Chapter 1
Grigori wakes up disoriented.
The first thing he registers, other than the intolerable ache in his head, is the fluorescent light.
His thoughts are molasses slow, half-formed, slipping through his fingers before he can catch more than the tail-end.
He's in a hospital; that much he can gather from the rhythmic beeping of the monitor and the sterile white of the walls.
He's not sure
he's in a hospital, but he'd like to find out.
Kovalenko," a nurse says, followed by a string of fast Anglic.
He blinks up at her drowsily.
"What happened?" he manages, throat scratchy.
She looks around helplessly– he must've said it in Morvanian– and says something again in Anglic, slower this time.
It takes a few beats for him to translate, brain muddled.
"You —- mild concussion," she tells him.
"You may be a little sore, and —- confused."
"What happened?" he repeats, this time in the right language.
She writes something down on her clipboard, then offers him a bottle of water.
He takes it with shaky hands.
"You took a hit in your game and landed on your head.
We'll keep an eye on you for the rest of the day, and you can leave with your team tomorrow."
Leave from where?
The details escape him.
He doesn't remember a hit, or who they were playing.
He hopes he's not out for too long: winning the cup last season has only strengthened his drive.
It had been surreal and amazing and fucking empty – but he can fill whatever's broken inside of him with another one.
He wants a repeat.
He thinks they have a shot.
"You have people waiting to see you," she says as he stares at the wall.
The condensation from the bottle chills his fingers, but it feels good.
Grounding.
"If you're up for it."
He must mumble some sort of affirmative because when he zones back in, a man is in front of his bed.
He assumes this must be one of the friends in question, but he only recognizes him vaguely– it takes him a second to place the face.
Everything feels like slow motion.
"Hello," he says, uncertain.
Why a Stallions player is here, he has no idea.
Maybe that's who they were playing.
Where the fuck is my team?
"Kov," Naidu– that's his name, Grigori remembers from an Showcase Game– greets, with no small amount of relief in his voice.
The familiarity startles him; he's not sure they've ever really spoken, outside of chirps.
Oakmere is so bad, though, sometimes Grigori didn't even bother.
After a while it just feels like punching down.
"You had us worried, man."
Grigori doesn't say anything.
His confusion is gradually mounting; he had hoped, upon waking, that he would have less questions and more answers, but it's proving to be the other way around.
"I do not remember the game," he says.
"Did we win?" Maybe it was Naidu who hit him, and coming to see him was a show of sportsmanship.
Maybe this is some weird, fucked up dream.
He should have dreamed himself a hot nurse.
Naidu grins.
"Yeah, barely.
We missed you out there." Grigori accepts that silently.
"Are we in Fairbrook?" he asks.
A plane ride home would fucking suck, and all he wants to do right now is lay in his penthouse with the lights off.
Oakmere to Fairbrook shouldn't be more than an hour and a half, though.
Naidu pauses in a way that feels ominous.
"Um, no. We're in FC."
What is in FC?
He stares at Naidu blankly.
"The nurse said you might be confused.
We were playing the Comets, and you took a dirty hit.
You'll fly back to Oakmere with us tomorrow, and be out for a bit while you recover.
Nothing to stress about."
Back to...
Oakmere.
Alarm bells go off in his head– something is wrong.
He wants to ask, but he doesn't exactly trust his Anglic right now.
This isn't right.
The door opens abruptly and a blur of dark hair rushes in, holding a cup of coffee.
Grigori stares at the man for a long, long second, certain he must be hallucinating.
But no: it's Dane fucking Blackwood, in the flesh.
Flushed and freckled and looking so goddamned worried– looking at Grigori like he'd never looked at him before.
"Fuck, Grigori," he says, and isn't
a shock to the system, his first name falling so affectionately from those pink lips.
"I'm so sorry, I went to the cafeteria, and then Nai texted you were awake, and I just...
God." He pauses his frantic rambling to sit next to Grigori, placing a hand on his arm.
Naidu is still
"I was freaking out.
We knew you were going to be okay, but I was still...
oh, thank God, Grigori."
Grigori just stares at him, his arm burning where Blackwood's fingers touch.
He can't think of one reason Blackwood would be here, miles from Millhaven, hand on Grigori's body like he owned it.
They haven't spoken in months, and the last time they did they hadn't even kissed.
It's making his chest hurt.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" he asks, shaky Anglic be damned.
Blackwood freezes, eyes wide.
Even startled he's gorgeous, but Grigori can't find it in himself to appreciate it.
Instead, it's just pissing him off.
"That is what I am asking you." He squeezes the water bottle tighter.
"Why you are not in Millhaven."
Blackwood just stares at him stupidly, slowly removing his hand from Grigori's arm.
Naidu makes an odd noise; Grigori'd forgot he's still here.
"I haven't been on Millhaven in years, Grigori.
I play for Oakmere now, with you."
Grigori goes still.
What Blackwood is saying doesn't make any sense.
None of this makes any fucking sense.
He just won the Heritage fucking Cup a few months ago – with
Fairbrook
He won MVP and fucked Blackwood in his huge suite for one of the hottest nights of his life then flew back to Petrovsk to go deal with his father's illness because no one else would.
He tries to force down the panic that has taken hold of him, but it's not working.
"I do not understand," he says, breathing in slowly.
"He's our teammate," Naidu says.
"You're an Oakmere Stallion.
You're our
captain.
"No," Grigori says through gritted teeth.
"That is not true, for me.
I play with Fairbrook.
We just won the Cup."