Aibek

Shack One smells like eight different people and none of them are considerate about it.

Aibek is on the couch because his bed is too short, phone face-down on his chest, one slide-sandal hanging off his left foot. Slit-pupils thin in the yellow light. He has not moved in forty minutes.

Feliks comes thudding down the stairs with the specific heaviness of a demi-bison who does not believe in stealth. "Oi. Leopard. You're blocking the floor."

"I'm on the couch."

"Your legs are on the floor."

"That's because the couch is too short. Take it up with the Norwegian Olympic Committee."

Feliks steps over him. Rune, on the rug doing hip openers, snorts without looking up.

Vivienne is at the breakfast bar with her tablet, hair still wet from the showers. "He's been like that since noon."

"I can hear you."

"I know."

Kári wanders in from the kitchen with a yogurt cup. Aibek's eye opens.

"That's mine."

"It had no name on it."

"The shelf had my name on it."

"Was I supposed to read the shelf?"

Aibek lifts his phone, thumbs the camera open without sitting up, and takes a photo of Kári holding the yogurt. Kári blinks.

"What was that for."

"Evidence."

"For what?"

"For later."

Ella drifts down the stairs in a cloud of hairspray and a leotard under her tracksuit jacket. "Is someone cooking? I smell — "

"Kári stole my yogurt."

"Oh my God, get a new personality."

"Get your own breakfast."

The phone on his chest buzzes. He does not look at it. It buzzes again. He does not look at it. It buzzes a third time and Vivienne, from the breakfast bar, says: "Either answer that or throw it out the window. Pick."

He lifts it. Glances. Three words from Yerlan.

Main entrance. Now.

He stares at it for a beat. Then another.

"Problem?" Vivienne asks.

"No."

"Your face says problem."

"My face says my face. Leave it alone."

He swings upright. The couch groans. Kári, still eating the yogurt, steps carefully out of his path. Aibek stands to full height — the ceiling beam passes just over the crown of his hair, a clearance of maybe three fingers, which is the reason he never stands fully upright in this shack without a reason.

Rune, from the floor: "Aigerim's landing today, yeah?"

"Mm."

"She bringing food again?"

"If she has any sense, no. You people are a zoo."

"She likes us."

"She tolerates you. There's a difference."

He crosses to the chair by the door, picks up his federation parka, shrugs into it one-armed. Zips it halfway. Doesn't bother with the rest.

"Where you going?" Feliks asks through a mouthful of something.

"Out."

"Out where?"

"Out of this shack. Specifically. Immediately."

Ella perks up from the kitchen. "Oh — if you're going toward the plaza can you grab my — "

"No."

"I didn't finish."

"The answer was going to be no regardless of what came after it. Saves us both time."

He pulls the door. Oslo cold slaps him clean. He does not go back for proper shoes. Pride is a stupid currency and he spends it freely.

The walk to the main entrance is four minutes at his stride. Salt crunches under the sandals. His bare ankles hate him. The rut-heat sits in the back of his jaw like a slow pulse he is choosing, through sheer contempt, to ignore.

Yerlan is where Yerlan always is — standing still, coat buttoned to the throat, hands behind his back, reading the distance. Grey crewcut. Forty years of expression compressed into the same flat line. He sees Aibek coming and does not wave. He only waves at Aigerim. Aibek has been informed of this policy and has made peace with it.

Aibek stops two paces out. "You summoned."

"Aigerim's flight cleared customs ten minutes ago."

"Congratulations to her flight."

Yerlan's mouth does not move. "And there is someone I want you to meet."

It is then that Aibek registers the third shape standing a polite meter behind Yerlan's left shoulder. He had clocked them on approach as staff — teal ISC lanyard, tablet tucked against the ribs, coat federation-neutral — and dismissed them as background. He now looks properly.

His whole body goes still. Not the tension kind. The other kind. The kind that happens when a cold engine catches.

He does not say anything. He is not going to give Yerlan the satisfaction of a reaction, and he is absolutely not going to give you one.

The automatic doors hiss open behind him before the silence can set. Aigerim comes out at a trot, duffel slung, ponytail swinging, pastel-blue tips catching the floodlights. She sees them and her face does the thing her face does.

"Aga!"

She drops the duffel and crosses the last three meters at a run.

He braces for the impact out of habit — her launches are not polite, they have never been polite, she treats him like the only vertical surface in the room that can take her weight — and she collides with his ribs hard enough that a normal man would have folded. He does not fold. One arm comes around her back, flat palm between her shoulder blades, and the lift is reflex. Her feet leave the ground by maybe six inches.

"Don't run on ice."

"I was on salt."

"The salt is on the ice, Aigerim."

"Put me down, aga, the cameras."

"There are no cameras here."

"There are always cameras."

He sets her down. She stays tucked against his side, one arm around his waist — it reaches about halfway because he is a wall — and beams up at Yerlan.

"Ata. You came."

"I said I would."

"You said maybe."

"That is the same thing."

Yerlan does not hug her. He reaches out and touches the top of her head once, a single pat, like he is confirming a piece of equipment arrived in working order. Aigerim takes it the way she takes everything — like she got the whole sun.

Aibek watches this with the same face he uses on everything. Inside the coat his free hand has curled into a loose fist against his thigh and he is counting the seconds between breaths because if he looks over Yerlan's shoulder again before he is ready he will do something his sponsors will find out about by breakfast.

Aigerim's eyes slide past Yerlan and land on the third figure and brighten with the open curiosity of a person who has never met someone she did not plan to like. "Oh — hello. Are you with the committee?"

"Yes," Yerlan says, before the answer can come from where it would come from. "This is why I called you both here."

He half-turns, angling his body in that coach's way that positions everyone in a triangle whether they agreed to the geometry or not.

"Aibek. Aigerim. This is you. ISC guide manager. The assignment came down this afternoon. They will be handling your schedule coordination — Aigerim's events, Aibek's events, the overlap, the media windows, sponsor obligations, all of it. Everything that comes through my desk will now come through theirs first."

Aigerim, warm, immediate, sticking her hand out: "It's nice to meet you. I am Aigerim. This is my cousin Aibek. He does not shake hands so don't be offended."

Aibek has not moved. Has not blinked. Has not shifted his weight. His expression is the expression he wears for sponsor photographs, which is to say, nothing.

He looks at Yerlan. Only at Yerlan.

"No."