Work Text:
February 7, 2014
“Oh, Scott,” Vaughny says, tone laced with disappointment.
“I like it, shut up,” Scott says. He runs a hand through his bleached, short-cut hair, smiling and waving as the Opening Ceremony procession marches through Sochi.
“You know you can talk to me, right?” Vaughny says.
“There’s nothing to talk about! I just wanted a change. It looks fresh, don’t you think?” Scott says.
“Interesting look, Scott,” comes a voice to his left, and Scott turns to see Janice, the captain of the women’s team, marching in lockstep beside him. “You doing alright?”
“Why do people keep asking that? I’m fine!” Scott snaps. He pauses. “Shit, sorry Janice, I didn’t mean to be harsh.”
“All good, Scotty,” Janice says, eyeing him in a distinctly queer fashion. “You just kind of look like my wife right now. Well, until the beard.”
The casual way she says wife cuts him to his core, but he recovers quickly. Having your heart gently caressed by a man who promises to be there for you, but who then drops it into the nearest dumpster tends to do that to you. Builds resilience. Besides, he happens to think the contrast of his dark stubble and fuzzy blond hair is quite fetching.
“Well, we clearly both have good taste,” Scott says. “It’ll go well with Gold.”
Both Vaughny and Janice raise their eyebrows at that.
“Cocky, huh? That’s new. I like it,” Janice says.
“Uh, jinx?” Vaughny says. “The hockey gods-”
“There is no God,” Scott says, smile fixed as the procession rounds off and they approach their seats. “Of hockey or anything else.”
Vaughny and Janice try to glance at each other around Scott’s head. Unfortunately for them, they’re all around the same height and are marching in the same direction, so all it accomplishes is making it look like they’re staring at him. That photo will definitely end up in a tabloid tomorrow, probably with some caption suggesting one or all of them are on meth. Scott loves being American, but he does envy those who can change their hairstyle without a half dozen late-night comedians making jokes about it.
It was a good decision. Kip had told him to keep his hair long, said it broke his heart whenever Scott gave it a trim, but Kip can hardly complain about people not keeping their promises. Besides, Scott’s always had this awful habit of pulling his own hair when he’s stressed, and it’s much harder to do that now.
February 9, 2014
Shane is staring at his head.
“It’s not a wig, I promise,” Scott says, elbowing him.
“It’s just so…” Shane shakes himself. “Sorry.”
“No, I get it. I mean, I look crazy hot, right?” Scott says.
Vaughny chokes on his meat skewer. Scott taps his back, then smacks it, and for a moment he can see the headline, Speed Skating Stopped After American Hockey Player Chokes on Russian Meat in Stands, but eventually Vaughny coughs out a hunk of mystery meat.
“You need to stop eating those, man,” Scott says. “Just… go for the pelmeni.”
“Seriously, Scott, are you okay? Because my mom says the only guys who get a cut like that are having a midlife crisis or have just been dumped,” Shane says.
“It’s fashion,” Scott insists. “I’ve always wanted to try it. Why not now?”
Shane says nothing, turns to the speed skating and comments on that instead, which makes it much easier for Scott to breathe. These damn kids used to respect him, he swears. Now they’re prying into his business, at the worst possible time, because he finally has business. The kid who called him Mr Hunter wouldn’t interrogate him about this, he’s sure. Every you know you can talk to me, right is just having the opposite effect, driving him further into silence and glaring.
Vaughny pulls him aside once the speed skating finishes, after Shane announces he needs to get ready for Canada’s game against Slovakia. “Look, Scott, I’ve been patient, but I’ve got to say it. Is this about…” he leans forward “Blueberry banana?”
Scott feels icy betrayal crystalising in his chest.
“You went through my phone?” he asks, soft, because Kip taught him you don’t have to yell to ruin a man’s life. You just have to give him some rope, and he’ll hang himself.
“No, man, never! I just… look, you never text anyone, and you know Eric’s vision is scary good, and he said you were texting someone called K with a blueberry and a banana emoji, and suddenly you were sending a photo of your blue banana socks to them, and then you stopped! And now you’re miserable!”
