Vancouver, British Columbia
February 16, 2010
Someone had erected a giant rainbow tent in the middle of the Olympic Village.
Valeri stopped dead in his tracks when he noticed it, fear gripping him. Where had that come from? He was certain it had not been there this morning; he would have seen it. He would have avoided it. But there was no avoiding it now—it was right near the entrance leading to Team Canada’s accommodations, the universe’s cruel idea of a joke.
Was there some way he could go around? A longer route, perhaps, that took him around the square and away from the tent. He couldn’t let anyone see him walk past it; what if they got the wrong (right) idea about him?
Just ahead of him, Adrian—Canadian figure skater and one of Valeri’s few friends outside his Russian teammates—paused, looking around as he realized Valeri was no longer walking beside him, and then turned to him with a frown. “Val?”
Valeri remained frozen. People were jostling him as they walked past, shooting him glares for not moving out of their way. Adrian took one look at him, and then at the tent, and walked back to him, pushing his mirrored sunglasses up into his bleached-blond hair so he could look into Valeri’s eyes unencumbered.
“It’s fine,” he muttered, voice low. His Russian was still utterly abysmal, but the sound of it was enough to snap Valeri out of his stupor. “No one is looking at you.”
“Everyone is looking at me, actually,” Valeri said. The people walking through the square, some of the people in the tent itself, staff and volunteers and—der’mo, Valeri thought, locking eyes with the one athlete eating beneath the rainbow awning.
Why, Valeri lamented silently, did it have to be Cole Avery?
He watched as Cole stood and took his empty plate over to the recycling bins, the red Team Canada windbreaker standing out even beneath the brightly colored tent. The Pride House tent. For a split second, a tiny ember of hope lit a spark in Valeri’s chest, and he squashed it immediately. There could be no room for that here.
Valeri felt like he was sixteen again as Cole approached, like he was back at the Palavela, meeting the shy, handsome hockey player for the first time. Cole had been the Canadian national team’s youngest member at nineteen, fresh from his draft to the NHL and eager to prove himself, to help bring home gold for Team Canada. He had been quiet and reserved, but sweet, and it had taken all of one conversation for Valeri to fall head over heels for him.
It had been Adrian who had introduced them, because he and Cole were not only Canadian teammates, but old friends. They had learned to skate at the same rink, had trained together as children, played together on a little league hockey team before Adrian had decided he would rather do camel spins than body checks. But they had remained friends, and so anywhere that Adrian went during those two weeks in Turin, Cole was almost sure to be there, as well.
Valeri, intimidated by his Russian teammates, who were all older and more experienced than him, had latched onto the kind and friendly Adrian the moment they’d met. Young, lonely, and so afraid of making a fool of himself, he’d wanted desperately to fit in with the older athletes, and luckily for him, Adrian had not seemed to mind gaining a second shadow in the form of a lanky Russian teenager.
Adrian had been everything Valeri was not—he was loud and flamboyant, and he did not care what anyone thought of him. Valeri admired him and buried the envy whenever it reared its ugly head.
Of course, Adrian had figured him out almost immediately, and in private had teased Valeri mercilessly for his schoolboy crush on his childhood friend. Val had hoped that the crush would have dissipated in the four years since Italy, but seeing Cole now? He felt all those feelings come rushing back as though they had never left. Unfortunately, he was horrified to find that he was just as enamored with the hockey player as he had ever been.
“Hello, handsome!” Adrian greeted Cole when he reached them, going in immediately for a hug and kissing Cole on the cheek.
There it was again—the jealousy, bubbling in Valeri’s stomach like he had swallowed acid. He couldn’t tell what he was more jealous of: the fact that Adrian could be so free and open with his affections without fear of judgement, or the fact that it was Cole he was being so free and open with.
“Cole, you remember Valeri Nadezhdin,” Adrian continued as he pulled back, throwing an arm around Valeri’s shoulders and yanking him firmly to his side, as though he could sense that Valeri was a flight risk. “He was at Turin, too.”
“Of course I remember,” Cole said, those brown eyes meeting Valeri’s once more. “It’s nice to see you again, Valeri.” He smiled, the same shy smile from four years ago, that bloomed slow and lopsided, an almost self-deprecating smile.
Blyad’, Valeri thought, his stomach doing a funny little flip. I am fucked.
