and severity that became her position as Chief Resident of Trauma, but was also honed through years of dealing with men and their violence-led problem-solving techniques. “Burns, get out,” she said and Burns went, socks in hand, wisely electing not to reckon with the consequences of having a smart mouth. “Crosby, put your shoes on,” she said, pushing down on one shoulder until Sidney sat, blankly staring at his shoelaces till Julie, huffing impatiently, dressed him like a child, bundling him into his coat and steering him down to her sensible SUV, a car-seat fitted in the back. They waited in the garage while her car warmed up, Julie apologizing before she called her wife, murmuring a quick apology for the delay in returning home. Whatever her wife said in return made Julie smile, a half-laugh escaping before they slid out of underground parking into the bright January sun, shining off the blanket of snow that had fallen over Pittsburgh while Sidney Crosby had his Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

“How do you do it?” asked Sidney, his voice raw and rough, even though the crying had been mostly internal. “How do you and Caroline make it work - even though you’re here all the time and she does her work? How come she doesn’t just -?”

“Leave?” asked Julie, and signalled before turning left onto Central Avenue. Sidney swallowed and began to apologise for prying. “Sidney,” said Julie, and he shut up, saving his stammered sorries. “I and the rest of the hospital know about your views on medicine and marriage. You believe they don’t agree, and I’m sure you have your reasons. But I happen to disagree, and I live my life accordingly.”

“You’re calling me a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Sidney. “I’m calling you an idiot,” replied Julie. “There’s not a whole lot of people who understand what it is like to devote yourself entirely to surgery, so much so that your patients are on your mind whether you eat or sleep or write or drive. And there are even less who recognise that in you, and are still willing to accept a life composed of the leftovers after you’ve given medicine your everything.”

“So you’re telling me there isn’t a chance.” Sidney twisted his hands in his lap. At Bloomfield Bridge they encountered a small traffic jam; Julie let the car idle and sipped coffee from her travel mug. “I’m telling you,” she said, accelerating as they shot across, the river rushing below, “to grab your chance at happiness with both hands while you can, because Geno, to me, seems like one of those who really gets it. He’s strong enough to be able to live his own life and let you live yours, and yet find a way for you two to hold together. Will there be conflicts? Inevitably. But the question you need to ask is, is he worth fighting for, regardless? Would you want him to stay? Or would you let him leave? So don’t let your manpain get in the way of your happiness, Crosby. He’s a good guy. Don’t fuck up.”

“I might have already fucked up,” admitted Sidney, his eyes burning.

Julie pulled up in front of the house and then put her hand on Sidney’s sleeve as he turned to get out. He slumped back, and Julie sighed. “Look,” she said, “Sid, you’re a good kid, and two years from now you’re going probably going to be Chief Resident for Neuro. You’re running circles around almost everyone in your service, you have a terribly competitive NIH grant in your pocket, and Mario has already essentially crowned you as his heir. But there are always going to be days like this, when everything that can go wrong, does. If you don’t learn to lean on your people when it happens, to stop and ask for help when you need it, you’ll eventually crack under the pressure. So lean on your people when you have to, and come back stronger tomorrow. Don’t be like Burns.”

“Be like Chu instead?” asked Sidney, and almost smiled when she pointed out that he could do worse. “What’s in it for them, though? For Caroline and for - for Geno? What do they get, when we aren’t around for them to lean on? When we go to work instead of being there? Who do they lean on?”

“You can only do the best you can, Sidney,” said Julie, “ to be there as much as you can and let them know that you wish you were there, when you can’t. That’s all. And then you hope like hell it’s enough to make them want to stay.  You might be surprised. Geno knows what it is like to be under extreme pressure.” At Sidney’s blank look she rolled her eyes. “He’s Russian, for fuck’s sake, Sidney, I wish you would actually read the GLMA’s newsletters instead of binning them. Russia, remember? They’re not too fond of us folks. They probably gave him a one-way ticket out. It’s likely that he can never go home again. So maybe he might need to lean on you, a little. That’s your job.”

“Oh,” Sidney, dumbstruck, sat in her car. It hadn’t even occurred to him. He thought of Geno’s Instagram, a photo on the internet for everyone to see, a man’s hand curling over Geno’s collarbone, fingertips resting where his pulse throbbed under the purple lights. “Go home , Sidney,” said Julie; he went.

