Chapter 3

Two and a half years ago, on a beautifully crisp April morning, Dmitri had gone for a long run to distract himself from the fact that his stupid fucking circus full of idiot fucking monkeys had lost the previous night to the Rails in overtime. He'd wasted thirty minutes actively seething to himself about Salminen's lazy fucking passing and barely noticed when he hooked a left turn that brought him down to a canal—but then he had, abruptly, because an absurdly pretty man with dark, sweat-soaked hair had been running towards Dmitri on the opposite side of the path and the familiarity of his features had hit Dmitri like a shoulder to the solar plexus.

He'd stopped and put his hands on his hips for a second, wheezing.

The doctor had nearly passed him, turning his head and giving a twitch of acknowledgement because, presumably, this was the civically responsible thing to do, and then he'd visibly clocked Dmitri and done a double-take. "Oh," he'd said. He did a very cute little awkward shuffle as he attempted to decide in real time whether or not to stop.

"Hello," Dmitri had said, once it had become obvious this was a paralyzing decision for him to make.

"Hi," the doctor had said. "Uh—do you—run down here often? I've never—seen you."

Like a sane person, Dmitri usually used the hotel gym on road trips. As he'd watched Dmitri lace up his running shoes earlier that morning, Riggs had said somebody's gonna spit on you but fine, it's your fucking funeral, Dima. But since the alternative had been going to the hotel gym and potentially beating one of his own teammates to death with a 25lb dumbbell, Dmitri had opted to go out of doors.

"No," Dmitri had begun to say, and then the doctor had frowned and lifted two fingers to his own eyebrow.

"Are you bleeding?" he had said.

"Ah shit," Dmitri had mumbled in Ostrovian, pulling up the hem of his shirt to dab at his eyebrow, which Kowalczyk had split the night before. The sweat-wicking grey fabric was splotched brown when he lowered it. "Better?" he had asked in English.

The doctor has been staring at him in undisguised horror. "Your ribs!" he had said, aghast. "Why are you running?"

"Not so bad, just—ah, on the top?" Dmitri had said.

"You're still bleeding," the doctor had said. "What the fuck is wrong with you. Come on." And without saying anything else he'd turned and begun to climb up the grassy bank to the road. "Come on," he had said, and for some reason Dmitri had followed him. Possibly it had been the bossy way he spoke, like someone who was used to issuing orders that other people were too stupid not to follow; Dmitri had been trained since he was a small child by a series of camps and coaches to respond to this type of authority. Alternatively, it had been the tiny little shorts the doctor had been wearing. They were dark blue. The doctor had been golden all over except for the skin of his inner thighs, which Dmitri had been able to see thanks to the wide steps the doctor had been taking to climb up the bank–that skin had been a paler, pinker color. Dmitri had wanted to sink his teeth into that inner thigh like it was an apple.

The doctor had stomped up the grassy bank, across four lanes of traffic, down half a deserted block, and shoved his way through the rotating glass door of a high-rise building whose lobby was cavernously empty. "Unbelieveable," he'd been muttering to himself. Something something something and then, "probably fucking pneumothorax," followed by a few more grumbles. His sweat-dampened face had glistened under the lights of the lobby, and the elevator, and the carpeted hallway of the twenty-second floor. Inside unit 2221 he'd flicked on a series of lights, kicked off his shoes, and pointed at a half-closed door. "In there," he'd ordered Dmitri, and in Dmitri had gone, fascinated by his own meek acquiescence. What the fuck was he doing? What the fuck are you doing? he had asked himself, and he'd had no answer.

The door had led to a bathroom. The doctor had made Dmitri sit on the closed toilet lid and take off his shirt, which Dmitri had done very slowly so the doctor would be able to appreciate the fine network of muscle that Dmitri had spent a decade building. Instead of looking impressed, the doctor had pulled on a pair of green nitrile gloves from a box in a drawer and knelt between Dmitri's knees to palpate the edge of the bruise that had swelled overnight over Dmitri's ribs.

The doctor had frowned. "Tenderness here?" he had asked.

"Fine," Dmitri had said.

"I can see the imprint of individual knuckles," the doctor had said. "Here, and here. Obviously somebody whaled on you for a while, so stop being fucking stoic and tell me if you feel tenderness when I press. Unless, of course, you'd prefer to puncture a lung and slowly drown to death in your own blood."

"Is this typical Norlish manner of bed sitting?" Dmitri had wondered.

"Beside manner," the doctor had corrected shortly, and then he'd pressed down on something that had made Dmitri inhale sharply through his teeth. "Okay, take a deep breath and exhale for me."

Dmitri had done as ordered. Despite the pain of his ribs–which the team doctors had already assured him were unfractured, just ugly-looking–and the itching discomfort of the blood drying into his split eyebrow, he had been suffused by a very strange and lovely sensation, sort of like he'd been taking a very hot bath and someone beautiful and naked had just leaned over and offered him a cool glass of mint tea. He'd stared down at the doctor kneeling between his legs, brow furrowed as he'd pressed his strong fingers in a series of short strokes along the left side of Dmitri's ribcage, and Dmitri had briefly fantasized about slipping his thumb between those serious, unsmiling lips and gently pressing against the tongue inside. The small bathroom was warm and smelled overwhelmingly of sweat and some kind of lemon-scented cleaning product.

"I can't detect any movement, which is good," the doctor had finally announced, leaning back on his heels. "You clearly got stitches–didn't your doctor tell you to take it easy?"

Dmitri had shrugged elaborately.

"Let me clean up your eyebrow," the doctor had said. "Or maybe you'd like to continue bleeding all over yourself."

"So hospitable," Dmitri had said. The doctor had stood up, and he'd put a hand out to brace himself as he'd wobbled; he'd been kneeling strangely on the tile floor, so probably one of his feet had gone to sleep. His hand had clamped down on Dmitri's shoulder. Dmitri's hands at the same time had gone to his waist, to steady him. His waist had been narrow under the loose shirt he was wearing and banded with firm muscle. The doctor had quickly released Dmitri's shoulder with a muttered sorry but Dmitri had not reciprocated. Instead, he had dug his fingertips in. Just for a second. Just to feel if there was any give.

The doctor had frozen under his hands. His head had tilted down. Dmitri had watched his pupils bloom like he was being concussed in real time.

Approximately thirty seconds later, the doctor had been flat on the tile floor as Dmitri had crawled on top of him, licking into his damp, panting mouth, the hand that wasn't scraped raw from knocking out two of Kowalczyk's teeth stroking the hardening length of the doctor's cock through his tiny little blue athletic shorts. What are you doing? some part of Dmitri's brain had wondered, but frankly it had not been a very loud part.

Dmitri had made the flight to Ashford, but only just. "Where the fuck have you been?" Riggs had asked when he'd sprinted into their hotel room thirty minutes before they were supposed to board the bus. "You missed breakfast."

"Long run. Got lost. Norland streets very confusing," Dmitri had said, whipping off his shirt and kicking off his shorts as he'd stepped into the bathroom.

"Are those bite marks?" Riggs had squawked, but Dmitri had already turned on the shower.