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Sid saw Nikita coming and pretended to be bowled over when they collided. Nikita dug his pointy elbows into Sid’s ribs and squirmed up his prone body to gaze into his eyes. “Did you see me? I finished the whole course in 10 seconds!”
“Will you show me again, buddy?”
“You have to watch me. See me. Watch!” Nikita said.
“I’m watching,” said Sid, turning to keep Nikita in view, as the young boy skated off and picked up a puck. Keeping it on his stick Nikita made his way around the widely spaced tires on the ice that had been set up just for him.
“Good job, good job Niki. Want to go again, buddy?” Sid asked, as Nikita crashed into Sid’s legs again.
“No, I’m tired. Can I eat fries and ice-cream?” he asked Sid with wide eyes behind his helmet.
“You need to change, and then we can get something to eat, eh?” Sid said ruefully, cajoling the child off the ice.
Anna and Geno were out for lunch, and that meant that Nikita got to spend this time with Sidney.
The Malkins’ visit to Canada was unprecedented and if it wasn’t for Nikita's insistence, wouldn’t have happened at all. The 5 year old was adamant about attending the Sidney Crosby Hockey School in his first year of eligibility. This would have been fine ordinarily but with Covid, the Hockey School had been cancelled for the year. This meant Sid setting up on-ice skill drills for just one child, but he appreciated having the Malkins in Canada. He’d longed for Geno to be in Canada for ages; a wish that turned ephemeral when Anna came to Pittsburgh, and evaporated into mist when Nikita was born.
After cajoling Nikita to change out of his hockey gear, Sid drove home for lunch with a tired boy. A little veggie pasta, and lots of fries and ice-cream were consumed as Sid listened to Nikita’s rambling stream of English with Russian words thrown in about Big Bo saving goals and how Nikita is going to be great too - “a ninja goalie, pow, swish, pow!!”
“So, goalie in football, and forward in hockey?” Sid asked.
“Yes!! The best goalie and the best forward. Like Papa. But I already play better football than Papa!”
Although Nikita insisted he was too old for afternoon naps, Sid took him to his bedroom with a book. They alternated reading it aloud until Niki fell asleep. Sid watched him sleep until he drifted off too.
*
Sidney dreamed.
He sees himself young and heartbroken after their finals loss to Detroit, desperate to escape his own sorrow. Sitting in the locker room surrounded by a miasma of heartbreak. Like dreams do, he slides forward in an instant to the moment where he looks down at Geno naked in his hotel room bed. Geno with his eyes turning from sadly forlorn to hotly intense, his words going from hesitant English to rapid Russian, his cock straining upwards towards Sid leaning over Geno’s prone body.
*
Sid wakes to loud giggling from down the hall. In the living room Anna is brandishing a makeshift sword against Nikita, while Geno lounges on the sofa, his long legs extended, laughingly calling out tips to his child.
Geno turns around, “Ah Sid, so oldman! Have to take afternoon nap to recover from skating two hour!” Sid shoves Geno’s shoulder on his way to the kitchen.
Anna tries to turn Nikita’s boisterous energy towards his Papa and Sid. Her hair is long and shiny and her body glorious as ever, but it’s the mischief in her eyes that has Sid grinning helplessly back at her.
Chugging his shake, Sid tells himself that he can’t put off talking to them any more. They’re leaving soon, in less than 48 hours. Geno typically disappears over the summer, and he doesn’t expect this year to be different. The summer silence will hurt more than usual, and he’d prefer to get some indication of Geno and Anna’s reaction before they leave.
Sid approaches Geno, “I’ve got to talk to you. Maybe we can take a walk after dinner?”
“Okay. Can talk here also, no? Or is about team? Trade?” Geno asks, tensing.
“No, nothing about the team. I’d like to just talk to you, that’s all.”
*
Over dinner, Sid’s breath keeps getting caught in his chest. Geno, Anna and Nikita comfortably ensconced in his house brings dreams to light that he hadn’t known he’d been harbouring.
Since Sid could remember, he had put hockey before everything else. A single mindedness that had meant putting aside possible other futures. His father Troy had supported him every step of the way, in innumerable ways, not least going with Sid to doctors, signing permission slips that allowed a young prodigy to keep his biological future at bay with the highest suppressants available.
Those annual injections had suppressed his heats and allowed Sid to keep the focus on his career, with all of the world assuming that he belonged to the Beta population. It meant no distractions about how or even if his omeganess meant he should be cosseted and kept off the ice, away from the brutal hits that were part and parcel of playing for the NHL.
