Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types, Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Kip Grady/Scott Hunter

Characters:

Kip Grady, Scott Hunter (Game Changers), Eric Bennett, Kyle Swift, Elena Rygg, Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Maria Villanueva

Additional Tags:

HIV/AIDS, HIV/AIDS Crisis, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Internalized Homophobia, Period-Typical Homophobia, New York City, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Coming Out, happy-ish ending, fuck Ronald Reagan, Period Typical Attitudes, Queer History, Grief/Mourning, Peril, Closeted Character, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Angst, physical assault

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of Defective

Stats:

Published: 2026-07-20 Updated: 2026-09-02 Words: 55,740 Chapters: 4/8

Bright Particular Star

Summary

1987. New York Admirals Captain Scott Hunter is fifteen seasons deep into the kind of hockey career most players can only dream of and keeping one hell of a secret. He navigates his life in NYC, intimately aware at every turn that a single photograph or a trace of a rumor could end his livelihood.

Kip Grady has never known how to hide. A grad student and early organizer for ACT UP, he spends his days marching through the Village and organizing mutual aid, fighting for a queer community battling for its life against a devastating epidemic. When their paths cross, Scott is forced to consider the limits of his carefully constructed closet and decide if he is finally ready to stand in the light.

OR: Scott and Kip meet in 80s NYC at the height of the AIDS crisis.

Additional Spoilers Here

I promise that these characters do not, at any point, contract HIV: Scott, Kip, Ilya, and Shane.

Scott and Kip, as well as Shane and Ilya, will all have the happiest ending possible given the constraints of the time period.

Notes

Hello! Thank you for opening this work, and presumably being interested or intrigued enough to read it. It is meant to be a companion to enrich the story being told in Vocabulary of Exile, but either work can be read alone.

Before you start the story, I want to share a few disclaimers and context notes regarding the history and themes ahead.

First, pleast note that this is a work of fiction, not a historical document or a medical resource. I have poured immense care and research into these words, but I did not live through the HIV/AIDS crisis at its peak in New York City. To do justice to the setting and the community, I relied heavily on primary sources, archives, and oral histories of those who were there. This history belongs to a generation still with us, and those who should still be with us. I have approached their lived experiences with as much reverence, weight, and respect as I possibly could. If there are any chronological or technical missteps along the way, those errors are entirely my own, and they will certainly happen.

Regarding scope, this story is about Scott and Kip. Their experience, told through their eyes, reflects their specific position within their respective communities. The AIDS crisis impacted, and continues to impact, a diverse range of people. Their stories are valid and essential, but this narrative is focused only on this pair.

A note on content and tagging. I have chosen not to use archive warnings for this story. Because of the historical reality of the era and the community we are spending time with, the stakes in this fic are incredibly high. Choosing not to use archive warnings does not mean there are no tragedies ahead. People in Scott and Kip’s world are fighting a crisis, and it is entirely possible that characters we care about will get sick or pass away over the course of the narrative. I wanted to be transparent about the heavy nature of the story so you can protect your own peace while reading, without explicitly spoiling the plot beats. I have had a hard time tagging this story, so I hope that this suffices. Each chapter will have additional optional warnings if applicable.

If you need specific comfort regarding characters, you can click here for that.

I promise that these characters do not, at any point, contract HIV: Scott, Kip, Ilya, and Shane.

Finally, a note on the present: while the setting of this fic is bleak, the reality of our world has changed drastically. HIV/AIDS remains a serious global health issue, but medical advancements mean that prevention, treatment, and daily reality are better than they have ever been. Stigma thrives in the dark, and information saves lives. Please don’t be afraid to protect yourself and know your status.

This work is also meant to overlap with Vocabulary of Exile. Where possible, I will note this overlap in the chapter notes.

Thank you so much for reading.

Chapter 1: A Man Like You

Chapter Summary

"When something goes right with my game, I like to keep as much of my day the same as I can. Call it superstition."

Chapter Notes

Crossover Notes:
Chapter 3 of Vocabulary of Exile
Scott mentions being at the Canada Cup, which Shane and Ilya also attend.

Chapter Warnings

Scott goes on a canon-appropriate sex vacation, which involves brief sexual contact with not-Kip.
Period-appropriate recreational drug use, and it’s also mentioned as occurring.
Oral sex
Conversations where characters are encouraged to, but do not ultimately have, unsafe sex.

"Either way he was doomed: He did what was wrong, and condemned himself, or he did what was right, and remained a ghost."

Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance, 1978

Scott Hunter was so fucking tired of losing. It was March in New York, and the season was grinding by. He had lost twenty pounds since October and was running on empty, and it didn’t make a bit of difference. The Admirals were in a slump. They were still in playoff contention, barely. The back page of the Post had run Scott’s face the day after their fourth straight loss and a woman at the deli on Vestry Street called his name, heckling him like she’d earned the right to do it. 

He’d lived in New York for nearly fifteen years and it was the closest thing to home that he could imagine. It wasn’t exactly home, but was as close as he thought he was ever going to get. Home-home had been Rochester, then a dormitory in a boarding school outside Albany that was drafty every winter, then this. A penthouse in Tribeca that the team’s preferred realtor had found on a high enough floor that he couldn’t hear the street noise. He had not altered the place in any meaningful way. He hired a decorator every few years to update the place. The last one went for black leather and chrome to look modern. 

He turned on his sound system, slipping a CD into the tray just to watch the laser mechanism work, and took in the view of the Hudson, the dark shapes of the construction barges down at Battery Park City and the towering monoliths of the World Trade Center casting long, geometric shadows off the water when he couldn’t sleep. It was a place where he could go after the game ended, close the door, and the city would stop.

Sometimes it wasn’t enough. When it wasn’t, Scott indulged in what Carter had told him repeatedly not to do. He walked out alone before sunrise. Carter’s rationale was that the city was dangerous enough without Scott making himself a target. It was mostly true. The neighborhood was still half-industrial, and crack had gutted out the pre-gentrification loft buildings, turning the tenants into ghosts. Scott Hunter alone on the street was a story waiting to happen one way or another, but he went anyway. 

So there he was, standing on the street at five forty-five in the morning, trying out a new bodega. He’d had a falling-out with his usual place on Worth two weeks earlier. A regular, already half in the bag, had recognized him and wouldn’t let it go. He had been followed onto the sidewalk. The guy had grabbed his arm and Scott had shoved him off without thinking. Nothing came of it, but there was a way that story could have gone where someone had a camera, or the guy went down wrong on the curb, and it became news. He hadn’t gone back. That was how it usually went. He’d find his place, and it would last a few years if he was lucky until it stopped being an option and he started looking for a new spot, hoping an egg and cheese would break his slump and get him back in fighting shape for the game tonight. This one was only four blocks from the penthouse, just off Hudson. It had a faded yellow handpainted sign that said Maria’s. It seemed quieter than others a little closer to his place. He kind of appreciated that he didn’t have to fight the construction worker crowd, but maybe that meant their rolls were too hard. 

The shop was narrow, crammed in between two much larger buildings, one cheap flickering light going on the ceiling. Rows of canned goods, a cooler along the far wall with glass bottles, and a counter near the door with a register, and, behind it, a man sitting on a stool with a paperback tented open over one knee. He was fast asleep, chin slumped onto his chest.

Scott stood in the doorway. The clerk was gorgeous. He had dark hair falling over his forehead, a dense crop of curls falling in his face and catching the light. He was probably twenty-five or twenty-six. His face was striking even in sleep. The line of his jaw, the dark lashes against his cheek, a mouth that even slack carried a suggestion of expression, as though the face was animated even when its owner wasn't. He had on a cheap plastic nametag that said Kip.

Scott stood there for a second longer than he should have. He let the door close behind him and the bell rang. Kip's head came up fast. He blinked, registered Scott, and for one beat something moved through his face before he got it under control. Almost a double-take, his cheeks going slightly red.

"Shit, sorry," he said, voice rough from sleep. He pushed off the stool, running a hand through his hair. "What can I—" He cleared his throat. "Can I get you something?"

“Egg and cheese,” Scott said. “Cup of coffee.”

"Right, yeah." Kip turned to the griddle, cracking an egg with one hand. His ears were still red. "We have, uh—the coffee's from sometime in the night. I can make a fresh pot, it's not—"

"It's fine."

"It's pretty old."

"I'll survive."

Kip glanced at him sideways, reassessing. He poured the coffee, handing over the blue and white paper cup. Scott took a sip. It was genuinely terrible, burnt and gritty, leaving a lingering tang across his tongue. His face must have shown it, because Kip grinned at him.

"Okay, it's bad," Scott said.

"Yeah." Kip pressed the roll. "I did warn you."

"You did."

"I can make a fresh pot. It takes four minutes."

Scott checked the clock on the wall. He had an hour until the car service would pick him up for practice. Nowhere to be. "Sure," he said.

Kip took back the cup and dumped it. He ran water into the machine, measured the grounds. He moved like he’d done this ten thousand times. The egg was already done. He flipped it onto the roll with a piece of cheese, wrapped it in foil, and slid it across the counter. Scott peeled back the foil and bit into it while the coffee percolated. It was a very good egg and cheese.

"Heading to work after this?" Kip said, his back to Scott, rinsing the pot.

"Something like that." Scott appreciated that Kip seemingly did not recognize him at all. “How much do I owe you?”

“Buck seventy-five.” Scott whistled low. “Yeah, I know, a little steep. You’d be surprised how quick the crowd dies off when you crank the price up a quarter.”

Scott put a five on the counter. 

Kip turned around, handing over the cup of new coffee. "Sugar's on the counter," he said. “It might need it.”

Kip picked up the five and slid his change back across. “Keep it,” Scott said.

“Seriously?” Kip asked, watching Scott sip the coffee. 

“Yeah. We’ll call it a finder’s fee. Best egg and cheese in Manhattan."

Kip smiled back. “Glad you like it. Have a nice day.”

Scott held up the coffee cup. “You too, Kip.” His lips popped on the p. 

He walked out and back to the penthouse. He sat in his kitchen and thought about Kip much more than he had any right to. During the season, that was all he had. Fantasies about gorgeous men he saw on the street, at the bar, in a bodega. It wasn’t ideal, but it would hold him over until summer.

The game that night went better than Scott could have ever imagined. They were down a man in the first period and Philly had been pressing in. Scott had been playing like shit for weeks, and then suddenly something shifted. Some recalibration in his spirit he couldn’t quite put a finger on. He put one in despite running the penalty killer at 12:41, and then a second one the next period at 18:03. Then he did it again four minutes later. Madison Square Garden erupted around him, the kind of wall of sound that he hadn’t heard directed at him in months—a hat trick, his first one all season. There were also two assists, and two more goals he had nothing to do with—a wild night, ending seven-one. 

Scott sat in the car on the way home. He wasn’t the most superstitious, but everyone has their thing. He had the best game of his life, and all of it was after that egg and cheese. Nothing else was different tonight. He needed another. 

He was back at Maria’s at the same time the next morning. The bell rang, and Kip's head popped up from the copy of the Post he was reading. A flicker of, dare Scott say, delight went across his face.

“Same as yesterday?”

“Yeah,” Scott said. “Please.”

Kip cracked the egg and put on a fresh pot of coffee without being asked. 

Kip was blushing again. “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“Are you Scott Hunter?” Scott looked at him.

“Yeah,” Scott said. “Who told you?”

Kip gestured at the paper. “They ran your picture today.” He smoothed out a page that read Night of the Hunter! in a blocky font next to a story about Ed Koch.

“Ah. That is me, yes.”

“You had a good game last night.”

"We did."

"Hat trick." He said it like a fact he had looked up. "That's—yeah. Good."

"Thanks."

Kip handed over the roll and the coffee, and Scott put ten dollars on the counter. “Keep the change.”

“That’s way too much.”

“Nope.” Scott replied, p popping again. “See you next game day. If we win tonight.”

“Why only if you win?”

“When something goes right with my game, I like to keep as much of my day the same as I can. Call it superstition.”

“This shitty coffee helped you win?”

“I guess we’ll find out tonight.” He headed out the door smirking before he said something a little too forward.

Four days later, Scott was back. They had wrecked New Jersey after his last bodega visit, four to two, Scott with a goal and two assists. He didn’t want to ruin a good thing, and he would have to stop relying on the bodega soon, with a stretch of away games coming up.

To his surprise, Kip wasn’t at the counter. There was a dark-haired woman around Kip’s age, moving around like she had grown up in the place. 

She looked at him. “You’re Scott Hunter.”

“Yeah.”

“My dad watches all of your games.” She leaned on the counter. “He was losing his mind.”

“Hockey fan?”

“Huge,” she said. “When the Mets aren't playing anyway, it’s you guys. He still hasn't shut up about the World Series, but he is going to freak when he hears you came in here.”

Kip appeared carrying a crate of oranges from the back. Clearly he had been listening.

"Morning," he said to Scott.

"Morning," Scott said.

The woman was watching this exchange with open satisfaction. She extended a hand across the counter. "Maria," she said. 

Scott shook it. “Like the sign.”

“That Maria is my grandmother. This is my dad’s business.”

"Tell him it’s the best egg and cheese in Manhattan."

Maria looked at Kip. Kip was very focused on setting down the crate of oranges.

"So," she said. "Egg and cheese?"

"Kip usually—"

"I know what Kip usually does." She was already at the griddle, cracking the egg with one hand and starting a fresh pot of coffee. "Sit down."

There was one rickety stool in the corner. Scott sat on it. Kip started stacking oranges in the bowl near the register, not quite looking at anyone. His ears were red. Maria made the coffee fresh without asking and handed it across and then leaned on the counter again.

"You come in yesterday?" she said to Scott.

"No, only on game days."

She looked at Kip. "And you didn't tell me."

"I was going to tell you."

"When?"

"When it came up."

"Scott Hunter comes into the shop and it doesn't come up?" She turned back to Scott with exaggerated patience. "He read your box score this morning."

"That's not—I read the whole paper."

"You read the sports section more than once."

Kip put an orange down. "I'm going to go clean up the back."

"You just came from the back."

Scott picked up his coffee. Kip stepped over to the griddle and wrapped up Scott's sandwich for him and slid it across without being asked. Maria continued stacking the oranges Kip left and muttering something under her breath. Scott put down five dollars. 

"We have some away games. So I won’t be in for a while," he said.

"You'll win," Maria said confidently.

He looked at Kip, who was not looking at him. "You will," he said.

Scott left before he said something he'd have to think about on the walk home. He thought about it on the walk home anyway.

The road trip was five games in ten days. Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington, Boston, back through Hartford, then back home. Scott ate different egg and cheese sandwiches in different cities and they were all fine and none of them were quite right. They won four of the games anyway, which suggested the superstition had legs beyond that bodega, or that he'd simply gotten his game back and was crediting the wrong cause. He didn’t want to know which it was. 

Carter Vaughn said something about it on the bus from Washington to Boston, after the third game into the trip, somewhere on the New Jersey Turnpike at midnight. They were two rows apart and Carter leaned across the aisle and said, "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it."

Scott stared at him. "You're back," Carter said. He'd been Scott's alternate captain for four years and had earned the right to comment on Scott’s play. He settled back in his seat and pulled his cap over his eyes.

Scott looked out the window at the highway going by and said nothing, which was fine with Carter. He didn’t want to tell Carter that what he was doing was ogling a twentysomething who made him eggs on a flat top.

Road trips always had their own texture. Hotel rooms in a string of cities where nobody on the street knew his face, which should have been a relief and mostly was. But the anonymity, the two or three hours in which he could be nobody in particular, felt different now in a way he couldn't name. Scott lay in a room in Pittsburgh one night and thought about the bodega. He came home on a Thursday. He was at Maria's the next morning before his alarm went off.

Kip was already behind the counter, reading, a thermos of his own coffee beside him. He looked up when the bell rang.

"You're back," he said.

"Four and two," Scott said. "On the road."

Kip nodded, assessing this. "Good enough to count as a winning streak?"

"I think so."

"Egg and cheese?" Scott started to say yes. Kip tilted his head slightly. "I could do bacon. If you want. I'd have to cook it fresh. If you don’t think it would bust your winning streak."

Scott considered this for a second. "Yeah," he said. "Okay. I'm willing to risk it."

He sat on the stool. Kip got the bacon out and laid it on the griddle and the smell hit the small space immediately, grease and salt. He cracked the egg on a separate section of the griddle. The radio was on low playing news.

Scott watched him work. He wasn't subtle about it. There was not a lot else to look at in Maria's at six in the morning and Kip didn't seem to mind being watched, or if he minded he'd made a decision not to show it.

"How long are you in town?" Kip said, not looking up from the griddle.

"Ten days, then we go west. Vancouver, then Los Angeles."

"Long season."

"Always."

Kip turned the bacon. A crackle and a shift in the smell. "You do it for—what, how many years now?"

"Fifteen." Scott picked up his coffee. "Long time to do anything."

"What do you do with the summers?"

"Vacation, mostly." He paused. "Sleep. Try to put on the weight I lose during the season."

"You need to put on weight?"

“It’s hard to eat enough when I’m playing."

Kip laughed. "Do you want a second roll? 

"No, I’m good,” Scott smiled. “What about you?"

"I've been doing the morning shifts here for a little over a year. Probably keep doing it all summer. Can’t wait for September."

"September?"

"Starting my Master's in the fall. History, NYU." He pressed the bacon flat with the spatula. "So I'm saving up. They give you a little, but not enough to actually live on."

"What do you study?"

Kip glanced over his shoulder. "The Vietnam draft. Who got sent and who didn’t. The lottery system was supposed to make it fair." He tilted his head slightly. "It didn't. The data is pretty damning if you know where to look."

"Above my head. I never went to college."

“Not all of us can be pretty boys who skate around for a living.”

Scott looked away. Was that a dig, or was Kip flirting with him? Kip had turned back to the griddle, assembling the sandwich—egg, cheese, bacon on the roll, wrapped in foil—and slid it across the counter.

"Is that why you're doing nights here?" Scott said. "Saving up before you start?"

"Yeah, partly." Kip poured him a fresh coffee without being asked. "I had a situation that didn't work out. He moved in with someone else." Easy, unremarked, the pronoun landing in the space between them. "So I'm back at my dad's place in Queens. I want to live closer to school, but you know rent is insane."

Scott picked up the sandwich. He turned that sentence over. He. Roommate, lover, coworker, something in between? Scott ate a bite of the sandwich. It was better with the bacon. But the air between them had shifted, and he had been in the store for ten minutes already and had not yet moved toward the door and needed to.

He took a cup of coffee from Kip. "I should get going," he said. "Practice. I have to commute all the way to Rye."

Kip looked at the clock on the wall. "Sure." He picked up his book.

Scott put a twenty on the counter.

"That's—" Kip started.

"See you next game day." He was out the door before Kip finished the sentence.

The March air was cold and he stood on the sidewalk outside Maria's with the coffee in his hand and the foil-wrapped sandwich and thought pretty boy. He walked home the long way.

He kept coming back. Not every morning—at first, he limited it to only game days, the logic maintaining the limit. He came in, ordered the usual, now with bacon, paid, tipped far too much and left. He told himself the tip was about helping a student out, and not a single thing more. Scott tried to keep it clean. He didn't sit on the stool or ask a single question about Kip’s life. He answered questions with the polite brevity of having somewhere to be, which was true on game days and less true on the days when he came in anyway and invented a reason on the walk over.

Kip tried a few times. A question about the road trip west, offered across the counter while Scott's coffee was brewing. A comment about a piece in the Post that was sitting between them. Small openings, the kind that might have worked in March. Scott answered them shortly and vaguely and left as soon as the coffee was ready.

He wasn't rude about it. He was never rude about it. Scott said good morning, said the right things on the way out. He just stopped staying. He stopped giving Kip the friendly version of himself. The one that asked genuine questions and listened to the answers and lingered a little too long. He replaced it with the public-facing version of his personality, smooth and functional and impassive. It was the only move he had. 

The Admirals were eliminated in the middle of April, just one game short of a playoff spot. Scott’s second wind he got from the bodega mid-season wasn’t enough to turn the standings around. The final loss was at home, just one goal making the difference. Scott skated off the ice to a crowd that had already accepted it and was waiting for next year. He cleaned out his stall in a locker room that held the disappointment of a season ending without ceremony. Carter said the right things. Scott said the right things back. He drove home through lower Manhattan and thought about nothing in particular, which was what he thought about after every season ended.

He didn't go to Maria's the next morning. There was no game that night. There would be no game for months. The superstition had nowhere to attach, and without it the five forty-five alarm had no justification and he let it go off and then silenced it and lay in the penthouse in the silence of an off-season morning and looked at the ceiling.

His willpower held up for four full days. It wasn’t a game day. It wasn’t any day at all. But there he was, walking the four blocks at six on a Thursday morning with a spring chill still in the air and pushed open the door and the bell rang. 

Kip was behind the counter. His eyes popped up and the look that crossed his face was quick and confused before it settled into stark professionalism.

"The usual?" he said.

"Yeah," Scott said. "Please."

Kip started on the sandwich. "Season's over," he said. It was closer to a statement than a question.

"Yeah."

"You going somewhere? Off-season?"

"Probably," Scott said. "Not sure yet."

Kip nodded and made the sandwich, and the coffee, and slid them both across. Scott left behind a ten. 

"Good luck with school," he said.

Kip looked up. "Thanks, have a good summer." Scott nodded at him and left, determined to stop thinking about Kip this summer.

Scott went to Rochester first. Not because he wanted to. The house on Culver Road needed him. He had grown up in this house. His mother had died in it. He had come back every off-season since he'd gone pro because it was his and because there was no one else to do it. He also knew not coming back felt like an abandonment he wasn't ready to commit to yet, even now, even after all these years of being not quite able to sell it and not quite able to stay.

The previous tenant had moved out, and there wouldn’t be another for a few weeks. It had the usual post-rental shambles. A falling-down gutter, a clogged furnace filter, and a yard that had not yet been tended since the snow melted all required attention. He drove up with a list he'd made on the back of an envelope and spent a week dealing with it. The contractor he'd used for the past six years came by to look at the gutters. The woman two doors down, whose name he always forgot, waved at him from her driveway. He bought groceries at the Wegmans on Monroe and ate at home each night and watched the news and went to bed at ten.

At the end of May he drove out to Long Island. Eric Bennett and his wife Holly had a house in Massapequa, a nice one, modern art and sculptures that looked out of place in the colonial-style home. It was a house that reflected two incomes—Eric's hockey contract and Holly's, which was in finance. Holly didn’t seem to care much for hockey. They had met at Harvard, which Eric mentioned sometimes and Holly never did, and the house felt like it belonged to both of them equally and perhaps to neither of them entirely.

Scott had known Eric since his rookie year on the Admirals, when Eric was already a respected veteran. He was a goalie, five years older than Scott, one of the best and increasingly aware, as goalies become aware after thirty-five, that the generation behind him was closing in. Eric moved with more caution than he used to. He didn't talk about next season like he had talked about the ones before it. He was still good, but he wouldn’t be much longer.