“I’m not miserable!” Scott insists. “I’m fine!”
More than fine, really. Vaughny seems to have no idea about Kip, has not betrayed him, and Scott has a good feeling about their prospects for Gold. He just needs everyone to leave him and his beautiful hair alone.
February 13, 2014
It should figure that the day after Russia’s embarrassing crash-out against Latvia is the first time Scott sees Ilya Rozanov in the entire Olympics.
“Rozanov,” Scott says, nodding politely as he passes the weird serial killer alcove in the brand-new athlete’s building where Rozanov is brooding.
Rozanov looks miserable, and Scott knows how awful it feels when you think you’ve let millions of people down. He also, however, is tired of playing elder statesman. It takes all of his diplomacy to offer Rozanov even mild indifference right now.
“Rozanov,” Vaughny repeats, nodding to the exact same degree as Scott had. The bastard.
Scott fools himself into thinking they’ve made it out unscathed when he hears his name called.
“Hunter!” Rozanov’s eyes latch on him, looking kind of manic and a little red. “Where is teenage girlfriend?”
“What teenage… what the hell are you implying?” Scott asks, simmering. He’s got a decent grasp on his temper, but if Rozanov thinks his inability to even reach the quarterfinals justifies baseless allegations…
“You know, young girlfriend, motorcycle, leather jacket, bad hair… is midlife crisis different for dinosaurs?” Rozanov smirks, all teeth. His eyes still speak of sorrow.
Alright, just an age crack, then. Scott’s still annoyed, but not enough to say anything.
“Russian men live to what, like, 45? So you’re midlife now. Glass houses, man,” Vaughny says, because apparently he is annoyed enough.
Rozanov’s smirk widens. For fuck’s sake, they’re not doing this.
“Vaughny, come on, be nice,” Scott says. “We still have a game tomorrow, remember? Save it for the ice.”
“Yes, Vaughny,” Rozanov mocks. “Crawl back to Hunter’s kennel and obey like good boy.”
“Fuck off, Rozanov,” Scott says, instantly. He knows Rozanov doesn’t mean anything racial by it, that he overuses the dog-and-puppy metaphors around Scott and everyone in his life, but Vaughny’s dealt with enough racists in his career that he won’t see it that way. Vaughny’s already sliding into the defensive posture he uses around the worst kinds of people, and Scott is regretting not just grabbing him and turning the other way the moment they saw Rozanov. “You’re making things worse.”
“Of course he is, Scott,” Vaughny says. “He’s a fuckboy, it’s what he does. He insults everyone who tries to get close, and buries himself in pathetic, surface level relationships to fill the void. He’ll never know real intimacy because he’s too afraid of disappointing his corrupt, dying empire.”
Rozanov actually flinches at that incredibly low blow, and Scott is feeling all hope of diplomacy die when he realises… isn’t that Scott himself, right there? Pathetic, surface level relationships? Check. Afraid of disappointing a corrupt, dying empire? Quite possibly, depending on who you ask. Insulting anyone who gets close, though…
“Roz- Ilya,” Scott says, moving forwards and putting both hands on Rozanov’s shoulders. He goes boneless at the touch. “Come here.”
He’s surprised by the ease at which Rozanov accepts the calming touch.
“Uh, Scott?” Vaughny asks, understandably incensed. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“I get it,” Scott says, to Rozanov mostly, but loud enough for Vaughny to hear. “You’re doing all this, giving so much of yourself to others, and they don’t even appreciate it. Just blame you for not being completely perfect.”
Scott moves to pull Rozanov into a hug, and he doesn’t need to try very hard before he’s being clutched at, like a port in the storm.
“I don’t know what crap you’ve had to deal with, but I know it probably sucked, and you didn’t deserve it,” Scott continues, over Rozanov’s shoulder. “You’re not a bad guy, Ilya. I bet you were a pretty sensitive kid, huh? You must have been, you can read people so easily. Probably taught yourself not to cry, because you’re not supposed to, right?”
