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After practice ends, Mike and Nicklas are walking down to the parking lot when Sasha comes from seemingly nowhere and tells them some of the guys are meeting up for dinner at some restaurant and they “better be there”. Agreeing, the three go their separate ways.
Mike gets back to his place and he gets a text of the address, time, and "dress nice" from Sasha. He laughs at Sasha telling him to dress nice, but the place sounds fancy, so he wears relatively nice clothes anyway.
Mike gets to the restaurant a couple minutes early, but only Nicklas is there. "Nobody else here yet?" he asks.
Nicklas shrugs and Mike sits beside him. "Any idea what the meeting is about?" Nicklas asks. "Or why we had to dress nice?"
"Not really, but maybe there's a dress code or something," Mike points out. “It is kind of fancy.”
They continue talking about ways to make the team better as well as their plans for the weekend, until they are interrupted by the waiter as he comes up for the third time and they realize they've been talking for fifteen minutes and nobody else is there.
"Listen, I'm sorry. Our friends were supposed to meet us, but I guess they've forgotten," Mike apologises to the waiter. "We can just leave-" he starts, but Nicklas stops him.
"The reservations are under Alex Ovechkin, right?" Nicklas asks. The waiter confirms and Nicklas shrugs, "Well, I'm sure he's just running late- he's never on time. Give us a minute to look at the menu and we'll just order before he gets here," Nicklas says.
"What are you doing?" Mike asks once the waiter leaves.
"It's late, we haven't eaten, and clearly Alex made Sasha set us up for a joke so we might as well make the most of it," Nicklas shrugs.
"Why would Alex do that though? Nobody knows we're together." Mike asks.
"Who cares? He probably wanted us to get all dressed up and waste our time thinking we would leave after fifteen minutes," Nicklas points out.
"Which is why we're staying?" Mike asks, confused.
"His reservations, his dime," Nicklas grins.
Mike smiles back at Nicklas. "I would kiss you if we weren't in public," he says.
After a quick study of the menus, Mike and Nicklas order expensive wine and fancy food they can hardly pronounce- but thankfully has a description under it. They spend the next hour or so eating pretty much all they can eat while enjoying each other’s company with a guilt free bill.
They are about to leave when Nicklas can't help but laugh. "You know, we may have to thank Alex," he points out. "I think he gave us our first date."
Mike pauses before laughing louder than probably appropriate for a restaurant like this, but he doesn't care. They just spent almost five hundred dollars on dinner for two, they can have a bit of a laugh. "Should we send him a thank you card?" he suggests as they head towards the parking lot.
"Listen," Nicklas starts. "All joking aside, I had a really nice time tonight. Even if it was because Ovie was being a dick." he points out. "It's nice to finally get date one out of the way."
Mike smiles at that. "No kidding. I had fun too," he says before looking around them. It's pretty late, so Mike chances it and goes in for a kiss. "Have a good night, Nicky."
Mike is driving back to his house when his phone buzzes. Half expecting it to be Ovechkin, he's surprised to see Semin's name pop up. "u r welcome /wink" is what the text reads.
It takes a second for Mike to realize that they just charged Alex five hundred dollars for a joke he probably didn't even have a part in. It's something he chooses to ignore in favor of not ruining his first date.