Holly made dinner—pasta, salad, bread—a meal that worked for Eric and for everyone else. Eric was a vegetarian, which had been a running joke in the locker room for more than a decade, and he didn't drink, which had never been a joke, just a fact about him that everyone had long since stopped noticing. The dinner was delicious and the three of them sat on the deck afterward while the light sparkled off the water, and the conversation was fine. Scott had a beer. Eric had a glass bottle of Diet Coke. At some point Scott noticed that Eric and Holly hadn’t looked at each other all evening. It wasn't so visible or obvious as a fight. Scott recognized this as the casual avoidance of two people who had decided, consciously or not, to maintain the distance between them rather than close it. He recognized the bones of it without being able to say from the outside what had caused it.

After Holly went inside, Eric handed another beer over to Scott and said, without preamble, "You ever think about settling down?"

Scott took the beer. "Sure."

"Yeah?"

"Never found the right person." The words came out smooth, and they were true, mostly. 

Eric nodded. He looked at the water. "Holly wants to get a place in the city," he said. "Closer to her office. It’s an hour by train to the World Trade Center. More when she needs to be uptown." He fiddled with the bottle in his hands. "I want to move farther away. I think we’re too close now." Scott didn't say anything. "She married a hockey player," Eric said. "She knew what that was. Twenty years of it. I don't think she knew what came after."

"What comes after?"

Eric shrugged. "Me. All day. In the house. She wanted a career instead of kids. It’s fine, it was her choice, but I don’t know what to do with myself next," He kept his eyes fixed on the water. "I've been playing since I was five years old. But I’m tired."

Scott looked at him. Eric had a Cup ring from his second season playing, before Scott joined the team, and a Harvard degree and a house on the bay and it was everything Scott could have ever dreamed of. Minus the wife, maybe. But it wasn’t enough.

"When?" he said.

"One more year. Maybe two."

"You could coach."

"Yeah." He didn't sound like he believed it. "I don’t think that’s for me."

They sat a while longer. 

"The right person," Eric said. "I don’t know if that exists."

Scott turned away. He thought about the bodega and a face with dark lashes he'd been trying to forget. "Or you haven’t met her yet," he said.

Eric nodded, like Scott had confirmed something he already knew.

He drove home Sunday morning and called Eric from the penthouse to say he'd had a good time, which was true, but not the whole truth either. 

Carter Vaughn had been in Los Angeles since the season ended, which was where the woman he was seeing lived. Scott had met her once, briefly, at a charity function the previous fall, the same one Carter had met her during. Gloria. She'd been in something he'd seen on television and had the air of someone who was used to being recognized and had made peace with it, which was not something Scott associated with people he liked but which he found, in her, unexpectedly comfortable. She was completely at ease in her fame in a way that he had never been, not that their levels of celebrity were even remotely comparable. Carter was different around her. Softer, kinder, more willing to let a silence sit without filling it. They were keeping things quiet and staying inside, mostly. No high-profile restaurants or places that would get them in the papers. He had invited Scott out for a few days, which is why Scott found himself in the passenger seat of Carter's rented car on the 405, which was stopped, as the 405 always seemed to be.

"You hate it here," Carter said.

"I don't hate it."

"You've checked your watch three times since we got on the freeway."

"There's a lot of traffic."

"There's always a lot of traffic." Carter looked over at him. "No worries about you trying to get traded to LA, I guess. You know what your problem is?"

"I'm sure you're going to tell me."

"You need to find someone."

Scott looked out the window at the other stopped cars. "I have someone. I have you."

"I mean someone who isn't me. Virgin Mary here needs to get laid."

"I'm fine." 

Carter made a sound of disagreement. “It would make you less tense.”

They sat in traffic for another forty minutes. Scott did not check his watch again. He liked the weather, though. The dry LA heat that sat differently against the skin than New York humidity. He loved New York but the stale air and the smell of hot trash wore on him in the summer. It was why he liked spending it elsewhere. He sat by Gloria’s pool in the evenings after she had gone inside, and he drank a beer and watched the lights of the canyon, and it was as close to peace as he usually came. His only worry was that Carter would realize he loved Gloria and he would be the one looking for the trade to LA. Scott was too far gone in his career to think about moving for a lover, but Carter still could. If Eric left, and Carter left, then maybe it was also Scott's time. He waved the thought away. Those were not vacation thoughts.

He flew home at the end of June to find stickers everywhere. SILENCE = DEATH, black triangle on pink, plastered to lampposts and mailboxes and the side of a phone booth on Hudson and the door of the laundromat on Vestry and the back of a stop sign two blocks from the penthouse. He had seen them before, popping up sporadically since spring, the slow spread of them across the neighborhood, but in the weeks he’d been away, they had multiplied. It was like someone had been out with a stack of them while he was gone, systematically working the blocks. He walked from the car to the penthouse and counted six before he realized they were everywhere.

Scott had missed something while he was gone. He could feel it in the air of the neighborhood without being able to name it. The city suddenly denser with a friction he didn't have the context for. The virus wasn’t news but something was different now. The stickers had taken over, a furious pink-and-black grid layered over the city's regular grime. He picked up a discarded copy of the Post from the lobby counter and flicked through it, looking for an explanation for the tension buzzing outside his door. His eyes caught it in a local column near the back—a brief, sharp report on a raucous city hall hearing disrupted by a group called ACT UP like a dispatch from a battleground. He had been tucked away in the Hollywood Hills, disconnected from the world. When the neighborhood crossed this line from subdued dread to active, concentrated fury. He tossed the paper onto the mail table. He had a low-grade, ongoing awareness that this crisis was connected to him in ways he had sealed off, so thoroughly that the connection registered mostly as a cold lump in his chest that he moved past.

Scott met a kind travel agent in Midtown and booked a trip to Ibiza. She seemed to understand the assignment, despite his vague references to wanting vivid nightlife and privacy. He had three entire weeks. They had booked him a room outside Santa Eulalia. He slept late and ate at different places each night and let himself be an attractive, muscular American without the weight of what that meant at home. The sun on the water in the afternoons, the heat of it, the island existing outside of everything Scott Hunter meant anywhere else. It was a clash of color, electric pinks and blues against the whitewashed walls and terracotta roofing tiles.

He brought different clothes than he owned as Scott Hunter, Captain of the New York Admirals. Linen shirts, jeans cut differently from anything in his regular rotation, nothing with a logo or a name on it. He had learned, years ago, that the clothes mattered. In New York he was always recognizable, and a lot of that was due to the costume he put on. If he put on a different costume on the island, he was just a man in a bar, which was the point of going there.

He knew the geography by now. The narrow cobblestone streets off the port, the open-air bars along Calle de la Virgen where men stood in doorways in the warm evenings. The beach in the long afternoons, the dunes behind it where the crowd thinned and nobody was paying attention. He carried condoms in the inside pocket of his jacket, bought at a pharmacy in midtown before he left, because he had read every GMHC pamphlet he could get his hands on. Scott Hunter had staked his career on his body and was not going to be careless with it.

He didn't need them. The calculus was what it was. Mouths, hands, the ceiling he'd set and enforced for four years now. He had heard stories of people in New York who had drawn the lines differently and some of them were sick. He played the percentages professionally and wasn't going to stop here.

Scott missed what it was like before, when the summers he spent in tropical party cities were allowed to feel freer. Not in New York, never in New York, but in places like this, that were far enough from the back page of the Post. Anonymous hotel rooms, men whose names he remembered and some he didn’t. He had been twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six back then. Worried about how embarrassing it would be to tell the team doctor you thought you picked up chlamydia, not finding out you were going to die. He hadn’t had sex the way he wanted to in years, and he had not understood until that option was off the table how much he had taken for granted. The pamphlets had arrived in 1983 and 1984 and he had read them with the uncanny dread of finding his own life described in warning language, and he had recalculated. More information came out every year, but it still wasn’t enough to feel safe cruising, even here, where no one knew a single thing about hockey. He wanted more and had made peace, more or less, with not allowing himself more. 

He missed it. He was not always good at admitting this even to himself, but in July in Ibiza, he could admit it. He missed it. 

The cocaine was the same logic. It wasn’t his first time, feeling his blood begin to hum, the release of a night where none of the usual accounting applied. A bar near the port, someone passing a mirror down the counter. He did it a few times over the weeks and left it there, the same way he left everything else that only worked here. Vacation rules were different. Then you went home.

He met a man on the second night. It was a club with music he could feel through the walls. Jordi—dark-haired, maybe thirty, with a dry sense of humor that Scott caught even through the language gap.

"American," Jordi said.

"Yeah."

"Athletic." He said, grabbing Scott’s arm and giving it a firm feel. His eyes moved briefly, taking stock. "What do you do?"

"Construction," Scott said. It was the answer he always gave. Plausible, explained the build.

They went to the beach. It was late, the crowd thinned to nothing, the dunes dark behind them. Jordi pulled him in and they kissed for a while with the sound of the water and the freedom of a place where nobody was watching, and then Jordi said, a little breathless, "Your hotel is close? Or somewhere quiet here?"

"Here is fine," Scott said. "The beach is quiet enough." He pulled back an inch, his hand resting on Jordi's chest. "Listen."

"What is it?"

"It has to be safe." He held Jordi's eyes. 

Jordi shrugged slightly. "Ah. It is okay, no? You look healthy, I am healthy. Look at you—like a machine."

This was the line. Scott had heard versions of it before, in different voices, different accents, and it always landed the same way—a clarity, the thing he'd been afraid someone would say.

"I have condoms," he said. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, but did not pass them over. He hadn’t intended to use them, but they were a way to tell how the night was going to be, how much of his risk really was a risk. Scott wanted Jordi to look at them with relief. He wanted Jordi to be afraid too. 

Instead, Jordi just rolled his eyes at Scott's hand before looking back at his face. An eyebrow went up. "Okay, okay. Relax. You are very careful for a guy on holiday."

"Habit," Scott said. 

But now he was afraid. This man was too careless. It wasn’t enough to stop entirely, but it was enough to proceed with caution. From his pocket, Jordi pulled a glass bottle, the label long peeled off by the humidity. With a quick twist of his wrist, he unscrewed the plastic cap, the distinct, sweet-chemical tang of the vapor instantly cutting through the salt air. He held it to one nostril, and inhaled deeply, his chest expanding under his shirt. 

He offered the open bottle to Scott. "Here."

Scott shook his head, shifting his weight back slightly on the sand. "We don't need that,” he said.

Jordi let out a short, breathy laugh, his eyes half-lidded as his heart rate spiked from the vapor. "It is not just for that, American. It makes everything better. Try."

"No," Scott said. He needed his head exactly where it was.

Jordi shrugged, taking one more shallow breath of the fumes before tucking the bottle back into a pocket. "You miss the best parts of the night," he murmured, but he didn't argue.

What followed was good, sure. It was a familiar map of hands grasping on hot skin and mouths clumsily searching for each other in the dark. The routine of it grated on Scott. This was his vacation. He needed to get out of his head and enjoy it. When Jordi finally went down on him, the pleasure was sharp, nearly too much to bear. Scott flinched back, pulling back before he broke, like clockwork, like he was supposed to. Jordi made a disgruntled sound at his retreat, but Scott brought him to a messy release with his hand a few short strokes later. Scott scrubbed a hand over his face. It felt good. He liked that he could give Jordi that, and to find his own release, but he felt the tension turning into a hollow ache low in his stomach. It was good. But god, he wanted to feel this man in him. That stretch that burned just right. But not today. Not ever.

He saw Jordi twice more. The final time, Jordi lay in the dark afterward on the sand with a cigarette and said, "You are very tense for a man on vacation."

"I'm always tense."

"In America, you are like this?"

"More."

Jordi exhaled a trail of smoke. "This is a waste," he said. "A man like you."

Scott didn't answer. Later, back in his room, he watched the ceiling fan going around and thought about what a man like you meant, and whether Jordi meant the same thing by it that Scott meant, which was a man who has learned to want less than he wants, and has become good enough at it that sometimes he forgets the original want was there.

There were three others over three weeks. Same protocol each time, the same limits, the clean exit. He did not take anyone back to his room, or invited them to stay for breakfast. He showed up and then he left, and nothing followed him home, which had always been the arrangement. It would be safer, he thought, to find someone consistent. 

Years ago, in the hotel rooms that had been the outer limit of what he permitted himself, there had been more. Men who knew what they were doing and took their time and didn't require the vigilance he now carried into everything. He knew why things were different, but he still felt that he was allowed to miss it. Maybe someday, long into the future, he could find a place where no one knew his name. Meet a long-term person, maybe one he even could love, and get that same satisfaction. Someone usual, who was willing to play by his set of rules. But that would mean a different set of issues. But until then, there was a calculated risk and there was summer. 

While he was gone, Scott thought about Kip twice, against his better judgment. Once when he saw a similarly compact man with dark curls and felt the urge to press their bodies together, and once on the plane home, wondering if Kip would be at the bodega the next time he walked in, which didn't count.

He landed at JFK on a Monday in August, took a cab to Tribeca, stood in the penthouse looking at the Hudson and the skyline and understood that in six weeks training camp would start. Then the whole machine would engage again and carry him forward into a slightly different version of the exact same year he had just had, which was the same as the one before it, and the one before that. 

The season, the games, the locker room, the city. The occasional women he brought as dates to charity functions and took out once or twice to maintain appearances and then never again. He stood on the terrace for a long time. In the morning he walked to Maria's.

The bell rang. Kip was behind the counter with a different book—thicker, hardback, a library stamp on the spine. He looked up. He did the thing where something akin to excitement moved in his face and then didn't.

And he was wearing a button. It matched the stickers that had covered the city. Small, on the strap of his apron near the shoulder. SILENCE = DEATH in the pink triangle. It was just there, like he’d put it on without thinking, because it was part of who he was. Scott clocked it and tucked away that piece of information where he hid away all the things he knew about Kip.

"You're back," Kip said.

"Season starts again soon," Scott said. "Got in yesterday."

Scott walked closer, his eyes dropping to the library book on the counter. "What are you reading?"

Kip glanced down, turning the spine toward Scott. It was Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran. “Just some fiction. It’s about the downtown scene in the seventies, before things changed.” Kip's gaze was steady, his fingers tapping the cover. 

“Never heard of it.”

“No, I wouldn’t think so. What about you? What do you read on those long road trips?”

Scott shifted his weight, suddenly feeling very large and conspicuous in the narrow aisle. “Stephen King, mostly.”

Kip’s eyebrows shot up. A slow, wicked grin spread across his face. “Stephen King?”

“He’s good,” Scott defended, a rare prickle of competitiveness hitting him. “Keeps your brain occupied.”

“Right, right. It’s just—” Kip leaned his forearms on the counter, the grin turning teasing. “This isn’t a trap, is it? You’re not going to keep me captive in a cabin and tie me up until I love you, right? Because I have a thesis to write.” 

Scott stared at him, his throat going completely dry. The joke was light, but the phrase tie me up hung in the muggy, late-summer air like live electricity. Kip was blushing, his cheeks matching the pink of his button, but he didn't look away. 

“I’m more of a The Shining guy,” Scott managed to say, his voice a little lower than intended. “Less ropes. More ghosts.”

“Good to know,” Kip murmured. The tension stretched for a little too long before Kip stood and went to the griddle. “Usual?"

"Yeah." Scott cleared his throat. "Is Maria here?"

"No, her cousin's visiting from Santo Domingo."

"Ah." He accepted the coffee when it came. "She doesn't make it the same anyway."

Kip glanced at him over his shoulder. "The coffee or the sandwich?"

"Both."

"She makes it exactly the same."

"Nope," Scott said.

Kip turned back to the griddle. Scott could see the corner of his mouth from the side, the beginnings of a smile. He pressed the egg flat and said nothing.

Scott drank his coffee while he waited. The bodega was quiet. August light through the door.

"How was your trip?" Kip said, not turning around.

"Good." Scott picked up his coffee. "Restful."

"Where'd you go?"

"Spain."

Kip slid the sandwich across. "I've never been."

"You should go," Scott said. Then, before he could not say it, "It would suit you." Kip on a beach. Golden skin in the sun.

Kip looked at him. It was a beat too long for the comment, and they both knew it. He put his money on the counter.

"Training camp in six weeks," he said. "I'll be back."

“Next week I switch to evenings. No more mornings.”

“Oh?”

“Class.”

“Did you find a place? Closer to school?”

Kip smiled sadly. “No, unfortunately, not everyone tips like a superstar hockey player. I’ll be commuting from Queens, except for when I can convince Maria to let me sleep on her couch.”

“Too bad.”

"See you around, Scott."

Scott left. He walked home through the August morning and stood on the terrace with the last of the coffee and watched the Hudson and thought another season. And then—what? He didn't finish the thought. He went inside and closed the door.

Summer came to an end faster than Scott had anticipated with the Canada Cup. The tournament ran through Hamilton and Montreal, Team USA against the best the rest of the world had. It did not go as well as he hoped. Canada had a hotshot group of young players, led by Shane Hollander, and took them apart in the semis in a way that felt inevitable by the second period. Scott sat in the locker room afterward with his gear still on and thought, not entirely seriously but not entirely unseriously either, that an egg and cheese from Maria's before the game might have made the difference. He had been to three cities in ten days and eaten badly in all of them and the thought of the bodega and the smell of the griddle at six in the morning had the force of something that might have let him go home a champion. He categorized that as only superstition and went to bed.

Scott wasn’t quite sure how he found himself at the charity event in the middle of September. His agent, Carolyn, would drop these things into his schedule. It was an auction, art for youth sports scholarships, the kind of thing she committed him to without asking because his name on the attendee list was worth something to the organizers and she was sure he would go along with it. Scholarships had saved his life, and he was happy to pass it along. He wore a new suit from Hugo Boss that he had picked up from Barney’s that week and took a car on a Friday evening in the last real heat of summer, the light going gold over the buildings.

The venue was a gallery. A white cube on West Broadway that smelled of cigarette smoke and cheap wine. It was not the uptown charity-benefit world where people bought paintings to be seen buying them. This was more intimate. He understood within thirty seconds of walking in that it was queer-adjacent, feeling the familiar prickling awareness of being too exposed. He scanned the room, located the exits, assessed who was here and whether anyone had a camera. Logically, it was unnecessary. Carolyn was here. She was his shield, as she so often unknowingly was. But the assessment still ran. He couldn’t stop it. 

Someone nearby accepted an offer on a painting. Twenty-five percent pledged towards summer camps for foster kids. Someone else drifted past. Scott stood in front of a large canvas and looked at that instead.

The work was by Basquiat, the name that was everywhere that year, the galleries, the conversations Scott half-heard at functions like this one. He knew the name how things worm their way into your consciousness without having sought them out. Part of the known culture. The canvas was enormous and layered and furious in a way that made him feel both drawn toward it and out of his depth. Text and figures and a visual syntax he couldn't parse, working on him in ways he could feel but not articulate, like a valuable piece of art should.

He was thinking he should have invited Eric to come with him, who actually knew shit about art when liquid splashed over his shoulder without warning. 

"Oh god—I'm so sorry—"

Scott turned around. Kip was holding an empty wine glass and looking at his blazer with total horror. His cheeks, Scott noticed, had gone the same color they'd gone on the morning in late March when the bell above the door had given Scott away. He was wearing a dark shirt with the sleeves pushed up and no jacket and he looked like himself in a way the bodega had not prepared Scott for. 

"It's fine," Scott said. “Don’t worry about it.”

"It's really not, I just—"

"It's fine." Scott meant it. He didn't care about the jacket. He was looking at Kip's face, which he had seen focused and distracted and amused and briefly asleep, and had not seen flustered until now. "Hi."

Kip blinked. The horror shifted into something else. "Hi," he said. "I didn't know you—I mean. Hi. Scott."

"Hi," Scott said again.

Kip laughed. The sound of it in a room with music and strangers and cigarette smoke was different from the sound of it across a counter and Scott stood there without being able to do anything sensible with it. Someone brought Scott a napkin. He blotted the shoulder of the blazer without looking at it.

"You know this work?" Kip said, nodding toward the Basquiat.

"Uh, no," Scott said. "I know he worked with Warhol. That's about it."

Kip's expression morphed to surprised delight. "That's actually a reasonable place to start," he said. "It drives Basquiat fans insane, but it's true. Warhol spotted him early." He looked at the canvas. "Warhol died in February—you probably saw it in the news."

"I read about it, yeah."

"So that collaboration is done. And now this—" Kip gestured at the room, the auction paddles, the wine, the crowd—"is what's left. Someone in this room is about to spend significant money on a canvas by a twenty-six-year-old Black kid from Brooklyn, partly because Warhol told the art world to pay attention." A pause. "There’s a whole argument about the commodification of art there."

"Tell me about it," Scott said.

So Kip told him. Neo-expressionism. The text as image. How the work metabolized pop culture and art history simultaneously. He talked about what it meant that this canvas was here in this room being sold for what it would sell for, and what Basquiat thought about that, and what Warhol's dealer thought about it, and where those two things diverged.

Scott asked questions. His interest was genuine, and Kip was not looking at him as people usually looked at him when he asked questions about things he didn't know. Usually once people knew Scott was a hockey player, they talked to him like he was stupid. Just a big dumb jock. To be fair, Scott didn't often correct the assumption. It led to fewer questions. Kip didn't make him feel like a dumb jock at all.

Two other people who had been in the orbit of the conversation detached over the next hour. Scott didn't track it. The wine dried on his shoulder, the dark fabric hiding the stain well, and the room went on around them. Eventually, the auction wound down. The Basquiat went for thirty thousand dollars. Scott bought a smaller piece, something by someone he hadn't heard of, because Kip had stood in front of it briefly and said he liked it. He gave it to Carolyn to figure out what to do with. At some point, she materialized at his elbow. Scott made the introduction. She said she had to get going. Scott said he'd follow in a few minutes and she left.

Kip picked up his glass from the cocktail table where he'd set it and found it empty and set it down again. 

"There's a place on Grand," Scott said. "If you’re hungry. Good slice. We could walk, or I can call my car."

Kip looked at him. "It's a nice night."

They walked. Heat off the sidewalk, restaurants spilling out, the city dense. The line outside the pizza place was out the door and down the block. Scott stood on the sidewalk and looked at it. He could say his name. It would work, it almost always worked in the right kind of place on a Friday night, and the calculation was already forming before he stopped it. Not in front of Kip. Not like that.

"How long do you think?" Kip said.

"Half hour. Maybe more."

Kip looked at the line and back at him. "Is there somewhere else?"

"Yeah." Scott hesitated. He wasn’t sure what possessed him at that moment, but he went for it. "My place is eight blocks from here. If you want."

Kip looked at him. The look lasted long enough for Scott to hear how he'd said it. I'm eight blocks from here. He could have said there's another place nearby, but he didn't. His apartment. On a Friday night. Kip knew perfectly well what eight blocks from here meant after the evening they were having.

"Yeah," Kip said. "Okay."

The line outside the pizza place was still in Scott's head when he unlocked the door—the decision not to pull any strings, to stay a normal guy for a minute—and then the door was open and he watched Kip walk in ahead of him and stop.

"Oh," Kip said. He looked at the Hudson through the wall of windows. He looked at the ceiling, the furniture, the view again. "Holy shit."

"Yeah."

"I mean." Kip turned around, still taking it in. "I figured you'd have a nice place."

"But."