Rozanov’s arms are clinging, but his head is almost frozen, and so the nod he makes against the fabric of Scott’s jacket is infinitesimal. But it’s there.
“One day, things will get better,” Scott says, soothing. “You’ll meet someone – it might be one person, it might be a lot of people, but they’ll make you feel like home again. All of this pain, now? It’ll be a memory, that’s all. You’ll have…”
Scott casts his mind to the joyous moments, the warmth.
“You’ll have arms you can cry in and shelter when it’s cold. You’ll remember what it felt like, before things got so hard, when you were just a kid who loved to skate, and who wanted to make his family proud.”
Scott moves to pull back, and though Rozanov resists a little, he eventually lets him. It’s a beautiful moment. Both of them are crying, and Vaughny’s calmed down completely, looks close to tears himself. Scott is still staring into Rozanov’s big, sad, wet eyes.
“And then you’ll fuck it up,” Scott says. “They’ll leave, like they were always going to. You’ll have a few fleeting memories of the one time you were happy, before it was all ripped away.”
Rozanov’s expression is sliding into impassivity, but the horror is there in his eyes, as it must be in Scott’s own cold, dead ones.
“You’ll live in regret, forever, knowing it was all avoidable, but not really. Someone else could have fixed things, maybe, but not you. Not me. Someone not broken.” Scott smiles beatifically. “And when that day comes, maybe in ten years, maybe tomorrow, you’re going to look back at today. You’re going to remember meeting a guy who went through the exact same thing. And you’re going to realise that all of it was inevitable. You’re also going to realise that you at least could have had the mercy of living in ignorance, but you killed it when you decided to lash out in anger, instead of holding it in.”
“Scott, what the actual fuck are you talking about?” Vaughny says.
Rozanov’s gaze is still locked on his, though.
“Hold it in, Ilya. Take all that bitter hate and aim it at all the broken pieces inside you. Carry it with you, everywhere, so no one ever gets caught in your supernova of suffering. It hurts so much worse, but you know what? You build a tolerance. You get used to pain. And the only person you ever hurt is yourself,” Scott says.
He leaves Vaughny and Rozanov both, with that, striding on his heels. He thinks he’ll watch curling today. With luck, maybe someone will lose control and send a stone into his face.
February 14, 2014
Stupid, fake, fuck-ass holiday.
Commercialised, chocolate-and-roses bullshit.
Scott’s eating a big bowl of borscht in his equally shitty, mold-ridden twin-share bedroom. Vaughny won’t even look at him, which is probably what he deserves. Slipped in last night when Scott was already asleep, and left before he woke up. He wants to call Kip. He wants to get on his knees and beg for forgiveness, via fucking Skype. He wants to move quickly, because Kip is far too hot and kind and perfect to be single for long. Probably can get a date in five seconds or less. But it’s too fucking late, isn’t it? They’ve been apart for almost as long as they were together, now. Kip’s not a fucking closet-case like he is, he has options. He made use of Scott’s body until he got sick of it, and then suddenly all the things he said he was okay with were too much for him.
They beat Slovenia last night, are in the semi-finals now. Whoopdee-fucking-doo. Scott can’t even chase down his sorrows with whiskey, because he’s representing his country or whatever the fuck.
Vaughny doesn’t even knock.
“Done punishing me?” Scott asks, dull.
“Hi Scott,” Janice says.
Scott jumps so high he spills borscht all over the gross, uneven carpet.
“This is an intervention,” Vaughny says, closing the door.
Scott frowns at the mess. “This is going to take ages to clean up.”
“Scott, sweetheart,” Janice says. “Please forget about the soup for a second. We’re trying to talk to you about something important.”
Scott rolls his eyes, rising. “Fine, you two can clean, and I’m gonna go-”
“Is that how you treated your boyfriend?” Janice asks.
Scott freezes in place.
“You know, the guy who broke your heart?” Janice is unrelenting as she continues. “The reason you went and got this… fuckboy fuzz?”
