Sid came over for dinner a few nights later with an unanticipated bouquet of pink roses and hovered by the kitchen island while Zhenya put the flowers in water. Zhenya’s heart pounded in his chest. Flowers were a clutching gift; pink flowers— “Geno, uh,” Sid said, and Zhenya’s hands trembled slightly as he fussed with the blossoms. “I know it’s way too soon, but. Do you want to?”

Geno was in pre-heat when he showed up at the rink: Sid could smell it on him. Geno swanned into the locker room with his head held high, kind of glowing with self-satisfaction, and smelling ripe with it, right on the edge of tipping over.

Merpeople didn’t kill humans except in stories. Merpeople also didn’t talk to humans, or bob up in the water near where a human was fishing from the dock and tell him to throw back anything that wasn’t a lionfish, or kiss humans or look at them the way Sid was looking at Zhenya now, as Zhenya finally stepped out of his trunks. Merpeople kept to themselves. But not Sid.

He was dying to know, obviously he was dying to know; obviously he knew something had happened, with the way Geno and Sid kept looking at each other, and holding hands like that, which Sidney had never seen them do. And kissing on the couch, and Sid looking like he was up in the clouds, just totally gone, like his feet were floating at least a kilometer above the earth.

After a while, Sid forgot that it was strange. Early on in Geno's second season, Sykora took Sid aside and said, “Look, what is going on with Malkin,” and it took Sid a moment to even figure out what he was talking about. Sid shrugged. “That's just how Geno is.” “Like a routine,” Sykora said, expression still skeptical. “A superstition?” “Sure,” Sid said. “Something like that.”