"This is insane." He said it without judgment, just fact. He walked to the window and stood there. The city was doing what it did at night, and Kip was standing in Scott's apartment looking at it like it was something to look at, which it was, but Scott had mostly stopped noticing. "Do you want to order some dinner, or—"

"Or," Scott said.

Kip turned from the window. He looked at Scott across the room.

"Okay," he said.

Scott crossed the room. Kip kissed him first, or Scott moved first, or both at once. He would never be able to remember which it was. No counter between them, Kip's hands at the back of Scott's neck and Scott's hands finding his waist, the fabric of the dark shirt, the heat of his body underneath. Kip kissed like he was pouring every ounce of his attention into it, and Scott had nowhere to put his hands that didn't make him want more.

They reached the bedroom without a decision being made about it. Kip's shirt came off and Scott looked at him in the low light from the window. The line of his throat, his collarbones, the dark chest hair narrowing down, and felt a vertigo. He should not be doing this. He should not be allowed to have what he wanted. He needed to stop this right now before it went too far. 

"Hey," Kip said, his hand along Scott’s face. The doubts vanished. 

"Yeah," Scott breathed in reply.

Kip pulled him down, flipping them until he was on top, unbuttoning Scott’s shirt. What Scott knew how to do was disappear. Make the body into a transaction, be present in the minimum necessary sense and absent in every sense that he could, leave nothing that could be traced. He had forgotten that it was a skill. He had forgotten there was an alternative.

Scott tried to stay present. This was only going to happen once. There wouldn’t be another time like this, probably until he retired and could fade away. His hands on Kip's back, Kip's mouth was on his neck, his collarbone, lower. When Kip's mouth moved down to his hip bone, Scott made a sound he did not try to suppress.

Scott looked up at him, all of him, the dark chest hair, the lines of him, looking back without flinching, and felt the vertigo of six months of wanting finally in the room with him.

Kip moved agonizingly slowly, relishing Scott’s impatience. It always moved so fast, when he was travelling. Quick and efficient and then over. Here they could take their time. Scott didn’t know how to do that.

Kip took him in his mouth and Scott put a hand in his hair and held on, not guiding. It had been so long since he'd been present for anything like this that the sensation was almost secondary to the fact of it. The fact of Kip's hands on his hips and Kip's mouth doing what it was doing and Scott not going anywhere, not squashing down a single thought, just there. He pulled Kip up before the end because he needed to and Kip came back up and they finished with their hands, Kip's face close to his, both of them breathing hard.

When it was over, Scott lay on his back looking at the ceiling with his heart going and his body wrung out and Kip beside him, breathing.

Neither of them said anything for a while. Kip shifted onto his side, facing the ceiling. "Okay," he said. "I have to tell you something."

Scott waited.

"I thought you were homophobic," he said. Scott stared at him. "After the first time you got bacon," Kip said. "You just—shut down. I figured I'd said something wrong, or I made you uncomfortable." He tilted his head slightly. "I was pretty sure that was what it was."

"It wasn't that," Scott said.

"No?"

"No."

Kip waited. Scott didn't offer anything more, and after a beat, Kip nodded slowly, accepted the non-answer. "Okay," he said. "I've been trying to figure out if I was reading it wrong since March."

"You weren't reading it wrong."

"Yeah." Kip's mouth quirked. "Okay. Good."

Kip rose and went to the bathroom. Scott heard the water running and lay there until he realized he should probably do something about his state as well. He stood, found a towel, cleaned himself up, and pulled on a pair of shorts. He sat with his back against the headboard and the sheet pulled up and waited.

Kip came back in and started collecting his clothes from the floor. His pants in one hand, his shirt in the other. He looked at the suit jacket draped over the chair with the wine still on the shoulder.

"I am sorry about the jacket," he said. "I can cover the dry cleaning."

"Don’t worry about it. You're leaving?"

Kip stopped. He looked at Scott across the room.

"Yeah, I mean—"

"You don't have to," Scott said. He heard how it came out and didn't take it back. "You can stay. I'd like you to stay. If you want."

Kip looked at him. Scott didn't have a word for it. Readable. He hadn't been readable to anyone in a very long time and it was uncomfortable and he didn't look away. Kip dropped his clothes on the floor.

"Don't gotta twist my arm," he said, and came back to the bed, and sprawled across the width of it with his head on Scott's thigh, on his back, looking up at the ceiling. Scott looked down at him. It was the most unselfconscious thing he'd ever seen anyone do in this apartment, which was not a high bar because no one was ever in this apartment, but still. Scott put his hand in Kip's hair. 

"Tell me something," Kip said. He was looking at the ceiling. "I want to know about you. I can't think of the right questions."

Scott thought about it. "I grew up poor," he said. "Rochester. My mother and I. She was—she was really something." He hesitated. This part was always difficult. "She died when I was fifteen."

Kip was quiet. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Thank you."

"Only child?"

"Yeah. It was just the two of us." Scott cleared his throat. "I got a scholarship to a boarding school with a hockey program at fourteen. Then I started playing pro and that was that." He smiled. "I know how lucky that is. How unlucky I could have been."

"Not luck," Kip said. "You worked for it."

"I had a lot of help. What about you?"

Kip turned his head slightly and looked up at him. Scott kept his hand moving in his hair, slow.

"My real name is Christopher. Grady," Kip said, to the ceiling. "Almost nobody calls me that. I'm twenty-five. I live with my dad in Queens."

"I know," Scott said. "You mentioned it."

Kip smiled at the ceiling. "Right. The bacon conversation."

"The bacon conversation."

He should sleep. He was supposed to see the new rookies tomorrow and it would be long and he had not slept yet and it was—he looked at the window, the dark outside—not early. His eyes closed. Kip's breathing slowed. Scott kept his hand in his hair.

In the morning, Scott woke to the smell of eggs. He lay there not placing it, because the penthouse did not smell of eggs. The penthouse did not smell of anything. 

Kip was in the kitchen. He'd found the eggs—Scott had eggs, apparently, though he couldn't have said when he'd bought them—and a pan, and he was standing at the stove in his underwear, doing something that from the bedroom doorway looked like an egg sandwich coming together out of pure improvisation. No griddle. No good roll. Whatever bread was in Scott's kitchen, which was probably not the right bread. Scott stood in the doorway and watched him.

"Morning," Kip said, without turning around. He'd heard him. "I found eggs. I hope that's okay."

"It's fine."

"You don't have a proper griddle." He said it without judgment, an observation. "Or any rolls. I used the bread that was in the bag."

"That's sourdough."

"I know." He slid the egg onto the bread with the efficiency that came from having made ten thousand of these. "It'll be fine. Sit down."

Scott sat on a stool at the counter. Kip set a plate in front of him—egg, a slice of cheese that had come from somewhere, the sourdough—and then turned back to make his own. The coffee was already done. Kip had found that too. Scott picked up the sandwich and ate it.

It was not the egg and cheese from Maria's. The bread was wrong and the cheese was much firmer than the cheap American slices Kip usually threw on and there was no griddle-press to the roll. But it was made by Kip Grady, and it was the best thing he'd eaten in weeks. He didn't say this. He drank his coffee instead.

Kip sat across the counter with his own sandwich and a slim paperback book, which had migrated from his jacket pocket to the counter. He ate and read. He didn't ask what this was. Then he closed the book and looked at Scott.

"I should go. But this was nice. And you don’t need to worry about me talking to anyone. I know how the world works for men like you." Men like you.

"Wait." Scott hadn't planned to say it. "I want to—" He stopped. Kip waited. "I'm going to say a bunch of things. Okay? And I know it's a lot. But." He held Kip's eyes. "Can I say them?"

Kip's expression shifted. "Yeah," he said. "Go ahead."

"My life is complicated," he said. "There are things I can't do right now. Maybe not for a while." He heard how that landed and kept going. "But I really like you. And I want you to stay."

Kip looked at him. He was quiet long enough that Scott felt the full weight of what he'd just said sitting in the room between them.

"Okay," Kip said. "I'll stay."

Chapter End Notes

Okay, how are we feeling now? Not so bad, right? We are just getting warmed up.

Context notes:

The pink triangle stickers and buttons bearing the phrase SILENCE = DEATH emerged from a specific moment of radical mobilization in Manhattan. The imagery was quickly adopted by the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, following its creation in March 1987 (the month this fic starts, not a coincidence). The influx of stickers Scott notes upon returning in August reflects the escalation of ACT UP’s summer work, which included protests at City Hall and a series of continuous, targeted actions throughout June and July demanding accountability for the ongoing crisis. For high-risk groups in the late 1980s, intimacy was dictated by the highly specific, explicit risk-reduction guidelines distributed by the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the pamphlets Scott references.

Kip’s analysis of Basquiat captures the combination of the 1987 New York art market and a community in mourning. Andy Warhol’s sudden death in February 1987 ended the complex creative partnership that had peaked with their joint 1985 exhibition. In the months that followed, the commercialization of downtown street art was accelerating rapidly, driving up the value of Basquiat’s layered, furious canvases. $25,000 was a fairly accurate estimate for the time, and I upped a little due to the charity nature of it all, but the next year, after his untimely death, those same paintings would go for ten times more.

The book Kip reads, Dancer from the Dance is a 1978 novel depicting the post-Stonewall, pre-crisis gay subculture of Fire Island and downtown Manhattan. I read it in college, and it’s not a happy book, in case you get the hankering to pick it up. For a twenty-five-year-old student like Kip, looking back at the seventies meant reading about a sort of paradise that had been thoroughly ended by the epidemic, transforming what should have been a modern novel into a text about a lost civilization. Stephen King was everywhere that year. 1987 led to the release of Misery, The Eyes of the Dragon, and the paperback version of It. It was a nice comparison to pull bewteen Scott’s mass-market sensibilities and need to fit in and Kip’s university campus deep cuts.

Chapter 2: Bright Days

Chapter Summary

"He had spent so much of his life being watched, calculated, performed for and at, that being allowed to watch someone else perform joy without him owing anything in return felt like its own kind of luxury, rarer than the penthouse, rarer than the car service."

Chapter Notes

A reminder that the first two chapters of this were pre-written before I went on my vacation.

Crossover Notes:
None! There are no intersecting scenes or dialogue with Vocabulary of Exile in this chapter.

Chapter Warnings

Not too much. This one is relatively safe.
Discussions of safe sex practices between Scott and Kip, sex scenes between Scott and Kip.
Brief mentions of family abandonment of HIV/AIDS patients.
Period-appropriate frustrations around censorship and inaction regarding HIV/AIDS and homosexuality

I was so willing to pull a page out of my notebook,

a day, several bright days and live them as if I was

only alive, thirsty, timeless, young enough…

— Eileen Myles, "Notebook, 1981"

Training camp started two weeks later and quickly consumed most of Scott's daylight. There were no games yet to organize his morning around, and no reason to stand at the counter at six with a coffee he didn't need. Kip also wasn't behind the counter now. He was in Scott's bed, on his couch, in his kitchen, in his thoughts constantly. 

That first morning after, Scott had dressed in his practice gear and left, fully assuming that he would never see Kip again. Sure, Kip had said he would stay, but why would he? Scott was a lot and he was asking for a lot, and he knew that. He wasn't really even sure what he was asking for. What did he have to offer Kip? Stay inside the penthouse and warm his bed and never leave and never tell a soul, like Kip was being inducted into some private harem with no name and no precedent. But then he had returned from practice, feeling at least somewhat optimistic about their new players and the coming season. Kip was there, curled up on the massive leather couch with a book. 

"Hey," Kip said, putting down the massive tome of draft information.

"You're here," Scott said, completely dumbfounded. 

"Do you want me to make dinner—" Scott cut him off by flipping over the top of the couch and pulling him into a kiss. 

Kip laughed into it, the sound vibrating against Scott's mouth, and then stopped laughing when Scott's hand found his cheek and held him there, nothing rushed about it despite how badly Scott had wanted this exact thing all through practice, daring to dream that last night may not have been one-time thing. The book slid off the cushions and hit the floor and neither of them gave it another thought. Kip pulled back just far enough to get a knee up on the couch, straddling Scott's lap in one motion that knocked the air out of both of them. Scott's hands went to his hips, fingers pressing into denim, holding him down against the friction building between them. He got Kip's shirt over his head and dropped it somewhere behind the couch, and after that there wasn't much more talking, replaced with the slow grind of Kip's weight against him and the couch leather creaking under them both and Scott's name, eventually, husky and frayed, the first time he'd ever heard it sound like that. 

The next two weeks had been a brilliant end of summer haze. Kip had a course to teach three days a week, and classes and research of his own, and Monday nights he was at ACT UP meetings at the Center, but otherwise he was at Scott's, carting home stacks of papers and books that quickly colonized the table. Kip reading on the couch with his feet in Scott's lap until it turned into something else entirely. Scott coming up behind him at the counter and not letting him finish making coffee. The two of them ending up rutting against each other on the kitchen floor more than once because the bedroom had felt too far away. 

The kitchen floor turned into its own kind of habit, separate from anything that started there and didn't end in clothes coming off. Scott came home from a game that had run late, starving in the way only a hockey game could hollow him out, and Kip, who'd been teaching until nine, or at his Monday night meetings, was always somehow hungrier. Kip tried, once, to teach Scott how to recreate the bodega egg and cheese from scratch at one in the morning, Scott holding a spatula like it might bite him, flipping an egg so hard it folded in half and landed half in the pan and half on the stove.

"That's not how you do it," Kip said, doubling over laughing against the counter.

"That's exactly how I've seen you do it."

"It is not. You have zero hand-eye coordination for allegedly being a professional athlete." Kip took the spatula out of his hand, like disarming him. "Sit. Drink your beer. Let the guy who's fried an egg before fry the egg."

Scott sat. He was, by any objective measure, one of the best athletes in the world, paid millions of dollars to perform with extraordinary precision and accuracy in front of tens of thousands of people, and he could not, it turned out, flip an egg. Kip never let him forget it. It became a bit, and Kip worked it into conversations that had nothing to do with eggs at all, just to watch Scott's face do its annoyed-and-delighted thing.

They ate sitting on the floor with their backs against the cabinets more nights than not, plates balanced on their knees, because the dining table had vanished under a glacier of Kip's research and neither of them had the energy or interest to clear it. It became its own ritual without either of them calling it that. Scott learned the floor was colder near the dishwasher and warmer near the oven, and started steering them toward the warm spot without being asked. Kip noticed, eventually, and didn't say anything about it, just smiled into his food like he'd caught Scott in something he wasn't going to embarrass him by naming.

Scott had never had this much of anyone's body memorized, every place that made Kip go still and every place that made him loud, and some mornings he caught himself just watching Kip move around the apartment half-dressed, learning the lines and angles of him with the same focus he used to give opposing lines on tape. 

And Kip talked. Listening to Kip had been most of what Scott had done those weeks. Scott had always thought of him as kind of silent in the bodega, but as soon as Kip felt like he was being given permission to speak, he let loose. Kip talked in flowing long bursts, words about his life, about his research, about the classes he taught, moving from one topic to another as naturally as breathing. 

The best version of it happened past midnight, when Kip had had just enough beer to lose his sense of an audience entirely. Rambling about the research or his colleagues or some book he had read.

"I have to tell you about my advisor's nemesis," he said, reaching to turn out the lamp. "There is a man at Columbia, tenured, sixty-some years old, who has been feuding with my advisor since 1964 over a footnote. One footnote." He was sitting fully upright now, gesturing with both hands like the bed was a lecture hall. "My advisor cited a primary source the guy at Columbia claims he found first, in some county archive in Indiana, and the Columbia guy has never let it go. Twenty years. He brings it up in the acknowledgments of his own books. Not the footnote itself, just a little dagger aimed at my advisor, every single time."

"What did the footnote say?" Scott asked.

"Nobody remembers! That's the best part. I've read all of both their books and I genuinely cannot tell you what the disputed fact is anymore, because it's been buried under decades of two grown men sniping at each other in academic journals." Kip dropped back onto the pillow, shaking with laughter. "There was a conference panel last spring where they were both scheduled to speak, and my advisor requested, in writing, to not be seated at the same table during the reception. The department had to redo the whole seating chart. Grown men. PhDs. A seating chart."

Scott lay there with one arm behind his head, picturing two men in tweed silently radiating hatred across a hotel ballroom over a fact nobody could even name anymore. He liked the animation that came into Kip's hands when he got like this, liked how his voice climbed and dropped with no regard for the hour, liked that none of it required anything from Scott except to keep being there. He had spent so much of his life being watched, calculated, performed for and at, that being allowed to simply watch someone else perform joy without him owing anything in return felt like its own kind of luxury, rarer than the penthouse, rarer than the car service.

"You're not even listening," Kip said, catching him.

"I'm listening." Scott reached up and pushed his hair back from his forehead. "I just like watching you do this more than I care about the footnote."

"That's insulting and also the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me." Kip grinned and kept going anyway, off on a tangent now about his department chair's feud with a colleague over parking spots in the employee garage, no stakes at all, and Scott listened to that too, and meant it when he laughed.

Scott had spent many years training himself out of curiosity about other people's lives. He never asked a single question about other people that didn't involve hockey if he could help it. If he never asked any questions about them, they never felt the need to ask any back that he would have to come up with lies to get through. He didn't like to lie if he could help it. It took him a few days to understand he was allowed to ask questions back, and that Kip's nose would scrunch up, and he genuinely wanted to know more about this man. He learned about Kip's life this way and only this way, secondhand, in fragments, and he had started to build a map out of those fragments without ever once setting foot in the place they came from.

One night, lying in bed, Kip was reading a book with one hand stroking the hairs at the nape of Scott's neck and said, "Kyle thinks I'm sleeping with someone married."

"Who's Kyle?" Scott stiffened, trying to push down the rising panic that someone knew about them. 

"Kyle Swift. We went to college together. We used to be roommates, back then. He tends bar in the Village now." Kip turned a page he wasn't reading. "He thinks I must be fucking a married guy, because there can't be any other reason for me to stop hanging out at his bar when he's working on Wednesdays."

"I'm not married," Scott said, trying to make it sound lighter and more joking than he was feeling. Who the fuck was this Kyle to comment on Kip's sex life?

"If you are, you did a damn good job hiding her," Kip laughed.

"She'd be furious about the travel schedule."

"I did vanish for a couple of weeks. And it's not like I can give him a phone number where to call me."

"No, probably not."

Kip glanced over. "I think he just misses me. We dated for a while. Years ago now. It's fine, we're better as friends, it just sort of ran out of road." He offered it up neutrally, a fact set down rather than confessed. Scott felt the hot flash of jealousy. He didn't want to think of anyone else seeing his Kip like this, relaxed and stretched out in bed, sated and open. Did Kyle get to see the parts of Kip that Scott could only dream of seeing?

"And people know? That you dated?"

Kip nodded. "People in my life know."

"And your dad? Is he good with it?"

"He was great, actually. I was ready to have to move out, but Dad hugged me and said it would be fine. I think he was worried I was telling him I was sick, not just gay."

Scott wondered what his mom would say. He had known, even before she died, when he was at that young age where boys started talking about girls, that he didn't seem to notice them like the other boys did. He wouldn't have been able to articulate what that was, and certainly couldn't have put a name to it, but he knew now that he was always this way. Maybe she would have given him a hug and told him she still loved him, no matter what, but maybe she wouldn't have. He would never know.

"Does anybody know, about you?" Kip had put his book down and was looking at Scott intently.

"Well, there's you. And then there's Kevin."

"Kevin?"

"My, uh, roommate? I guess that's what he was. From Rock on the Mount Academy. I mean. We never talked about it. But we also, you know."

Kip's eyebrows shot up, delighted. "Scott Hunter. Are you telling me you lost your virginity to a boy at a catholic boarding school called Mount Academy?" He was laughing now, a honeyed, melodic sound that Scott wanted to keep hearing every moment for the rest of his life.

Scott grinned sheepishly. "Something like that, yeah. You know, there weren't any girls. And Kevin had a nice ass." He cleared his throat. "You go out a lot?"

"I used to go out a lot." Kip rolled onto his back, looking at the ceiling instead of Scott. Scott had started to recognize this, the angle of his chin, the rigidity that entered into his posture as Kip started talking about something serious. "I haven't really, lately. I try to make time to go sit at Kyle's bar, but that's about it." 

He set the paperback on the nightstand without marking his page and turned onto his side instead, an arm coming to rest across Scott's chest. Scott let it sit there. Some nights this was the whole of what happened between them, no more than this, Kip's knee hooked over his leg and his breathing slowing into a rhythm, even and unbothered. Scott lay awake a while longer feeling the comfortable weight of him settle across his body. By the time Scott reached over to turn off his lamp, Kip was already gone, mouth slightly open against his shoulder, and Scott lay there in the dark. This was nice, having someone here, someone to just hold on to. He lay there for a long time before he let himself follow into darkness.

Scott learned about Kip's friends that same way over the course of the nights in his bed. Kyle. Elena. Shawn. Chuck. Jimmy. Maria, of course. Friends from before, that he had met through the years of living and working in New York. Joel was a new friend, folded into a different chapter of his life. Joel was also at NYU, working through the second year of his program. Kip was talking about his thesis advisor, Dr. Lawrence, over takeout at the kitchen counter and mentioned, without breaking stride, that Joel had read his chapter draft and pointed out parts of it that were weaker and needed work.

"Who's Joel?" Scott asked, the question slipping out before he'd thought to hold it back. He didn't want to sound jealous. He wasn't jealous. He didn't get to know Kip's friends any more than from the stories Kip offered up, just the same as they did not get to know him.

"He's another student. History department too, same as me, just a year ahead." Kip hesitated, as if mulling over his next words carefully. "I think you'd like him. Like maybe you could be friends. You know, if."

"Why do you say that?" Scott was curious now. What did he, giant, uneducated hockey brute, have in common with an uptown career academic? 

"He follows hockey. And he's funny, like you."

"Oh, you think I'm funny."

"I do," Kip laughed. "When you're not being so intense."

"Oh, so never."

"See, there it is," Kip smiled, pulling him in for a kiss.

"I don't know what I'd talk to any of your friends about." 

"You'd figure it out," he replied lightly, but there was still a question folded underneath it that Scott heard but didn't answer. Would Scott ever be willing to meet his friends?

Scott had a five-game road trip eating up a full week of his time. Kip used the gap to go to Washington with a group from the Center. He came back on Monday with his nose burnt bright red from the sun despite the cold, and an intensity that Scott hadn't seen before he left. 

"How was it?" Scott asked.

"Huge." Kip sat on the couch. "There were names sewn into fabric panels, laid out across the whole mall. Thousands of them. You could walk around it for an hour." He picked at a thread coming loose from the edge of his coat. "I found a couple people I knew. I bet there were more, but there were just so many."

"Who were they?"

"A guy Kyle used to hang out with, and a guy I knew from the dorms freshman year."

Scott didn't know what to say, so he didn't try for anything clever or insightful. "I'm glad you went."

"Half a million people were there." Kip looked up at him, his eyes round and wet. "By next week it'll be back to nothing on the news again. Like none of it happened."