Allowing those assumptions meant Sid could also indulge in casual sex. He had allowed himself one indiscretion with Geno, as they both wallowed in the misery of losing their first Cup Final. The following year, he broke his sex fast with Geno again, in celebration of their first Cup win. The annual breaking of his sex drought became a ritual, a way of marking the end of another year of playing the highest level of hockey.
Although neither Geno’s previous flings and serious relationships nor his own had derailed their end of year sex date, Sid had feared that Anna would be different. Geno had been his usual head over heels self about Anna, like he always was about a new interest. But, from the beginning Sid had worried about her.
Once Geno and Anna were officially together and she was in Pittsburgh, Sid had thought that it was the end of the Sid and Geno sex day. He braced himself to say goodbye to their annual ritual of pouring out the season’s frustrations and successes into each other’s playoff-battered bodies. He tried and failed to think of an alternative to his sole indulgence with Geno.
When he was young he rode Geno into the bed, topping from the bottom. First to feel anything but despair after Detroit trashed them, and then a year later in celebration of their vengeful victory. As the years have gone by, their sex has changed too. Now, Sid sometimes lays on his back and looks up at Geno.
The last five years, he’s been letting himself catch Anna’s eyes, as she watches Geno and Sid. He’d been shocked when Geno had said they could keep up their end of season tradition, if Anna could watch. Sid’s never touched Anna’s endless skin, but he’s seen her fingers between her legs, caught her face mid-ecstasy. He’s listened to her goad Geno on, as Geno and Sid fuck their year goodbye. Sid had asked Geno once, how she was okay with their fucking. Geno shrugged, moony-eyed and said, “Anya’s goddess. Too good for most men. Except me”.
It’s made the three of them comfortable in a way that went beyond the usual relationships with various teammate’s wives.
*
Sid and Geno walk out to the pier over the lake and watch the sun drift down. Anya is putting Nikita to bed and Geno is only too happy to leave wrangling a stubborn Niki into bedtime to his wife.
“You wanted to say me something?” Geno says, turning to Sid.
“Yes. I don’t know where to start.” Sid turned to sit with his legs hanging over the water.
“From the beginning, no?” Geno’s curious eyes study Sid.
“You know how we slept together after the Finals loss in ‘08?” Sid asks.
Geno bursts into laughter, “Yes, am not have old age problem like you. Remember everything clearly still. Also remember all years after.” Geno leers over at Sid happily.
Sid grins at him, and again looks away over the lake. “Yes”, he pauses. “Can you try and promise that we’ll still be friends after I tell you this?”
Geno studies Sid before sitting down next to him. This could be something Sid is blowing up out of proportion, or another serious hint to what lies behind his typical inscrutability, “Yes, you can tell me anything. Maybe I shout, but we team. Always family.”
God, Sid wishes he never had to say this. Or maybe that he’d said this years ago, but it was too late now. “You know Geno, let's start at the other end” he says. “I see you with Niki and Anna. And Flower and Vero with the girls and now James.”
“Yes,” Geno says, his eyes softening. He thinks he knows where Sid is going with this. It’s natural with all the birth announcements and Father’s Day stories in the air.
Sid continues, “And Tanger with Alex and Tori, and Rusty and Muzz and Dumo have babies and even, um, Mike has a son.”
“Yes, Sid, I know. Also E Rod and Rudy.” Geno murmurs. “You think you and Kathy also try?”
Sid bites his lip. He takes in a long breath and breathes it out slowly, before turning and drawing his legs up on to the pier and crossing them in front of him.
Geno turns to face him and Sid says baldly, “I’m an Omega.”
He gets to see Geno scoff a laugh. “You not Omega”, he says. “No heat, no secret thing. You big cock.” The idea is ludicrous. Sidney Crosby cannot be an Omega. For one thing, Geno is a Beta and why would Sid be sleeping with him. For the second, even if Geno didn’t know Sidney as sexually and intimately as anyone other than Kathy probably does, no one would be able to hide such a large story about the face of the league.
Sid huffs helplessly, and ducks to hide his eyes.
Geno sobers and studies him seriously for a minute, before demanding in surprise “You Omega? How I’m not know? How no one know? Whole league not know? So big deal this that omegas play, and no one knows Sidney Crosby is Omega?” This is not a Sidney kind of joke or prank. It could be a Flower type of prank, but Sid is genuinely forcing himself through this conversation, with badly hidden distress and media-level control over his face. Whatever this is, Sid is not kidding.
