phnx | Noises, Sounds, and Sweet Airs [Check, Please!]

Title: Noises, Sounds, and Sweet Airs
Author: Phnx
Fandom: Check, Please!
Pairings/Character: Patater, Alexei "Tater" Mashkov, Jack Zimmermann, Eric Bittle, Kent Parson
Rating: T+ --> I was waffling between G and T for this, since the content is very mild, and there's only a single profane word in the entire fic, which I was considering removing just for the sake of a G rating.

roguemariel informed me that Kent's mere presence requires a T rating, though, so... T it is.
Summary: Sentinels and hockey in 1.6K words. Title is incongruously from The Tempest.

--

When Alexei exits his plane into T. F. Green airport, the first thing that strikes him is the noise. It isn’t logical, really--it isn’t any louder here than it was when he connected through JFK or Moscow or any other airport he’s been in. His hearing isn’t even one of his enhanced senses.

But he had been rushing to make his flight in New York, and hadn’t had the chance to really--appreciate--the different, permanent quality of the sounds now assaulting his ears. They are no longer comprised of individual voices, all tuned out due to his lack of interest, but are instead messages flying over his head faster than he can decode until they all coalesce into a single mass blaring around him.

Noise.

Well, it’s not like he wasn’t warned.

Alexei takes a deep, stabilising breath of the stale, airport air, and then he raises his chin, pastes on a grin, and marches on to baggage claim.

NHL teams usually billet their rookie players for their first year, but the Providence Falconers franchise is still so new that even the few more experienced players they’d gained in the expansion draft are scrambling for a foothold in their new home. The idea of hunting down a billet family for Alexei had been briefly broached by his agent in Russia, but his English was declared “good enough,” and it can be difficult to find a family who knows how to handle a Sentinel.

“But you are fine by yourself?” his agent asked him at the time, eyes sharp. “There is no need for us to find you a Guide?”

“No, no,” Alexei reassured him. “I only have two enhanced senses--eyesight and smell. Just small things, you know. I have never needed a Guide before.”

“I see,” said his agent thoughtfully.

“Besides,” Alexei argued, “I am no 18-year-old boy living away from home for the first time. I have six years of playing for the KHL behind me. I know how to be an adult.”

His agent laughed in his face.

The flat the team arranged for him is small and clean, but not clean by a scent-sensitive Sentinel’s standards. He sighs and shakes his head. He drops off his bags and immediately heads out again for supplies.

The noise takes a long time to fade, but slowly, slowly, the cacophony in the locker room is replaced by intelligible chirping, the clamour in line at the grocer’s calms into celebrity gossip that Alexei delights in throwing his two cents in to, and the demands of the media only give him a little headache instead of a debilitating one.

It becomes easier when Jack joins the team.

Jack is a powerful Sentinel, all five senses enhanced, but he is so steady that Alexei can’t imagine what could have caused the near-fatal zone-out that delayed Jack’s entry to the NHL by four long years.

“I dunno, Tater,” says Snowy, uninterested. “Maybe he found a Guide or something?”

Alexei scoffs at this. As though Guides are the solution to everything about a Sentinel! Alexei has never needed a Guide--has never even felt settled by the presence of a Guide, who all seem to have the same cloying, saccharine disposition that, far from being calming, grates on Alexei’s nerves.

Alexei might, maybe, possibly change his opinion on this when he meets Jack’s Eric Bittle.

Alexei smells him before he sees him. The air around Bitty is sweet like babushka’s kitchen, seeping in through the pervasive reek of the locker room, and Alexei can’t stop himself from taking several long, deep breaths.

“Zimmboni’s baker!” says Alexei, trying not to be obvious about leaning in closer. “Finally, Jack is sharing you! We hear of you always, but now we see, too!”

Bitty giggles, and Alexei isn’t sure why he finds it charming and not irritating. “Bless your heart!” he says. He says more, too, but Alexei is too focussed on the soft, floating feeling rising from his stomach to pick out the words.

After Bitty leaves to find his seat in the stands, Jack says to Alexei, “It’s good to know that he’d work for you, too.”

“Work? You mean pies, maybe?”

Jack laughs. “No, I mean… If you zone out, you know. Bitty could help you, too. You’re compatible with him, too. It was always an issue for me before. I didn’t really click with any Guides, you know?”

“Hmm,” says Alexei. “I like your Bitty, but I like for pie, not for Guides. Zone outs, I never have these. They are no problem to me.”

