Chapter 2

Beaumont had said, "Thanks, man," and headed towards the automatic doors. A few seconds later, having made a dramatic theatrical production out of stubbing out his cigarette, Dmitri had followed. He'd felt those dark eyes following him, jabbing between his shoulder blades, and when he'd turned to give a final, casual glance over his shoulder he'd seen that the doctor had turned to watch them leave, his eyebrows drawn low into a suspicious squint.

Since Dmitri had been hoping to provoke something a little more slack-jawed, this expression had inspired a brief moment of introspection. What had he and Beaumont been talking about when the doors had first opened?

Ah.

"He thinks we are mobsters," Dmitri had decided.

"Cause you're fucking trashy, Dima," Beaumont had replied immediately. "It looks like you mugged my grandpa for that shirt."

"This is raw silk," Dmitri had said. "Noramereans have no taste. None of you know how to dress. Is embarrassing for me, to always be showing you up. Make more of an effort, okay?"

Barrett had swooped down on them like a fucking bat the moment they'd stopped at the desk to speak with this so-called Reggie, a bespeckled beanpole wearing scrubs covered in strange little yellow one-eyed creatures. "Volkov! Beaumont! What are you two chucklefucks doing here, curfew's in half an hour."

"How's Riggs?" Beaumont had asked.

"Says he'll sleep like a baby without Volkov's snoring," Barrett had said. "You get two minutes with him, a proof of life photo for his girlfriend, and then you're back to the hotel, got it?"

But in the end, Dmitri had sent Beaumont back on his own and stayed with Riggs until his girlfriend—still in Lakeshore after he'd been traded last year; visa problems, apparently—had been able to book a seat on the first SkyLink flight of the day, which would get her to Riverview by nine the next morning.

"You want me stay?" Dmitri had offered. Riggs had snorted, then groaned and lifted the hand that wasn't in traction to his forehead, where a lump the size of a fucking Imperial Voronsky egg had begun to emerge from a purpling bruise.

"Go," Riggs had said, slurring slightly.

"You not want my dulcet tones?" Dmitri had asked.

"You fucking snore, man, I don't know what to tell you," Riggs said. "Your girls are lying to you. Probably because they can tell how fragile your ego is."

Dmitri had turned on all the overhead lights as he'd left, grinning to himself at Riggs's squawk of outrage and pain, and made his way down to the first floor lobby of the hospital. He'd been about to duck into a private corner to call a car service when he'd seen a tousled head of dark hair bending down to chat with Reggie-at-the-desk and somehow had known to stop.

"—fucking beat," Reggie had been saying. He'd pushed up his glasses with a thumb and forefinger spread into a V, like a villain in one of those weird animated shows Beaumont and his girlfriend liked to watch. "You're coming off of night float, right?"

"It's fine," the dark-haired doctor had said. He had been writing something with a pen, his attention wholly focused on the folded sheet of paper.

"Only you would say that," Reggie had said, with an audibly appreciative sigh. For fuck's sake, Dmitri had thought irritably. But he had understood the impulse; from this angle he had been able to see those bright green scrubs pulled tautly over an extremely well-developed ass. Maybe the pretty freckled doctor with a great ass knew how to skate. Riggs claimed all Norlish people were issued a pair of skates at birth, as part of a federal welfare program.

"It's not just me," the doctor had said distractedly. "All the residents have to do night float. This is a very good pen."

"ZENKO," Reggie had said.

"Oh!" the doctor had said. He'd clicked the end to retract the tip and looked at it more closely. "Nice action," he'd mumbled quietly and clicked it twice. "Do you know if I can order these? Like, online?"

Reggie had put his chin in the palm of his hand. "Keep it," he'd said. "I have a box."

The doctor had smiled at this. Dmitri had felt his entire body jolt, like he'd just been boarded from behind. What the actual fuck. "Thanks," the doctor had said, "that's really generous of you, Reggie. Can I send you an e-transfer for it?"

"Two dollars? I mean, sure. Or you could buy me a coffee."

Reggie had blinked a few times to really make his point. Dmitri had been striding across the lobby before it occurred to him that this was an objectively insane thing to be doing; maybe Riggs hadn't been the only one to sustain brain damage at the hands of the Metro's defense. But before he'd been able to do anything particularly stupid, someone in a yellow tissue paper gown covered in smears of blood had burst through a set of swinging doors bellowing Nakamura YOU'RE UP and the doctor had taken off at a dead sprint just as Dmitri had felt a hand latch onto the back of his neck and heard Barrett hiss, "You better have a good fucking reason for breaking curfew, Volkov."

Dmitri calls the nutritionist that does his meal prep and tells him to make double of everything for the foreseeable future; asks his cleaning lady when she comes by on Thursday to make up one of the guest bedrooms and stock the nearest bathroom with cotton swabs, tissues, and clean towels; has his doorman cut a second set of building keys. After that, he calls it a day. He'd spent his rookie year sleeping in Fontaine's basement, getting woken up at six every morning as the guy's approximately four thousand kids and army of dogs had thundered into the kitchen for breakfast. Between them Celeste and Dmitri had been able to speak about twelve words of English and most of them were hockey cognates, so they'd invented an elaborate series of mimed gestures for the household chores that Dmitri had performed, mostly badly, to make up for the enormous amount of food he ate and the giant piles of stinky laundry he generated.

If Dmitri had been the kind of person who worried about things, he might have worried about his new rookie—but he was not, and he does not. The kid will do fine or he'll go down to the farm team in Millbrook and neither outcome will have anything to do with how soft Dmitri's guest bedroom mattress is.

The day before training camp starts, as he waits for the interminable welcome meeting upstairs to end, he sits in front of his locker, damp towel hooked around his neck, and texts Nash: what r u wearing.

Don't sext me when I'm about to scrub in, asshole.

What is this, Dmitri asks. He's imagining a giant round bristle brush like the one his cleaning lady uses on his kitchen sink.

I'm prepping to go into the operating room for a surgery, Nash replies.

Dmitri immediately tabs over into the web to investigate what this entails. so u are wearing scrubs. cute mesh hat?

Go fuck yourself, Nash suggests.

(((( can't, not flexible enough. show me some yoga moves?

Nash marks his message with the thumbs down emoji. Putting my phone in do not disturb btw. Do NOT send a dick pic while I am doing this bypass.

The door to the locker room bangs open before Dmitri has time to do anything except tap a few sad-faced parentheses. "This is Volkov," Barrett barks. "Volkov, this is Tarasov."

Dmitri lazily rolls to his feet. "Hey," he says. The kid is not quite twelve feet tall in person, but he's stocky and square-jawed, wearing a white and yellow striped polo shirt and a pair of jean shorts cut off and fraying at the knees. His curly hair is gelled flat to his head. "How's it going?" Dmitri asks him in Ostrovian.

"Hello sir I am Alexei Mikhailovich," the kid replies all in one breath.

"Only people I'm fucking call me sir," Dmitri tells him as he shakes his hand. "Dima is fine."

~