Sid bites his lip and looks over the water. It’s summer and the sky is going to be light for a bit longer. He wishes that it was dark already, wishes that he could hide away in the veil of night.
“When you find this out? Maybe someone plays trick on you, Sid,” Geno offers.
“Geno,” Sid says, his voice steady and certain. It’s his Flower is going to Las Vegas voice.
Geno stills and looks at him. “Tell me. I’m not understand. How can suddenly be Omega now? You 34 Sid!” It defies belief. Admittedly, Geno doesn’t know much about Alphas or Omega, other than the typical high school ribald ribbing, but he knows that all presentations take place in adolescence.
Sid turns back to Geno, and he can’t find the words. Or more accurately, he can’t bear to voice them yet. What if he loses Geno over this? “I’m 33, G”.
But then again, he’s likely to lose Geno anyway. If not today, then once their playing career is over, and that day is barely over the horizon now. It feels like he already spends every offseason fighting to keep them together.
What he’s done is deceitful. And he’s going to have to say it. Sid looks back at the lake, takes a deep breath and lets it out again.
Geno’s eyes are wide and he can see caution gathering around his eyebrows, more queries crowding in the corners of Geno’s eyes. They’ve known each other as teammates for over a decade and a half, time that leaves one with so much familiarity.
“Remember, the ‘08 final”, he starts again. And before Geno finishes nodding, he forces it out, “I got pregnant”. Geno stills. Sid thought he’d pace and shout, but Geno’s shocked into silence. “I found out during my end of year physical. The bloodwork showed that I was pregnant. I- I didn’t know what to do or how to tell you. You’d already left. And so I, uh.” Sid stutters to a stop.
“You what Sid?” Geno asks, devastation and disbelief dwelling within his open mouth
“I uh, I froze the embryo.” Sid says. He still doesn’t know how to explain that it felt like the best thing to do. A way to keep his options open, and wait to tell Geno until the start of the next year. By the start of the next season months later though, they were back to the easy familiarity of teammates, their one-night stand conveniently never brought up by either of them.
“What? What? I’m not understand? What you say, Sid?” Geno feels like he’s just gone into the boards hard. That split second when your mind just barely comprehends what’s happening, but your body hasn’t caught up with the impact yet.
“I froze the embryo” Sid repeats.
“What is embryo?” Geno asks, his mind flipping through his English vocabulary. He doesn’t know this word. Maybe he’s dreaming. He pinches himself and winces in response.
Sid looks into his eyes, “The baby? The cells, the growing pregnancy. I froze it. It’s waiting in a freezer bank.” Sid searches Geno for understanding. “The pregnancy cells which will become a baby were taken out of me and frozen. So maybe later, the cells can keep growing into a pregnancy. It’s an embryo, Geno.”
“One baby, one baby is in the bank?” Geno sounds quite disbelieving. “Why you not tell me? Why not tell there’s baby?”
“Over the summer you were with Oksana. It was my second year in the league! I wasn’t going to tell anyone I was an Omega. I didn’t know what to do!” Sid struggles to lay out his panicked thinking from over a decade ago.
“So, there is embryo in bank now?” Geno asks, seeking confirmation and clarification. He’s hoping that if he just understands the shape of what Sid’s trying to tell him, it’ll all somehow make sense.
Sid bites his lip, looking over the water.
“Sid!! Sid. How this is be? I am Beta. Anna is Beta. You are Beta. It not possible for there to be embryo in bank!!!” Geno stands up and paces away and then back, looking down at Sid in disbelief. This whole thing is unbelievable. He oscillates back to thinking it’s a prank, and that he’d be an idiot to believe it. “Why you say this now?”
Sid makes himself face Geno. “There’s now four embryos in the bank, G. And yes, before you ask, they’re all yours. I’ve never let anyone else fuck me.”
Geno staggers back, breath caught in his throat and eyes bugging out of his head. “Four? Four? How they four?” he asks.
“‘08, ‘09, ‘12 and this year”, Sid responds.
Geno feels like his heart has stopped, “You pregnant now?”
“No, the embryo is in the bank, but yes, I got pregnant this year too.” Sid says. “And Geno, I want this baby.”
“Why you keep? Why, why you not tell me?” Geno feels like he is upside down. Sid opens his mouth, but Geno cuts him off again, “You, like, keep put my baby in bank? And after Anya also? What, you lie to me, like, forever, if you not pregnant this year?”