Kip didn't have his own place, and it quickly became apparent that while he was seeing Scott and they were doing whatever it is they were doing, he wasn't going to find one. Scott understood enough by now to know there'd been a Scott before him. Someone Kip had lived with, maybe even loved, and that situation hadn't worked out, and unless he stayed in the penthouse, he was back on a train from his father's house in Queens every night instead of somewhere of his own. Scott hadn't asked any questions about whoever had come before. He had a clear enough sense of what it was, but he was still working out whether knowing would be the better choice. 

Soon, Kip was staying at his place a few nights a week, returning to see his dad when Scott vanished for away stretches. Those were hard. Scott couldn't call. He couldn't, and Kip's dad certainly wasn't going to foot the long-distance bill. Scott was mostly worried about the Olympics. He was certainly going to be selected for the team, which would be an honor itself, but the concept of being away for nearly a month without seeing Kip had done something to his brain. A few weeks ago, this situation didn't exist, and now, he'd do anything to keep it going. 

When Kip left for Queens, Scott always felt guilty watching him dig a brass token out of his coat pocket and head out the door to hop on the subway. He could have put him in the car. He had a car service on retainer that would send someone, and he paid a premium for discretion. He could have put Kip in it every time. He never offered. Not even once. It would have been far too risky to do that. A black car idling outside a building in Queens would be too much. So Kip rode the 7 train instead, packed into a Redbird car layered with windows scratched to hell and interior paint layered with marker tags that the city kept promising to clean and never did. So the house in Queens stayed a distant fact. A place Scott would never see, with a father he never planned to meet. 

"You could keep your stuff here," Scott said one morning, watching Kip stuff a change of clothes into his bag for the third time that week. "Toothbrush, maybe. I could clean out a drawer."

"I have a place to live."

"I know."

"I don't need you to take care of me." 

Scott froze. "That's not—"

"Yeah. It's fine. You want me here, but not here. And it's okay."

"It's just a toothbrush, Kip. I don't mind letting you stay if it means you're closer to work."

"I need a little more than a drawer." Scott didn't have an answer for that, so he didn't give one, and Kip let it drop.

He had a key cut at the locksmith that afternoon. He left it on the kitchen counter and didn't say anything when Kip picked it up and stood there looking at it for a second before putting it in his pocket. Kip didn't say anything, but he started letting himself in. Scott also noticed, after a road trip, that Kip had definitely stayed over while he was gone. He liked the idea of Kip in his bed, even when he couldn't be. It filled him with a warm, sweet feeling in his stomach that he didn't know what to do with. He liked having someone to care for, something he had never had before.

It came up again, a few weeks later. Kip had mentioned an exhibition, in passing, an artist he liked showing somewhere in Soho. Scott bought two tickets to the opening without telling him, good seats, a benefit dinner attached that cost more than Kip's monthly stipend. He'd meant it as a gift. Kip thanked him for the tickets, but his voice had a cool edge to it.

"This is too much."

"It's not. You want to go, so you should go. It's for a good cause. Public libraries or something. Take Kyle. Or Joel. Whoever."

Coming home later that night, Kip was still keyed up from the gallery. "I wanted to see the paintings, Scott. With you, ideally, but you weren't there for that part either." He shrugged off his coat and didn't say anything else about it, and told Scott instead what he'd seen, color and shape and an artist's discussion about race disparities that Scott only half followed. Scott listened and understood that the dinner had been a withdrawal from an account that was already running low. He had a habit of solving things with money because money was the one thing he had and felt no kind of way about throwing around. But it also wasn't what Kip was asking for. He knew that. 

He got it right one time, almost completely by accident. He'd noticed Kip's sneakers coming apart at the seam. The nylon fabric was splitting where the ball of his foot flexed after how many marches and pickets they walked through. Instead of saying something, Scott walked into the sporting goods store himself, in his hat and sunglasses like he was casing the joint, and bought the exact same pair, Saucony Jazz in navy blue, same size, brand new. He left them by the door and didn't say a thing. Kip found them the next morning on his way out, looking at the old shoes and the new ones, side by side.

"Did you buy these for me?"

"Well they aren't my size," Scott replied. "Your other ones looked like they might be at the end of their days."

"They were broken in, that's all." Kip picked up the new pair, turning them over, fighting a smile and losing. "You really thought, what, a thousand-dollar benefit dinner? No. Sneakers. That will make him happy."

"I didn't think about it that hard. You needed new ones. For all your protests."

"You absolutely thought about it that hard." Kip dropped the shoes and crossed the room and pulled him down by the collar, smiling wide into the kiss, their teeth bumping. "This is so romantic."

"So you're not mad?"

"Oh, I'm furious."

"You can wear the old ones in bed if it'll make you feel better."

"Shut up," Kip said, and kissed him again. "Thank you."

After that, Scott started peppering in things slowly. Not too much, and not the kinds of things that Kip could complain about. The good coffee Kip liked from the yuppie roaster uptown. His favorite pen that he used for grading papers was replaced the day Scott noticed it was on its last legs. Things that didn't cost any amount that mattered, but all of it seemed more valuable than the gallery tickets had. Kip stopped flinching at the little things, and started saying thanks instead. 

It was Carter, of all people, who gave him the idea for a larger gesture. Carter had season tickets he barely used and a habit of handing pairs off to teammates' families. It wasn't unusual. Lots of the guys did it, just not Scott. It felt like money that would just go to waste otherwise, with seats sitting empty. One night on the team flight back from Montreal, he mentioned, conversationally, that he had two going to waste for Saturday's game.

"I'll take them," Scott said. "I can pay you for them."

"Oh, got a special friend coming?" Carter teased. "Virgin Mary finally ready to be moved by the holy spirit?"

"That's blasphemy, asshole. Catholic school, remember?" Scott punched his arm. "No, I have a friend who did me a favor. Figured it would be good payback."

"I'm just saying, you could give them to a puck bunny, and she'd never leave you alone again."

"No thanks." He didn't say more, and Carter didn't ask. Two nights later, Scott put the tickets in an envelope and left it for Kip on the kitchen counter, no note, nothing that explained where they'd come from beyond the team logo printed across the top.

Kip found them before he found his shoes. "These are unbelievable seats."

"I thought maybe you'd want to bring your dad."

Kip eyed the envelope, then Scott, his face processing through a thought that didn't quite form a question. "He's going to ask where I got these."

"Tell him you made a friend with season tickets going to waste. It's not a lie."

"It's not the truth either."

"It's enough," Scott kept his eyes on his coffee. 

Kip went still for a second, turning the envelope over once in his hands like there might be more written on the back. "Okay," he said, finally. "Thank you." He waited a second. "Do you think you would meet him? After the game?"

Scott froze. He wasn't sure how to respond the right way. Some way of phrasing it that wasn't fuck no, absolutely not. He settled on, "You know I can't do that, Kip."

"Not as Scott Hunter, the guy I sleep with," he started. "You can just be Scott Hunter the superstar hockey player."

"And you think he'll buy that?" 

"I mean, the truth is much less believable." 

Scott almost laughed. He didn't, because the request was still sitting there, asking more of him than the charities he worked with ever did. He did meet and greets all the time. Why was this one so hard? It was smaller than any of those asks, but also much larger. Scott looked at Kip's large, hopeful brown eyes. He wanted this. Scott wanted to give him this.

"Five minutes," Scott said. "After the game, in the hallway by the player's entrance. You guys can't come back."

"No, of course not." Kip was already smiling like he'd won the lottery.

Saturday's game ran tight into the third, 2-1 against the Nordiques, the crowd becoming reckless and aggressive with the thin lead. Scott had a goal and an assist by the second intermission. His legs felt slow, a step behind his thinking, but he was still pleased he had managed to put one away, and to send one to Carter. He knew it was nerves. He didn't look up at the stands. He had trained himself not to do that. But for one whole shift in the second period, he'd known exactly where he wasn't supposed to look, and his eyes flicked up there anyway. Kip was looking directly at him, next to an older man who looked exactly like Scott had guessed his father would. Then, before he could help it, he raised his hand and waved at Kip. Kip met his eyes, and Scott skated away. 

He showered fast and dressed even faster, telling the equipment managers that he had to go. He met Kip in the corridor outside the family room where the wives and kids and a handful of season-ticket regulars and VIPs were waiting around for their player or an autograph or a puck. Kip's father was a broad, sturdy man in a windbreaker zipped to the collar, a Mets cap pushed back on his head, and work boots that had seen a job site more often than a hockey rink. He looked like he'd come straight from somewhere, hands still a little rough. 

"Dad," Kip said, "This is Scott Hunter." He gestured at Scott. "Mr. Hunter, my dad, George." Scott's lips quirked up on the Mr. Hunter. 

"Hunter," George Grady took his hand in both of his, pumping it once, hard. "Christ. My son said you set this thing up. I don't even know how to say thank you." He really took in Scott, doing the calibration fans often did in person, realizing Scott was taller and older than he seemed on television, typically. "Some game. Great goal."

"Thank you, Mr. Grady." Scott kept his voice level, his public voice, the one that had never failed him. "I'm glad you could use the tickets."

"I haven't shut up about it. Forty years rooting for the Mets and the Admirals both, and the Mets finally win one, and now this." George's hand was still wrapped around his. "Kip says you two are friends."

"I go to his bodega," Scott admitted. It seemed a safe admission, and close enough to the truth. "But you can't repeat that or I'll have to find a new egg and cheese, and that would piss me off," he laughed conspiratorially.

George laughed too, loud, delighted, the kind of laugh that turned heads in the corridor. Scott felt the seconds ticking past the five minutes he'd allotted and did not, for the first time in any meet and greet he'd ever had, want them to end as fast as he usually wanted exchanges like this to end. George asked about the goal, about next week's back-to-back, about whether the team had a real shot this year, and Scott answered all of it with the same patience and grace he gave reporters and none of the distance, and somewhere in the middle of it he caught Kip watching him with an expression he didn't recognize. 

"Dad, we should let Mr. Hunter get home," Kip said eventually. "I'm sure he has an early practice tomorrow." 

"Of course, of course." George pumped Scott's hand again. "Thank you, really. This made my year." He missed, or pretended to miss, the soft look that crossed Kip's face. He turned to Kip. "Are you staying at Maria's tonight?"

Kip looked at Scott, then back at his father. "Yeah. I have an early class." 

"Alright then. Maybe you'll be home this week sometime?"

"Yeah, maybe," Kip shrugged. 

George gave them both a nod and started to walk away. Kip lingered a half-step behind. "See you soon," he said, too quiet for anyone but Scott to hear. 

"Go," Scott said, and Kip went, jogging two steps to catch up with George, and Scott stood in the corridor a long time after they'd cleared the door, the noise of the building draining out around him into the hush of a Saturday night after a win.

Scott went home alone, same as always, and sat on his terrace with a beer, the city laid out beneath him. He hadn't expected Kip to come by that night at all, maybe telling his dad the truth about going to Maria's. But the buzzer went a little after eleven, and it was Kip, still in the jacket he'd worn to the game, cold off the street.

"You could just come in. You have a key."

"Seemed rude."

"Next time, just use the key," Scott said, kissing Kip's cold fingers. "Did your dad have fun?"

"We took the subway together a few stops and he talked the whole way," Kip said, shrugging out of the jacket in the entryway. "Maybe after I got off he talked to strangers. I don't think he's stopped talking since the anthem." He looked lighter than Scott had seen him in weeks. "I had to come back and tell you. He thinks you're the best thing that's happened to this family since I got into NYU."

"High bar."

"You cleared it." Kip crossed the room and stood close enough that Scott could smell the cold still on him. "Thank you. I know how hard that was for you."

"I didn't do anything." Scott said it and heard, immediately, that it wasn't quite true, but didn't correct himself. He grabbed two beers and sat. Kip drank from his, set it down, and straightened up like he was about to give testimony.

"So we get on the train," Kip said, "and my dad starts in with the 'Christopher. Christopher. You will not believe what just happened to me.' And I'm sitting there, I know what happened, I was there, and he tells me the entire game again, every shift, with sound effects." Kip mimed a slap shot with an invisible stick, nearly knocking his beer over, then leaned in like he was sharing a secret. "He did the goal horn. With his mouth. On the train. The whole car stared at us. A grown ass man."

"He did not."

"He did. Twice. Once for me and once, I think, because he just wanted to do it again." Kip switched back into the voice, jabbing a finger at an invisible windshield. "'And he WAVED at you, Christopher. The man WAVED.' Like you'd knighted me." He grinned at Scott, delighted with himself, delighted with the whole night. "I haven't seen him like that since the Mets won it all last year. I think you've replaced the '86 World Series as the best thing that's ever happened to him."

Scott laughed with him, loud and boisterous. Kip looked thoroughly pleased to have caused it.

"There it is," Kip said, soft now. "I love that sound. You don't laugh enough."

"Maybe you should be funnier."

"Oh fuck off." Kip leaned his head on his shoulder. He picked his beer back up and tapped it against Scott's. "To your replacing the '86 Mets."

"To the '86 Mets, who deserve better than this comparison."

"They don't. Nothing deserves to be compared to you tonight." Kip said it lightly, a joke that carried something he meant underneath it, and let his head stay where it was.

They sat like that for a while, the beer going warm in both their hands, until Kip finally tipped his face up until their lips met. "I didn't do anything," Scott repeated against his mouth, and heard, immediately, that it wasn't quite true.

Kip studied him for a second, weighing whether to push. He didn't. He threw a leg over Scott's lap, straddling him. His tongue thrust into Scott's mouth, hands coming up to rest at the back of Scott's neck, and Scott felt the whole tightly wound night start to relax in his chest, the panic he'd been suppressing since third period finally releasing. He had spent the better part of his years building a life with one door in, locked, the only people allowed through it being people who never asked anything of him beyond a handshake and an autograph. George Grady had gotten further than that without trying, without even knowing what he'd done, and here was Kip standing in the middle of the wreckage of all that arithmetic, looking like he'd won a prize he didn't fully understand the size of.

"Bedroom," Scott whispered.

"Fuck yeah," Kip said, and steered him toward the door.

They didn't make it fully undressed before Kip had him down on the bed, knees framing Scott's hips, both of them still half in their clothes from the game. Scott got a hand up under Kip's shirt, palm flat against the heat of his back, and Kip rolled into the touch like he'd been waiting all night for permission to do this. They'd done it enough times now that there was a rhythm to it, an established give and take, but tonight carried a different charge underneath it, the night's adrenaline still working through both of them, George's laugh still echoing somewhere in Scott's chest.

Kip got his shirt off first, then Scott's, and for a while there was nothing but that, skin and the slow drag of mouths down necks and collarbones, Scott's hands learning territory he still hadn't fully mapped. When Kip's hand finally slid into his waistband, Scott made a sound he didn't try to catch, and Kip laughed against his neck, pleased with himself, and kept going. They took their time about the rest of it, hands and mouths trading off, nothing rushed, both of them chasing the same slow build until it broke for each of them in turn, Kip's name the last coherent thing Scott could grasp before his mind went totally, completely clear. Afterward they lay tangled in the sheets, Kip's head on his chest, and Scott put a hand on Kip's cheek and didn't say anything, because there wasn't anything else to say right then.

What Scott had thought would be a sufficient concession turned out to be the opening of a door he hadn't meant to leave unlocked.

The following week, Kip was on his knees between Scott's legs on the couch. Scott's hand went to his shoulder. 

"Hold on," he said.

Kip sat back on his heels and looked up at him.

"You should not swallow." The blood ran out of Kip's face and his mouth opened and closed several times like a fish, searching for words. 

"Are you—"

"No, god no. Sorry, no." He smoothed his hands over Kip's hair. "I didn't mean to panic you."

"I'm just careful. I need you to know I'm careful."

Kip laid his hand on Scott's thigh. His fingers were warm and smooth, unlike Scott's thick callouses. "I know you are." 

"It's low risk," Kip said. "Not zero, but the guidance is pretty clear on that. I've read the same pamphlets you have. Probably more of them." He held Scott's eyes. "I would never do anything to hurt you. I also will not ask you to do anything you're not comfortable with. Does that work?"

Scott considered him for a long moment. "Yeah," he said. "Okay."

Kip's hands slid to his thighs. "Then let me."

Scott's hands went behind his head, focusing on the sensation while the rest of the world fell away. Kip took his time about it, tongue working the underside of him in long strokes before he took him deeper, the wet sound of it indecent in the hush of the apartment. A saliva-slicked finger pressing back into him, touching against the spot deep inside him just how he liked. Scott's hips canted up without his permission, and Kip pinned them down with a forearm, looking up at him through his lashes like he wanted Scott to watch, which Scott did, helplessly, until his head dropped back against the cushions and his vision went gray at the edges. He came hard, a hand clamped over his own mouth to dampen any kind of sound out of fifteen years of habit. Kip swallowed and sat back on his heels, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, looking thoroughly pleased with himself.

Scott was still putting his brain back together when Kip climbed up onto the couch beside him, tucking his feet underneath himself, entirely too casual for what had just happened.

"Kyle and I hang out on Wednesdays. He works at this place on Avenue B. We have other friends there too." Kip watched his face, reading it closely. "I think you should come sometime." 

"What kind of place?"

Kip glanced at him then. The recalibration crossed his face fast, and Scott understood that he'd asked the wrong question, or asked it in a way that gave too much of his own footing away. "Nothing special. Same bar every week, same six people. You'd survive an hour." 

"Kip."

"It's not a gay bar, Scott. But it has a lot of gay people," he admitted. "I've been going since I was twenty-one. It's not a statement. It's just Wednesday."

"I can't." It came out quickly. No hedging. There was no version of that sentence that didn't include a hard no. It couldn't be a maybe or a someday. It had to be a no. A bar like that, with Kyle, with five regulars who would recognize his face. He didn't soften it and he didn't spell it out, because Kip already understood enough of his life not to need the explanation laid out so plainly for him. He had to know Scott would say no, and he had to know why.

"Sure," he said. "Another time."

He did not bring it up again. Neither did Scott.

Scott was fascinated by the ways their age gap manifested when it came to how they approached keeping things locked away. Scott didn't like to feel like an old man, but at this point, he was eight years older than Kip, which made a huge difference. Kip had never known intimacy without the fear of disease. 

They were eating on the floor of Scott's living room, the takeout containers between them, and Kip needed some context first, a place called the St. Marks Baths, closed now, shut down by the city two years back.

"I used to go sometimes, before they shut it," Kip said, picking through a container of noodles. "Not all the time. Kyle went more than I did." He offered it without any weight, a door left open rather than a confession pushed through it. "Did you ever go?"

Scott went still. He didn't decide to, but felt his body brace anyway. Kip noticed. Of course he noticed. Kip noticed everything about him, it was half of what made him exhausting and the other half of what made him impossibly wonderful. He didn't say anything about it, though. He kept eating, and after a beat the conversation moved on, back to Kyle and a story about a doorman who used to wave people through without checking IDs, and Scott sat there nodding in the right places and heard almost none of it.

"About what you asked before," Scott said. "About the bathhouses. No. I was worried about the raids, even before."

He thought about it for two days afterward, which meant he thought about almost nothing else for two days, in the gaps between drills and in the car and lying awake at one in the morning with Kip asleep beside him. It wasn't envy, exactly, and he turned that word over and set it down because it wasn't accurate enough. What sat in his chest instead had no name he could put to it yet. There was a secret city that had existed inside New York, in daylight, with doors that opened onto a street instead of a back hallway, where men had walked in without checking the block first. A place that had let Kip be unremarkable in it, the one thing Scott had never once achieved at any point in his life. He had been twenty-two himself once, the same age Kip would have been when the place was still open, and he had spent that year on a bus between rinks memorizing the loneliness that came with a body he wasn't permitted to want out loud. That year he had gone to Spain over the summer break for the first time. 

He didn't say any of this to Kip. He didn't have the words yet, and some part of him suspected that saying his thoughts on his own experience would create more questions that he wasn't yet ready to answer.

Kip came in late one Monday, looking bone-tired in a way Scott had never seen before. His shoulders were curled in like he was slumped over an actual physical weight.  

"Hey," Scott said. "Where were you?"

"ACT UP meeting. Then a few of us went to clean out an apartment." Kip dropped his bag by the door and kicked his shoes off.

"What do you do at those?" Scott asked.

"We meet on 13th Street. Mostly it's planning. Phone trees, getting people to protests, drafting language for the next action." Kip said it like he'd explained it a hundred times and didn't mind explaining it again. "After the meeting we had to go clear an apartment though."

"What apartment?"

"Guy named Randall. He lived alone. He died last week. Nobody found him for a couple of days, and when someone finally thought to check on him, the family refused to come." Kip scrubbed a hand over his face. "A few of us went and packed up his place instead. Boxed his books, his records. Tried to find people to take the stuff. There was a whole shelf of AZT bottles on his nightstand, half empty. Ten grand a year for that stuff and it still didn't keep him here. Somebody has to pack that up too. It's usually us."

"I'm sorry," he said, pulling Kip in. 

"Thanks."

"I'm sorry, I have to ask. Is that," he hesitated. "Safe?"

"Yeah, Scott. It's safe." Kip said it kindly, but clearly that he was tired and annoyed and a little worn down by the question. Scott had a dozen more follow up questions he wanted to ask. How do you know it's safe? Who was Randall? Did you know him? What was in the apartment? He didn't ask any of them, because asking would mean doing something with the answer, and he'd spent a long time building a life with no room in it for things that demanded action. Kip didn't seem to need him to ask anyway. 

He crossed the room instead and sat down on the couch next to him, close enough their knees touched, and that was when it broke, Kip's face crumpling all at once like he'd been holding it together by sheer effort the whole train ride down. Scott pulled him in without thinking about whether he knew how to do this right, Kip's forehead dropping against his shoulder, his hands clutching the front of Scott's shirt. Scott just held on, one hand moving slowly over his back, not saying anything because there wasn't anything to say that wouldn't sound cheap measured against a dead man's empty apartment. He didn't know how long they sat like that. Long enough that his arm went stiff and he didn't move it. Long enough that Kip's breathing evened out again on its own.

Kip didn't seem to need him to ask anything after that. He sat there a while longer, spent, and eventually went to take a shower. Scott lay awake until he heard the water shut off, and didn't say anything when Kip climbed into bed smelling like Scott's soap instead of his own, just drew him in again and held him until they both fell asleep.

The next morning, Kip brought it up again. 

"You know you have a platform."

"I don't know what that means," Scott said. 

"People listen to you. The papers cover you." Kip was deadly serious. "You could help get the information out there."

"I understand that."

"Do you?" He met Scott's eyes. "Because the government just made it illegal to give them that information honestly." Kip's voice stayed level, but a harder edge had crept underneath it. "Helms got an amendment through in October. No federal money for AIDS education that promotes homosexual activity, whatever the fuck that means. So health departments are pulling pamphlets. Real information, about how to not die, scrubbed because it might suggest two men fuck sometimes. They're actively making it worse, on purpose, by law."

"I live in the real world too, Kip." Scott heard how it sounded the second the words left his lips and he didn't take it back, because it was true, even if it was a shitty excuse. "I can't just put out a statement like that."

"Princess Diana is out there with people in the hospital, the least you could do—"

"I'm not a fucking princess, Kip!" Scott snapped.

"I'm not telling you what to do." Kip's voice stayed even. "But you should know what it looks like from here."

"I know how it looks."

"I don't think you do yet."

