The 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeong Chang were in full swing.

"Earth to Daya! You're missing all the curling!" he called to the kitchen from the couch.

Daya fiddled with celery sticks and cucumber slices. The only thing he was looking forward to on her tray were baby tomatoes.

Carrots had been banned last week on suspicion of the dark side ability to spike his blood sugar. He lived to the age of twenty-seven in blissful ignorance of the notion that the root vegetables were sweet. Luckily, he had never liked raw carrots, so their absence from his life didn't hurt him.

The candy bars, on the other hand... he couldn't resist, despite finding their taste cloying. Unfortunately, he couldn't share this breakthrough with Daya.

"I'm coming," she said. The warning was unnecessary, given that it only took a few steps from the counter to the couch, but her voice was a welcome alternative to that of the commentator.

On the screen, the athletes mopped the ice with a commendable dedication.

Mike watched Daya instead out of the corner of his eye. "Apparently, we kill in curling. Imagine that." 

She had wanted to watch the Olympics together. She had painstakingly frozen the images until he pretended he could see the difference between the toe loop jump and the loop jump, but he couldn't shake gnawing anxiety.

Did he imagine the strain in her neck because he wanted a reason to rub it away? Or had he forgotten it was always there? He had seen little of her in the past weeks. She was always looking for an opening to be on the ice, or squeezing in a dance class.

Or she was avoiding him. No, no. She was doing exactly what he had insisted she'd do. Oh, good Lord, I'm an idiot...

He focused on the screen where the curling coverage switched to the highlights. The running text promised the figure skating lady singles final next.

The commentary focused on Sarah Blackwall, the top Canadian contender, and her Russian rivals, a fifteen year-old Polina Rakova and a nineteen year-old Liza Morozova.

After watching competitions so far, Mike started to clue in why Daya had felt she had missed her chance. Figure skating seemed to work on the crib to podium conveyor belt principle. Canadian Blackwall, the same age as Daya, was a decorated veteran.

The Russians, as young as they were, spoke breathlessly of the teenagers who were pawing the ground in the wings, dying to turn fifteen. Once unleashed, they'd shatter the senior ladies' figure skating world with their multiple quad jumps. The scoring charts would be topped. Men would have to train quintuple jumps, impossible according to the laws of physics. 

Bloodbath and mayhem would follow. The world of sequins, gauze skirts and charming smiles had all the gentleness of the mortal combat arena after the Hells froze over.

It seemed inconceivable to him that someone would want to step back into the rink after getting away. Forget everyone else. He cared about Daya, and she said Calgary was tolerable. Not the highest praise, but it was better than nothing. 

The way she glanced at him sometimes, the soft gaze from under the veil of lashes, turned the world on its head. And she was chomping down the celery stick on his couch, while his deadline to return to Toronto was ticking down even now. It had to mean—what? 

Why don't you just ask?

He fiddled with his glasses to find a distraction. The Olympics, damn it, the competition that had its stakes inflated by its rarity—and he found his unfashionable but light frames more intriguing. What if the Canadians won the most medals? What if they didn't? 

What of it?

More and more gladiators in sequins stepped into the bright lights... slowly, the thrill of the words final and champion found a purchase in his gamer's soul. He picked favorites, winced at the falls that barely looked survivable, let alone something a fragile girl could smile away while chasing the music. There were no damsels on the ice.

Daya's shoulder touched his... her bare shoulder—she wore a sleeveless hoodie. He was grateful for his sweater, because his freckled soft flesh would have looked like a sesame bun next to her tight warmly hued skin. 

Through this contact he got his first warning that something was about to happen on TV as the stream advanced in its second hour.

The camera panned over the joyful smile of a dark-eyed skater in a red-and-gold dress, with elbow-length gloves. The skirt was the sort that the ballet dancers were, a starched circle, rather than the kind that falls down the hips. He did not think it was the dress that strained Daya's shoulder so much, but he rubbed her back before realizing what he was doing.

The line on the screen said the girl was the first after the short.

"You think this... ah, Polina... will win?" he asked Daya, absorbing her body's warmth  into the palm of his hand. His warm girl swallowed instead of an answer, and the music started, a lively classic tune. 

The girl on the ice took off, her smile growing brighter as she picked up speed. She was fighting, but she made it look like she was an elf playing on the ice.