The thought that Sidney could have kept this from him. That he’d keep stockpiling possible children is too large to be absorbed. Is he asking for forgiveness? Because Sid hasn’t said sorry about storing the children, or about keeping this secret. Maybe if he’d shared this in the very beginning, they could have built some future together, but then Geno wouldn’t have Anya and Nikita and that thought is violently rejected by his soul.
“I always meant to tell you, but there was never a good time?” This. This is why Sid had never brought this up before. The whole situation is difficult for anyone to believe and he really, really wishes that he didn’t have to have this conversation. Maybe he should have just considered someone else’s sperm. Or instead, never mentioned the embryos in the bank, and just asked Geno to donate his sperm now.
“And NOW is good time?” Geno rakes his hand through his hair and looks at Sid in disbelief. Sid keeps talking and nothing is getting clearer. That there are now 4 potential children beggars belief. Geno wants nothing more than to go back to the house, to his beautiful wife and gorgeous child and forget this conversation ever happened. But someone is going to need to be the responsible adult here and not keep fucking ignoring reality.
“Well,” says Sid, as usual, giving nothing away. His shrug is self-contained, with his typical ‘if it doesn’t work for you, then I’m sorry but I can’t help you’ attitude.
Geno can’t believe him. He can’t believe any of this. This is typical Sid. He does insane things and at the same time thinks that insanity is normal. What does he expect Geno to say? What does he expect Geno to do? What a thing to tell your happily married best friend? And expect all to be well? Sidney in many ways is completely an alien. And this only proves it again.
Geno is halfway to the house, to go bury his head in Anya’s lap to try and make sense of any of this, before he stops. He storms back up the pier, and asks Sid, still sitting there with his calm face, and steady eyes, “Who else knows this?”
“That I have embryos in the bank?” Sid asks
“No! Yes, but no, that you Omega? Also, embryos, who knows? Anything, everything?” Geno whisper-screams, hands gesturing furiously. If Sid tells him that he’s the last to know, Geno is going to push him into the lake.
“No one,” Sid answers.
Geno gives him a glare with bared teeth, and Sid amends, “Well, my family knows I’m an Omega, obviously and Pat. Dr Vyas on the Pens. No one else on the team, or the league.”
Geno frowns at him, “No Flower, Tanger? No Max, no Duper??”
Sid shakes his head. “No. No one. I take the strongest suppressants. I always have, since I presented as an Omega.”
Geno insides are still an explosion. He puts aside the thought of fetuses in the bank. Physically shoves away his inability to understand with his hands. He crouches down next to Sid and eyes his body in complete confusion. “But Sid, I am not Alpha. I am Beta. You on suppressants. No heat even. How this is happen?” Geno asks, wondering suddenly if this is like the phantom pregnancies some women supposedly have. Maybe Sid has hallucinated all this, from a bad hit or something. Sid shrugs. And says nothing. Geno can feel his fury flaring anew, but before he begins to spit it out, Sid speaks.
“I don’t know. We’re a good match. Apparently, affection can make a difference. Both yours and mine. Pheromones, vassopressin,” his lips purse and he looks down. “Love.”
Geno is speechless. Love. Love, he says! They’ve fucked 15 times over 15 years, and Sid says it has resulted in 4 potential children. Geno doesn’t understand any of this. It is fantastical. As insane as Anya coming up to him and telling him Nikita is Sid’s. Ludicrous. The probability Anya randomly and secretly sleeping with Sid seems equally likely to this craziness being shared.
“I have to talk to Anya”, he mutters. And finally walks away.
Sid sits and watches the stars come out and listens to the mosquitoes buzz. He waits through the hours until the sky starts to lighten, turning into a soft, pearly grey. Then he turns around and heads inside.
*
Anya and Zhenya talk late into the night. By the time Anya came into his life, Sid had been family to Zhenya for years. That Zhenya enjoyed their annual sexual congress, as a weird Sidian coda to the season, was just another quirk that he had puppy-eyed her into accepting.
She had initially been sceptical about the whole thing, because she has never shared well. She had agreed to it on the basis that she would be in the room, and if she was the slightest bit uncomfortable, he assured her they would stop and she would never need to consent to any such thing again.
The first time, watching Zhenya with Sid was seeing a completely different side to her husband. He had always been the aggressor in her bed, and she had enjoyed their dynamic. Watching Sid push Zhenya around while letting him into this body seemed like something entirely different. She was hot and bothered the first time, and it led to her agreeing to another year. The second year she was in the room with them, was after their back to back win, and Geno teased her mercilessly that she would never be let back out again. Sid would now demand her as a good luck charm to every instance Zhenya and Sid were together.
