Chapter 1
A week before training camp begins, one of the front office people—a generally mild-mannered older woman who prefers to be called Ms. Gertrude—calls Dmitri in for a meeting with the coaching staff that turns out to be an ambush. While they can't technically force him to house a rookie, which has allowed him to put it off for years with increasingly stupid excuses, time appears to have finally run out. "You can't pick and choose which parts of the captaincy you want to take on," Barrett says. "You have the C, so fucking act like it."
"No one else speaks Ostrovian," Ms. Gertrude adds, like that's Dmitri's fault and not a decision that's been actively made by management for the last eight years. You can't throw a fucking rock in Crown Jewel Arena without hitting five Slavs.
"I live in an apartment," Dmitri says. "No room for rookie."
"You live in a four-bedroom condo," Ms. Gertrude says. "Three bathrooms and in-unit laundry. I looked it up on HomeScout."
"My condo is on HomeScout?" Dmitri says.
Ms. Gertrude ignores this egregious violation of Dmitri's privacy to continue, "Do you have any roommates sleeping in one of those three other bedrooms?"
"Roommates, no. Guests, yes." Dmitri tries to leer at her, but Ms. Gertrude is made of stern stuff.
"You can still have guests," she says. "No one expects you to be a monk, Mr. Volkov. We all know better. But that poor child doesn't know a lick of English."
Dmitri's seen tape of the new kid—straight out of a fucking Krasnoyarsk mining town, about twelve feet tall, with chin scruff he probably had to start shaving at age seven—and his nasty slapshot hadn't exactly filled Dmitri's heart with pity.
"I think about it?" he tries.
Ms. Gertrude slides a stapled stack of paper across her desk. "Think while you're signing these," she says. "Initial in the yellow boxes."
As he's leaving Ms. Gertrude's office, his phone buzzes in the pocket of his athletic shorts. One vibration, so it's ChatVibe. Obviously Dmitri is a cool fucking customer who would never do anything as stupid as fumble for his phone just because of a fucking ChatVibe notification, but his phone almost slips through his fingers as he quickly digs it out. Nash : I'm going to be in Ashford next month. Oct 4-9. Meet up?
Cole's in Ashford every October. The Noramerean Assembly of Something Monumentally Dull's Annual Meeting. Fucking MEC, Cole had complained to Dmitri once, a little awkwardly. He never seemed to realize that when he lied (which embarrassed him, because he was a good Norlish boy who had been raised right) the subsequent flush would make his freckles stand out. So whatever this Ashford conference is, it has nothing to do with MEC, whatever the fuck that is. But it is a excuse for Cole to fly to Ashford every October and Dmitri's hardly going to give that gift horse a fucking dental exam.
After a careful, deliberate pause–he counts a hundred seconds–Dmitri sends back a thumbs up emoji.
Three years before, on a chilly November evening, Dmitri had been irritably sucking down on the cigarette pinched between his thumb and forefinger in front of a pair of automatic doors that had claimed to lead to the NHMC emergency department. He'd barely heard the hiss of the doors sliding open behind him, he'd been so annoyed. "Here is a thought," he had said to Beaumont, darkly. "The next time that cocksucker thinks he can fuck up one of my guys, I send the pieces of him back home to his mother in a tiny box."
"Probably it'd be a big box," Beaumont had replied. "Like. Realistically."
"Fine," Dmitri had said, punctuating his statement with a deep drag on his cigarette. "Next time, I send him home to his mother in a medium-sized box. Overnight shipping."
"Uh," someone had said, "you're not supposed to be smoking here."
When Dmitri had twisted to shoot an annoyed glare over his shoulder, a man in bright green scrubs had been standing behind him. He was wearing a grey knitted sweater that was unzipped and laying open across his broad chest and a lanyard with plastic-encased cards looped around his muscled neck. His pretty face looked annoyed the way a very fluffy kitten might look annoyed after being scruffed. Without quite meaning to, Dmitri had let his eyes trace the wing of his dark hair, long enough to be pushed back from his forehead and behind his ears.
"Da?" Dmitri had said, exaggerating his accent.
The guy's mouth had flattened and he'd jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the automatic doors, which were plastered with a number of large stickers that explained in both English and Vallesian that neither loitering nor smoking ought to be occurring in their vicinity.
"No English," Dmitri had said.
The guy had rolled his eyes. "Whatever," he'd said. "Who cares if you compromise the care of the critically ill patients inside this building, eh?"
This had gotten to Beaumont, predictably; he'd elbowed Dmitri in the side and whispered, "Maybe—?"
Dmitri had sucked pointedly on his cigarette and ignored Beaumont. He had felt something zip up his spine, not dissimilar to the sensation he got in the milliseconds before a face off, when he knew that because he was faster and smarter and meaner he was going to win. He had casually strolled towards the disgruntled Norlish in his bright green scrubs, exaggerating his steps. He'd wanted the man to notice Dmitri's big frame in its expensive suit, the handmade leather dress shoes that were never scuffed because Dmitri only ever wore them on game days, the diamond-encrusted tie pin that he'd bought himself to celebrate when he'd won the Sterling Cup.
The man had looked at Dmitri. The fluorescent lights embedded in the concrete above their heads had exaggerated the bruised shadows under his dark eyes. His mouth had parted, slightly, and Dmitri had lowered his cigarette and casually shot his cuffs, so he could flash the edge of his watch—a Kronos, from the sponsorship deal he'd cut three years before, after his first Sovereign Cup.
The man's mouth had opened all the way to say, "If you try to bring a lit cigarette into this hospital, it's a five thousand dollar fine."
"Is not," Dmitri had immediately countered, because Norlish people were insane but surely they weren't that insane.
"Norlish dollars," Beaumont had clarified behind him.
"This country is ridiculous," Dmitri had said. "Is one fucking cigarette, you won't get cancer just from touching it."
"I didn't realize you were also a doctor," the man had said sarcastically. "Also, and I can't believe this needs to be said, if you come in and try to start a fight, the consequences will be worse than a fine."
"You will call security?" Dmitri had asked casually.
He had been close enough then to see that the doctor was near to his own height. Not as broad, of course, but solidly built. His scrub pants had been drawn tight over his thighs; the horrible fluorescent lights exaggerated the long curve of each quadriceps. Gym rat? If so, whatever he was doing on leg day was fucking working.
"I won't need to," the doctor had said calmly.
Dmitri had waggled his eyebrows. "Ooh," he had said. "I'm. Uh, how you say—" and he had said waiting for you to drop to your knees and suck my dick in Ostrovian.
"Feeling a sudden sense of civic responsibility?" the man had suggested flatly.
Beaumont had snorted out a laugh. "C'mon, man," he had said, coming up and clasping a hand on Dmitri's shoulder. "Let's not piss this guy off any more. Sorry, doc, we're just waiting to hear if our buddy came out of surgery okay."
The man's eyes had softened. "Check in with Reggie at the desk," he had said. He had paused then and hitched a slightly awkward breath before continuing, "We have the best trauma team in the province. Harper's the charge nurse tonight and she runs them like it's the navy. Your friend is in good hands."