Neither of them was wrong, which was its own kind of unbearable. Scott couldn't come up with a rebuttal that wasn't also a confession, and Kip didn't push past the point he'd made, and they finished dinner with the conversation sitting unresolved between them, a debt added to the others.

A different night, a different request. 

"There's an author I love doing a thing at bookstore. You'd hate it." Kip said it like a dare, lacing his shoes by the door. "You don't have to come. I'm not asking you to come."

"It sounds like you're asking me to come, Kip."

"Just mentioning it," he glanced up. "Okay fine. I'm asking. Forget it, it's a stupid idea."

Scott said no the first time, easily. The same direct no he'd used on the bar. Kip had dropped it. Two days later, he brought it up again, just as light, just as easy to refuse. Scott refused it again and told himself that was the end of it. The third time, on a rare Friday with nothing on Scott's schedule and Kip already pulling on his coat, Kip didn't ask so much as just look at him, saying, "Please. I really want you to hear her. Just this once." 

Scott watched Kip getting ready to leave. He went through the analysis he always ran before saying yes to anything like this, the angles, the exits, the odds of one face in a crowd of strangers placing him. It was stupid and he shouldn't go. It was an unnecessary risk. But when Kip was looking at him like that, he said yes anyway.

"We have to be careful," he said. "I mean it."

"You always mean it." Kip's whole face had opened up, pleased enough that it made the risk feel smaller for as long as Scott let himself look at it.

Scott wore the oldest hat he owned, the brim worn soft, and a jacket with no logo on it. He hadn't shaved in a few days which also helped. He took a different train from Kip and arrived seven minutes later and stood outside the shop trying to come up with every reason he could possibly find before he made himself go in. The store was cramped, books stacked past any reasonable height, folding chairs set up in rows that didn't fit the room. Maybe fifty people, the last vestiges of late afternoon light coming through the front window and lying across the floor in a long bar that everyone's feet kept crossing. The room itself was dim, lit with small lamps. Scott took a seat in the back, and watched Kip move two rows up to sit with people he clearly knew, a hand on someone's shoulder, a laugh at a joke Scott couldn't hear.

The poet was a woman a little older than Scott. She had a sharp voice with a hardened edge. She read from a battered notebook for a little more than half an hour. Scott followed it as best he could, stumbling through the lines that assumed a vocabulary he didn't have and a history he hadn't lived, and he didn't try to figure out all the pieces he was missing. Instead, he watched Kip. Kip, whose face was bathed in golden lamplight, highlighting the angles of his jaw like a Renaissance painting. Kip, lacking self-consciousness in a manner Scott could only hope to aspire to one day, an ease in his frame that Scott had only seen over a bodega counter when he thought no one was watching. Here, Kip knew who might be in the room, who might see him, and he didn't give a fuck. He belonged here. He didn't have to negotiate whether he belonged here in his mind. He just allowed himself to do it, not once considering the price to enter.

Scott sat in the back in his hat, sweating, completely out of context. Examining each face for knowing, for recognition. He found, each time, that even through his paranoia, no one was looking at him at all. That should have been enough relief, but it wasn't. Kip was so free, so easy. He had never had this. He had been given a body that worked and an arena that loved him for it, and none of it had ever once let him sit in afternoon light surrounded by people who already knew him, like this room knew Kip. 

Afterward, they met on the subway, kind of. They took the same train. Standing a careful eight feet apart the entire time. Not talking. Not holding each other's gaze for longer than a fraction of a second. 

Inside the safety of the penthouse, Kip turned to Scott, pulling him into his arms. 

"Thank you for coming," he said.

"It was fine."

"You hated it," Kip said with a grin.

"I didn't hate it."

"But you didn't like it."

"It wasn't for me. But I liked watching you." Kip locked eyes with him, holding his gaze. 

"Thank you for trying."

Scott spent Christmas that year in Massapequa. It was the same as most years, passed gently from house to house, year after year by the older players. Letting him stay for a few days, have Christmas dinner. Play with kids, if there were any. This year, Kip stayed in the city with George, and Scott found himself missing him much more deeply than he would have guessed. He let himself imagine, on the drive to the Bennetts', future Christmases with a tree and lights in the penthouse, and Kip opening thoughtful gifts Scott had found, and maybe luxuriating in some long love-making in front of the fireplace he never lit. Or maybe Kip would spend the time Scott was with Eric to realize that this would never happen. That there would never be a holiday with family, because that would require him to have a conversation he was never going to be able to get through.

The Bennetts' house appeared nearly the same as it had in the summer. The modern sculptures still sat strangely against the colonial trim. A real tree stood in the front room, smaller than the living room could have held, but entirely reasonable for a household of two. Holly had made a beautiful roasted vegetable tureen and a spread of other things alongside it. Everything was lovely. But the air between Eric and Holly had gone past the measured distance Scott remembered from the summer. They moved around each other in the kitchen like two people who'd memorized the choreography of avoiding collision, polite, efficient, and entirely separate.

On the last night of Scott's visit, the dishes done, Holly already upstairs, Eric sat across from him at the kitchen table.

"We're getting divorced," Eric said. There wasn't any preamble there.

"When did you decide?"

"About a week ago."

"You didn't have to invite me for Christmas if you knew."

"Nah, we didn't want to ruin your holiday too. It's not ugly. People hear divorce and assume ugly. It's not that." 

"I'm sorry, Benny. That's some shit."

"Don't be. I'm mostly relieved, if I'm honest." He almost smiled. "She found a place near the office, just like she wanted."

Scott recalled their conversation from the previous summer, Eric saying he didn't know if the right person existed and Scott telling him maybe he just hadn't met her yet, and felt the strange vertigo of watching a thing he'd said out loud happen in real time.

"You need a place to land for a while?" Scott asked. "You could stay with me. As long as you need."

He heard himself say it and understood, the second it was out, that he didn't want Eric to say yes. Eric deserved the offer, and Scott would have absolutely made good on it if he had to, with no hesitation. But Eric in the apartment meant Kip couldn't be there, and there was a fast, incredibly unflatteringly selfish part of him that knew that would be a terrible blow to his quality of life. Hell, the regular release was vastly helping his game. 

Eric studied him the tiniest bit too long, like he'd caught the note of doubt in Scott's voice. "I appreciate it, Scott. So much," he said. "But I think I want my own place. I've never lived alone, you know." He took a drink out of his bottle of Diet Coke. "No offense. Your place is gorgeous."

"None taken," Scott replied. 

"I found a building near the practice rink already." Eric took another pull of his Diet Coke. "I've been commuting so damn far for all these years and just realized how much of my life that was."

They didn't talk much more about it. Scott drove home the next morning thinking about an apartment near Rye, and a penthouse of his own that Kip filled more nights than he didn't. 

In January, Kip came home from the Center still vibrating, a folded copy of Cosmopolitan rolled up in his fist like he meant to use it as a club.

"There's a doctor," Kip said, dropping his bag and smoothing the magazine flat on the counter, "who told millions of women they basically can't get sick from sleeping with an infected man. In Cosmo. Like it's a beauty tip." He jabbed a finger at the page. "It's bullshit and women are going to read this and believe it, because why wouldn't they, it's right there in print next to Bedside Astrologer teaching them how to ride a Capricorn!"

"That's insane."

"We're picketing their offices this week. There were already a couple hundred people there yesterday, and we're going back. It's not just Reagan not saying the word. It's outright lies, and nobody's going to retract it loud enough to matter." He pressed both hands flat on the counter and leaned into it like he needed to physically hold himself in one place. "Scott."

"Kip."

"You could say something. It's a lie and somebody with your kind of name in the paper could say something true that would reach more people in one sentence than I can in five years of protests."

"I know."

"Do you, though?" Kip looked at him, not unkindly, just tired from arguing the same point to too many people who agreed with him and still didn't move. "I'm not trying to wreck your life. I just keep running the numbers where staying silent costs more than speaking up, and I can't think of it any other way."

Scott didn't have an answer that wasn't the same one he always gave, so this time he didn't say anything, and let the silence sit there instead, which felt marginally more honest.

February was the part of the year that Scott liked the least. Long, gray-streaked winter days where every single game mattered and there was none of the joy and team camaraderie that he had felt in October. USA Hockey had also sent him the letter, in December, officially, that his name would be on the Olympic roster for Calgary. He told Kip, wondering how it would land. 

Poorly, was the answer. 

"You know what, fuck the Olympics," he started, slamming his fork down. It was a much bigger reaction than Scott had been expecting.

"Sorry," Scott apologized, although he wasn't sure for what.

"You're going to go to Calgary for fucking weeks. Weeks. It's going to cost millions of dollars. Millions. People are dying, Scott, people like us, and no one is going to say a fucking thing." Kip wasn't yelling. Scott had never once heard him yell. He was frustrated and sad, the words hissing through his teeth. "Reagan hasn't done shit either, you know. He'll say it's a top priority but won't even acknowledge us. But somehow there's always room on the news for fucking bobsled."

"It's not the same thing, Kip," Scott said. He didn't know what else to say. Kip wasn't wrong. But he was still going to the Olympics.

"No, it's not. One of them is a sport." Kip pushed his food around his plate without eating it. "I went to three funerals last month. Three. The whole country is gearing up to watch figure skating though, so I guess that's nice."

"I don't know what you want me to say, Kip."

"I know you don't," he snapped. "I want you to go. I am so happy for you. And I know it's decided and you're going. But do you know what it feels like to watch your friends get sicker and sicker and no one will even say anything about it? It's like they were never here at all."

Scott didn't have a great rebuttal to that, because he agreed with most of it. Agreeing didn't change anything about the flights being booked to Calgary in his name, or the uniforms being ordered for him to wear. Kip was right, and Scott could never say that out loud, outside of this penthouse. Kip would keep going to funerals, and the country's full attention would be pointed only at national pride, and the gap between those two facts was chilling and inescapable. 

It was the first week of February, the morning he was leaving was when Kip said it. Scott had been bracing for this for months, had been sure, more than once, that Kip was about to walk away from him. First at Christmas. Then when the ACT UP meetings stopped being once a week and started being whenever the work demanded it. Then every time Scott couldn't, or wouldn't, go with him.

"I'm not going to pretend I don't know what we're doing," Kip said, sitting on the counter in Scott's kitchen with his feet swinging, watching Scott make coffee neither of them needed because his hands wanted a task.

Scott kept his back to him a second longer than necessary. "What are we doing?"

"You tell me." Kip's voice was even, not accusing, which somehow made it worse. "I take two trains to get here. You won't take one to get to me. You met my dad for five minutes and made him happier than I've seen him in years, and I'm grateful for that, I am, but I still haven't met a single person in your life."

Scott didn't answer fast enough, and the silence seemed to decide Kip for him.

"I love you," Kip said. It came out almost combative, like he was throwing it onto the counter between them to see what Scott would do with it. The second it landed his jaw tightened, some reflex trying to take it back even as he kept talking past it. "You should probably know that while you're deciding what kind of answer you owe me."

Scott turned around. He had an answer ready, the practiced one, my life is complicated, there are things I can't do right now, and it died somewhere behind his teeth because Kip had heard it already and didn't look like he wanted to hear it again. And not any part of it had anything to do with what Kip had just said.

"You don't have to say it back," Kip said, his voice losing the edge it had carried a moment ago. "You don't have to change anything tonight. But I love you. And I want to be with you. And that means not being in the closet forever. I want my friends to know you. I want to know your friends too."

"I don't have a good answer for you."

"I know." Kip held his eyes for a beat before answering. "That's the answer, though, isn't it."

Scott didn't say anything. The coffee maker clicked off behind him, the sound absurdly loud in the silence, and neither of them moved toward it. 

The phone rang. Carolyn, brisk and apologetic, a car coming now instead of in an hour because of a mixup, and could he head down? Scott said yes and hung up and stood there with his hand still on the receiver, the conversation with Kip unfinished in the air between them, and felt the cruelty of timing that let him off the hook for an answer he didn't have.

"That's Calgary," Kip said. It wasn't a question.

"Yeah."

Kip slid off the counter and came over anyway, put a hand flat on Scott's chest, not pulling him in, just resting it there. "Go," he said. "We'll talk when you're back."

"You'll be here? When I get back?" He hated how pathetic he sounded. Like he was begging this man not to leave him.

"I'm not letting you off the hook." Kip almost smiled, though it didn't quite reach. "Win, for the rest of us, who can't."

"I'll try."

Scott put his hand over Kip's, and they stood like that in the kitchen and neither of them finished the conversation, because there wasn't, yet, a way to finish it that didn't end in anger or tears for them both. They would both need to suffer a little during that conversation, and now there wasn't time to find out which one of them would do it first.

He picked up his bag where he had left it by the door and walked out, hearing the latch click behind him. Scott let out a huge sigh. This, this was why he had avoided relationships for so long. He loved this. He loved how it made him feel. The million immeasurable ways his life was better and would become irreversibly awful as soon as Kip left. Because he was going to leave, because Scott couldn't live the life Kip needed to live. But god, did he care about that man. He cared that he was safe. He wanted to give him everything in the world. He stood in the hallway for three seconds, listening to the city through the building's walls. He could give Kip this. 

Kip was still at the counter, his head in his hands when Scott walked back through the door. His head jerked up and he looked over at Scott, expectantly. 

"I love you," Scott said.

He left before Kip could answer.

Chapter End Notes

Context Notes:

Your tiny history lesson. Sorry that this one is a little bleak.

Kip’s activism takes him to a lot of different places in this chapter.
Kip attended the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights on October 11, 1987. This was also the first time that the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt was unveiled on the National Mall. If you haven’t heard of the quilt, I saw part of it in San Francisco a few years ago and it’s very striking and impactful. Each panel is 3x6 feet, which is about the size of a grave. They were then stitched into 12x12 foot blocks, creating a field representing the dead. Each panel was created by grieving friends and family members, so each one is unique. They were made of clothing, with things like wedding rings, handwritten letters, or photographs stitched into the fabric. At the march, there were 1,920 panels. Today it is over 50,000 panels and weighs over fifty tons.

The political anger Kip brings home is rooted in real-world politics Senator Jesse Helms had just passed his October 1987 amendment banning federal funds for AIDS education materials that "promoted homosexual activity”, which led to health departments scrubbing accurate, lifesaving safe-sex guidelines from public pamphlets.

Kip’s reactions to Cosmopolitan Magazine were also based in reality. The January 1988 issue had an article by Dr. Robert E. Gould. He claimed that heterosexual women faced virtually no risk of contracting HIV during vaginal intercourse, and they didn't need to worry about condoms. Insane. On January 15, ACT UP organized a massive picket line outside the Hearst offices and distributed literature to correct the misinformation. His mention of Princess Diana also reflects the activist landscape. She had made international waves the previous April by deliberately shaking hands with an AIDS patient without gloves to disrupt the public panic over casual contact.

The 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, which ran from February 13 to February 28. This was the year the Jamaican bobsled team debuted, completely monopolizing American human-interest sports coverage while the domestic epidemic was ignored entirely. I mentioned this in Vocabulary of Exile as well, but they didn’t allow the NHL players to participate that year. I ignored that completely for my own needs.

The Soho gallery opening Scott buys tickets for would likely be happening in a massive, cast-iron building along West Broadway, Prince, or Greene Street. I pictured a benefit dinner as being hosted somewhere like The Odeon in Tribeca.

For those of you patiently waiting for more Vocabulary of Exile, it's on the way soon. Thank you for reading. I'll see you in comments!

Chapter 3: Insulated

Chapter Summary

A crushing defeat and a party gone wrong.

Chapter Notes

Crossover notes for Vocabulary of Exile:
Ilya defecting in Chapter 7
Scott meeting Ilya in Chapter 12

Content Warnings

Kip visits a deeply under-resourced hospitals, with some brief decriptions of people who are at the end of their battle with AIDS.
Kyle becomes quite ill at a party.
Drug references.
Scott is a little...slut-shamey? of Kip and Kyle. I don't know how else to put it. Judgemental of his general lifestyle, I suppose.

Insulation! That was the ticket...If you want to live in New York, you've got to insulate, insulate, insulate.

—Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities, 1987

The final buzzer sounded and Scott stood at the blue line, hands on his knees, catching his breath before he skated off. It might have been the most humiliating game of his career. West Germany 4, United States 1. They had dropped to now playing one final game for seventh. Not even a fucking bronze at this point. Eleven long days of being measured against the 1980 college boys who had beaten the Soviets in Lake Placid and not a damn thing to show for it. They were a formidable team, but they'd never be that team, and they lost, hard, and would be going home empty-handed.

Scott also knew, deep in his core, that this was his only chance at this opportunity and it was completely obliterated. There would never be another Olympics for him. His birthday had come and gone last week. He hadn't mentioned it to Kip before he left for Calgary. It hadn't occurred to him until much later, and once the day had passed, it seemed weird to bring it up afterward. What do you say? Hey, hottie who practically lives with me, you forgot the birthday I never mentioned, and now it's been a while and is a little awkward? He hadn't celebrated his birthday since he was a teenager at boarding school and the house mother took pity on him anyway, and it's not like he expected a gift from Kip. There wasn't any use to the thing. Now it was yet another sign that he was getting old, and that was a sign he was closer to the end of his career. Not a single thing worth celebrating there. And now he was a big dumb loser and the whole world saw it happen, so there was even less to celebrate.

In the locker room, no one was interested in talking. His gear came off in the typical order. Gloves and helmet, jersey and upper pads, then skates. Doyle sat with his head down for a long time before he started on his laces. Reardon, the goaltender, swore once. Nobody else said a thing. Scott knew he would be internalizing the loss, replaying every shot that he should have blocked, but there wasn't anything to say that would make it feel any better.

Scott tried to shake away the lingering feeling of failure and focus on how charming Calgary could be, and how little time he had to enjoy it because he was so locked into his futile attempt to bring home a gold medal. The Olympic Village was a city of its own, temporarily carved out of a university campus into something resembling a small, incredibly multilingual carnival. There were the friendly nations, France, Canada, Norway, Morocco mingling, with a few of the frostier delegations, notably the USSR, keeping their distance, maintaining the Iron Curtain, as Scott thought of it.

Glacier and Olympus halls stood in the middle of it all, two new residence towers thrown up solely for this occasion. Their hallways still had the smell of fresh paint under the accumulated mustiness of two thousand strangers living on top of one another. The old gymnasium had been fully gutted and turned into a retail mall, and a florist sat next to a bank, which sat next to a photo studio for athletes who wanted official professional images to show they were here. There was a barbershop where a Norwegian biathlon competitor was receiving a haircut from a volunteer in a red parka who couldn't have been older than Kip. Outside, every other person seemed to be wearing a stupidly garish white cowboy hat handed out by the host committee. An entire international delegation of skiers and skaters and luge sledders walking around in Stetsons like this was a weird Texas-themed fever dream the Canadians were displaying for the entire world. Two drinking polar bears in matching hats watched from a banner over the dining hall doors. All of it was silly and magical and he wished Kip was there to see it with him. They hadn’t spoken a single word to each other since Scott left for the Olympics, and that fact was suddenly far too much for him to bear. He told himself that it was because he needed to focus on winning games and press obligations, but the reality was that he didn’t know how to follow up on I love you over the payphone.

The phone center was at the far end of the mall. It was a row of metal stalls that didn't reach the floor, mostly meant to block sound rather than to offer any meaningful attempt at privacy. A line had formed by the time he arrived. It was primarily Americans calling home with the same morose tone he recognized coming out of his own mouth a few minutes later when it was his turn. Explaining the losses to someone who would tell him it didn't matter, even though neither of them truly believed it. When it was his turn, he fed the operator his calling card number and asked to be put through to the penthouse. He wasn't sure if Kip would pick up, if he would dare touch the phone, if he would feel comfortable doing so, or if he was even there. The line rang four times before his answering machine clicked on, playing Scott’s curt, pre-recorded greeting back to him, followed by an unnecessarily loud beep. 

“It’s me,” Scott said. Hopefully Kip was somewhere within earshot. “Pick up.”

There was a brief silence while he waited, then a click as the receiver was lifted. This time a tentative voice came over the line. "Scott?"

"Yeah," he replied. 

"Oh, thank God. You didn't tell me if I could answer the phone. I was worried when you didn’t call."

"Sorry, I was just really focused,” he lied smoothly. “Has anyone else called?"

"No," Kip replied. "Hasn't rang once." That statement came across a little sadder for Scott than it should have, but he dismissed the thought. Kip paused for a moment, but Scott didn't rush to fill the space. "Are you doing okay?"

"7th place, if we're lucky. Eighth if not." He leaned his face against the cold metal of the stall. It felt soothing against his flushed cheek. 

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You don't even like hockey."

"I do too, and I like watching you win." Scott could hear Kip slide down the wall onto the floor on the other end of the line. "Are you in your room?"

"No," Scott said. "They didn't spring for phones in the rooms."

"So much for phone sex then."

"There's a guy from the bobsled team standing about three feet away pretending not to listen."

"Is he succeeding?"

"No," Scott said. That drew a rich and warm laugh out of Kip. Scott closed his eyes. He wanted to say so much, and he couldn't. Not with the bobsled guy standing right there. He had said it, in his own home, leaving as soon as he could, like leaving a tip on a table in a restaurant and vanishing before the waiter can come back. He remembered the bright look in Kip's eyes before he practically sprinted out the door. Scott thought more about that instant since he'd arrived in Calgary than anything having to do with the games. He couldn't tell you shit about the Czech hockey team, but he could map out the exact vein in Kip's forehead that popped out when Scott said I love you that first time. 

"How is the team taking it?" Kip asked.

"About how you'd expect. Quiet. Angry. But we'll all go back to playing on different teams next week." Scott shifted his weight. "It's so odd here. There's these strange little polar bear mascots in cowboy hats. It's all so weird."

"Polar bears?"

"The mascots. Hidy and Howdy."

"Are they cute, or?"

"Weird," Scott repeated. There was a silence on the line. Kip exhaled. Scott liked knowing he was there, in his house. Sleeping in his bed, even if he couldn't be there. It was ridiculous how attached he was after merely a few months. The feeling fixed itself deep within his stomach, equal parts comforting and dangerous. They stood there, silently together, as the time ticked by.

"Come home," Kip said finally. He was so quiet that Scott had to press the receiver hard against his ear.

"Soon, baby." Scott's own mouth dropped open. He hadn't meant to call Kip that. Jesus fucking Christ. He was such a sap.

"Baby, huh?" Kip said. Scott could hear the smile radiating through his voice.

"Shut up." 

They talked for a few more minutes about nothing that mattered. The bobsled guy was hovering, and an entire delegation's worth of eyes were between Calgary and the apartment in New York where this conversation should be safely concealed.

"I'll see you soon."

"Okay," Kip replied. "I love you."

Scott hung up, smiling. It was not the expression he'd walked to the phone wearing, which alone told him the call had been worth it.

He took the long way back to his room. There wasn't a hurry to reach a room with a roommate in it. Some perfectly polite guy from Vermont who played for Los Angeles.  A knot of figure skaters had commandeered a lounge table and were playing cards, trading chips made out of chocolate wrappers, laughing with each other in three languages. Down a side hallway, a television bolted in a common room played highlights from the day that no one was watching. Two nights earlier, Bryan Adams had played to an audience of athletes only. How strange it was to be surrounded by thousands of people, having the best few weeks of their lives, while they were not able to see the secret hidden deep within him. Not knowing that all he wanted was to go home and get back to Kip. 