“I don’t know what he wants. I don’t know why he has done this,” Zhenya tells Anya again.
“Well,” she says, “let’s set the alarm for the morning and we can ask him.” The night’s revelations have Anya surprised, but not shocked. There’s precedence in typical alpha, beta, omega relationships of sexual dyads, and Anya wonders if that is what has developed here. Zhenya is unable to move past the fact that Sid is an Omega. She wonders if the whole thing has unfolded because Sid and his body have moved past Zhenya being a Beta.
“Together?”
“Of course together, Tiger,” she says, pulling him down to bed. They make love slowly, with Zhenya coming quickly, and hugging her to him for a long time, before burying his head between her legs.
“Once more,” he says, as she pushes him off her. “Three times lucky?”
She looks at him, and then widens her legs for his fingers.
When the alarm goes off, Zhenya is blurry with sleep. He rolls over to see Anya drying her hair. Her eyes meet his in the mirror. She puts her hair in a turban and sits down to do her face.
Zhenya groans and rolls over again, wanting to spend his morning in bed. He wishes he was at home. How had this happened? Maybe he should have just gone straight to Moscow from Florida, instead of coming north to this madness. On the other hand, it would have still existed. Zhenya doesn’t want this knowledge, but he wants the secret kept even less.
He rolls out of bed, pisses, brushes his teeth and then makes his way out of the room to check on Nikita, who is still asleep. Anya comes looking for him, wet hair and flawless face upturned for him to kiss.
*
They find Sid standing over the kitchen sink. He turns when they enter, and pours out two drinks.
He hands the mugs over, and Anya inhales the delicate jasmine aroma wafting up to her face. She doesn’t need to glance over to know that Zhenya has his black tea already sweetened with strawberry jam. Sid knows them well. In the little ways that mean family. She can let his secrets be a betrayal that splinters Zhenya-and-Sid for good. Or see instead, if there’s an opportunity to make her family even stronger. Anya leans back and considers Sid. Zhenya waits for her to take the lead.
Sid folds his hands across his chest, and says to her, “I’m sorry”.
“For what?” Anya asks, raising a brow.
“I should have told Geno a long time ago. And, if not earlier, I should have told him for sure, when you got together,” Sid replies.
Anya asks, “What do you think would have changed?” She’s not sure what answer she’s looking for, but Sid has always been honest with her. She wonders if Sid has been honest with himself.
“Everything. You would have known sooner," he says. "There probably would be fewer embryos.”
Sid isn’t saying a lot. The corners of his mouth are tight. Anya doesn’t know how to read his face. She looks at Zhenya, who is biting his lip and looking at Sid with big, hurt eyes. Sidney is still looking at her. She reaches across and takes Zhenya’s hand in hers. Their fingers fall into place. She looks back at Sid and asks a question she already knows the answer to, “Does Kathy know?”
“No,” Sid shakes his head.
“What are you going to tell her?” Anya asks.
Sid sighs deep, but says clearly, “We broke up.”
She feels Zhenya lurch in response. “Why? Because you didn’t want to tell her about Zhenya?”
Sid rubs his finger over the immaculate table surface, “I knew I was going to tell you. And regardless of what happens here, I knew I wasn’t going to tell her. What kind of future do we have if I can’t tell her the truth?”
“Sid,” Anya says, leaning forward. “Why did you tell us?” Why now, she means. Sid’s mouth twists, and his eyes stay directly on hers.
“I want a baby. I need one of my babies” he says. And there it is.
“Now?” Zhenya asks. “What about season? You not play? What you do next season?”
“I don’t know, Geno. We’ve been chasing Cups for a long time together. And I want to win more Cups with you but... every year it gets harder. All these babies everywhere. I want one also. When I got pregnant this time-,” Sid pauses before continuing. “When I turned thirty, the omegologist told me that I was unlikely to ever to get pregnant. That I would need hormone enhancers to raise fertility, even in a heat with an Alpha. That even then, it might not work. He said that the quality of eggs produced falls over time and that, combined with my years on suppressants and my age, would make pregnancy difficult, if not impossible. And yet, like a miracle again, I conceived. This is most G, I really want it.”
“So, you not play this season?” Zhenya asks again, his voice strange.