Sidney knocked on Geno’s door and waited, hearing his familiar tread, the squeak of that one creaky floorboard beside the bookshelves as Geno crossed the room. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out as soon as the door opened, Geno’s dear, familiar face lined with worry, a spoon in his right hand. Geno looked at Sidney, standing in his doorway, his coat hanging around his shoulders and buttons done up wrong. He had no idea what Geno saw, but it caused him to say, “Oh, Sid,” and draw him inside, sweeping a pile of books off the couch and sitting Sidney down.

“I’m sorry,” said Sidney again, “that I didn’t make it to the airport, and that I didn’t call. My patient died. And then my other patient coded. And the third one’s tumour has come back, and there was an accident on the I-376 -” Geno finished tugging off Sidney’s boots and pulled him up to his feet, wrapping his arms tightly around Sidney. “Oh, Sid,” he said again, softly, just between the two of them, in Sidney’s ear, and a dam broke inside, Sidney sobbing in that ugly way you do when your heart is emptying itself out, when there’s nothing left to give you so you put your tears on the heap of all that’s left.

When Sidney had slowed to hiccuping sobs, Geno tugged him into the shower, standing close to him, carefully washing his swollen, raw face. It was though someone had peeled back an entire layer of skin, leaving Sidney exposed, and he curled into Geno’s body, letting him wash his hair, limp and obediently turning as Geno directed him. Geno tucked him into bed naked, warm between the sheets that smelled faintly of detergent, and brought him a cup of honey and lemon tea. “Zh-henya,” croaked Sidney, provoking a startled laugh. “Accent so bad,” said Geno. “Stick with ‘Geno,’ please,” so Sidney said, “Zhe-en-ya,” again, to see him laugh like that, bright and unexpected. “Go to sleep, Sid,” said Geno. “I really am sorry,” Sidney mumbled, one last time, though his eyes were closing. “Is not for sorry,” Geno said softly, one hand on Sidney’s brow. “I’ll make it up to you tomorrow,” Sidney slurred, catching Geno’s soft, huffed laugh and taking it down into sleep with him.

“You smell nice,” said Sidney, the next morning, watching Geno get dressed for class. Geno grinned, because he did, of piney green things, subtle and yet distinct. “I’ve been meaning to ask,” Sidney ventured, “about the cologne - ah, scents, that you use.” “You like,” said Geno, secure in the knowledge borne of the many times Sidney pressed his nose against Geno and inhaled like it was his last breath. “Yeah,” admitted Sidney. “But, how did you get into it? Is it like, a common thing, for where you’re from?” Geno said nothing, finally shrugging. “Is not big thing. I like, so I wear. Why, why, it’s not important.”

Sidney took a deep breath, for things had undoubtedly changed between them since the night before, but this was new territory and he was vastly inexperienced in matters of the heart. “It’s important,” he said, finally, “to me. I’d like to know. If you want to talk about it.” Geno looked down and away from Sidney, sitting by the side of his bed and tying his cravat carefully. It was a thinking pause, not a refusal, so Sidney waited patiently as Geno formulated what he wanted to say.

“When I come to England,” he said finally, “To Oxford. It’s new. I don’t know anything. My whole life, in Russia, I speak four languages, go to college, but my English is little bit bad.” He bit his lip, pausing, and then went on, haltingly. Sidney listened, and was reminded once again of that blinding rage he felt when he saw Geno’s lashes, spiky with tears, closing his door. For all that his English was precise and deliberate, Geno painted a picture made more vivid by the things he didn’t say - Sidney imagined a young, lithe Geno, being made to feel precisely as foreign as he was, being be told over and over again, in bed and out of it, of how different he was in every way, from how he spoke, to how he dressed, to how he smelled. Like Sidney’s white coat, these scents, too, telegraphed belonging, signals of his place in the order of things that surrounded them. “Little bit for me,” said Geno, tugging on his shoes. “Little bit for them.” Sidney inhaled, vetiver and bergamot. “I like the way you smell, too,” he said, slow and deliberate himself. “You little bit weird, Sidney,” confided Geno, and then yelped, one arm wrapped protectively around his middle when Sidney rolled across the bed to rumple his whole professorial look.  