USA Hockey had booked them all on flights on the 26th, the morning after their final game, leaving four excruciating days between that minute and his trip home. The Olympic village had sorted itself into two main populations. Some still had a competition that mattered ahead of them, recognizable by the determination and discipline they continued to exhibit in all things. And then there was everyone else. Drinking in the lounges starting at noon, trading pins and scarves and other memorabilia in the halls. Scott, who had never collected anything in his entire life, spent the afternoon helping his roommate figure out what would be a fair trade for a patch from the Jamaican bobsled team, which seemed to be the hottest, rarest item.

On the twenty-second, the wind came down off the mountains and took the temperature up by nearly thirty degrees. A chinook, they called it. Water was running along the curbs. Athletes who had packed for the sub-zero conditions of winter athletics at altitude were now standing outside in just their shirts, squinting into the sun. The alpine officials were losing their minds over a ski course that was quickly turning to soup and increasing their reliance on artificial snow.

Scott rose to skate early every morning at the small practice rink across campus, and then ran laps. Scott appreciated the structure of that. Regardless of their poor showing here, he was going to need to go home and become Captain Scott Hunter of the Admirals again, and ideally, take them to a Cup victory that would erase the sting of their Olympic defeat.

On the twenty-third, he went to watch Norway play France for eleventh place, because there wasn't anywhere else for him to be. The rink was only about ten percent full, mostly with volunteers and family members. The two teams scored an incredible thirteen goals between them, but neither of the goaltenders seemed to mind. The difference between eleventh and twelfth was negligible in their minds.

His final game was scheduled at an hour that guaranteed no one at home would be watching. Kip would be leading his seminar. His teammates should be at practice. Switzerland had been badly beaten all week, and this day was no different. Similarly to the game he had watched, it was clear that there wasn't as much pressure on this game. They passed the puck back and forth, but the aggression was missing. After two weeks of grim faces and a very serious locker room, the last time he'd see the Olympics just felt like fun. They won eight to four, and everyone seemed content with that turnout.

The handshake line took under a minute. They knocked gloves, and it was done. There weren't any medals or anthems. Two volunteers started pulling the bunting off the boards behind the net. In the locker room, the equipment guys were there with a big laundry bin for the discarded sweaters.

"Actually, can I keep it?"

The equipment man shrugged. "I won't tell if you don't." Scott knew if they had won gold, Hockey USA would have mounted them up professionally in shadow boxes with the medals and had them shipped to his house. But nothing for seventh place. It was still a memory, and one he'd like to keep.

He bought a new calling card and got through to New York a little after seven that night.

"We won," Scott said.

"You won!" Kip said.

"It was the seventh-place game though, so."

"So you're the seventh best in the world," Kip said. "Out of how many, like a hundred and fifty."

"There were only twelve."

"But still." Scott let him have that. In the stall next to him, a Swede was happily sobbing into the receiver by the sounds of it, and the line outside was growing.

"How are you?" Scott asked.

"Fine."

"You can tell me."

"There was a memorial Sunday at the Center." Kip's voice had lost its warmth. "Terry. I knew him pretty well. It went fast. I haven’t been able to get past it this time. Something about this one I can’t shake off."

"Kip, I'm so sorry."

"His family came up from Pennsylvania to get him, but they didn't tell anyone, so we had a service for him. His partner was there. John. Such a nice guy. They were together six years, but no one from the family even told him."

Scott leaned against the divider. There wasn't anything he could say that would make this better for Kip. He also knew exactly what Kip was thinking.

"That's not right."

"No." Kip breathed out. "There are lawyers at the Center. They help you fill out forms so the right people get called."

"Okay."

"I did mine in January. I put my dad."

"We can talk about this when I get home. You don't have to do this now."

"Scott, he wouldn't know to call you." Kip's voice was rough. "No one would know."

"Kip," Scott started. “I’m not in a great spot for this conversation.”

"We can talk about it when you get home."

"Yes. Absolutely. We can talk about it then."

Kip cleared his throat. "I studied with Joel today."

"Yeah?"

"He got access to the war photographs at the Public Library." Scott could hear Kip moving on the other end, settling, finding a comfortable spot. "We went through them for a couple of hours comparing them to the written records. It was so tedious, but better to do with someone else. Wears you out though, all the digging."

"That sounds like a lot."

"It is, but it's so satisfying. I'm getting a lot done without you here to distract me," he teased.

Ah yes. Joel. There was a rotation of names that came up over dinner, and occasionally, stopped coming up. Joel's had been common since he started school in the fall. Kip went to study with him at the library most Sunday afternoons, coming back a few hours later seeming lighter. The social time filled him up in a way that his days at the Center or St. Vincent's depleted him.

Kip talked about Joel in a way that made Scott feel that ever-increasing pang of jealousy. As Kip would tell it, Joel was sharp-witted and intensely brilliant. He was cataloging photographs from the First World War and loved to bounce ideas off Kip. It all made Scott feel stupid. The big dumb jock trying to romance the brilliant nerd. He was waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Kip to realize he was better off finding another academic who could keep up with him in a match of wits.

Scott felt that hot flare of possessiveness come up under his chest again. He pressed it down. Some grad student with a library card lay claim to hours of Kip's undivided attention when that should have been Scott's time. Instead Scott was here talking about a game nobody watched, and worrying about how Kip was worried he'd die and Scott wouldn't notice. Joel could have the library and the study carrels and the lecture halls, but in twenty-four hours, Scott would be in bed with Kip. It wasn't a competition, he had to remind himself. Kip was on the phone with him, keeping his bed warm while he was gone, and that had to be enough reassurance.

"I'm sure Joel is glad your usual distractions are gone for a while.” Scott hoped it had come off flirtatiously, but Kip pressed on. 

"I think he's working too hard. The research and the writing and the teaching all add up. It's been exhausting for both of us, but I don't think he has a millionaire stud at home making sure the fridge is always stocked."

"You know I use a service for that."

Another athlete tapped on the divider. "I think I gotta go. I'll be home tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," Kip's voice held a smile. "What time?"

"If everything is on time, nine, probably."

"Go pack. I'll see you. Congratulations on being seventh best."

"Out of twelve."

"Out of a hundred and fifty," Kip replied, hanging up the phone before Scott could argue with him. He stood with the dead receiver against his ear for as long as he could get away with.

He spent a restless night staring at the ceiling while his roommate snored. By eight the next morning, he was on the shuttle to the airport. The flight was a quick run through Winnipeg, on to Toronto, then at long last to LaGuardia, landing a little after eight that evening with his duffel bag slung over a shoulder, feeling the day of travel and two weeks of hockey settling into his bones. 

His car was waiting for him at arrivals, his driver holding a sign with his name on it near baggage claim. Kip didn't offer to meet him, and Scott didn't ask. Arrivals halls were where people were looked at, and a night like this definitely had a photographer working the concourse to capture Olympians coming home from a particularly rough set of games. Whatever was building between him and Kip, it wouldn't survive in the daylight yet, and a single photo would be more than he was able to explain away.

The car took him over the Triborough Bridge. Every other billboard or bus stop they passed was plastered with the stark white half-mask of The Phantom of the Opera, staring down at traffic. Scott absently thought that Kip would probably like tickets to see it. The car pulled up to his building. His favorite doorman, Walt, was there and offered a professional line about the game. "Mr. Hunter," Walt said, as he turned to go. "Your assistant has been staying here a few nights a week. Said he was watching the place for you? In case you didn't know."

"Yes, that's fine, Walt. I asked him to. Water the plants. Keep things tidy." 

"As long as you know, Mr. Hunter."

"Thanks, Walt." Fuck. Okay. Walt was discreet. And having an assistant wasn't weird. And Walt would know he had more than one bedroom. It was fine. It wasn't like he brought home a lot of guys, or any guys except Kip.

Scott was still in a spiral when he let himself into the dark penthouse. For a moment, he was certain that Kip wasn't staying there tonight. Then he saw the light under the bedroom door. Scott pushed the door open, and his jaw dropped. Every thought he had been having on the walk up vanished from his brain.

Kip was already out of his clothes, propped against the headboard with the thin gray sheets pooled at his waist, leaving very little to the imagination. His patience had clearly run out a while ago. He didn't bother saying hello.

"Took you long enough," Kip said. "I'm freezing."

"You could've put a shirt on. Or pants. Or gotten a blanket,” Scott joked with a smirk. He could feel the blood rushing straight to his dick.

"Could've. Didn't." He held out a hand. "C'mere, Hunter."

Scott dropped his bag and didn't bother with anything else, coat still on, tie still knotted around his neck, crossing the room in four steps because the weeks he had been gone suddenly felt like an unreasonable amount of time to have spent anywhere else besides right here.

Kip pulled him down onto the mattress before Scott had gotten a shoe off, mouth finding his between one breath and the next.

"Kip, slow down." Scott pulled away. 

"What's wrong?" he said, propping himself up on an elbow.

"Nothing. Just, I love you. I wanted to say it right."

"You said it," Kip got out, trying to get back to Scott's mouth. "Then you ran away." He had a teasing smile.

"I had to catch a flight!" Scott protested.

"I know what you did." Kip pulled back just far enough to look at him. "You said something  else too." He was grinning now. "Didn't think of you as a baby guy, Hunter."

"Shut up."

"I liked it."

"Shut up." Scott kissed him again, mostly to make him stop talking, which didn't work, Kip laughing against his mouth before he gave it up and let his tongue slide languidly into Scott's mouth.

"Off," Kip said, hands already working Scott's tie loose. "Now."

Scott wasn't going to argue with that. He tugged the tie the rest of the way off and his shirt after it, Kip's hands faster at the buttons than his own, and by the time they were down on the mattress properly there wasn't much conversation left in either of them. Kip pushed him back against the pillows and went to work with his mouth, taking his time about it in a way that undid Scott faster than anything else could have, one hand braced on his hip. In that instant, Scott gave up trying to think about anything happening below his own collarbone. It was all glorious. It was everything he didn't know he was missing, and now he had it, whenever he wanted it, here in this apartment. How, how was he able to save this for just summers for so long?

Scott wished he could do this all night, but he was dangerously close to coming already. He couldn't let Kip finish it alone. He hauled him up by the shoulders somewhere around the point where holding still stopped being an option, flipped their positions, and took Kip roughly in his mouth. Kip's hands went to his head, seemingly involuntarily, and he held on for dear life. It was messy, sloppy. Scott's teeth grazed across Kip's head accidentally, and he made a harsh moan that Scott needed him to make again. Kip was writhing under him, hips canted off the mattress. His fist closed on the sheet instead of Scott's hair this time, and he came first down Scott's throat with a muffled shout, cut short like keeping quiet was still a habit even here, where there was no one to know. Scott followed not long after, Kip's hand finishing what his mouth had started, coating Kip's muscled chest in his release.

Scott held himself above Kip, chest heaving.

"That was—"

"Yeah," Scott said, still panting. He pushed himself up off the bed. "Stay," he said.

He came back with a warm cloth and carefully wiped down Kip's chest and flagging cock, admiring the healthy flush across his collarbone. He tossed the cloth and climbed back into bed. Kip scooted over until he was sprawled half over Scott's chest, and neither of them moved to pull up the blankets for a long time. Scott was content. He had missed this man so dearly, a feeling that felt inherently dangerous. To open himself up to these kinds of feelings was to create a vulnerability he had long since declared to be too much. But was it so much to ask to have it all?

"Back to practice tomorrow?" Kip asked. His breathing had settled back to normal.

"Yeah. Back to normal."

Kip sighed contentedly. "It's great to have you back, baby," he teased. Scott gave him a playful shove. Kip caught his hand and pulled him in for another kiss. For a little while longer, Scott allowed himself to live entirely within the enveloping, secure harbor of Kip, holding the outside world off for as long as he could.

Late Sunday evening, Kip was grading papers at the table, a ratty copy of the Village Voice beside him, where he had discarded it, while Scott lounged on the couch, reading The Bonfire of the Vanities. Kip had bought it for him, so he was determined to get through it, but he also couldn't help but feel a nagging guilt that he was exactly the kind of out-of-touch, wealthy New Yorker the book was lambasting. He was exhausted, mentally and physically. He needed a break. He knew he wouldn't get one until the playoffs were over. The news was in the background, though neither of them was really paying attention until the broadcast shifted to highlights from the men's hockey gold medal ceremony. Scott’s eyes were locked onto the screen, unable to look away. He knew he was purposely jabbing at a fresh bruise, engaging in a special brand of self-torture by watching the exact instant his lifelong dream was handed over to someone else.

As predicted, the Soviet team had won. Scott had watched their last game as it had happened, and it had been particularly brutal. The points from previous games had already guaranteed the gold, but that didn't stop them from playing a hard game against Finland, throwing each other into the boards. The Saddledome ice was empty, a red flag going up on one side and the anthem starting. There were three men on the medal stand in their national colors. The middle one in a red polyester parka with a white knit cap, gold going around his neck. He looked incredibly serious, but the Soviet team had looked nothing but serious the entire time Scott was there.

"They just gave the Soviets hockey gold," Scott said, mostly to himself. The anchor kept talking. The footage cut away from the ceremony to a shot of the university campus as night fell, security vehicles and a cluster of officials standing outside a building Scott recognized without wanting to, the same low brick residence hall he'd walked past a dozen times without giving it a thought. A Soviet athlete, the anchor said, was unaccounted for following the medal ceremony.

The anchor read from a paper on the desk in front of her. Soviet officials had issued a statement that evening regarding the status of Red Army player Ilya Rozanov, twenty-one, describing an unscheduled absence from the delegation's accommodations. The Soviet Sports Committee was characterizing Rozanov as a danger to himself, citing acute psychological distress, and urging Canadian authorities to ensure his safe return to Soviet custody.

The broadcast cut to a man at a podium, a chyron identifying him as Soviet Ambassador Nikolai Voronov, speaking in Russian while subtitles rolled underneath him. Lieutenant Rozanov is a decorated hero of the Soviet Union who is experiencing a grave psychological emergency. He requires the immediate support of his team and his country. We ask that Canadian authorities treat this matter with the sensitivity it deserves.

Kip had put down his pen and was looking at the television too now. "They're fucking lying," he said, his pen hanging from his mouth.

"How can you tell?"

"Why would he win gold and then have some kind of emergency? After he won? If he was going to have a breakdown, it would have happened before, or if they'd lost."

"They did lose, to Finland. But they still got the gold."

"No. He's refusing to go home. Do you remember the Munich games?" 

"Do you?" Scott teased. Kip had to have been pretty young when Munich happened.

Kip had the tact to look chagrined. "Okay, I read about them. Do you remember anything about those?"

"Yeah, the terrorist attack. Everyone remembers those games."

"Yes, but also athletes refusing to go back to communist countries. Same story, different Olympics." 

"You think that's what it is?"

"I think a healthy person wouldn't develop a psychological emergency that only the Soviets can solve for him right when it's time to board the plane back to the motherland." Kip pushed his papers aside. "It's easier to say he's sick than to say he doesn't want to be a Soviet anymore."

Kip closed his books and came to sit by Scott on the couch instead of across the room. Their knees brushed in an intimate gesture that would absolutely have sent Scott into a spin anywhere except this room. On the screen, the anchor continued to show images of the Soviet player, like mugshots, including his height and weight and what he had last been seen wearing. It was almost comical because it included the heavy gold medal, which one could say might be an identifying item to have. It felt very much like they were hunting Ted Bundy, and not a terrified kid who couldn't be much past twenty. 

"How much planning did you think it took to pull this off? It has to be a whole conspiracy, right? Otherwise, they would have found him in a second."

Scott didn't have an answer to that, not one that didn't sound incredibly thin anyway. The idea of a hockey conspiracy encouraging Soviet citizens to commit treason seemed too big, too outlandish to be true. Staring at the kid on the screen, Scott couldn’t help but feel a strange lurch of kinship deep in the back of his mind. This kid had just been handed the highest honor in the world. One that Scott would never get to have. And at that singular moment, when he should have been on top of the world, he was plotting to vanish. He chose to blow his entire life apart, just to be free.

Ilya Rozanov had abandoned his country, his family, and every single thing that he knew, with the one exception of maybe being allowed to still play hockey. He was stepping into a completely alien world with a gigantic target painted across his back because the other option, a life of living under a restrictive, watchful regime, was just too much to bear. Maybe someday Scott could vanish like that, the way snow melts off the grass in Central Park at the end of the winter. There one day, gone the next, like it never happened. After hockey, when no one cared to look for him any more, he could flee too.  He could defect from the closet, and the expectations he had built this cage out of, and run away to the warm, safe country of Kip. But Rozanov was brave enough to jump now. Scott wasn’t.

That was the last either of them said about Rozanov for a while. He didn't turn up right away, but the aggressive news coverage eventually died out, as every story does. He wasn't dead, as far as Scott could tell, or that would command a whole lot more airtime. But he also didn't pop up in the days afterward either. It was like he evaporated into thin air.

March came in like a lion and stayed that way, the city plagued by a lingering chill and wind that blasted around city blocks. Kip had been spending more evenings at The Center. He visited friends he'd known for years, guys who had started showing up sick over the winter. He didn't talk about it much with Scott at first. He'd come home a little later than usual, hanging up his coat by the door, and mentioned in passing that he'd stopped to see someone. Scott didn't ask for names. It was better for him not to know. It helped him keep that tiny extra little bit of distance.

Then Kip’s visits to St. Vincent’s started to ramp up too. It wasn’t occasional anymore. First, it was only to sit with a friend who'd been admitted, then again a few days later to see someone who didn't have any family who were able or willing to visit. Then it became virtually all of his spare time. Kip would come home with the stale odor of hospital clinging to his clothes like a second skin, and described hallways choked with gurneys and staff that were drowning in an exhaustion that seemingly had no end. There were never enough nurses. The hospital was operating well past its breaking point, capacity limits long since forgotten. Rooms meant for two were bursting with four or five patients at a time. Kip spent hours trying to fill the gaps, encouraging patients to sip water over painful mouth sores, or dabbing rough hospital washcloths over brows wracked with alternating fevers and chills. He spoke about bodies that were wasting away to only skin and bones in front of him. It was a grim picture. Scott understood, without being told, that this was becoming a regular part of Kip's life and not an errand that would ever end. 

One night they were sitting in the living room after one of Scott's games. Scott's feet were on Kip's lap. Kip was working his fingers along the sore muscles of his arches without being asked. Scott let his head loll against the arm of the couch. Kip's thumbs firmly massaged the aching muscles at the back of his foot where the cumbersome skate boots always seemed to wear. Scott was in heaven. He let himself sink further into the couch cushions. If he could have this every night for the rest of his life, he'd die a happy man.

The television was playing the eleven o'clock news, as usual, providing a backdrop to whatever else they were doing that night. The broadcast shifted from footage about emergency lane closures on the Williamsburg Bridge to a segment on the crisis. The anchor spoke the way they all do, with that cadence that somehow could come off both positively excited and monotonously detached at the same time. The anchor spoke with cheery obliviousness about the rising mortality rates and infection statistics.

"In health news tonight," the anchor began. He had dazzlingly white teeth and you could see them all when he opened his mouth to speak. "The Department of Health has released updated surveillance figures today on the AIDS virus. Total cases across the five boroughs have now surpassed twelve thousand, five hundred, with the death toll climbing above eight thousand. The virus is now the leading cause of death for all New York City residents between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four. When we come back, we'll visit our man Clark with your weekend weather forecast."

Scott was watching Kip the entire time. His thumbs had stopped moving against Scott's instep. He was staring at the screen with a vigilant rigidity. He was hanging on each and every word. Scott could not stand the way the words of the broadcast had insidiously ruined Kip’s relaxation. The urge to shatter the building tension was overwhelming. He couldn't handle this being dragged into his living room through the TV. Into his personal retreat from the world. Not tonight, not when they were having such an effortlessly good time. Not when he was exhausted and only wanted to sit and have a cozy evening in with Kip. He reached over and grabbed the remote, changing the channel over to The Late Show. Kip didn't respond, but he lowered his head, raised his hands to the hard muscles of Scott's calves, and resumed kneading. Scott didn't know what to say. The superficial laughter of the live studio audience filled the space between them.

Two nights later, after a particularly long day at the Center, Kip placed a manila envelope on the table in front of Scott.

"What's this?" Scott asked.

"Let me get through this before I lose my nerve."

Scott sat down at the table. 

"We've been doing this five months."

"Mmhm," Scott agreed, apprehensively.

"And this is a thing we should be talking about after we've been doing this for a decade, but I don't want to wait. They wouldn't know to call you if something happened to me, and I need them to. If we're doing this. And I know this is really a serious conversation but I love you, and if worst comes to worst, I want you in the room."

"Kip," Scott started, ready to hedge.

"I know. No one can know who you are. But think about it. I'd know if you died. It would be in the news. There would be a statement. But me? I'm nobody. You'd never find out. I'd just disappear."

"Should I be worried?"

"It's not just about the virus. It's if I get hit by a bus tomorrow."

"This is important to you."

"It's really fucking important to me."

"Okay. Take me through it."

Kip opened the envelope and pulled out the top sheet. "This is the will. I don't own anything, and I left what there is to my dad."

Scott nodded. He made a mental note to contact his lawyer to review his will as well. All of the money was going to charity if he dropped dead, but he would want Kip to be well cared-for if the situation came up.

"This one is the durable power. If I can't make medical decisions, it's who they call. I put my dad down in January, but I went back and got a clean set."

There was a blank line halfway down the page. Under it, Kip had written employer and Scott's name, along with the penthouse's phone number.

"Employer," Scott noted.

"I think we say that I work for you."

"What?"

"You know Walt, the doorman? He thinks I'm your assistant."

"He mentioned that, yeah. Where did he get that idea?"

"Well, I told him. When you were at the Olympics. He didn't want to let me up, even though I had a key."

"Your dad though."

"My dad thinks you're just a guy who comes by the bodega sometimes. He wouldn't think of you."

"I don't want to be your fucking employer. I want to be—" He shuddered. "I don't even know what I want to be. I want to be with you. Like this."

"I hated writing it. But you don't want anyone to know and this is the safest way."

Kip handed him the pen. "There's something else," he said. "The form might not hold up. Hospitals decide all the time that family is family, and the papers become useless. The lawyers at the Center have seen it more than once."

"So why are we doing this?"

"It gets you the call. You'll get a phone call. Everything after that is a mystery, but you would at least get the first one."

Scott signed neatly on the line.

"Okay, now we need to do yours," Kip continued.

Scott shook his head. "Not necessary."

"You get put into the boards wrong during a game. Who calls me?"

Scott went through it. Every September, the trainers went through the medical packet at training camp, and there was a line on the fourth page for a next of kin. Every year wrote down Carolyn's name. Before that, it was a billet family who had stopped hearing from him around 1974. Before that was the headmaster of the boarding school.

"Nobody."

"I'll change my contact info. I'll put you on it."

"Who sees that sheet?"

"Trainer, team doctor."

"Is that it?" 

