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The rink where Saito’s departmental hockey team practices is shit, even relative to the rinks where they play—which are also, objectively speaking, shit. Ariadne glowers down at the faded dot, hating the musty smell of the place. She ignores Mal, mostly, even though she’s only about a foot away and, well, Mal—gorgeous, catlike, graceful Mal.
At the company’s holiday party two months ago, Mal had drunk a bit too much and Ari had helped Arthur take care of her and get her home. Once, when Ari helped Mal sip at some water and murmured that she was going to be fine, Mal had grasped her wrist and said, only a little jumbled, “You are the light of my soul, dearest; come to Paris, or at least to coffee. With me.”
Ari had stroked her hair, feeling herself go red, and replied gently, “You’re very sweet, but maybe sleep on it, okay?”
And Mal hadn’t said anything else, that night or the next day or the next, and after a couple weeks, Ari had set aside her disappointment and continued listening with half an ear to Mal’s Star Wars speeches in French. That’s one of Mal’s things, when she takes a faceoff—part of this intimidation rigmarole, unbreaking eye contact, smirks, raised eyebrows, speaking just-audible rapid-fire Parisian French.
It works, too, but only on people who don’t know that she’s reciting translations of movie monologs. So Ari, with six years of study in the City of Light itself under her belt, is pretty much immune. She catches enough of it today to identify Darcy’s confession to Lizzie—the one that worked—from the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice. If Yusuf would just drop the damn puck…
Mal has been on a romance kick, Ari thinks vaguely; last week was that part from The Princess Bride about Buttercup not realizing what Westley meant with “as you wish,” and before that, the left and the right hand realize that they are two parts of a whole, or something; Ari doesn’t know where that one’s from. And today: “Si, cependant, vos sentiments ont changé, je devrai vous dire—”
Yusuf drops the damn puck.
In addition to the intimidation tactics, Mal is good at faceoffs, but Ari is just a bit better this time, and neatly snaps the puck back to Arthur, a sixty-degree angle back and to her left. She spins, watches as Yusuf motors over to their net across the rink. But more importantly, Arthur dishes the puck to Dom, who stickhandles around Eames and, once he’s clear, passes to Ari. He overshoots and she races the puck to the boards. Mal hip-checks her and battles for it, but in three-on-three there’s just too much space for a real scrum to develop, too much ice to cover. Even though Ari’s much smaller, it’s easy for her to chip the puck free of their skates. Arthur takes it neatly, slips past Tadashi, and roofs it from there—Nash almost gets his blocker on it, but goals don’t care about “almost.”
Arthur just nods to himself, but Dom yells like it’s a real game and cannons into him from the left circle for a hug. Arthur seems to be bearing it just fine, but Ari glides over anyway and punches him on the shoulder, barely feeling it through her gloves, then heads to the net. “Nash, almost,” she says.
“Almost doesn’t count,” he replies, but he doesn’t sound too beaten-up about it. “Oop. Summoned.”
Saito stands on the blue line in his skates, which look a little absurd with a three-piece suit, but it’s not like anyone’s going to call him on it. They gather around him, Mal, Eames, Nash, and Tadashi in red pinnies and Yusuf, Dom, Arthur, and Ari herself in their normal practice jerseys. Saito isn’t anything so official as a coach; he just likes being able to stay involved in the game, ever since he broke his ankle in that skiing accident. “Well played,” he says. “With a full complement, Ariadne, do watch out along the boards. Mr. Eames, you may wish to practice takeaways, perhaps against Dominic. Mr. Nash, Yusuf, drills with Mallorie, Ariadne, Arthur, Tadashi. Half an hour.”
They drag Nash’s net over next to Yusuf’s, dump ten pucks on that half, and get busy. These scramble drills are fun—sure, scoring is great, but so is passing, deflecting, laughing at sloppy turnovers and Tadashi’s dramatic wraparound attempt. Nash is more than fast enough on his blocker with that one; it helps that Tadashi slides belly-down across the ice for another ten feet, laughing like a little kid. It’s all just ice noise—skates swishing, sticks on pucks, the smack of a blocker pad, a couple brilliant pings when a shot goes off the post. And yelling, obviously. That’s an important part of hockey culture.
Ari is happy and giggly when Saito calls time, with a nice burn in her muscles from the workout. They all take a cooldown lap, even the goalies, and then strip off their pads on the rubber flooring outside of the rink proper. Sure, the changing rooms are right there, but with only two women it’s more fun to hang out here, getting their guards off and unlacing skates and untaping their socks.
Arthur makes fun of Eames’s neon green skate laces; Eames only replies “Tinted visor,” and they have a mock-glare-off that lasts an entire thirty seconds. Yusuf laughs at Mal about her bizarre tape job; Tadashi helps both Nash and Yusuf with the absurd bulk of goalie pads. Dom keeps up his usual steady stream of equipment questions, whether anyone has tried this new stick or that new helmet or those new gloves, because he’s a little too competitive and a little too oblivious to realize the rest of them are actually just in this for fun. It’s not like he expects answers, though, so that’s okay.
They all agree to meet up at their regular once everyone’s showered and changed, pads banished to their bags until it’s time to face cleaning the damn things. Now they do split, Mal and Ari into the women’s rooms.
It’s pretty much routine by now, their own lockers and bags and all that, but as the door falls to, Mal says, “Ariadne, a moment?”
“What’s up?” asks Ari, caught off-guard. Mal, even after a practice with her dark curls hanging in sweaty tendrils, is startlingly beautiful, and her voice now is like smoke, not the light playful tone she used to snark back at Yusuf.
“I did mean today’s,” Mal confides. “On the faceoff. If you remember, the holiday party…” She trails off and glances away.
Now, Ari blinks. “Wait, you— Really?”
Mal looks at her again through her eyelashes, and the playfulness is back in her voice. “Last week’s was—what is Eames’s expression. Laying it on a bit thick, no?”
“I don’t think you’ve ever told me ‘as you wish,’” says Ari, a bit distracted, because Mal is—well, Mal is Mal, and her eyes are very, very blue.
“But I have slept on it,” Mal counters. “So. Coffee? Paris? Leave the boys to their beer and—no, no, that is too far. We can’t trust Arthur to keep them all out of jail.”
Ari is smiling—she’s been smiling, she realizes; her cheeks hurt with it. “Let’s start with coffee,” she says, and Mal beams at her, and she thinks, And maybe Paris as well.