Scott is pretty sure he’s having a heart attack. He can’t breathe. Janice is fading into a block of pale judgement, and he doesn’t know where Vaughny is, but he could be rounding up behind him with a knife, or on the phone with TMZ, or…
“Please don’t tell anyone,” Scott says, and it’s fucking pathetic, but he must be in the mood to beg. “Please don’t. Please.”
“Ah,” Janice says. “Proper closet case. Well, that’s harder. Carter?”
Scott flinches as Vaughny approaches, moves instinctively into a ball to protect his head and groin.
When the touch comes, it’s not the hard punch he expects. It’s soft, warm hands around his shoulders.
“Hey, Scott, it’s me, remember?” Vaughny says, soothing and soft. “Your buddy? I’m not going to hurt you, I swear. I think maybe you’re a little stressed out, huh?”
Scott nods into his knees.
“What was his name?” Janice asks.
“Kip,” Scott says, broken.
“And what happened with Kip?” Vaughny continues.
“He left,” Scott says. The tears are in his eyes but they’re not flowing. “He left me.”
“I kind of got that bit,” Vaughny says. “Can you tell me why?”
“He wanted me to go to his birthday party,” Scott says. “I couldn’t. Not with all those… It was at a fucking gay bar, and he said no one would know. Everyone would know. He said he wouldn’t tell! He told them all! They knew, and I never even met them. And he just… how the hell was I supposed… I tried, Vaughny, I swear I tried.” Scott sniffles.
“Wow,” Janice says. “You weren’t kidding. Big gay mess.”
“Real helpful,” Vaughny snarks.
“Right, so. What we’ve got here is a pretty clear case of trauma, and you pulled me in here to talk about a bad breakup, but I can work with this! Scott, do you want to win him back or get over him?” Janice says, joining them on the floor.
“Impossible,” Scott says. He curls a little tighter into his ball. It’s safer there.
“You sure you wouldn’t be happier bawling in there?” Janice says, pointing to the only piece of furniture in the room beside their beds and nightstands, the closet.
Scott glares at her. “Easy for you to say,” he hisses. “Don’t women’s hockey players have to come out as straight?”
Janice laughs. “See, isn’t it nice to get angry? You’re right, it is easier for me. I can kiss my wife whenever the hell I want, and you can’t even say your boy-toy’s name without sobbing like a little baby.”
“Janice! How the fuck is this supposed to help?” Vaughny asks.
Scott unfurls a little. “She’s trying to provoke me. Won’t work.”
“Hey, Vaughny?” Janice says. “Remember how nothing else you’ve tried has worked, and I’m literally your last resort?”
Vaughny sits on his bed in a huff.
Janice turns back to Scott. “You remember when Lemaire got married and then cheated on his wife, like, nine thousand times?”
“Yeah,” Scott says.
“He’s married again now. No one cares, even though adultery is way worse than being gay, in basically every religion. Doesn’t that piss you off?”
“Not really,” Scott says. “His ex-wife cleaned him out in the divorce. He’s got nothing now.”
“Really? Nice. Alright, not the point. What’s Kip’s last name?”
“Grady,” Scott says. “Why?”
Janice is already on her phone. “Found his Instagram. Oh, here’s a picture of him with another guy.”
Scott flinches away from the screen, crawling backwards like a demented scorpion until he bangs against his bed. It’s a delaying tactic at best, though, and Janice shoves the phone in his face, allowing him to see… “That’s a dog.”
“Looks almost as pathetic as you right now,” Janice says. “Sounds like he swapped out one whiny bitch for another.”
“Yeah,” Scott says, bitter. “Guess he did. Congratulations on making me feel like shit about myself, Janice. You’d make a great Catholic.”
“He’s single, by the way,” Janice says. “Post from today: ‘Being single on Valentine’s sucks, especially when you’re ruined for other men, but at least the chocolate is cheap.’ Isn’t that nice. He’s pining.”
“He said that?” Scott says, leaping up and grabbing the phone. Sure enough, there it is. Ruined for other men. “Then why did he leave?”