On Saturday, Sidney picked up Geno from outside the Hunt Library. They stopped at Harold’s to pick up a horrifically expensive winter bouquet for Nathalie. Geno’s carefully constructed, towering  and layered medovik was wedged safely into the back inside a glass-domed cake box, but Geno made Sidney stop long enough for him to retrieve it, balancing it across his knees while Sidney drove out to Sewickley. “You didn’t have to make the cake,” said Sidney, but Geno shrugged and opened the box, flooding the car with a warm, honey and butter smell. “Yeah, okay, no complaints,” Sidney leaned over to sniff hungrily at it, protesting when Geno pushed him back. “Drive now, cake later.”

Mario and Nathalie, inevitably, grilled Geno in their deft, unyielding way after dinner, asking him questions about his Ph.D. research (‘on Tsvetaeva, Russian poet’) and his family (‘Mama, Papa, brother, all in Russia’). Their conversation went back and forth between French and English; the French was largely beyond Sidney, but his attention was divided anyhow between Nathalie’s excellent roasted potatoes and little Alexa Lemieux’s convoluted story about some unfolding drama in her junior hockey team. Nathalie and Geno moved on to Nabokov; Mario shrugged across the table at Sidney, and looked at his wife with an expression of such uninhibited adoration that made Sidney squirm inside and look away. Across the table, Nathalie said something to Geno that made him burst out in laughter. Sidney grinned back instinctively. He didn’t know what his face was doing but he felt hot inside and out, cheeks burning and his heart turning over.

“It’s little bit like, meet the parents,” said Geno, on the way home, sated and full. “My dad’s a doctor, too,” said Sidney. “A surgeon, like me.” He paused, because he was standing on the edge of something immeasurable, a lifetime of childhood resentments, stitched together with memories of every missed birthday, every missed hockey game, every grade brought home to an empty house. The interstate glittered at night, lights stretching out on the empty road. The Veterans’ Bridge stretched across the river on their left, high beams above and icy rushing water below, fading in the background as they merged into the right lane and turned back to the city. Geno, beside Sidney, was still and patient, enfolding the car in a silence that seemed forgiving, rather than cold. “He wasn’t around a lot, my dad.” Sidney swallowed. “But that’s how it is, the life of a surgeon.” He released the wheel to wipe one sweaty hand on his knee, turning his palm up when Geno clasped it in his own. “Let’s go home, Sidney,” he said, and when Sidney turned to look, his gaze was warm and steady, his fingers still curled around Sidney’s hand.

The stack of letters that Sidney had left, like an unexploded mine, remained on Geno’s desk unopened for two weeks until one day it was gone. Sidney didn’t ask, and Geno didn’t tell: for one, the NIH grant was disbursed and Sidney spent a miserable week interviewing candidates to assist him on his project next year. For another, February had Geno embroiled in preparing mid-terms and grading papers, even as he delivered a series of lectures as part of his obligations as a visiting scholar - some in Russian, one in Polish to the School of Slavic Studies, and one, terrifyingly, in English, before the entire Literature department. They sat at opposite ends of the living room, Sidney on the couch with his files on the coffee table, far from Geno’s eyes so that no vigilant defenders of patient privacy and HIPAA requirements could be offended. Over at his desk, Geno wrote in longhand, first in Russian and then in English, consulting his translation dictionaries and thesaurus, testing phrases on Sidney from time to time. It was so terribly domestic that Sidney lived in half-delight, half-fear, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for time to run out, and sighing with relief each time Geno opened the door and held his arms welcomingly.

Sidney came home from a brutal shift on his pediatric neuro rotation, one of those afternoons, to find Geno practising with a list of words, recording them on his phone and listening to himself say them in scratchy playback. “English!” said Geno, genuinely frustrated, and Sidney looked at the list, Geno’s spiky English writing and then the Russian equivalent in cursive beside them. “Di-gest,” groaned Geno. “Dee-gest? Dig-est? Die-gest?” He flopped his head down on the desk dramatically.

“Poor Zh-en-ya-a,” said Sidney, mangling it, kissing the back of Geno’s neck and feeling the vibrations as Geno reluctantly laughed. “Where  are you going ?” groaned Geno, lifting his head up off the desk when Sidney stepped away. Sidney, half-undressed already, looked up, his hands on his belt, tongue in his cheek. “I had to rush off last night. I promised I’d make up for it.” He tried his best to look innocent, or as well as one could while stripping down in the middle of the afternoon, sunshine golding through the windows and sending curious fingertips of light over the floorboard and up his naked torso. He undid his belt and tossed on the coffee table, the buckle clinking as it slid to the floor. Geno sat up immediately.

