Russia had never been any of the crew's favourite destinations. To fly over it was long, incredibly boring and most times pure torture, because eventually everyone gave up and agreed to play charades with Arthur, something that - in fact - made everything worse. Every time. But staying in Russia, even though its culture might be interesting, the buildings there might be beautiful, was always hellish. Staying in St. Petersburg on a winter night in a ruddy old way-too-cheap hotel could only be described as hell. After it froze over, obviously. And to put a cherry on top of this big pile of- ... not so nice things, Douglas hat to room with Martin, because Carolyn was very cheap on booking hotel rooms again and nobody wanted to continue playing charades through the night - henceforth, rooming with Arthur was absolutely out of the question. Rooming with Martin, though, would mean endless nagging about finishing paperwork, filing plans, writing in his logs and Douglas hated basically everything Martin did to get him to work.

It turned out to be an entirely different experience, though.

"Martin. I am really sorry to break this to you, but you may want to write down your will and call your loved ones."

"Why, are you going to kill me because I won the "Village names that would look stupid on a T-shirt" game, Douglas?"

"Not quite. As you know, I might not be the best loser, but still, since the games you won are of a number so small that you can't even begin to compare it to the number of games I won; I will cope with this absolutely hurtful experience. No, what I was actually pointing at is the fact, that we will both very likely freeze to death tonight."

"What? Why?"

"Two very good questions, Captain. You see, I might not be an expert in other languages - even though my French is still better than yours - but even I would be able to understand how to operate this heater, since the company who produced it, was nice enough to describe the process of "heating up a room" in nice illustrations. Those illustrations however, show me, that I did everything right to make the heater work, but it still does neither turn on any of its lights, nor does it produce what we long for so dearly: Warmth."

"Are you sure, maybe you just forgot to turn on a button or something? Let me see."

Martin knelt next to Douglas checking the little electric heater and looking on its cable with a frown. Douglas found it ridiculous, that Martin thought he could operate the broken heater better than him, but he didn't say anything. Martin would figure out that it was hopeless after all and while he was doing so, Douglas would get downstairs to the little shop across the streets and try to get some hot coffee or tea, preferably enough to cope during the cold night that was ahead. He didn't even look back at Martin who was still hunched over the heater when he left the room, slightly mumbling to himself. 'The first sign of insanity', Douglas thought - he would bite his tongue afterwards for that slip, even if it was never said out loud.

When Douglas returned thirty minutes after he left the hotel room, packed with a can of hot tea, a pack of sandwiches and a pair of warm woolly gloves, he first thought he got the wrong room. He was about to apologize and leave when he realized that it was indeed, their room, with Martin stretched out on his bed switching through the channels on the small telly. Douglas was never a man who was short on words but this time, he really couldn't think of anything but:

"How..."

Martin looked up and tried to get a slightly crooked grin off his face.

"I did tell you my old man were an electrician, didn't I? And that he wanted me to take over his business? Even though I was never really keen of his idea, I thought it couldn't hurt to listen when he told me some of his tricks to get old broken things to work again."

Douglas set down the grocery bag and looked at the small heater that seemed almost happily blinking the light that was refusing to shine almost an hour ago and constantly puffing heated air into the room, making it almost comfortable.

"I didn't know you could do that", Douglas finally said.

"Why should you? You never either ask or think I can do anything right."

Martin didn't really sound hurt, it was more amusement that was somewhere not so well hidden in his voice. "Don't you?"

Douglas didn't answer to that. He rarely apologized to anything and if he did, he very often didn't really mean it and preferred to crack a joke instead to make the person he insulted - intentionally or not - feel less moody. But this time he had the feeling, he had to apologize somehow and also thank Martin from keeping them freezing to death in some old ruddy hotel in St. Petersburg. But he didn't do either of them. Instead, he went through his groceries, the ones he bought for himself and handed his Captain one of the packed sandwiches, knowing that Martin happily embraced every opportunity when he didn't have to buy himself food. "Hungry, Captain? "

Martin took the food and swallowed down every other comment that might have been on his tongue. Douglas could still see the young Captain smirking to himself.