The squares on the score chart for each program element gazed empty.

The top score to beat sat at 75 and a bit.

All the gliding put Polina to 3 and something.

The playful music went on.

Polina swirled and twirled, flirting with the audience, sending confident smiles at the cameras.

The score increased to barely 14, half the skating time gone, only two element squares filled with green, the rest of them still blank, a long row of empty squares.

"What is happening? Is she going to jump?"

The commentator and Daya said almost at the same time that the jumps would come in the last half of the program, on tired legs, because the new scoring system gave a huge bonus for that distribution.

Polina didn't seem tired, absorbing energy from the light, making sweeping circles around the rink. The red and gold of her ballerina dress, and the white of her teeth between the coral lips shone as the millions watched her dance carefree.

Polina jumped.

"Wow!"

The score jumped to 21 points, one more square switched to green.

"Triple lutz," Daya whispered into his ear.

Just like her breath on his cheek, the music teased.

Polina was jumping again, in a combo. 

Mike had given up on knowing which jump was which, so he glanced at Daya, who mouthed, double axel, triple toe loop.

But the time was running out, but all those blank squares...

The flirt on skates paid no hid.

Her smile didn't fade a fraction, and there she let them have it, jump after jump, three in a row... 

This time Daya called out a triple flip, a double toe loop, a double loop before Mike had asked. Anyway, it was lots of jumps.

The ease of it seemed improbable, staged, filmed beforehand, not broadcasted on live TV.

The music, already lively, picked up. The girl did not quirk an eyebrow at the world, but something about her beatific smile said, now, now, I mean serious business.

At a whirlwind speed Polina went around the rink with more jumps to finish (triple lutz & triple loop combo, triple salchow, triple flip, double axel Daya was saying).

The squares filled in, not a single red one, all green. The score jerked up and up and up.

Crescendo—and Polina spun as if made of wax, flowing through the positions, ending with one leg pressed against her body.

For the first time her face tightened with effort. It did nothing to shake off Mike's impression that he was watching a film, not a live competition. That last huzzah belonged in a sports movie about how the underdogs overcame it all to win an all-important match.

Then the music was done, and she was done, ending the tour de force with a coquettish bow, with her arms flung behind her, her wrists flipping, a classic ballet swan. 

Mike felt it was the equivalent of giving someone a finger.

The score row of the performed elements filled in to the end, all green with final score six points ahead of the score to beat.

Daya sobbed.

His hand had never left her back. He wrapped his arms around Daya, while simultaneously fumbling to pause the stupid Olympics. I should have known...

Daya cried with her face hidden in his sweater, her shoulders shaking. He stroked her hair, smelling the cinnamon and flowers of the toiletries she used. He stretched out to wrestle tissues out of the box and pushed his back into the couch to create a bit of a gap between them.

She looked cozy with her hands clutching the sweater under his chin, her complexion heated with tears. He dabbed some away. "Do you want some water?"

"No." She sniffled, and he dabbed some more.

"I'm sorry." She poked the soggy spot on his sweater with her finger. "It's just first you think you are too young, and you will get stronger, will get faster. Then you think you are growing and need to adapt to your new body. Then, then... there are all these other things. Bad luck, injuries, things ... then, then it's too late, you are too old. But there is Polina, and she is fifteen... and it's not like she did not have the same crap to deal with—"

"I understand, I understand..." he said softly.

She shook her head, no, you don't.

"Okay, maybe I don't, maybe nobody does." Giddily, recklessly, he dropped the tissue and just traced her cheek with his fingers. His head pounded—that would be the sound of his best intentions fleeing through the closed windows. If there was ever a time to take a calculated risk, to tip the balance of the scales in his favor, it was now. 

"But I am in love with you, and I don't give two figs about this red ballerina in Korea."

"Polina Rakova," Daya whispered.

"Yes, her too."

Daya slipped her hand from where they were squeezed between his chest and hers. Her mouth never fully closed, offering a tempting hollow. She pulled the glasses down his nose, put them away, somewhere... 

"Mike... please, kiss me."

The world drifted out of focus. The smudged shapes, her whispering his name, his confession—it all had an aspect of an alternative reality. He closed his eyes to keep from waking up and found her upturned face with his lips. The salty trail led his mouth from her eyes to her lips. He remembered them puffed up from crying, unlocked, unguarded.