“You sit there,” said Sidney, “and write your lecture. I’ll sit here, and entertain myself.” He plonked himself down on Geno’s couch, socks going the way of the belt, and cupped himself through his trousers, smirking at Geno’s open mouth and round eyes. “Go on,” he said. “Write. Let’s see if we can work out a good rate of exchange. For each sentence you complete, I’ll -” “You what?” said Geno, torn between suspicion and slack-jawed lust. “Whatever you want,” said Sidney, luxuriously stretching and then taking off his pants with more wriggling than was strictly necessary. “Hmm,” said Geno, picking up his pen and notebook. He looked unconcerned, but there was  a glint in his eye, a contemplative look on his face that foretold the sort of encounter that, historically speaking, left Sidney dazed and randomly smiling to himself for days afterward. “I think you made a mistake, Sidney.” Sidney smiled at him and spread his thighs, one foot on the floor, the other up on the sofa back and watched as Geno fumbled with his pen. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

Later that month, Sidney and Kessel hunched over one six-inch tablet until Hags took pity on the both of them and showed them how to cast the live-stream of Geno’s keynote on the lounge television. “I was watching that,” protested Burns, as Hags muted the sounds of last night’s episode of The Bachelor and replaced with Geno’s face, so mobile and alive, speaking slowly but surely. “Brodsky says, in a manner of speaking, we all work for a dictionary,” said Geno, “Because literature is a dictionary, a com-pen-dium of meanings for this or that human lot, for this or that experience. It is a dictionary of the language,” and here he paused dramatically, and Sidney watched him enjoy the rapt attention of his audience, his tongue poking at the side of his cheek before he went on, “in which life speaks to man .” Sidney’s pager vibrated, but he stopped at the doorway to look back for a moment, at Geno, his blazer abandoned, waistcoated and bespectacled, gesturing with his hands and mouth, patient and confident, holding his audience in the palm of his hand. A laugh broke out and Geno smiled in response; Sidney bolted before it could devastate him and overturn the rest of his day entirely.  

The chirping at the hockey rink intensified as March rolled around; with beer league playoffs in April, teams begin to take practice a little more seriously (or at the least, Sidney did, and following suit, Geno, who dragged Alex, kicking and screaming with him into running drills). They earned the nickname of ‘Two-Headed Monster’, running joint practices for the Victorious Secrets and the Haemoglobin Trotters. Theoretically, this gave both teams two hours instead one each, but in practice, forty-five minutes in everyone was trashed on beer, leaving Geno and Sidney on the ice in a vicious one-on-one that Flower refused to tend the goal for. “Make Bryz do it,” he said, escaping early. “I have to look after myself, you know. It’s not good for the baby.” Beside him, Vero rolled her eyes, pregnant and glowing, patiently waiting to drive her inebriated husband home.

Mid-terms came and went in a haze of grading papers. Mrs Perkins began to prep her garden for spring, and as March warmed up, Geno began to run again, threatening to drag Sidney along until he prevailed one day, stretching on the front stoop while relentlessly ignoring Sidney’s complaints of how “just got home, literally, it’s five in the morning, Geno.” Geno’s general bendiness, and his willingness to bend in all sorts of mildly obscene ways in the name of stretching was incentive enough, but Sidney let him placate any misplaced guilt with with promises to perform acts of extreme licentiousness in the shower after. “I bathe you, then I fuck you, then I feed you, and then you sleep. But first we run.” Geno dropped into down-ward facing dog, effectively winning the argument. “ Fine ,” he huffed, tying his laces resentfully, but it faded soon because Geno in motion was twice vital as Geno in rest, outpacing an admittedly tired Sidney with ease and then doubling back to tug him along the steep streets of Polish Hill. “If you think I’m running back up this route, you’re insane,” panted Sidney. Geno took pity on them and looped them around Penn Ave, a gentler incline that allowed Sidney to keep up, their feet hitting the street in perfect tandem as the sun rose over the horizon.