Sid looks at Zhenya finally, “I don’t know G. I was thinking... maybe a surrogate.” Sid's eyes are flat and grey.
“And so, you tell now. Hide for so many years. Hiding these children and you tell now? So I will say yes, to you?” Zhenya’s voice is low and hoarse. He doesn’t know the word surrogate, but he can estimate what it means.
Sid looks at Geno and then at Anna to try and tried to lay himself bare. He wants to explain further. To persuade them that he’d be willing to do a lot to get their approval, when he is interrupted by a little hurricane.
“Mama!! Papa!!” Nikita yells, leaping down the stairs. Sid gets up and turns towards the stove. Nikita throws himself over Anya’s lap.
“Did you sleep well darling?” Anya asks as she kisses him all over his face.
Zhenya notices Sid watching Nikita and Anya with a fond expression.
“What do you think, buddy? Pancakes?” Sid asks softly.
“Pancakes!!!” Nikita shrieks.
Zhenya's heart stutter-steps. He loves Niki so much. He loves Anya. He loves Sid.
*
The rest of the weekend passes with little further conversation on the matter. Sid has shared his hidden self. Zhenya and Anya know that they need time together to navigate what this could mean, before agreeing to anything with Sid.
The only other conversation about the revelations between Geno and Sid takes place the night before their flight out. “What you want Sid? What you ask?”
Sid responds quickly, “Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
Geno looks at him, and says “I not know. You give no time. You keep this 15 years, now you want answer in two day!”
“No. I don’t want to know in two days. There’s no deadline here, G. I just wanted to tell you the truth.” Sid says, trying to convey his willingness to leave what happens next with Geno and Anna.
Geno pushes further, “What you want, Sid?”
“Anything. Everything. Children.” Quietly, he adds, “At least one child.”
There is nothing more to say.
Epilogue
Over the summer, Anya and Zhenya return to the topic over and over, pressing on it like a bruise. Zhenya does not speak to Sid, though he has many questions. They communicate as usual via instagram updates and the team group text.
To Anya, Zhenya concedes that Sid holds a special place in his heart, but he argues that it is not the kind of love he has for Anya and Nikita. Zhenya’s affection for Sid is different. But he cannot deny that it is there. He does not demur when Anya asks if he had ever envisioned a future with Sidney. Zhenya confesses that he’d never thought it possible.
Zhenya dislikes reading, but he forces himself through what he can understand about omegas and their biology. He’d paid scant attention before, considering omegas irrelevant to his existence, other than the occasional fantasy when he’d wondered if he would present as Alpha. Omegas loom large in his thoughts now. He still keeps forgetting that Sid is one. The articles give him more information, yet none of them discuss his own scenario where an Omega on suppressants gets pregnant with a Beta with whom he is unbonded. There are articles and romantic novellas about the impact of pair bonding on fertility, and Zhenya can’t stop wondering if Sid has always loved him more than Kathy.
By the end of summer, Zhenya and Anya are no closer to an answer. Before they fly back, she asks him if he would mind exploring a triad. Zhenya looks at her in shock and then with hot tears furiously spilling, he says, “You’re my only”, his lips in a thin bloodless line.
“I know. But you may be his only. Let’s see what we can do,” she says, enfolding his clenched fist under her fingers.
When they are all back in Pittsburgh, Anya and Sid begin to spend time together. She invites him over to dinner and they spend weekends at the Malkin home, and sometimes go swimming in Sid’s pool. Zhenya and Sid and Anya share a bed occasionally, with no intention of taking things further.
As the Pens fight to make the playoffs nearly six months later, Sid sleeps over often, rewriting his superstitions by substituting in Geno and Anya’s house and their routines.
When Zhenya and Sid talk about exploring a sexual relationship, Anya is part of the conversation, and they agree that she’ll be in the room with them. She is sometimes on the bed and sometimes not. She doesn’t touch them when they are in the middle of sex, because then Sid struggles to stay in the moment. Slowly Sid becomes home to Anya and Zhenya and Nikita.
When the Pens make the Finals, Anya tells Sid that she’ll carry an embryo for him. She wants all four of them - Sid, Zhenya, Nikita and herself to take this next step in concert. Sid barely manages to nod through a haze of tears, squeezing her hands so hard they ache for the rest of the evening.
When Geno lifts Lord Stanley that summer, Anya has a pregnancy glow and Sidney is slyly scheming about another back to back. He thinks announcing a bonding, with a baby Crosby-Malkin enthroned in the silver chalice, would suit their disparate styles perfectly.