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Sidney has only been at the Pittsburgh Zoo for a year before he hears tales of how the new brown bear from Russia is making waves at an enclosure across the park. (The geese gossip. Sidney wouldn’t have a huge problem with them if only they didn’t have a penchant for resting on the grass where he can see them. He knows they’re mocking him by spreading their huge wings and taking flight whenever they please.)
They brought in a male bear in hopes that he’d mate with Shilo, who’s still fairly young, for a bear, but has violently rejected every potential mate the zoo keepers find for her. Sidney doesn’t have many friends, but he is friends with Shilo. He feels confident in saying all the previous male bears were assholes, even if Shilo never explicitly said so.
Sidney understands Shilo’s plight probably better than any other animal at the zoo—he’s not the only penguin here, but he is the only unmated penguin. Sometimes his humans try to introduce female penguins into their habitat, but most often they try to attach themselves to an already mated penguin. The fights get bloody, which Sidney is not a fan of, but it does mean that the unmated female penguins don’t stay long and Sidney is left unbothered.
Most days, he stays perched high on his rock. He comes down for feeding times and one or two (or twenty) laps in the icy water. His days are quiet and relaxed and absolutely boring, so he relies heavily upon the geese’s gossip as a form of entertainment.
They honk (quite loudly) about how ironic it is that Shilo’s finally found a bear she likes, but how the new bear doesn’t like her. He doesn’t attack her, they say, he just completely ignores her. They say the bear only speaks Russian, and the geese laugh over how homesick he apparently is. (Geese are quite cruel, Sidney thinks.)
Sidney can relate to being homesick. He’d been in a handful of other zoos before he came here, but before all those he’d been at the Halifax Zoo for several years. His family was there; his mother and father and sister and even his grandmother, though Sidney’s not sure if that’s still true.
The Pittsburgh Zoo has been kind to him, and he thinks he’ll end up staying here for a long time (especially since they don’t seem overly concerned with mating him; Sidney is beginning to think the reasons for that relate to the large crowds that gather below their water tank—they’re always watching when he swims), but he’ll always miss his home. Sidney’s not exactly sure where Russia is, but being away from home is hard no matter the distance.
Sidney watches the geese finally stop lazing about and take off. He thinks tonight will be a good night for a stroll across the zoo.
Zhenya's favorite time of day is right after closing, before the handlers lure them inside for the night with mediocre fish.
For a while, he enjoys it because it’s the quietest part of his day—he loves little humans (the big humans are mostly okay too), but sometimes they’re so loud and they all tend to flash bright lights at him non-stop. It’s something he’s used to, having grown up a zoo bear, but just because he was used to it didn’t mean it didn’t occasionally annoy him.
Especially now, in this new environment that he shares with Shilo. (Shilo is a nice bear, certainly nicer than rumor told it, but still a bear much too young for him.)
But at the end of the day, right after closing, Shilo tends to sit near the gate and wait for it to open to their dinner and night beds. Before, Zhenya sometimes took this time to swim without little humans tapping at him from below, but now—now Zhenya watches.
About a week ago, Zhenya noticed they had an irregular visitor stalking their habitat after closing. The fat little penguin never left the cover of foliage beside the walkway, but his curved beak often stuck out between the leaves and his white belly was no help at all in disguising him.
The first day Zhenya spotted him, they had a twenty minute staring contest, something Zhenya usually only engaged in with baby humans that liked to press their tiny faces to the glass separating wall. Zhenya only looked away when the back gate opened and the scent of dead fish reached him. By the time he had looked back to where the penguin had been outside Zhenya’s enclosure, he and his stark-white belly were gone.
He was back the very next day though, right after closing, and this time Shilo saw him on her way toward the back door.
“Oh, Sidney is back!” She waved one big paw toward where they could see half a beak and a belly of white fur sticking out through the bush. The whole bush jumped. Zhenya watched with mounting amusement as one skinny wing stuck out and waved back.
Beside him, Shilo snorted, dropping back down to all fours. “He’s a weird one—cute, and certainly delicious-looking, but 100% weird,” she said, ambling her way to the back door. “I’ve always wanted to try exotic bird, but he never got much closer than the wall for me.”
Zhenya felt his lips peel back almost without his permission, but he stayed close to the water’s edge and watched until the little thing flapped it’s strange wing at him one more time before it disappeared back into the trees.
He was sorry to see him go, but the stubborn thing kept coming back, without fail.
It feels like they’ve spent ages staring at each other from across a great distance, but Sidney refuses to come closer and there are days when Zhenya thinks Shilo was lying about him having done so at one point. Zhenya tries to appear inviting; he wants to talk to Sidney. Such a strange penguin would surely be entertaining? He tries requesting Sidney come out with a wave and a smile, but that just gets him a skittish looking bush, an aborted flap of Sidney’s wing, and a visit cut short by Sidney’s quick departure.