Jack gives Alexei a wry grin. “They never were for me, either, until suddenly they were.”

Despite Jack’s ominous warning, Alexei continues to blast his way through the NHL scoreboards, zone-out free.

He also continues his passionate love affair with Bitty’s baked goods.

“Little B,” he pleads into Jack’s phone which he has just wrestled out of Jack’s hands. “You come visit soon? You stay away so long, no pie! Very sad!”

”...Hi.” says someone who is not Bitty. ”Sorry, Mashkov, I’m more of a cake and danish kind of guy.”

Alexei has been horribly betrayed. Still, he knows how to make the best of every terrible situation. “No pie? Really are little rat, Parson. But fine, is fine, I settle for cake. When you bring?”

Parson laughs, sounding surprised. "I’ll see what I can do."

“Good, good,” says Alexei. “Here, Zimmboni wants phone. Remember cake!”

Jack gives him an unreadable look when he takes his phone back, which really isn’t fair. Alexei knows that he’s made his dislike for Parson very public, but if Jack wants to reconnect with his boyhood friend, the least Alexei can do in supporting him is to not antagonise him. Even if he is a little rat.

The hit, when it comes, is like every other hit. Alexei rams into the boards with awful, bruising force, but it’s nothing he hasn’t skated through in the past, returning to the centre ice like a rebounding bullet. He didn’t hit his head. There’s no reason it should be spinning the way it is.

Voices rise and fall around him, swimming in and out like his ears are waterlogged. He shakes his head, wincing, and then the world around him explodes into noise, and he hears everything and nothing, all at the same time.

He comes to on a cot in the rink’s clinic, gasping for breath. He recognises the room by its blaring lights and the tiny patterns of cracks in the ceiling, but he’s briefly confused by the smell--sharp, spicy, sweet--and the blaze of heat running all down his side.

“Hey, Mashkov,” says a voice in his ear. “Finally awake, you lazy fucker?”

“Kent!” gasps Bitty from somewhere farther away. “My word, poor Tater has just been through an awful ordeal, and you--!”

Bitty’s voice cuts off abruptly, replaced by soft mutterings from Jack that Alexei can hear with perfect clarity.

Alexei turns his head, very carefully, to the side.

A mussed and beautiful Kent Parson stares back at him, a curious smile twisting his lips.

“Do you know what happened?” asks Parson, voice quiet.

It occurs to Alexei, very suddenly, that everyone has been speaking very quietly. And since he hasn’t had any trouble making out their words even with all their various accents, that must mean--

“Ears go--” He stops, frustrated. How do you even say this in English? He knows the words, he knows he knows the words, but with his aching head, he can’t find them. “Loud,” he decides. “All noise, like with eyes, with nose. But is new for me. I’m zone out? You are Guide?”

“Check, check, and check,” says Parson, tone bored. “Congratulations, you have three enhanced senses now. There’s probably a ribbon or something in your future.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Alexei can see that Bitty is nearly bursting with indignation, but Alexei himself is--charmed.

Ugh. Why does it have to be the rat? Though, speaking of--

“Why we are in the bed?”

Parson flushes and won’t meet his eyes. “You were unconscious. Were we supposed to dump you on the floor?”

Alexei raises his eyebrows. Parson turns even more red.

“You clamped onto Kenny like a limpet as soon as he got close enough,” Jack supplies. Alexei can hear the grin in his voice. “We couldn't separate the two of you. Though I suspect that’s half because Kenny was holding onto you just as hard.”

“You can prove nothing,” Parson hisses at Jack.

Alexei releases a long sigh and rolls over until he’s practically on top of Parson. He throws an arm over the little rat for good measure and cuddles closer until his nose is buried in Parson’s stupidly blond hair. It smells nice. “I’m not wanting a ribbon,” he yawns. He doesn’t miss the way Parson shivers at the exhale of breath against his skin, and he smirks. “Where is my cake? You promise cake, yes?”

Parson grumbles to himself grouchily, but Alexei doesn’t mind. He’s with his friends, safe and warm, and though his new enhanced sense will be a literal pain to handle, he has his other two enhanced senses well under control. Bitty will doubtlessly be so overcome with sympathy that he’ll bake a stack of pies that will tower above even Alexei’s head, and Alexei is certain that there is Parson cake in his future.

Around him, the roar dims to noise, and the noise dims to a sound that dissipates gently into the air as something within Alexei finally, finally settles.

-END-