He should have said that it was nice to see Cole again, too, or any other perfectly polite, detached response, so of course, he did the exact opposite of that.
“Not know you are…” He couldn’t say the word in any language, the shape of it getting lodged in his throat, along with the fear. He nodded to the rainbow tent instead.
Cole frowned, looking from Valeri to the tent and then back again. “Oh, uh…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s not really about whether you are or aren’t, it’s more about, like, showing solidarity with anyone who’s…afraid. Especially people from countries like—ah—”
Like yours. Though Cole had stopped himself, the words hung heavy in the air between them. Accusatory. Accurate. It was several seconds before Valeri realized that Cole had not actually denied anything. Before he could process that fact, though, Cole spoke again.
“Actually,” he said hastily, pushing through the awkwardness. “Me and a couple of the other guys are going to be eating breakfast at the tent tomorrow, just to like, show everyone that Team Canada is down, or whatever.” He looked at Adrian, then. “You guys have a free day tomorrow, right? You should join us.”
Adrian smiled. “That sounds like an excellent idea, Cole,” he said. His fingers pressed bruises into Valeri’s shoulder. “We’ll be there, won’t we, Val?”
Valeri was dizzy. “Da,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say.
Cole smiled again, and Valeri felt his knees go a bit rubbery; he wasn’t sure he would have remained upright had Adrian not been holding him so tightly.
“Great,” Cole said. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow. And hey, good luck tonight with your short programs.”
“Good luck against Norway,” Adrian said, waving him off.
Valeri waited until Cole was out of earshot—he couldn’t help but stare as Cole walked away, noticing how well his Team Canada windbreaker, with the large Avery 14 on the back, and his dark jeans, suited him—before he rounded on Adrian, furious.
“What the fuck,” he hissed in Russian. “Why did you agree?”
“Because he’s my friend,” Adrian hissed back. “And I don’t give a fuck about the color of the tent I’m sitting under while I talk to him.”
Valeri huffed, but he didn’t argue further. He knew Adrian meant well, in his strange way. Maybe it wouldn’t be…so bad, he reasoned. It was just breakfast, and like Cole said, it wasn’t about making a statement, about confirming whether he was or wasn’t whatever people might have thought he was. It was simply about showing solidarity with those athletes who might be too afraid to come out.
No one had to know that that included him.
February 17
Cole showed up at the Pride House tent early the next morning, giving the volunteers some excuse about wanting to help them get set up, but the truth was that he was just so nervous that he couldn’t stand pacing around his room any longer. That, and Scott, his roommate and fellow Canadian hockey player, had threatened him on pain of death if he kept it up, so he’d left.
He didn’t know why he was so jittery. It wasn’t like this was a date. Adrian would be there, for one thing, and he was basically like Cole’s older brother. Also, Valeri was so repressed that he would probably run screaming for the hills if he even thought for a moment that Cole might have those sorts of feelings for him. Not that Cole wanted to date Valeri. He hardly knew him, and the last time they had seen each other, Valeri had only been sixteen. Not exactly dating age.
He wasn’t sixteen now, though. Over the last four years he had grown into his gangly limbs, but there was a bit of baby fat still clinging to his body, giving him an almost feminine shape. There was also an air of confidence around him now that he hadn’t had four years ago, when he’d been so young and skittish. Cole could still remember the party that first night in the village, after he had met Valeri for the first time, when Adrian had been three sheets to the wind and he’d leaned over to whisper-shout in Cole’s ear: “Val is like, so in love with you! It’s adorable.”
Briefly, he wondered if Valeri might still have a crush on him, but it had been four years. Perhaps he had someone, back in Russia, or maybe in Paris where he trained. It was a little egotistical, Cole decided, to think that Valeri might still be nursing feelings for him after all this time.
As quiet hours ended and the village started to come to life, people began to trickle past the tent. Most were coaches, other staff, and members of various entourages. Very few athletes, although the Captain did drop by, along with a couple of the other veteran players, their Team Canada jackets standing out. The Captain clapped Cole on the shoulder as he passed.
Cole waited, and he waited. Eventually someone sat down next to him, and he looked up to see Adrian.
Just Adrian.
He already knew the answer, but he asked anyway. “Valeri?”
Adrian just shook his head.
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