Chapter Text
It starts with an MLH-sponsored event in Toronto.
Youth initiatives. Inclusivity. Scott was invited as a seasoned veteran of the sport, along with numerous others from the league.
Kip sort of hates it.
Not the intention, of course. Empowering hockey youth is great, in theory. And inviting the only openly gay player is a nice gesture. But both he and Scott know it’s bullshit, a thinly-veiled attempt at LGBT friendliness, in a sport that has never been friendly to their sort at all.
No actual changes to the culture or environment that had made coming out so impossible for Scott, just here’s a gay hockey player. We still involve him, even with kids around. Look how progressive we are.
Again, Kip hates it.
It’s late afternoon now, and Kip has spent an entire day watching the finest sportsmen in the league dart around on the ice with a bunch of fumbling kids.
It’s cute. Scott, especially, is cute. Kip watches him correct passes, streamline turns, and manage their spacing. The kids all watch him in wide-eyed awe, clamouring for his attention and praise.
The kids are great. Scott’s great. It’s the other players, really, that are the problem.
Most are fine, focused on their own shit. But some side-eye Scott with obvious contempt, ignore him when he tries to make conversation.
“They’ll treat you badly now that they know,” Kip had said after that fateful kiss on the ice.
“They’ll get over it,” Scott had said simply. “And if they don’t, it was still worth it.”
Kit believed him then, and he believes him now, but that doesn’t change the certainty that he took something from Scott. That he condemned him to something, that day he let him pull him onto the ice.
By the time the event winds down, Kip is a little angry, gut-achingly hungry, and riddled with a bone-deep exhaustion. The kids are ushered out, the players drift off in groups, and the rink empties of its noise.
Back at the hotel, there’s nowhere to go except the bar. Kip follows the congregation of hockey players and seats himself firmly atop a barstool, letting the hum of conversation wash over him.
He’s nursing a beer when Dallas Kent—centre for the Toronto Guardians and all-around hulking bully—sidles up beside him.
Kip glances up at him. Down at his drink. Scott is in the corner, corralled by a bunch of his teammates. “Hello...?” Kip ventures.
“You’re Hunter’s boyfriend.”
Kent has about fifty pounds and five inches on Kip, but still, he finds himself straightening at the tone, the derision. “I am,” he says proudly.
Kent’s face twists. “He was so good. He could have been one of the best. I can’t believe he threw it away for some—”
“Fuck off and die, Kent,” says a new voice, with feeling.
Kip is fond of them immediately.
Then he chances a glance up (why are hockey players so fucking tall?) and realises Ilya fucking Rozanov has just told a fellow player to go die.
Kent whirls on Rozanov furiously, seems to realise who he is squaring up against, and storms away.
“That was Dallas Kent,” says Kip stupidly, watching the man’s retreating back. His tongue is tangled. He can’t think of anything else to say. He might have just traded one homophobic asshole for another.
He knows of Rozanov, of course. Both from Scott’s endless tirades and his now frequent viewings of hockey. He knows that Rozanov plays like a man with no sense of self-preservation and nothing to lose. He knows he pisses everyone else off in the league, including Scott—especially Scott.
“He’s a cunt,” says Rozanov succinctly. He nods at the barstool beside Kip’s. “Can I sit?”
“Well—yeah.” Kip decides to fuck the whole day off to hell and turns to face Rozanov fully. “Kip Grady,” he says, extending a hand. “Nice to meet you.”
To his surprise, Rozanov shakes it. “Ilya,” he says. “I know your boyfriend.”
“My boyfriend hates you.” The words emerge from him without forethought. It’s the way he’d speak to Elena. Teasing. A little biting. He’s certain he’s overstepped for a moment, but then Rozanov tips his head back and laughs—carefree, raucous—and Kip is left staring, a little off-kilter. Vertiginous.
“Your boyfriend is old. Probably has dementia.”
Kip bristles. “He is not old.”
Rozanov is still smiling. He is, Kip realises with some surprise, exceptionally handsome. He’d been so fixated on Scott for so long that the thought had never occurred to him before, but he’s not blind. “He is old in hockey years. The oldest man alive.”
“Why are you speaking to me?”
“I made Hunter a promise.”
“A promise?”
Rozanov winks. “That I would protect his boyfriend from all of the scary hockey players.”
Kip frowns. “I’m not scared.”
Rozanov’s still staring. His eyes crinkle at the corners. “You remind me of someone.”
“A friend?”
“A lover.”
Kip is jolted to attention like a man electrified.
“A male lover,” Rozanov clarifies quietly. “Your boyfriend knows. Is obvious he didn’t say anything.”
Kip shakes his head profusely. No. Scott had certainly never insinuated that Ilya Rozanov, famous womaniser of the league, had a male lover. “Why are you—”
“Telling you?” Rozanov takes a long sip of his drink. A vodka, Kip thinks, which, stereotypes, but—
“You and Scott did important thing for me on the ice. You did not mean to—but—” Rozanov trails off for a moment. His brow is furrowed. He looks incredibly faraway. “You showed me possibility, understand?”
Kip thinks of Scott’s lips on his own on the ice. The jumbotrons displaying their faces, their love. That same certainty, the one that has pitted itself in his gut like a weed, that he has taken something from him.
But perhaps taking something from Scott has given something to others. Perhaps people like Ilya Rozanov feel a little braver now.
Maybe it mattered. Beyond the two of them. Beyond what they felt.
“I’m happy for you,” says Kip.
The simplicity of this seems to bring Rozanov up short. “Happy. Yes. I am happy for you, too.”
Kip smiles. Something has lifted, some weight he hadn’t even recognised the burden of until now.
“Even if your boyfriend is more out of date than low-rise jeans.”
And of course, he can’t resist. “You’re wearing low-rise jeans.”
“I am special case.”
“Yes.” Kip is grinning back. “You are certainly that.”
Rozanov finishes his drink in one great gulp. “Maybe I bring my lover to next function, yes?”
Kip teasingly glances over his shoulder, surveying the bar. “Or maybe he’s here already.”
It’s only when Rozanov goes still that Kip realises he might have encroached on something too close to home.
Then Rozanov laughs, and Kip laughs too, and they both act like Rozanov’s lover isn’t definitely a part of the MLH, holy shit.
“Maybe,” Rozanov says. His fake laugh tapers off. “You’ll say nothing?”
Kip eyes Rozanov carefully, then he figures why the hell not and places a hand on the other man’s arm. “I’ll say nothing. Ever.”
Rozanov is looking increasingly—and suspiciously—glassy-eyed. “Of course you’re nice. Forces me to be nice, too, hm?”
But Kip hasn’t forced Rozanov to be anything. And isn't it nice, he thinks, that Rozanov is coming to him as himself, entirely himself, because of what he and Scott did on the ice.
“Double date?” Kip ventures, half joking, half not.
Rozanov lifts his empty glass in salute. “Double date,” he says.
And Kip glances over at Scott, and smiles again, and knows now, with certainty, that it was all worth it.