Zhenya has never before met such a shy, stubborn animal.
It’s not often that he and Shilo get visits from the geese, but one day, a couple months after Sidney started showing up to stare at Zhenya, the geese come in such a large flock that they scare away the group of humans the bear enclosure had drawn in, just before noon.
They don’t necessarily talk to Shilo or Zhenya, but their honks are quite loud and Zhenya’s hearing is not broken. When Sidney’s name falls upon his ears, he’s up and glaring at them from the edge of the pool, not wanting to listen to gossip about his penguin, but unwilling to give up learning more about him from any source he can (even a source as unreliable as geese).
The geese notice they’ve caught his attention and they flap their wings in excitement, the pitch of their honk-laughter rising to nearly a deafening level. Zhenya snarls, tired of them already.
They ignore him completely (of course they do, the vicious things), but do continue talking about Sidney. About how apparently Sidney is the only unmated penguin at the zoo. About how Sidney is the most awkward penguin, liked, but not loved. About Sidney’s propensity for breaking out of his habitat and how his handlers have never figured out how he has done so.
About how, lately, Sidney has started nesting. Without a mate.
The geese, predictably, leave after dropping that juicy little nugget.
Zhenya doesn’t actually know many things about penguins, but he thinks he knows the main points—they can’t fly, and they mate for life.
If Sidney is nesting, that must mean he’s mated for life… with who? The geese said all the other penguins had mates. Maybe, after Sidney’s done staring holes into Zhenya’s skull from the bushes, he goes off and flirts with the giraffe. It’s absurd, but Sidney is absurd and Zhenya is upset enough to work himself into a tiff just imagining Sidney making a nest for some long-necked bimbo.
His mood turns for the worse, when, after closing that day, for the first time ever, Sidney does not come to him. Zhenya paces at the water’s edge, and waits well past dinner, well past when his handlers start making worried noises about his lack of appetite. Sidney never shows. He goes to sleep that night feeling angry and hurt and not a little bit confused as to why he’s so angry and hurt.
Sidney does not come the next day.
Or the day after that.
On the fourth day, Zhenya is so occupied with devising a way to escape his habitat that he doesn’t even notice when the zoo closes. He’s eyeing the far edge of the habitat where the trees come close (but not close enough) to the barrier when he hears the strangest trumpeting, trilling call.
His eyes first seek out the spot Sidney likes to hide, but they quickly catch on the flash of yellow—
Sidney.
Sidney is at the glass separating wall of Zhenya’s enclosure. Zhenya stares. He has never seen Sidney without a bush attached, but he’s—well, Shilo wasn’t lying, he is cute and the way he’s bobbing his head and trilling at Zhenya doesn’t derail from that at all.
Sidney has never been this close. Sidney has never dared to be this close.
Zhenya wastes no time at all in diving into the pool and swimming for Sidney. He’s only able to press his nose to the glass, but he wants to reach further; he wants to go up and over the wall and give Sidney a tongue bath, maybe sooth those ruffled feathers. Zhenya feels like he’s been reunited with a dear friend, though the feeling is still very different from how he felt when he was temporarily housed with Sergei during his time between zoos.
Sidney taps with his beak at Zhenya’s nose through the glass. His trumpeting trill gets a little louder and he wobbles from foot to foot in excitement.
It’s honestly more sweet than Sidney’s shy goodbye waves through a layer of leaves.
Zhenya sinks a little lower in the water before surging up to rub his whole cheek against the glass, trying to convey his own happiness. When he looks again, Sidney’s got his head tucked down low and the feather over his cheeks all puffed out. Zhenya rumbles in pleasure at the sight.
“My name Evgeni.”
“I know,” Sidney trills. “The geese—well.”
“You call me Zhenya,” he wants to hear Sidney say his name.
“Zhenya,” Sidney trills, quiet, or what Zhenya assumes is quiet for a penguin. “My name’s Sidney.”
“I know,” Zhenya echoes, “Shilo like talk.”
“I wanted—when you first came, I heard you… I wanted to be friends.” Zhenya’s a little afraid that if Sidney’s head feathers puff out any further they may never lay right again.
“Not want now?” Zhenya has to ask, even though he feels confident, now, that that’s not at all something Sidney wants.
Sidney ducks his handsome black head low, taps lightly at the glass again with his beak. “I built us a nest.”
Zhenya feels, in that moment, like he could scale the separating wall in mere seconds. Instead, he presses his nose to where Sidney’s beak still rests and rumbles deep in his chest.
“Then we not friends. We more.”
“More,” Sidney repeats, sounding awed. “You want more? With me?”
“Want try,” Zhenya says. “But no more giraffe.”
“What!” Sidney squawks, equal parts confused and offended. Zhenya laughs, feeling free for the first time ever.
In the distance, he hears the honking of geese.