"That's where you told me you were from!" Whiskey protests.
"That was a joke!" Plague hisses.
And with that, they're off to the races with another heated and utterly pointless debate. If these two don't resolve whatever bizarre chemistry has been boiling between them for years, they're going to kill each other.
Valek's eyebrows rise slightly. "Canadian?" he repeats. "And here I heard you didn't believe that."
Whiskey looks up from his argument with Plague. Plague is still bitching at him, but Whiskey can only pay attention to one thing at a time. It's both a curse and a blessing on the ice. "Are you?"
Valek flashes a grin and a navy blue Canadian passport he must've been keeping in his pocket for the sole purpose of fucking with Whiskey. The gold foil design on the front shimmers in the light.
"Dude, that's sick," Whiskey says, all previous disdain evaporating instantly. Like a giant golden retriever that was supposed to guard the house but just realized the burglar has snacks. "Is that a coat of arms? My passport's nowhere near that badass. It just has an eagle on it."
"My other passport is decorated with an eagle, too," Valek says dryly, handing the Canadian passport to Whiskey for inspection. "An eagle with two heads."
Whiskey stops caressing the gold foil coat of arms and stares at Valek, the wheels clearly turning in his brain as he starts to put the pieces together of whatever pointless puzzle he's been working on in his head.
"You'reFrench,bro?"
Valek barks out a laugh.
Plague shoots Whiskey a look that could freeze hell itself. "Perhaps we should all agree that nationality is irrelevant to hockey skill and leave it at that." He glances at Valek, who’s still laughing, with an embarrassed grimace of a smile. "I'm sorry. We're not all this obtuse."
"Obtuse, huh?" Whiskey rounds on Plague like he's going to slap him with Valek's passport. "What the fuck does weight have to do with anything?"
Plague stares at him in bewilderment. “What do you think ‘obtuse’ means?”
Here we fucking go again.
My migraine roars back to life and I pinch the bridge of my nose to hold it off. But while Whiskey and Plague bitch at each other about learning new words and reading a dictionary for a change instead of the back of a cereal box, I watch over my hand as Valek moves further into the room, making a slow circuit around our new furniture. His fingers trail over the back of the couch, pausing at a throw pillow that Ivy arranged earlier. Every muscle in my body tenses.
"Everythingis new," Valek comments. "I must have really disrupted the feng shui of the place with my arrival."
"Like I said, we were planning to redecorate anyway," I reply, keeping my voice steady despite my headache.
"Hmm." Valek picks up the pillow, brings it to his face, and inhales deeply. My heart damn near stops. "This scent... what is it? Some sort of air freshener?"
Shit. We sprayed this place with every neutralizing agent Plague could find, but there's no way to completely eliminate scent molecules. Not from fabric. Not from an omega in heat. Did Ivy wear gloves when she placed that pillow?
"Febreze," Whiskey interjects. "The fresh linen kind. Plague's obsessed with it. Sprays that shit everywhere."
Plague's eyes narrow at him.
Valek looks between them, that faint smile never leaving his face. "Fascinating dynamic you all have." He sets the pillow down, but not quite in the same spot Ivy placed it. "Tell me, do you often destroy your living room when a new teammate arrives? Or am I special?"
"No," I say, standing up despite the protest from my ribs. I need to be on my feet, not looking up at him from the couch. It's a subtle dominance thing, and he knows it. "Like I said, we had a particularly rowdy team bonding night. Whiskey got drunk, hence the name. It happens."
"Every pack has its wild card," Plague says. He looks perfectly composed, but I can smell the sharp note of tension in his scent. "We happen to have two of them. But it creates balance."
Valek turns toward him, and the atmosphere in the room shifts. Two predators sizing each other up, testing for weaknesses. "Is that what you provide? The counterweight to all this..." he gestures vaguely around the room, at the evidence of violence and hasty repairs, "... chaos?"
"I've found order is preferable to its alternative," Plague responds, not backing away despite Valek entering his personal space.
"Yet you choose to live with these alphas," Valek observes, his voice dropping slightly. "Surrounded by their impulses and aggression. One might wonder why someone who craves order would want that. Of course, opposites attract."
"Hey." Whiskey barrels between them, all dog energy crashing into a standoff between two cats. "Are you two gonna kill each other or are you gonna fuck? Because we've got shit to do today."
Plague's head snaps toward Whiskey, eyes flashing with genuine anger. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