“Nice run,” said Geno, ducking into his apartment. He started stripping off in the small entranceway, dropping his clothes directly into the open washing machine, his shirt, then his trackpants, a rolled up sock. Abruptly, Geno was naked, laughing at Sidney (“Come on, lazy,”) and Sidney found himself as always, struck by how huge Geno was, tall above Sidney, thick from the spread of his thighs to his muscled arms, his back an expanse, his ass plush and inviting in Sidney’s hands. “Shower, Sid,” he gasped, as Sidney backed him into the wall, letting his hands map every fading scar, every extending curve and line of Geno’s body. “Sweaty,” tried Geno, hissing as Sid gently applies teeth to his nipple, “Sid, I smell.” Sidney lifted his head, tipping back so he could nose into Geno’s neck, his head tucked right against Geno’s shoulder. “I like the way you smell,” he said, and he did, a clean, sweaty smell, damp and earthy, something essentially Geno and no one else. Sidney lowered himself to his knees, groaning a little at the stretch, and then tugged until Geno bent over him, thighs quivering, hips arched, canting him into Sidney’s mouth. “I mean, I love the colognes and stuff, too. But this -” he let his body do what it wanted, which was to tip face-first into Geno, “..this, it smells of just you, and I like that too.” He mouthed at Geno, letting his lips and tongue tell the entirety of his desire, this endless need to possess and know and taste until the both of them  were on the floor, sticky and sweaty and slicked together.

“We gross,” said Geno, collapsed on the floor, eons later, Sidney hoarsely breathing over him. “Your mess, you clean,” he added, smoothly extricating himself and straightening up. Still sprawled in the hallway, Sidney looked up to see a purplish bite-mark on Geno’s hip, bright and hypnotic. Geno prodded it and shook his head at Sidney, and Sidney begen the slow process of levering himself upright, pausing only to watch Geno’s exceptional ass as he walked away from him and to the shower.

The Victorious Secrets didn’t win the beer league championship, and neither did the Trotters, stumbling along in Sidney’s absence. He was in for much good-natured ribbing about betraying his own from Flower and Tanger, but they let it slide, because the clinical trial with Coffey had finally yielded spectacularly anomalous results. “We’re either on the verge of major breakthrough,” groaned Coffey, “or you lot have fucked up by virtue of your abysmal arithmetic skills.” Burns took offence and sulked, but Sidney spent four sleepless nights checking and re-checking the results, and then presenting their findings to a select committee of senior faculty at CMU. Mario listened, first doubtful, then incredulous, and finally, grudgingly impressed; Coffey, Sidney, Burns, and Hags ended up in Boston, having their breakthrough rigorously verified by one of Sidney’s former professors.

Geno declined to come along to Boston, citing the league final against a team of off-duty engineers called No Regretsky, and an urgent trip to New York right after. Saying goodbye before his overnight shift, Sidney carefully ignored the folder containing professionally printed resumes even while he packed it into Geno’s handbag, and with equal bloody-mindedness, managed to retrieve Geno’s freshly-pressed formal suit from the dry-cleaner that Mrs. P. recommended, all while successfully avoiding saying or hearing the word ‘interview’. “Sidney,” tried Geno, more than once, to talk about it all, but Sidney was adamant, and by virtue of the demon beeping pager or his clever mouth, deflected the conversation from hearts to bodies in an instant.

Sidney handed Geno his bag, mutely refusing to say goodbye, and carefully not offering to meet him at the airport later. Geno shook his head at Sidney, a familiar, fond gesture, slipping on his coat, and accepting the unreasonably frantic kiss that Sidney pressed upon his mouth, letting Sidney’s hands pin and keep him against the bedroom wall and deliver a monstrous, purpling love-bite on Geno’s collarbone before he had to leave. Geno left, slit-eyed and wet-mouthed, a knowing cat-like expression on his face, and Sidney thought about it when he walked across the hallway and back to his own apartment. In spring, Geno smelled minty and fresh, like the damp ferny greens behind Mrs. P’s backyard, electric and alive, and Sidney carried that feeling of electric, woody freshness with him to Boston and back like a talisman.

