Evgeni Malkin is thirteen when he soul bonds.

“Sidney comes highly recommended,” Zhenya hears at the edge of his consciousness.

Forbes family reunions are an Event, capitalised and all. Sidney’s dying, and it’s mostly because his great aunt Patricia won’t stop asking when he’s going to bring a nice girl to meet them, while everyone within earshot sniggers into their drinks. She’s somehow the only one who doesn’t know Sidney’s bisexual, and that it could very well be a not-so-nice boy he brings home one day. So he’s looking around frantically for an excuse to A) assert his sexuality to his slightly homophobic great aunt and B) escape, when he spots it in the form of a tall, dark and handsome stranger walking into the backyard with his second cousin Keith.

“We wish babies when we fuck. Congratulations,” is what he does manage to say, pointing at the stoop.