Scott deeply considered that. It went into a filing cabinet in Rye, where the equipment staff had a key to the office. The insurer had a copy, and one year a beat writer had gotten the home address of a defenseman, and everybody had kind of shrugged it away. There was no way to guarantee it was private. He told Kip as much.

"I want to be something to you, Scott."

"Okay. Let me figure it out. Just not tonight, okay."

"Okay."

A few weeks later, at the practice facility in Rye, he heard the news about Rozanov. Or, what could have been news. It still had that air of unconfirmed rumor. He was in Montreal, or he was in Toronto, and Montreal was trying to buy him for an astronomical sum. Then it was that he had left hockey behind to become a wheat farmer in Saskatchewan. Then it was that he had been spotted at a Calgary church giving confession to a priest, and hadn't left the city at all. What Scott had gotten, underneath all the conjecture and straight lies, was that the Metros had held the kid's rights since a draft nobody cared about, and there was a room full of lawyers in Ottawa and a press conference scheduled for four o'clock.

Everyone had an opinion. Carter wanted to know who was paying for the lawyers. Huff made a joke about who Rozanov must have had to blow to get out of the Soviet Union, which got a booming laugh out of half the stalls, and then another joke about Montreal being the queerest team in the league that got a much bigger laugh. Scott tied his skates. He had been tying his skates while ignoring that noise since he was at boarding school and never once thought to say anything to shut it down.

"Better hope you're right when we see them in a couple weeks," he snapped.

"Oh c'mon Scotty. You know what they say about those Frenchies."

"I think you should say it after we beat them," Scott replied. The ensuing laughter grated on his nerves. He was sick of the endless, useless, homophobic conjecture. Scott grabbed his stick and pushed his way out of the locker room. He found Coach Murdock standing in the tunnel, nursing a coffee.

"Coach, what's the actual story on Rozanov? It's a distraction."

Murdoch sighed. "It's just a headache. Word on the street from the other coaches is that he's gonna play for Montreal, starting soon. They gave us the heads up, but that's all I got."

"Playing this season?"

"Probably. If it were us, I'd want him on the ice yesterday." Murdock leveled a stern look at Scott. "Until the press conference, get back in there and tell them unless Rozanov is lacing up for us, I don't want to hear another word about him on my ice."

Scott nodded. "Got it."

Armed with the coach's warning, Scott was able to silence the rumors before hitting the ice. Practice was a helpful distraction to be sure, and he welcomed the exhaustion that settled into his bones by the time he showered and faced the commute home. The moment he turned the key into the lock, the lingering adrenaline of the day was gone, replaced by the serene peace of the penthouse.

Kip was firmly ensconced on the couch when Scott walked in. He had been at St. Vincent's since eight that morning. Sometimes he finished up there and came home and got right to work on his papers. Other times he came home and wanted to talk. This was the worst, third option. He sat still on the couch, eyes closed, but definitely not sleeping.

"They found the Soviet kid," Scott said.

Kip's eyes popped open. "Yeah?"

"He's fine. He's been in Canada the whole time with a team of lawyers. Montreal signed him. He's going to play."

"That's crazy."

"Metros drafted him a while back. It was a whole publicity stunt. Nobody thought it meant anything." Scott hung up his coat. "I'll be on the ice with him in a couple weeks."

"Say I was right," Kip smiled. He sat up on the couch, wiping his face.

"You were right."

"Oh come on. Say it like you mean it."

"You were right," Scott said. "I, Scott Hunter, concede that calling it a psychological emergency was a stupid lie."

"So stupid." Kip was up now, moving towards the kitchen. "They put a suit up at the podium, and he told the whole world that a twenty-one-year-old who had just won the Olympics was too fragile to get on the plane." He started digging through the refrigerator, pulling out Tupperware containers of cut vegetables. "Is he any good?"

"Better than seventh out of twelve"

Kip gave him a playful shove. "You know what I meant."

"Yeah. And he's young, so he's going to be a problem for about fifteen years."

"If he stays in Canada."

"Well, he can't go back. Not after all that."

"He has to have a family he left behind." Scott hadn't thought about that. "They're still there. His poor mother. I wonder what kind of story they gave her."

"You don't know that any part of that is true."

"I know how it works when people in charge decide who gets told the truth." He looked at Scott, then shook it off. "Anyway. He's a total stud. I'm sure he can find a cute Canadian girl and have a new family."

"Oh, you think he's hot, do you? Is that your type?"

"Hockey players? Duh."

"Young hockey players." Scott teased.

"Oh, shut up." Scott swooped in next to him and kissed Kip's neck.

They put the news on that evening, and the press conference was there. Third story of the night, after a fire in Queens. It was a tacky-looking hotel ballroom with a bank of microphones on the table, and a Metros banner hung behind it. There was a man at the microphones, with a folded sweater on the table next to him.

Scott knew he wasn't one of the Metros' usual coaching staff, because he knew most of them by sight at least. This guy was maybe early forties.

"I am Gerald Beaulieu, Director of International Scouting for the Montreal Metros. I have a short statement that I will read, and then I will be taking questions." He cleared his throat. "The Montreal Metros organization has signed Ilya Rozanov to a three-year contract. This organization selected Mr. Rozanov in the 1987 entry draft, and his rights have been held continuously since that time."

He turned the page. "Mr. Rozanov is in Canada lawfully. His immigration status is a private matter between Mr. Rozanov and the Government of Canada, and as such the organization will not be commenting on it. You can rest assured that he is mentally and physically well and is here of his own volition. The coaching team believes that, at this time, he will make his on-ice debut on March 26th against the Pittsburgh Puffins. The Metros are looking forward to welcoming him to the ice and would like to remind the public that Mr. Rozanov has only just moved to this country and does not speak fluent English. Please keep these things in mind over the coming weeks.

He repeated the statement in French, before saying, "Now I can take a few questions."

"Where is Mr. Rozanov now?"

"He is at his private residence. We will not be providing any information on that."

"The Soviet Union has stated that he was having a psychological emergency. Any response to that?"

"We cannot comment on statements issued by other organizations. I will again reaffirm our statement that Mr. Rozanov is mentally and physically well."

"Has the club been in contact with the Soviet authorities?"

"No."

"Will it be?" Beaulieu ignored that one. "Would you use the word defection?"

"That is not the word I'd use."

"What word would you use?"

"Signed to the Montreal Metros, like we signed every player currently on our roster."

"Can he play in the United States?"

"To assist in Mr. Rozanov's transition, we will be keeping him strictly to home games for the remainder of the season."

"So he misses half the games."

"Mr. Rozanov is joining the team at an unusual time. We are going to help him transition to this team as smoothly as possible."

"Has Mr. Rozanov spoken to his family?"

"That is a personal matter that I cannot comment on."

"Can you say whether he has had any contact with his family at all?

"We will not be discussing Mr. Rozanov's personal matters.

"When will he be able to speak for himself?"

"It will be his decision as to when to speak to the press, but I would not expect it to be before his on-ice debut. Thank you, that is all the time we have."

The anchor came back on, repeated all the main talking points, then there was a car commercial, and then the weather. Kip hadn't moved the entire time.

"They didn't even bring him," Kip said. He hadn't reached for the remote yet, though neither of them cared about the five-day forecast going on the screen.

"I mean, I wouldn't put a kid who doesn't speak English in front of forty reporters when all the questions are going to be about if the KGB is coming for him."

"I know why they did it," Kip said, muting the television. "All the good questions were just a solid no anyway. Also calling it signing instead of defection?"

Scott loved Kip's mind. He loved all the ways he could hear the words under the words, navigating a press conference analytically. Scott would have just taken it at wholesale and thought that was enough. Kip was too smart for him. Way out of his league.

"I feel like we watched two totally different press conferences. I don't know how you can get all that out of a few sentences."

"You spend hours a week reading people. It's the exact same thing."

"It isn't. On the ice we all want the same thing, and everyone has some kind of tell. This guy? What's his tell?"

"If he didn't have anything to hide, he'd answer the questions. He says, sure, kid's called home. Everybody's fine, next question. He wouldn't even say they'd been in contact at all. The plan is to stop anyone from knowing anything."

"You think his family didn't know."

"I think if he had, he would have said so. Otherwise the answer is bad enough that no answer is better than the truth."

"So he's in Montreal. Alone."

"Yep. Probably in a hotel somewhere, scared shitless."

Scott let Kip’s words wash past him while his eyes glazed over at the television screen. He realized, with a sinking pit in his stomach, that this was the exact playbook the NHL would use to smother other types of scandals. His scandal. He could vividly picture that same man, standing in front of a slapped-together crimson Admirals banner in a tacky hotel ballroom, reading tightly controlled, sterile language about Scott Hunter’s private matters. If Scott was ever outed, they would put him up somewhere in an isolated hotel while the media picked apart every aspect of his life until there were no secrets left. They wouldn’t let him speak for himself, the exact way they weren’t letting Rozanov speak now. They would try to contain the disease, the contamination he would bring to the team. The idea made his stomach churn painfully.

"I'll let you know after I see him," Scott finally managed to say. His tongue moved thickly through the words, but Kip didn’t seem to notice the panic brewing underneath Scott’s calm exterior.

One of the last regular-season games for the Admirals was in Montreal. At that point, the playoffs were a pretty solid no, and everyone in the league knew it. Scott had to admit that he was curious. Everyone was curious. Everyone wanted to see the boy. But while the rest of the league wanted to gawk at the Soviet Defector, Scott wanted to see what the man who possessed the courage to make that kind of jump looked like. He skated to the red line where Rozanov pulled up and stopped, nodding at him.

"Welcome to the League. Good to have you," he said. 

Rozanov looked at him like he had six heads. Scott felt his analytical gaze sweep over him. The sixteen seasons of wear and tear on his shoulders, his nose that had been broken more than once, and the hair he knew was starting to show flecks of gray. It was a peculiar thing, to be read like that by a kid who had survived his life falling apart, and seemingly emerged from the other side entirely intact.

"Thank you," Rozanov said. And then, "You are old." He said it like the thought just struck him out of nowhere.

Scott blinked. A younger version of himself might have shot back a fuck you before he could even think of holding it back. But the kid's voice had no malice. It wasn't a chirp so much as an observation, like he was telling Scott his skate lace had come undone.

"In Soviet Union," he continued, thinking aloud, "player this old," he paused to find the words. "Retired. Long time. You would be grandfather. Grandfather of grandfather." And then he grinned, a charming bright smile. He seemed so pleased with himself.

Somewhere behind him, one of the Metros made a noise that started as a laugh and was strangled into a cough. Scott was surprised that he also felt the need to laugh. The kid was funny and didn't seem to know it. He clamped it down. Laughing would only encourage this bad chirping behavior, and he also needed to grind the kid into the ice tonight to show him who was in charge, even if the Metros were certainly heading to the playoffs and the Admirals weren't.

"I appreciate the perspective," is what he settled on.

"You are welcome," Rozanov responded cheerily with a self-satisfied nod.

During a moment during intermission, he was in the corridor with Rozanov and stuck out his hand to stop him. "For the record, in Canada, thirty-four is not old."

"In Soviet Union," Rozanov started.

"In Canada," Scott cut him off firmly, "thirty-four is not old."

"Okay," Ilya said. He looked bored with this conversation. Then, "You skate good. For the age."

This time Scott couldn't hold back the bark of laughter that came out. He shook his head and kept walking.

It was also, God help him, genuinely great hockey, the kind Scott didn't get to play much anymore. The kid scored in the second play off Scott. Scott watched the crowd lose their minds over a fresh new player who had been a wanted man just a few weeks ago. It was all instinct and zero caution. He played with a reckless, unburdened freedom. He wondered what had happened to Rozanov in the past few weeks to make him play that way, or perhaps he simply no longer needed to have his guard up. Scott, who spent every waking second of his life carefully determining his next step and policing his own body, was completely hypnotized by it. It was a terrifyingly glorious thing to watch someone live with nothing left to hide.

He called Kip from the hotel that night and couldn't get the story out clean, laughing in all the wrong places instead. Kip laughed at him more than the story, and for a few minutes, all was right again.

Later that week, Eric came over after practice. Scott had stocked up on Diet Coke just for him. They were back to the lingering conversation on retirement.

"I think I'm done."

"One more."

"Scotty."

"Come on. Not this year." Scott leaned forward. "We're not making a run this spring, but I think another summer on these kids, maybe a smart trade or two, and we have a team that goes deep next year. You don't want that to happen without you."

Eric sat with that, quietly thinking. "One more," he agreed.

"One more." He clapped Eric on the shoulder. "If I didn't believe it, I wouldn't ask."

The retirement talk folded back to easier things, and then somewhere in the middle, after eleven, the phone rang. Scott almost let it go. It was late. Something in his gut told him not to. He took it in the kitchen.

"It's me." Kip was clearly enunciating his words like he was trying to sound less drunk than he was. "I wouldn't call unless it was an emergency. I wouldn't. You know that."

"What do you need?"

"I need you to come get us. Me and Kyle. We're at a place off Sheridan. We can meet you on the corner."

"How much have you had?"

"That's not—" Kip took a deep breath. "It's not me. It's Kyle. Something isn't right. He's so pale and he can't stand up on his own. I can't get him anywhere on my own, and I don't think I can get him into a cab and definitely not the subway." He rattled off an address. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

"Twenty minutes."

"I'll watch for you." There was a weighty pause. "Thank you, Scott. Thanks."

He hung up and turned around. Eric was behind him, his coat already on.

"My assistant," Scott said. The lie came out easier than he had expected. "He's out with a friend and the other guy got sick. He didn't have anyone else to call."

"Are you calling a car?"

"No, I'll drive. I want to keep it kind of discreet. Sorry to cut things short."

"Oh no, Hunter. I'm coming."

"You don't need to do that."

"You're not heading into a bar to pick up a guy you don't know by yourself. No chance."

Scott sighed. "Okay." He didn't want to argue. It would only make it all the more obvious that he seriously did not want Eric to come. Eric was about to learn a lot more about him tonight.

They rode down together, heading into the garage. Scott rarely drove, but it was worth it to keep a car for circumstances like this. They drove to the address. No Kip. He wasn't there. By some miraculous stroke of luck, Scott found a metered spot less than a block away and they set off on foot.

Scott had been expecting a divey bar, and instead got something totally different. He found a steel door off the side of a building that read condemned from the street. Kip was not outside, not looking for them. A guy on a stool inside the door looked the two of them over and let them pass. Scott went down a flight of concrete stairs into a low-ceilinged basement that was nothing like what Kip had described his evening as being.

The party was like a furnace inside. It was packed, loud, hot with too many bodies crushed together in too small of a space. The space was lit by a few colored bulbs hanging from the ceiling, creating a dim red murk, broken only by a few candles, their flames vibrating in glass jars and sending flickering shards of light in every direction. Shirts off or plastered wet to backs, men draped over men in corners, a knot of them by the far wall that Scott didn't let his eyes linger on. And the smell. Sweat, the chemical fruity spike of poppers, spilled beer, and something being smoked. A group of sweat-drenched men was passing around a mirror, one tapping a vial out on the back of his hand. A kid maybe twenty years old slumped against a wall, his eyes rolled back in his head, a friend laughing at him like it was nothing. Scott realized why Kip had called him. No one else was sober enough, clear-headed enough to help.

He looked at Eric, and at the single choked staircase that reached the basement. If a place like this got raided or went up in flames, his name would end up on the police blotter and the team would know and then he would be done. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to leave. Kip had shrunk down the idea of where he was because he knew Scott would never come if he knew the truth. Why had they gone back in? Had something terrible happened since the phone call?

"C'mon Scotty," Eric said, scanning the room. To his credit, he didn't look scandalized in the least. "Let's find your guy and get out of here."

He put a shoulder into the crowd and pushed through it, close bodies giving way. A slow hand trailing across his chest that he didn't acknowledge. At last, he found them near the plank set up across some sawhorses that served as the bar. Kip had a slim, blond-haired, blue-eyed man slumped half-across him, feeding him ice chips from an open five-gallon bucket. That must be Kyle.

Kyle was the color of wet cement, eyes open but slow. There was a sheen on him that had nothing to do with the heat of the room. This was the first time Scott had ever seen him. There was also no chance this was caused solely by liquor. Scott had poured plenty of men into cabs and could see that this was something else.

"Scott," Kip gave a relieved breath. "I'm so sorry I called. I'm so—"

"Kip, this is Eric. My friend from work. Eric, Kip. And this is Kyle. We haven't met before." Scott cut him off, clipped.

"Hey," Eric said. "Okay. Let's get him up."

"He was fine a couple hours ago," Kip said, more to himself than either of them. "He was making fun of my shirt."

"We got him." Scott put his shoulder under one of Kyle’s arms, and Eric took his place under the other without being told. Kyle fell away from the wall in a crumpled tangle of limbs, like a puppet with its strings cut. It seemed to put some clarity into him.

"Oh," Kyle said, slurred and delighted, his eyes raking over Scott from collar to belt. "You didn't tell me you were calling someone handsome, Kip. That's rude. You shoulda told me." He listed towards Scott. "Are you single? You look like you have opinions on Rothko. I can always tell. Do you like Mapplethorpe? The new stuff. Not the flowers."

"Kyle, stop," Kip sounded mortified.

"I'm just saying, he's gorgeous. And he brings his gorgeous friend," Kyle put his hand on Eric's face then. Kyle swung his gray face back to Kip. "And so are you. You know that? Look at you. Whole city used to be lucky to have you and now you just, what? Vanished? Nobody sees you anymore. You could have anybody in this room. Anybody in the whole city and instead you go home like a nun. He got a clumsy hand on Kip's jaw, thumb dragging along his cheek. "It's a crime. Looking like that. You should be out every night. You were out every night. I would know."

"You're very drunk," Kip said gently, taking Kyle's hand off his face and holding it instead. "And very sick. We're going to go home."

Scott's jaw was tight and he was itching to say something but there wasn’t a thing he could do with an audience there, so he kept it clamped down. Kyle was mourning a version of Kip that Scott knew in the back of his mind had to have existed. A Kip who was in rooms just like this one, several nights a week, then done the moment he'd chosen Scott. Kyle thought Kip had shrunk to nothing. He had no idea Kip had left it behind for just one person.

They dragged Kyle up the stairs and the cold air hit them like a blast chiller. Kyle shook, no coat on and only a thin T-shirt. They reached the car and folded Kyle into the backseat, Kip sliding in behind him. Eric took the front.

"It would be awesome if he didn't puke back there," Scott said.

Kyle's hand snaked around and touched Eric's hair. "Beautiful," he said.

Eric laughed nervously. "My wife thought so too."

"Wife." Kyle said it with disdain, as if it were a personal tragedy. "Everybody's got somebody. Everyone except me and Kip the nun. Wasting his talents over here." His head lolled against the seat and his eyes closed, the flirt draining out of him. "Kip, Kip, Kip. Smartest person. Kindest. Hottest. Great mouth. Legendary."

Kyle," Kip begged.

"Don't let him disappear on you. People keep disappearing."

No one answered that. Kip's hand was on Kyle's chest. Scott locked eyes with him through the rearview mirror. "Where are we going?" he asked.

"Kyle's place."

Kyle's place turned out to be a fourth-floor walkup in the East Village, only a few blocks away from the sprawling, windswept tents that had taken over Tompkins Square Park. Getting him up the stairs was its own whole ordeal. Kip moving ahead, opening stairwell doors, and Eric and Scott moving him sideways up the stairwells. By the top, all three of them were breathing hard, but Kyle had gone still and quiet which was worse than the endless flirty chattering from before.

Inside, the apartment was grungy and minuscule. Kip knew his way around, which Scott tried not to think about. They maneuvered Kyle onto the bed and pulled his shoes off. They found a bucket to put beside him and a glass of water he most likely wouldn't drink on an overturned milk crate.

"I'm staying," Kip said. "He's a little warm and someone should be with him. I'll sleep in the chair," he reassured Scott. It wasn't up for discussion, and Scott wasn't going to make it one.

"You sure?"

"I'm sure." Kip stood in the tiny galley kitchen, and for a second, he looked so terribly exhausted. Scott wanted to cross the room and put his hands on him. He had a dozen things to say, and none of them were possible with Eric standing in the doorway pretending to look at anything except Kip and Kyle. "I'll call you tomorrow. When I know he's okay or if—I'll call you."

"Okay. Call me."

"Thank you," Kip's eyes held his. "And Eric. Thank you too. For all of it. I'm sorry for interrupting your evening."

"Anytime," Scott said. He meant it sincerely and literally to Kip, but he knew Eric wouldn't hear it that way.

They left them there in the dim yellow lamplight. Kip filled a bowl in the sink and got a cloth, no doubt getting ready to sponge off a filthy Kyle. Scott made himself walk down the four flights and out into the cold without looking back.

Eric was quiet until they reached the sidewalk, hands jammed in his coat pockets against the cold as they walked towards where they left the car.

"That's your assistant's fella? Kip and Kyle?"

He let Eric keep believing the picture he'd already made for himself. "Just his friend, I think."

"Pretty cozy for just friends. Have you ever been somewhere like that?" Scott thought for a minute he had, but not here. In Ibiza, in Mexico, in Spain, in the south of France. He shook his head anyway. "Different life from the rest of us," Eric continued.

"Kip's solid. So smart. He’s a grad student. Great assistant."

"You're a good man, Scotty. Keeping a guy like that on the payroll, let alone dragging yourself out at midnight to haul his boyfriend home out of a place like that. That was really decent of you. Not everybody's got that in them."

His words settled over Scott like a blanket. Eric meant every word, and every word was targeting the wrong thing. Praising him for tolerating a safe distance from the exact life he was living, and the exact body that was in his bed nearly every night.

"Thanks, Benny."

They made their way back to Scott's penthouse. "You're staying tonight," he told Eric. Eric started to argue, but Scott wouldn't let him even start. "It's late, you're beat. Guest room is made up, and I'll run you home in the morning. You could shower here if you want. Get some of that place off you."

They rode up in the elevator and didn't talk much, worn thin by the hour and the cold and the exertion of the past couple hours.

Scott poured himself the glass of bourbon he'd been wanting since before the phone rang and poured Eric a glass of water. "Unless you want to—" he offered the bottle, but Eric shook his head.

"The body is a temple," he smiled.

"I don't know, some of the guys at that party seemed to be having a religious experience," Scott quipped back.

"He seemed like a sweet kid," Eric said eventually. "Kyle. Under all that."

"This was our first time meeting."

"Do you have opinions on Mapplethorpe?" Eric asked.

Scott frowned into his bourbon, baffled. "Who, the painter?"

"Photographer," Eric corrected mildly. He smiled, clearly having lured Scott into a soft sort of trap.

"Uh, no, then."

"How long has he been working for you?"

"Since October," Scott said.

"I hope this doesn't ruin things for him with you."

"No," Scott said, shaking his head. "But hopefully this was a one-time bailout."

Eric pushed himself away from the kitchen counter. "Thanks for putting me up tonight. And for hanging out. It's been quiet. Since Holly left."

"Anytime, Benny."

"You did a good thing, Scott. I know you were freaked out down there." You have no idea, he thought.

"Get some sleep, Eric."

He clapped Scott on the shoulder and disappeared down the hall toward the guest room.