He kissed each in turn, before she pulled herself up to draw him into an all out kiss. Or all in, he thought, probing with his tongue, to see what happens. Wondrous things, was what Carter said when he had glimpsed Tutankhamen's burial finery. That was what Mike thought too about the inroads he was making into Daya's mouth.

And her hair, because his free hand, with an unprecedented agility, loosened her hair. He felt it with his fingers, traced it falling past her shoulders, around her neck. He almost opened his eyes to see as much as he could.

This alternative reality was getting sweeter and more alternative by the minute. He loved every incredible moment of it.

Daya tugged loose the hem of his sweater from where it got caught on the belt of his jeans, and he guessed—felt her hands slipping underneath it. The shiver passed through him, from skin touching skin when her palms moved from his stomach to his chest. It generated the current that was not electrical, but it was electrifying at the same time.

The drumming song of I want, I want, I want drowned out everything else: considerations, fears, caution.

With shaking fingers, he found the pull of her vest's zipper. He did not trust his voice mid-kiss, but the: "Too soon?" came out as close to human words as could be reasonably hoped for.

"No..." she whispered. "You have seductive hands. Had anyone told you that?"

 "Once or twice..." he smiled, threading the tiny metal loop between his fingers, touching the silky fabric and the clavicle through it. "Far less than you've heard about your eyes, and lashes, and... everything. Do I stand a hope? A toe? A birthmark missed by praise? You're exquisite, my heart."

She kissed the tip of his nose. "Don't worry about being original."

"That would be the first."

"And open your eyes."

"That would be the first."

Her 'yeah' was more of a sigh, but it sounded better than any opera to his ears.

He opened his eyes to follow the parting of the zipper. The strip of a black bra binding her small breasts peaked out, then the curve of the abdominal muscle. His brain threatened to shut off the flow of oxygen through his parted lips if he didn't pursue it with nibbles.

The next three things happened all at once.

He stretched out to kiss the pearls poking through the shiny material and free them from the fabric if he could.

Daya climbed into his lap to ease the access, her body engulfing him in dizzying heat.

And the stadium in the faraway Korea exploded into applause and cheers from the TV screen.

The chanting was deafening.

Polina Rakova pumped her arm. The commentator guesstimated if her components score was higher than someone else's, and if her triple-triple combo would be the deciding factor—

The remote, his neurotic idiot of a remote, picked up on their movements and restarted the stream. The reality messed up with his alternative one.

He grabbed the remote, inwardly cursing, and that's when he saw Daya turn her head and look at the screen.

If they scraped all the ice from the Olympic rink and crushed it into the ice cubes, then poured it behind his collar, he could not have sobered up faster.

He stiffened, and not in that good old-fashioned I really like you way, but in the what the hell are you doing, Mikey?! way.

Hadn't he watched his parents fight for decades, because his mother's dreams got swept under the carpet? He'd just stepped on the rake that hit his father in the face.

As gently as he could, Mike untangled himself from Daya and the couch, found his glasses with shaking hands and restored them on his nose.

The world looked normal now. The two realities slammed together, sending a shock through him.

"Don't substitute me for what you actually need, Daya. You won't like it. I'm sorry I've taken leave of my senses. I'm going to step out for a bit..." Mumbling, why was he always mumbling? He tried to steady his voice, with little success. "Once I'm back, I promise you to behave. It will be hard after what had happened, but it will return to normal. I promise."

She followed him down the hall. "Mike, are you blind? I love you!"

He pulled the jacket from the peg and threw it over his shoulders, not bothering with the sleeves in his rush to leave. If she touched him again, his resolve would evaporate, and he'd pile on an unforgivable mistake on top of the first-rate idiocy. 

In his mind he kept seeing how it would happen, how he would lean Daya on the couch, her body bare... how her hair would spill around him in waves as he looked for a place for himself within her.

And that's when she would look away... not tonight, but some other night. Eventually. And that just wasn't good enough.

"Why? Why would you love me? Apart from the proximity that is?" It hurt. It hurt more than it should have, more than it ever did. Just how badly had he fallen for her? Badly enough by all signs.

Daya's frustrated voice chased him out of the doors. "Is that a trick question? Mike? Mike!"

And he wasn't sure if he had heard it or imagined, but as he thundered down the stairs, there came something more: You didn't give up on your thesis either.