Excerpt, full chapter on ao3:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/83972436/chapters/224108451
Calgary, Alberta — November 2005
That was the first thing Roman noticed.
Not the people. Not the table. Not the Canadian flag folded neatly in the corner beside the federation banner. Not the row of officials with their folders, water glasses, and careful faces.
It pressed at the back of his neck and settled under his collar, making the skin there feel too aware of itself.
Roman sat between Dmitri and Elaine Porter from Skate Canada, hands folded neatly in his lap, spine straight, ankles crossed beneath the chair. His posture had already been corrected twice that morning and neither time out loud.
Once in the car, when Dmitri had looked at him in the rearview mirror.
Once outside the meeting room, when Dmitri’s hand had settled briefly at the back of his neck.
The room smelled like coffee, paper, and the faint stale sweetness of pastries no one had touched. Beyond the windows, Calgary sat under a flat, pale sky, the kind of winter light that made everything look washed and undecided.
Roman focused on the condensation gathering near the base of one water glass.
Then slipped down the side.
He watched it instead of looking at the folder on the table.
He already knew what was inside it.
Elaine Porter was speaking.
She had a soft voice, deliberately so, the kind adults used when they wanted a conversation to feel less dangerous than it was.
“Obviously, this is an extraordinary situation,” she said.
Roman could feel his father’s stillness beside him.
That word had been used several times already.
Extraordinary opportunity.
Adults liked words that made dangerous things sound polished.
Elaine continued, “Roman’s results over the last two seasons speak for themselves. His technical content is significantly ahead of the domestic field at his age, and internationally—”
Roman’s fingers tightened once in his lap.
Or if they did, they were polite enough to pretend otherwise.
The man across the table, Gerald Something, turned one page in his folder. Roman could not remember his last name. He had introduced himself at the beginning. Roman had nodded. Dmitri had shaken his hand. The name had left Roman immediately after.
Gerald had small glasses and a face that suggested he had never once been late for a flight.
“The concern,” Gerald said, “is not talent.”
Roman knew what came next.
He had heard versions of it for weeks.
Not in meetings. Not directly. Through half-sentences in hallways, lowered voices at rinks, phone calls Dmitri took in the kitchen when he thought Roman was asleep.
Limited international senior experience.
Olympic environment is different.
He also knew that they wanted him anyway.
That was the strange part.
Everyone in the room knew he was not ready, but they were arranging themselves around the possibility that readiness might not matter if he was good enough.
Good enough had begun to feel less like praise and more like a trapdoor.
Gerald looked at Roman directly.
“You understand this would be a very large step.”
“Senior Olympic competition is unlike anything you’ve experienced.”
“You would be competing against men with far more experience.”
“He knows,” she said, as if helping.
Roman did not look at her.
Dmitri spoke for the first time in several minutes.
People always responded to Dmitri’s voice. It cut differently from theirs. Lower, heavier, still shaped by an accent that refused to disappear no matter how many years had passed. People heard it and listened, sometimes because they respected him, sometimes because they were uncomfortable not knowing whether they should.
Roman had watched him use it for most of his life.
Gerald turned toward him.
“Dmitri, with respect, no fifteen-year-old is fully prepared for the Olympic Games.”
"Roman's sixteen. Next month."
The sentence sat in the room.
Roman looked down at the table.
His reflection blurred faintly in the polished wood.
His birthday sat elsewhere on paper now.
Corrected, Dmitri had said.
The first time Roman had seen it, he had thought it was a mistake. Another one. Like Rowan. Like people who looked at his face and then at his jacket and failed to make the two things belong to the same country.
The date was wrong by months.
Not enough to be obvious to someone who did not already know.
Enough to make rules bend.
Enough to turn no into yes.
Roman had stared at the form in Dmitri’s office, one hand still on the filing cabinet, while his father stood behind him.
“That’s not my birthday,” Roman had said.
Then, “It is your official date.”
“China records are not exact.”
Dmitri’s face had been unreadable.
“They gave you estimate when you were baby,” Dmitri said. “You know this.”
“You know what they told us.”
The word had come out before he could stop it.
Dmitri’s expression had changed then. Not anger. Not yet. Something colder.
Because the question was not fair.
Dmitri had stepped closer.
“You want to compete with best in world?”
Roman had stared at the paper.
“You are ready,” Dmitri said.
Dmitri’s hand came down on the top of the filing cabinet.
“Do you think they care?” he said. “Do you think sport is clean? You think everyone tells truth and waits politely for permission?”
“You are my son. I know what you are. I know what you can do. Some clerk in China writes date because no one knows, and now this decides your life? No.”
The paper sat between them.
Roman remembered feeling like the floor had shifted under him, though nothing moved.
Dmitri’s eyes were pale and absolute.
“You want. Do not lie to me.”
He wanted so badly it made him feel ill.
The Olympics had always been there, distant and impossible, less a goal than a shape at the edge of everything Dmitri had built. Roman had known about them before he understood what they were. Knew Dmitri had gone. Knew Dmitri had medaled under another flag, in another country, in a life Roman could only imagine in fragments: grainy photographs, old footage, a younger body moving with frightening speed, Soviet letters on fabric.
The Olympics were not a competition in their house.
They were the place where Dmitri had become real to the world.
Not the same way Dmitri wanted it for him.
Enough to make the lie feel like something he could stand beside if he did not look directly at it.
So now he sat in the warm room while Gerald called him fifteen and the paper in the folder said something close enough to sixteen to pass.
Dmitri said, “He is not like other sixteen-year-olds.”
Elaine looked at Roman again.
“That is part of why we’re here.”
Roman hated the softness in her voice.
She was not cruel. That was the problem. Cruelty would have made this easier.
Everyone in the room was being reasonable.
Everyone was helping him.
Everyone was standing around the wrong date and pretending it was solid ground.
Gerald folded his hands on the table.
“We would not be considering this if the field were deeper.”
Dmitri’s mouth tightened.
The insult was not meant as one, but Dmitri received it anyway.
Gerald continued, “Or if Roman’s recent scores had not been so compelling. The Junior Grand Prix result was exceptional. The technical panel notes were—frankly, unusually strong. Domestically, there is no question he’s ahead.”
Roman pictured the results sheet from Scottsdale.
Danny Markov somewhere in the middle.
He thought of him anyway.
Not now, he told himself.
But the thought arrived regardless, like a blade catching unexpectedly in a rut.
Markov would not be going.
Not because anyone told him directly. Because the American selections had come through the gossip circuit the way all things did. Whitaker and Lowell. Experienced men. Sensible choices. Danny Markov not selected.
Dmitri had said nothing about it.
Roman had said nothing either.
But he had thought of the bus outside the hotel.
He had won that exchange.
That should have felt like proof.
Instead it felt like one more thing that did not fit cleanly.
Elaine slid a paper forward.
“We’re prepared to recommend Roman for the Olympic team,” she said.