“Probably because he got sick of oiling the hinges on your glass closet, Hunter,” Janice says. “For fuck’s sake, you’re in Russia. You know what they do to gay guys here? We’re right next to Chechnya. The shit they do there would scare the hell out of you. And you’re afraid of… what? Having to go to a European league, instead of the MLH?” Janice rolls her eyes. “We don’t even have a league, and we’re still here. Grow a pair. Of ovaries, because your balls clearly aren’t cutting it.”
Janice marches out the door.
“Did that help?” Vaughny asks.
Scott can’t see him from where he’s lying on the floor, so he directs his exasperated glare to the heavens. “Why did you bring her?”
“I thought, you know. You have me, an ally, and you’d have her. A… member of the community.” Vaughny sounds so earnest, the fucking moron.
“Maybe stop thinking,” Scott says. “You’re a terrible ally.”
February 20, 2014
Scott’s hair grows quick, so he’s really got more of a 50/50 brown-and-yellow thing going when they win Gold.
He’s exhausted, and tired, and so fucking sick of this sport he had once loved. All the fun sucked out of it when Kip left. He’s finally done it, lived up to the expectations piled unfairly onto him since he was a little kid. Captain America, leading the US to their first men’s ice hockey gold since before he was born.
“Is there anything you’d like to say?” asks one of the press gang. Not American, nor Russian. She sounds Scandinavian. “To your fans at home?”
“Yeah, actually,” Scott says. The adrenaline running through his veins is making him reckless, and if he gets banned for this – heck, if he gets killed for this – then so fucking be it. He has to try.
“I have someone, back home. We were in love, and I lost them. Because I was a f- sorry, I can’t swear, right? Because I was a coward. Because…” Scott swallows. “Because I wasn’t what he deserved. I couldn’t be true to myself, to us, the way he needed me to be.”
Silence falls in the room the moment he says “he”. Too late to back out now.
“Kip, if you’re watching, I love you. I need you. And I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get you back. We touch down in Chicago in five days, and I know you’ve never flown before, but if you’re waiting for me, I swear to God I’ll never let you go again.”
Scott turns to the rest of his team, expecting judgement, shame, guilt. Mostly, they’re looking at him wide-eyed, like he’s just grown tentacles and declared himself Tsar.
“Well, that’s one way to do it,” Vaughny says. “Most guys go with flowers.”
A few of the guys chuckle at that.
“You really should have saved that for the end,” Virtanen chimes in. “Seeing as, you know. We still have to answer questions for another two hours.”
A few more chuckles at that, but most of the team still looks… unsettled.
“Isn’t that super fucking illegal in Russia?” Jones blurts out, red faced. “Bro, what is wrong with you. You couldn’t wait five days?”
“It was a spur of the moment thing!” Scott says. “I’m sorry if I forgot about this country’s draconi-mf.”
“I think me and my American citizen buddy Scott here are going to go now,” Vaughny says, continuing to muffle the words from Scott’s mouth. “We’re going to go do American citizen things. In an American way. Americanly.”
February 23, 2014
“Yes, Mr President,” Scott says, red faced, as the plane full of athletes tries to pretend they’re not laughing at him. Did they really have to do this ten minutes before take-off? “I appreciate your support, and I assure you I will be… smarter, next time. And thank you for your honest opinion on my haircut. I promise I will... consider alternatives.”
He hangs up, the phone is taken by the nice man in black who had approached him, ten minutes ago, with “President Obama for you, sir” coming out of his smirking lips, and the plane is silent for exactly three seconds.
“Scotty got in trouble,” Vaughny says, and they’re all fucking cackling.
“I really hope your boy shows,” Janice says. “You’ll look so stupid otherwise.”
“I mean, according to twitter, half the gays in America are happy to take his place,” a figure skater ventures. “I’m on that list too, by the way,” he continues, winking at Scott. “As soon as you visit that barber.”
“I hate my life,” Scott says. “And my hair isn’t that bad!”
“You look like you’re about to tear down an orphanage to build a parking lot,” the figure skater says.
“You look like a gayer, only slightly more muscular Joffrey,” Janice says.
