Five minutes later, he sits back on his bed, pillow clutched triumphantly in his hands. Patrick is splayed out across his own bed, breathing hard with his hair curling out in five different directions. Jonny smugly clicks the television off with the remote, and then tosses the pillow next to him so he can climb under the sheets. Patrick sits up after a minute, tucks his hand under his chin and abruptly swipes his hand out into a point, straight at Jonny, with a glare. Jonny blinks, and then Patrick translates. It figures the first thing Jonny’d learn in sign language is 'fuck you'.

The only place he doesn’t feel alone is the moment after a goal at home. The rest of the time, all Zhenya can seem to feel is the ways he’s disconnected from everything else, English a yammering cadence he fishes scraps of meaning from like an exhausted prospector. I’m smart in Russian, he wants to tell them. I’m funny, in Russian. I’m all kinds of things.

The hydrophones have been picking up nonsense for the past three days and Zhenya has had it up to here, honestly.

“So I’ve noticed something,” Sid says, and Zhenya makes a face. Sid is using his Serious Captain Voice and he is using Personal Discussion Introductory Phrase No. 3. Fuck’s sake.

They make a point of it, always, telling Zhenya how beautiful Sidney is.