Sidney came back from Boston and went straight  the hospital. At the end of his shift, Geno made his way there, carrying a grocery bag that contained their contributions to Phil’s thirtieth birthday party, hastily celebrated in an empty consult room on the first floor. He giggled helplessly as Kessel unwrapped the eighth of thirty individually gift-wrapped and bow-tied cartons of whole milk, sputtering as Flower and Sidney high-fived, and then helping to carry twenty-nine of the down to the very confused administrator of the food-bank beside the hospital. Geno was bright-eyed and amused, curiously taking in as much as he could during Sidney’s lightning tour of the hospital, and gratifying Sidney no end by repeatedly insulting Burns and blaming it on gaps in his English.

Sidney got through April by virtue of placing Geno’s impending departure in the same mental bin that contained the canned responses he sent to his father’s sporadic emails, the reflexes that ensured his mother and sister received their birthday cards and Christmas gifts and clockwork Sunday morning phone calls. He managed to avoid the party that Alex threw in his grandmother’s house, ostensibly to celebrate losing the beer league championship to a team of terrifying stay-at-home moms that brutally checked men double their size into the board and went by the name of Queens of the Ice Age. Suspiciously, Alex’s grandmother had made a table-full of Geno’s favourites, but Sidney ate the leftovers without asking questions, and avoided Geno’s repeated attempts at conversing until Geno stopped trying. “Dumbass,” said Alex, to Sidney, almost pityingly, after he came by one evening with a case of beer, dressed in a searing purple singlet and red trackpants. Sidney averted his eyes. “You know, Zhenya -” and Sidney broke a personal rule and faked a page from the hospital so he could get out of there.

Sidney’s state of self-enforced oblivion as a coping mechanism only lasted so long as May came around. Feeling his way to Geno’s fridge in the dark, he was set upon by stacks of books that Geno had taken off the shelves and neatly organised against the far wall. Sidney clutched at his throbbing foot, and then limped over to the kitchen light, coming back to glare at the pile of books that had viciously assaulted his toes, now scattered over the floor in defeat. Volumes of Akhmatova’s collected verse in translation, tipped on their side, had led the charge; now familiar with Geno’s organization of at least the English titles in his collection, he restored to a stack with all his translations of Tsetaeva in English and French, balanced atop a beautiful, illuminated English verse translation of Lermontov that was still encased in plastic. “Translation so bad, book so beautiful,” Geno had mourned, wrapping it up to donate to the CMU’s expanding Slavic collection, but here it was, tripping up unsuspecting people in the dark. Sidney dropped it with  a bang - beside the books, easily missed in the low light by a man exhausted beyond measure, was a stack of packing cartons. “Sid,” said Geno, from behind, rubbing his eyes, and then tracking Sidney’s gaze to the cartons. He took a deep breath before he said, “Sid, we talk?”

“ No, ” said Sidney, quiet and vehement. He put his shoes back on and went straight back to his apartment, ignoring the defeated line of Geno’s shoulders, the way his eyes drooped slightly with sleep, his curled, unhappy mouth. Residency taught all doctors to get their sleep where they could find it, an efficient and quick slide to unconsciousness that was both, a parasceve and a preparation for the grind and heartbreak of surgery. Nonetheless, Sidney found himself unrelentingly conscious, a wakefulness that began in generalised rage against the blows of fate, and ended in  a pit of self-directed misery and loathing. He took himself to work and back from work in a dark cloud of misery, so dense that even Burns laid off, taking him aside after their meeting with the neuroradiology unit to say, “You okay, bro?” while snapping gum. Infuriated, Sidney stomped off down the corridor, ignoring Burns’s advice to not go to bed mad. “You’re beautiful when you’re angry,” said Flower, in the cafeteria, and taking in Sidney’s wordless snarl in response, handed over one of his pudding cups, unbidden. Sidney shovelled pudding into his mouth, carefully avoiding all thoughts of - well, his pager went off, and he ran. Geno’s car, on a year-long lease, vanished from their street parking, the front curtains in his apartment went down. Sidney came home with eggs and lettuce and milk and went past Geno’s door each time, the air stale and still, his tread heavy on the floorboards.