“You look like a straight guy who sucks in bed,” a female snowboarder adds, toying with her bronze medal.
“You look like-”
“Alright, enough!” Scott says. “I’ll cut it.”
Some of the bastards fucking cheer.
February 24, 2014
Scott notices the press as he drags his suitcase behind him in his left hand and carries his duffle in his right. He notices the searching glances of every multiple other athletes, who had clearly seen his viral moment. Some might have participated in the impromptu protective cordon that had formed around his room in the athlete’s village, for those few hours before the embassy staff showed up. Some of them, he knows, probably wouldn’t mind seeing him humiliated. Probably wouldn’t mind seeing him dead. But mostly he’s heard positive things.
Kip is waiting for him. Separated, given his own little protective barrier. He’s not alone, Elena is with him, but he’s a fucking vision. No one should look that good in double denim.
Scott doesn’t sprint to him, all dramatic, embracing halfway and dipping him in a VE-Day kiss, but it’s only because his tolerance for dramatics has been exhausted, possibly forever.
“Hey,” Scott says, when he reaches them both. He drops his bags and slides into Kip’s arms. “Never leave me.”
“That’s not concerning at all,” Elena says.
“Shh,” Kip says. “I’m into it.”
“I’ll jump off the Empire State Building if you ask,” Scott says, hoping there are no long-range microphones picking up his every word, but knowing it can hardly embarrass him any more than he already has if there are. “I’ll suck your dick twice a day until the day we both die. I’ll wear a collar to every game. A red one. With bells on it.”
“You’re not going to do any of that,” Kip says. He pulls back from the hug. “You are going to explain why I have Ilya Rozanov in my DMs telling me you gave him an existential crisis. That’s weird as fuck. But I never blamed you for anything, you could have just… called. You really didn’t have to be so dramatic about it.”
“Okay,” Scott says. He kisses his Kip, and a thousand camera bulbs flash.
February 25, 2014
Relearning each other will take time. It always does.
“You know, I had to prove I was the right Kip Grady?” Kip says, as they cuddle up in their bed. “They made me bring my passport.”
“Am I supposed to say sorry?” Scott asks. “I was desperate. I was an empty net, a stick without a puck-”
“Oh my God-”
“A Scott without a Kip,” Scott finishes.
“You’re a corny weirdo with fuckboy hair, and I can do way better,” Kip says. Then he flinches. “Sorry, I don’t mean that. I love you, you’re amazing, and the hair is awful, but it’s also crazy hot.”
“That’s what I said!” Scott says, having learned by now to wait for the end of Kip’s anxiety spirals instead of cutting them off. “No one likes it.”
“Oh, plenty of people like it. But it is horrible. Like, objectively. You look like a 90s movie villain. A hot one? It’s weird.” Kip scratches his chin.
Scott licks that chin, and then Kip's entire face, across his nose and up to his forehead.
“Gross,” Kip says. “Why are you like this?”
Scott moves his tongue down to Kip’s mouth, briefly cutting off his words in a kiss, before moving down to his neck. He sucks in a hickey, then moves onto the other side.
“Are we gonna have sex, or are you just gonna gnaw on me like a chicken wing?” Kip asks.
“Chicken wing,” Scott says, voice muffled by Kip’s Adam’s apple.
“Why are- oh my God, are you marking your territory?” Kip asks.
“Mine,” Scott says, sucking his third hickey into Kip’s neck. “All mine.”
“You’re a public figure, Scott, you can’t be this much of a degenerate. You need to set a good- mmfgh.” Kip says, cut off by Scott’s lips yet again.
“When I win the Stanley Cup, I’m going to carve your name into the ice at Madison Square,” Scott says, staring into Kip’s eyes. “And when we get married, I’m going to build a monument to you, like a gay Taj Mahal.”
“The Taj Mahal is a tomb,” Kip points out.
“We won’t need that. They can just bury us in the same coffin so our bones decompose into each other, and we can finally be one,” Scott says.
Kip blushes. “You say the sweetest things.”