Chapter 1
When Ethan exits Derek's hospital room, phone in hand to call Mira and Leon and Sophie and everyone else who's waiting on an update, he nearly runs into Dmitri fucking Volkov, pacing the hall.
"Oh," he says stupidly, staring at the large, prowling form of Seattle's captain.
"You're still here."
He hadn't thought much of Volkov swinging by the hospital a few hours back, right when visiting hours had started that morning.
When someone took a bad hit like this, it was routine for the opposing team to do something to reach out, make sure everyone knew that hockey was hockey but nobody had wanted something like this to happen.
Volkov had been stilted and formal and his English had been worse than Ethan had heard it since they'd all been rookies together, offering his apologies on behalf of Therrien, asking after Derek's condition.
Ethan hadn't been at his best after a long night, and he may have been a little snippy with the man when he'd informed him that thanks to his teammate, Derek was unconscious and the doctors didn't know why he wasn't waking up.
He'd been too worried out of his mind to really track much of anything else, but he'd seen the expression of legitimate fear on Volkov's face at the news, something vulnerable and shocked.
"He— is not awake," Volkov had said blankly.
"He is not okay?"
"No, man.
No, he's not fucking okay."
And then Ethan had been ducking around the corner to call Derek's parents again; they were waiting at the airport after their first attempt to fly had been thwarted by bad weather in Portland.
He'd become Derek's temporary medical proxy, of a sort; the doctors had talked to Mira on the phone and she'd given permission for them to share shit with Ethan about Derek's condition while they got their asses to Seattle.
He hasn't taken a second to pause and process in over twenty-four hours.
There had been the game, playing shitty and distracted the whole time, and then rushing straight to the hospital after, and getting a lot of scary information about a broken collarbone and a probable concussion and checking for brain bleeds and running tests... he'd gone back to the hotel just long enough to shower and fall into a restless sleep for less than three hours, and then he'd come back to stand fucking vigil outside of Derek's room, wishing Sophie could teleport here to hold his hand, wishing the rest of the team would stop texting him for updates, wishing Derek would wake up and tell him what he's supposed to do.
After he'd talked to Volkov that morning he hadn't given the man a second thought, dealing with the updates and the phone calls and shoving a bag of chips in his face from a vending machine just to keep the energy up for a little longer.
He'd been allowed to go in and sit with Derek for a while, although the experience had been an odd one, like being bored and scared at the same time— Derek was just lying there, bruised face and arm bound up in a sling.
He could have been sleeping.
He could have been about to open his eyes any moment.
But he couldn't.
Wouldn't.
And reading between the lines of what the doctors were saying, nobody's entirely sure why.
It had made him antsy before too long, and he'd decided another round of phone calls might be in order, and now here he is, staring at a very frazzled Dmitri Volkov, dark circles under his eyes and his lips dry and and chapped like he's been chewing on them.
"He is still not— he is not awake?" Volkov asks, eyes darting around Ethan's face with anxious attention.
"No change," Ethan says, before realizing maybe he shouldn't be offering medical information to a guy he and Derek barely know.
"Uh.
Not trying to be rude, but what the fuck are you doing here?"
Volkov opens his mouth and then snaps it shut again, swallowing hard.
"I wanted to check on him."
"Yeah, that's what you did like almost three hours ago.
You checked.
You're good.
You can go."
"No," Volkov says.
He looks at Ethan, a fierce sort of defiance in his eyes.
He looks— kind of like a wreck, maybe a bit how Ethan probably looks.
Sallow, like he hasn't eaten or slept properly.
Eyes rimmed in red.
"No, I can't leave."
"Are you feeling guilty, or something?" Ethan asks.
He can't really understand another explanation for Volkov's behavior.
Not like he actually knows the guy personally, but he's always gotten a general impression of a callous, cocky, annoyingly talented athlete with a stereotypically shallow emotional range.
The kind of guy incapable of thinking about other people as anything more than instruments for his own use.
"No," Volkov says again.
"Not guilty, not— I didn't do anything, Therrien didn't do anything wrong.
I almost hit him, after the game.
But I didn't, because it was accident.
We all know this."
"You almost hit—" Ethan shakes his head, trying to make sense of this.
"Listen, I'm running on almost no sleep and I'm trying to deal with calling his parents and the fucking PR shit and the rest of the team is bugging me for updates and I don't really have time to decode what the fuck you're saying.
Do you need something from me, or are we done here?"
It wasn't a real question, but Volkov answers it.
"I need something.
I need something from you.
I need you to tell me what is happening with Callahan, please."
And now he's starting to get properly pissed off.
"Why the fuck should I?"
"Because—" Volkov stops and swallows, looks around the empty hallway.
"Fuck.
Fuck this fucking stupid— I need you to tell me if he's okay, or I will lose my mind, nobody can tell me anything here, I can't just ask nurses, I am nobody, I am not allowed to be told.
But you know.
You know what the doctor is saying, you can tell me that he will be okay.
I need to know he will be okay."
"Why do you care?" Ethan asks, and Volkov makes a frustrated sound, almost a growl, in the back of his throat.
"Please, Ethan, please come sit down.
I need, I need— I will explain."
It's that, honestly, Volkov calling him Ethan, that cuts through the irritation and the exhaustion and gets him to pause and actually think about the situation.
He kind of didn't think Dmitri Fucking Volkov, player of a generation, would even have bothered to remember his name.
"Okay," he says slowly, carefully.
"There are chairs right around the corner, here.
It's where I was waiting last night when they first transferred him to this room."
They sit next to each other but with a seat in between, a buffer, and Volkov looks around the room, scanning it as if for other occupants.
It's really just a little alcove, nothing more.
There's a table with a few old magazines and a fake potted plant.
The bigger waiting room is down the hall, but Ethan supposes this is where loved ones gather sometimes right outside the doors of their injured family, waiting for the worst or the best news of their lives.
"Talk," Ethan says, after thirty seconds of waiting for Volkov to explain himself.
Volkov flinches, even though Ethan had kept his voice low and steady.
"I will tell you something.
And you will maybe not believe me," he says finally, an odd, undefinable tremor in his voice.
"Because it is fucking crazy.
It is so fucking crazy but— it's the truth.
And I can't leave, and I can't explain it any other way.
So."
"Okay," Ethan says, trying to stay calm.
His brain literally cannot speculate about whatever this thing is, this thing Dmitri Volkov is feeling the need to confess to him, sitting here in the hall outside of Derek's hospital room.
He wants to call Sophie, he wants to hear her voice.
He wants Derek to wake the fuck up.
And instead he's sitting here, with this asshole he barely knows.
This asshole who looks like he's two seconds from bursting into tears.
"Okay, lay it on me."
"I don't want to tell you this," Volkov says.
"He will be, when he wakes up, he will be so angry, probably.
But I need— someone has to know, because I need help, he is unconscious, I don't know what to do."
"Look, whatever it is—"
"Just let me— fuck, fuck me, this is so stupid.
You know, Derek tells me you know he has a— that he texts someone, a girl, here in Seattle."
"Violet," Ethan says automatically.
"You know about Violet?"
Something flickers across Volkov's face.
His jaw twitches.
"Yes, I know about Violet." He raises his eyebrows.