Mario predicted a breaking point, and he was, as usual, right, because Sidney, ignoring all warnings lost his temper after a sleepless night float spent dealing with a woman who refused to let her infant son have a Vitamin K shot after birth. Now now convinced that his brain bleed was not the byproduct of Vitamin K deficiency, but a plot by pharmaceutical companies to steal her money, she raged helplessly in the waiting room, stalking mommy forums and inadvisable bloggers on her phone while Sidney and the neonatal surgeon took the infant into surgery to try and drain the subdural haematoma. The baby’s blood wouldn’t clot, the bleeding uncontrollable, and when Sidney went to her with the grief counselor, she exploded in misdirected rage.

“My son,” she spat at Sidney, “would be fine if you doctors knew how to do your job.” Sidney, who spent the night trying to prevent a three month old from seizing over and over for reasons that were entirely preventable by responsible parents, opened his mouth to deliver a blistering diatribe, and found himself tugged away down the corridor by Luis, who handed him a sheet of paper. It said, in her neat handwriting, “Sidney, what would Julie Chu do?” with a tiny, elegant post-script (“Ps. Fuck Burns”) so Sidney swallowed his rage, composed himself and went back out to comfort the mother who was just beginning to see, with terror, what her well-intentioned but misinformed judgment would cost.

“Go home , Sidney,” chorused the entire nurses’ station when he stalked past them, so Sidney defiantly got into his car and drove anywhere but, out and around, down to North Oakland and then, on a whim, the Phipps Conservatory parking lot. He cut through the main hall and went through a room entirely composed of orchids, hands stuffed in his pockets. Despite the juice and joy of spring, the conservatory was mostly empty: only three art students, scruffy and unshaven, sitting in a pool of discarded layers in the tropical warmth of the greenhouse, sketched cycads and bears’ paw ferns, delicately unfolding on earth and paper. Sidney skirted past them, walking through and again into a different, outdoor garden. A looping path took him through beds of perennials, slumbering cold and white beneath the snow-covered earth all winter, and now spilling uncontrollably out of flower beds in riots of pink and red. Off a small patch marked off as a medicinal garden was a wrought-iron bench that abutted a lily-pond, with a small wooden bridge arching above it. Sidney sat down and admitted to himself and the ferns and the frogs, that without Geno, life would be unbearable.

“Ask me to stay,” Geno’s text had said, a explosive declaration contained within Sidney’s pocket. A week had passed, then two, and Sidney’s silence might have reasonably been construed to be an answer in itself, but he pulled out his phone, nevertheless, and typed with numb fingers. An hour passed, then nearly two, and from across the garden, Sidney watched Geno’s dear tousle-headed figure slip past a man with a wheelbarrow, skirt around the perennials and come to halt across the lilypond. He walked over the bridge, and came to sit beside Sidney, stretching his long legs out onto the gravel path. “My father,” said Sidney, voice shaking only very slightly, “is a surgeon, and has never spent a single birthday with me. Not one. My mother built an entire life centered around her garden, terribly alone and miserable. When he was home, they fought. When he was gone, we missed him.” Geno said nothing, taking off his glasses and tucking them into his waistcoat pocket. “I am not my father,” said Sidney. “But I am going miss your birthday. I will cancel dates to go see a patient. My pager will go off in the middle of sex and I’ll pull out and leave, even though I won’t want to. Dinner will go cold. I won’t make it to faculty barbecues. Is it fair to ask anyone to live with that?” He looked out over the pond; Geno said nothing. “Zhenya,” he said, “I want you too much to be reasonable. Will you stay?”

“No,” said Geno.

Over the roaring in his ears, Sidney heard nothing after, and moments passed before he realised he was sitting with his head between his knees, Geno’s long hand pressed between his shoulder blades, rubbing soothingly. “New York is only five hours drive,” said Geno, patiently, the heel of his plam running the length of Sidney’s spine. “Columbia will give me one year. Then Boris retires. CMU has a position open, I apply, maybe I get, maybe I don’t.” Sidney sat up again, heart in his mouth.

“Sidney,” said Geno, infinitely tender. “I can’t stay. I have to go.”

“So come back to me,” croaked Sidney. “Go, if you have to, but come back to me. Can you - will you do that?”

A few minutes passed, then an eternity. The spring flowers were heady, filling the air like incense. A flock of blackbirds rose and scattered over the sky. The man with the wheelbarrow trundled over the bridge across the pond, and Sidney lifted his head, red-eyed and trembling under Geno’s hands.

“Dumbass,” said Geno, standing up and holding out his hand. “Of course, yes. Come home , Sidney."