Scott stayed up. He carried his glass to the window. He stared at the phone, like maybe it would ring. He knew it wouldn't. Kip wouldn't call him again tonight. No news was also the thing he was hoping for. He thought about where Kip was, folded into a chair too small to sleep in, keeping his watch over his friend. Kyle lamenting that Kip no longer came out every night and that he would know. What ways had Kyle known or seen Kip that he hadn't? And there was a whole life Kip had gotten to have that Scott had selfishly taken from him.

Eric was asleep down the hall, believing he'd watched his friend do a decent thing for someone who probably should only be an acquaintance. He didn't like how easily that lie had come to him.

Eric was up first in the morning, dressed and ready to go. Scott made coffee neither of them truly drank and they didn't say much. He drove Eric home a little after nine, out of the garage and over the bridge, heading to his new place in the suburbs. Scott hadn't seen Eric's new place. He knew that it was near the practice facility. More convenient, Eric had said.

"I keep thinking about last night," Eric said.

"You don't have to say anything."

"No, I do." Eric kept his eyes focused out on the road ahead of them. "I've been in this game a long time. Seen every kind of guy I thought there was. You know how many guys I've played with who'd have found a reason to cut Kip loose months ago? All of them."

"I like him."

"I'm sure you do." Eric glanced over at Scott. "Things are changing out there. Everybody's supposed to be," he snapped his fingers, looking for the word. "Tolerant. More understanding of people being different. But not where we are. Guys in our line of work, the world is moving on and we're staying the same, you know."

"I think we work with some decent guys."

"I do too, but I don't think they would have done that last night. You have a good heart, Scott. I wanted you to hear that from me."

Eric thought he was praising a straight man for his tolerance. He was thinking of Scott as an open-minded, benevolent boss, taking pity on his young assistant. He felt a pit form in his stomach. He was so used to lying. But all lies of omission. This was different. He didn't like the active lying. Not to a guy as good to him as Benny.

"Thanks, Benny."

Eric remained silent for another block or two, drumming his fingers in a one-two pattern on the top of his thigh. "You like having an assistant?" he asked after a while.

"Yeah. It's been great." Eric didn't need to know how great or what kind of great.

Eric continued to tap ponderously. "My new place," he said at last. "I've been trying to get it to feel like it's mine since Holly left. Everybody says it takes time, but I don't feel at home there with all the walls still bare." He looked over at Scott. "Most of the art I have doesn't fit the space. I looked at a couple of pieces, but you know how it is. Hard to talk about with the guys. Everybody we know thinks velvet Elvis paintings are high art."

Scott nodded. He knew Eric spent a lot of his off-season in museums and galleries, and since Kip had stood next to him and explained capitalism through Basquiat, he was starting to get the appeal. "Yeah, new places can be tough. Carolyn got me an interior decorator to do mine."

One of the first things most of the hockey players did after they signed a contract was start offloading the domestic tasks. Even the married guys usually hired some sort of service people at some point. Scott had been sending out laundry, hadn't bought his own groceries in years, and had a regular housekeeping service, among lots of other things he certainly wasn't thinking about in that moment.

"That makes sense. I like picking out art, but it might be nice to have someone to help me. Give it a second opinion." Eric hesitated, his tapping rhythm skipping a beat. "Kip's friend, from last night. Kyle. Do you know anything about him?"

"Not really."

"He mentioned a couple of artists. I thought he might be a good person to tag along. I really just need someone to bounce a few ideas off of, and he might help me make some decisions."

Scott was so shocked he just about missed the turn onto Eric's street. He gripped the steering wheel, working unbelievably hard to keep his expression schooled. Was Eric trying to spend time with Kyle? Eric had spent the drive praising Scott for his openness and care for his assistant. And now maybe Kyle would be Eric's real-assistant, and any step closer to Kip's social circle meant a step closer to someone knowing about him, and that simply could not be allowed.

"I don't know, Benny," Scott said, trying to maintain an equal casualness to Eric. "I don't know him, but I'll ask Kip what he thinks."

"Yeah. Get his number for me, will you?" Eric sounded relieved. He stopped tapping, the tension leaving his hands. "Couldn't hurt."

"It was fun to see you outside a rink. We should do it again." The car had pulled up to the stately section of townhouses. Eric clapped a hand on Scott's shoulder and let himself out of the car.

Scott sat and watched him make his way into the house. He'd need to visit again soon. Eric was good people, and he shouldn't be alone now that Holly was gone. He pulled out into traffic and drove home to his empty place to wait on a phone call he wasn't sure would come.

Scott kept himself busy. He worked out, briefly, in the apartment, not wanting to leave the phone any longer than he had to. He knew he was being like a desperate teenage girl, but he couldn't seem to help it.

The call did come, finally, at three.

"Hey, it's me. He's fine," Kip said. "Mortified but fine. Sitting up, drank some ginger ale. He's apologizing to everybody he can think of, especially to my hot friends." There was a tired exhale of a laugh buried somewhere in the middle. "Turns out you can scare the hell out of an entire room and just had a very bad night. He is very, very sorry. We're not sure what he took, or how much."

"I’m glad that he's okay." Scott meant it, and he felt the worry that had buried itself deep into his muscles and festered all night slowly start to let go. "Did you get any sleep?"

"Not really. He was up most of the night puking. He’s out cold right now, but I feel a lot better about leaving."

"Do you wanna come over? You can shower and sleep here."

"Yeah, I'd love that. I need to see you," Kip said.

"What about your dad? You were supposed to see him last night."

"I called him from here late last night to let him know I was safe. Can I call him again from your place?"

"Yeah, totally fine. Do you want me to pick you up or are you going to take the train?"

"I can take the train. It's not far."

"Okay, I'll see you soon."

"Scott—”

"I know. Get over here, please. We can talk more then."

"Okay." He hung up the phone softly. He sighed, his head slumping back. They needed to talk, but he was not prepared for this conversation.

Kip arrived a little over an hour later. He was wearing different clothes than he had last night, and Scott realized with a shudder that they must be Kyle's, judging by the awkward size. He had on a worn pair of blue Levi's with a large tear at the knee, ankles rolled to keep the hem from trailing on the ground, and an ACT UP T-shirt that Kip also owned, though this one was in too large a size. Kyle was slim but he was tall. He was wearing a cheap knit hat and gloves, but they didn’t stop him from shaking under his leather jacket.

"I would've come to get you," Scott said. "You didn't have to be cold."

"It's fine. I didn't wanna bother you. Again," he added.

"Come on. Let's get you warmed up." Scott took him into the bathroom with the giant buthtub that they had never used. When he had gotten this place, the contractor had said he needed the gigantic claw-foot tub in the middle of the room that could easily fit four grown adults. He loved it during the season when he could soak out a muscle cramp.

Scott ran the water while Kip stripped off his clothes. "I have some fancy bath stuff, if you want," he offered, pointing at some decorative bottles full of pastel colored, shimmering liquids and gels.

"I won't say no," Kip said. Scott poured in some of the viscous goo, and the lavender-scented bubbles filled the tub. "You really are pampering me. I don't think I deserve it."

Scott smiled at him. "I'll leave you to it."

"You're not coming in?"

"Do you want me to?"

Kip looked at him incredulously. "Yeah, get over here. You're really wearing too many clothes for a bath."

Scott pulled off his sweats and climbed in first, the water rising precipitously as he did. Kip climbed in after and fit himself back against Scott's chest, between his legs. There was so much room for it. The tap was to the side, where it didn't dig into anyone's spine, and there was plenty of room to stretch out Scott's legs. Scott wrapped an arm over Kip's chest and kissed the sweaty, greasy crown of his head. Kip let out a deep sigh and pushed back against him.

"This is nice," he said. He sounded like he could fall asleep in the water. He definitely could after the night he had. Scott worked his thumbs into Kip's shoulders and felt the knots slowly releasing. The two of them sat in the inviting heat, with floral steam softening the room. Scott could have stayed there for a week. He locked their fingers together and brought their joined hands to rest over Kip's heart.

"I'd do anything for you," Scott murmured into his hair. "Anything. You know that, right?"

It was true and tender, and Scott felt the words congeal even as he said it. Anything had an asterisk the size of Manhattan.

"I know you would," he said. "Anything but the one thing, right?"

Scott's arms tensed around him. "Kip."

"I'm not trying to fight. I'm too tired to fight, and this is too perfect." Kip nuzzled against Scott's jaw and looked up at him with half-lidded eyes. "You'd give me the world. You'd buy me anything, fix everything. I'd trade all of it if you'd hold my hand outside this building. If you'd tell Kyle and Eric that you're my boyfriend."

Scott didn't have an answer that would be sufficient. He could say something comforting and gentle, and he felt himself reaching for it, but he couldn't bring himself to say it.

"Last night you scared the shit out of me," he said instead. "Where you were, what could've happened. I am so glad that you called me and I could help you, but you need to understand that I can never go to a place like that again. I absolutely cannot be seen there.” He sighed. “When I get scared for you, I want to shrink you down to something I can keep safe, here, forever. It's not safe out there."

"I don't like that I can't tell when you're caring about me from when you are just afraid. If the fear and the love coming out of you look the same, then every time you love me, you're going to try to make me small, and I'm already smaller than I can stand to be."

"I'm sorry."

"I know what I am to you here. Do you think I could be something to you out there too?"

Scott squeezed his eyes shut. He did not want to be having this conversation in the bath. "Someday. But not now, because I'm a coward. I'm not brave like you." His fingers teased across Kip's chest. "You keep letting me off. Every time." Kip pulled away and dipped his lank curls into the water. He reached for the shampoo. "Let me," Scott said, dumping some into his palm and lathering Kip's head. He dug his fingers into Kip's scalp, massaging it in, and Kip moaned under his fingers. After a few minutes, Kip dipped his head under again, letting the suds float away.

"I can take it right now, the lying, the secrets. But Scott—" Kip's words were so sincere. "I really, really wanted to tell Kyle you were mine."

"Someday."

"I don't know if you mean that," Kip's eyes drifted shut. "But okay."

Scott held him in the warm, dim room and knew he had been given a deadline without a date, completely dependent on Kip's life rather than his own. He had been waiting his whole life to feel like this, only to realize that his intuition that having a regular person for sex wouldn't make things easier. It would only mean his life was also beholden to them.

They stayed until the water around them cooled. Kip was dozing, and Scott grabbed the plug and let the water drain away.

"Do you need to eat?" he whispered.

"Probably. Can I take a nap first?"

"Of course, Kip. Anything you want, remember?"

"Except that."

"We can talk later," Scott replied firmly. He helped Kip out of the bathtub, and they toweled off, and then he tucked him into his gigantic bed, and he fell asleep right away.

Kip slept the better part of five hours. Scott spent it moving quietly around the apartment, listening for any trace of his stirring. He eventually came out after dark, wearing one of Scott's Admirals hoodies and a pair of his own gym shorts that he kept in the section of the closet that was his at this point.

"Hey," Scott said. "Come sit, eat something."

He'd tried to find some food in the time Kip had been snoozing, but the fridge was looking a little bare. His grocery delivery service was scheduled to come from Balducci’s the following day. He found some rapidly wilting spinach and some roasted chicken and managed to throw together a salad, tiny cubes of feta dotting Kip's, but not his. For a while, the conversation stayed light. Kyle was apologetic and mortified, and he would absolutely be making it up to Scott, and perhaps Eric, at another time. Scott let the conversation go on longer than he wanted to, because shallow and light was painless, and he was about to plunge them off into the deep end.

He couldn't help it. He had to ask the questions that had been eating at him since they had peeled Kyle up out of the basement.

"Can I ask you something," he asked, "and have it not be a big thing? I don't want to fight."

Kip looked up warily. "I don't like the sound of that."

"When you're out. When you were going out, Kyle made it sound like a lot, before." Scott cleared his throat, forcing the next words out. "Were you,” he cleared his throat. “Are you sleeping with other people?"

Kip's fork clattered to the table. "There it is."

"I said I don't want it to be a thing. I'm not accusing you of anything."

"You kind of are, but go on."

"I want to understand," Scott gave up on that sentence and started again. "Last night, that whole scene. I keep thinking about it and I want to know if it's, if you're—"

"Say it, Scott."

“Are you being,” he took a deep breath, “Reckless? About it. Are you putting yourself in bad situations? Kyle seemed—”

Kip laughed, sharp and mirthless. "God, Okay. We're doing this. I don't think you actually get it. That's not your fault, but you don't." He pushed the plate away. "I have always been safe. Every single time." He punctuated the words by slapping the table with his hand. "It's true. It's been true the entire time. But that's not what you're asking. You're trying to decide what you think of me."

"That's not fair—""Let me finish. You asked if I sleep with other people like it's a fucking character flaw you're hoping I don't have. That's how it is, Scott. It’s normal. So normal. Guys have a lot of partners. Careful ones, safe ones, but it's a lot. It's not a fucking moral failing, it's a Friday night."

"It's not like I'm a virgin."

"Yeah, but you're not like me either, are you?" He leaned forward. "And here's the thing that really gets me. I haven't been with anyone but you in six months. Six. You never asked, but I knew it's what you wanted me to do, so I did it. I'm the one over here depriving myself, but I did it gladly. For you. Because I love you. But not everybody is out here living like a monk to protect some guy who won't even say their name out loud and they shouldn't have to. I'm not going to sit here and let you imply that there's something wrong with people who aren't." He shook his head. "You don't have a fucking thing to worry about, Scott."

The words slammed into him and Scott didn't have much of a response. "What did you think I was doing in Spain?" he choked out.

"Yeah, sure. I'm sure you were the life of the party there. Was it at a club for other closeted rich guys to hook up with the commonfolk too?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Come on. You think you're the only guy doing this? Some of them have somebody. A guy in an apartment they pay for. A driver, an assistant, a personal trainer. Sound familiar?" He locked eyes with Scott. "You didn't invent hiding in the closet, Scott. There's a whole shitty little club of you who keep somebody nice in a cage and call it love."

"That's not what this is."

"If it walks like a duck."

Scott held out his hand. "Can we talk about this when you're not running on no sleep?"

Kip didn't take the opportunity. He stood up, leaving his salad half-eaten on the table. "You know what gets me? You know what's the shittiest part?" Kip's voice was lethally harsh, but stripped of the anger it had moments before. "I spent hours this week trying to scrape up some money to pay rent for four guys who are too sick to work right now. The mutual aid fund is always fucking empty. Guys going totally bankrupt just trying to afford any kind of medication that might give them a chance, let alone keep the electricity on. But all these rich assholes have more money than God, watching the rest of us drown and won't throw down a single fucking dollar because what if there's some kind of paper trail that will out them. But we already know who they are. Ask anyone at the Center and they've got a list." Scott stilled. He knew he was on that list, even if it was only one Kip had. "And I sit there and tell them it's bullshit, but here we are."

Kip walked away, the bedroom door clicking shut behind him. Scott sat alone at the kitchen table. He was in a whole shitty little club. He couldn't give Kip what he wanted, but he had money. He had more money than he could spend in ten lifetimes. He wouldn't miss the money. He couldn't write a personal check. If it leaked to the press that the Captain of the New York Admirals was over here bankrolling a fund for GMHC, his career would be over instantly. He had a great financial planner. He could call him tomorrow. It wouldn't be cowardice to use the resources he had like this. It was what he could do, and it would mean so much to Kip. It could fix this. It was a solid, real way he could make things better for Kip, even if he couldn’t give him all the rest.

 He walked into the bedroom. The room was dark, save for the ambient glow of the city coming in through the open curtains. Kip was curled on his side on the far edge of the mattress. Scott's side of the bed. The soft strips of light fell across his jaw. Scott stripped down to his boxers and climbed in carefully, keeping a healthy distance between the two of them. The silence between them was brittle, like stepping on the frost that formed over a puddle on a chilly morning. For a long time, they laid on the bed like that, neither willing to make the first move.

"I'm going to call the testing line," Kip said into the dark. His voice was thin and hollow. "Tomorrow."

Scott stiffened next to him. He hadn't asked for that. He would never have asked for that. "You don't have to do that," he said gently. He rested a tentative hand on Kip's side.

"I know I don't have to," Kip replied, rolling over to face him. Even in the low light, his eyes were sharp. "I know what it will say. I know exactly how careful I am. The Center tells everyone not to test. Did you know that? If you end up in the hospital, they’ll test you anyway and it doesn’t make a difference before that. It’s just something your landlord can use to kick you out or for the insurance company to tear up your policy. But I also know you."

Kip pushed himself up on one elbow, the sheets sliding off his bare chest. "Can’t you see how hard it is?" Kip's voice cracked, suddenly thick with emotion. "To come back from the hospital where guys my age weigh ninety pounds and they die and no one will come claim the body, and then I get to come back here? I take my bubble bath in a tub the size of a swimming pool and sleep in silk sheets."

"They're," Scott cleared his throat awkwardly. "They're Egyptian cotton." 

Kip let out an exhausted, dry laugh and scrubbed a hand over his face. "I feel so fucking guilty being here. I'm safe and healthy and all I can think about is how great life in here is and how fucking horrific it is out there. And I let you do it because I love you."

Scott grabbed Kip's hand, rubbing his thumb over his shaking knuckles.

"I see the way you look at me when I come from the hospital," Kip continued. "Like I'm bringing the plague into your perfect, clean house. You're waiting for me to run a fever, or get a cough that lasts a little too long. So I will call the department of health. I will jump through their stupid hoops, and I will get you a piece of paper that proves I'm not tainted."

"That's not—" Scott's throat was uncomfortably tight. "Kip, I don't think you're tainted. I'm just so scared of losing you. It took so long for me to find you."

Kip closed the distance, collapsing against Scott. Scott wrapped his arms around him, pulling him in as tightly as he could and burying his face into Kip's hair. "I'm not going anywhere," Kip murmured against his skin. ”But I’ll go get tested. Even if it won’t make a bit of difference for me, because it will for you.”

“Do you miss it? Nights out with Kyle.”

“Not as much as I love being here with you.”

Scott's answer was wordless. He kissed along the margins of Kip's face, tasting the salt on his brow. Then he gripped his waist and pulled them flush together in the center of the massive bed. Their hips ground together and the anger slowly drained out of the room, leaving behind only the tactile need to prove that they were both still there, together, in the dark.

Chapter End Notes

Expertly beta read by Aphantastical, who graciously provided some insight into an appropriate meet-cute for our boys Eric and Kyle.

Some content notes:
If you're not familiar, Robert Mapplethorpe took beautiful black and white photographs of flowers, but also highly controversial erotic nudes, many of which are of men. He was a big figure in the queer art scene, and would eventually pass away from the virus in 1989. In our canon-time, he would have a big exhibition coming up in NYC that someone like Eric would absolutely be going to see. Conversely, Scott brings up Rothko who was an abstract expressionist, who used deep saturated colors. Veeery different art, used here to portray some parallelism between our guys.

Details of the winter Olympics, included the USAs rough loss and drop to 7th, as well as the warm chinooks are all accurate.

Kip stepping in at the hospital is also reflective of the reality at St. Vincent's. St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village had a dedicated AIDS words beginning in 1984, the first one on the east coast. It was so overcrowded by 1988 that patients sometimes had to wait four or five days on gurneys in hallways to get a room. Volunteers from the community really stepped up at this time, especially queer women.

Thanks for reading. I mentioned in my note in the last chapter of Exile, but I'm back to work after (yikes) nearly a year of medical leave followed by WFH, so I simply can't write as much. There are just suddenly fewer hours in the day! But I'll see you when I see you. ❤️

Chapter 4: Tested

Chapter Summary

It's summer in the city, and Scott just wants to be inside.

Chapter Notes

Crossover notes for Vocabulary of Exile:
None!

Content Warnings

Scott has a lot of internalized homophobia that comes out in this chapter in the form of a few panic spirals, as well as some somewhat unnuanced understanding of nude art pieces
Kip makes a reference to suicide
Sexual content between Scott and Kip
Homophobic slurs
There's a couple of comments about diversity hires and affirmative action that are period-appropriate

"[W]ith every step I took it became more impossible for me to turn back. And my mind was empty—or it was as though my mind had become one enormous, anaesthetized wound. I thought only, One day I’ll weep for this. One of these days I’ll start to cry."

— James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

True to his word, Kip called the testing line from Scott's phone the next morning while Scott was rinsing out the coffee pot.

"Yes, I need a test." Then, after a long pause. "No, I understand. No name." Scott swirled the water in the pot, letting it wash away the last burnt dregs that were in the bottom of the far-too-expensive glass container.

"Twenty-six, twenty-seven at the end of the month." He paused for a moment. "No, first time."

Scott continued to rinse the pot long after it was clean. A longer chunk of time went by. Kip listened intently on the phone, floorboards creaking slightly as he shifted his weight.

"Yes," Kip said. He made a gesturing motion with his hand for a pen, which Scott tucked into his hand quickly. Kip wrote down a couple of letters followed by a string of numbers on the back of a receipt.

"May fifth is fine. Anything earlier?" he asked. "No, that's okay. Morning works best." Scott could hear the operator's muffled voice on the other end. "Two weeks, in person. Got it. Yes. Thank you."

He hung up the receiver and let out a big sigh. There was a stretch of five or six seconds where Kip didn't immediately start walking back into the kitchen.

"I'm going in on May fifth," Kip said. He picked up a glass of water and took a hefty gulp. "Eight in the morning, on Ninth Avenue. Then I have to go back in two weeks later to get the results."

"They won't call or mail it or something?"

"No, absolutely not. They are incredibly serious about anonymity."

"Okay." Scott paused. "Can I ask you a question?"

"That is a question."

Scott forged ahead. "Why haven't you gotten tested? Before now?"

Kip thought for a few seconds before he answered. "I mean, I told you last night. Nobody does."

"Nobody?"

"How many guys do you think I know who've had that test?"

"I don't know."

"Just guess."

"Fifty," Scott answered. He didn't know if that number was absurdly too high.

Kip held up four fingers. "And two already had spots when they went in, so they knew already." Scott leaned against the counter and looked at him. "Think about it for a second. Like you're one of us. It turns positive. What's the plan?"

"I'd go to the doctor."

"Okay, but you aren't you. You're an average guy. What would the doctor say? There's one drug. It costs ten grand. That's more than half what I'm going to be making this year. No one has the money to do that."

"Sure, but let's say I do." Scott didn't want to tell Kip he'd pay any sum to keep Kip healthy, but he would.

"There's a fifty-fifty shot that it makes you too anemic to get out of bed or doesn't work at all. And now you know. Every cold, every bruise, every little cough. You're exhausted and terrified. And if anyone finds out, anyone, it has real consequences. I know guys who lost apartments, got fired, their family left them. So no, nobody gets tested. I've told people that myself. Be safe, and if you get sick, they'll tell you at the hospital anyway." Kip stood with his back to him, hands on the edge of the sink. "So you get it now?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know," he said, picking his bag up off the stool. "I don't want you to say anything."

"It's your birthday soon."

"Yeah, the thirtieth."

"You didn't say anything."

"You didn't say anything about yours," Kip retorted.

"The run-up to the Olympics was a lot, and I didn't want to make it a thing. You didn't need to do anything." He cleared his throat. "Did you want to do something?"

Kip looked at him hungrily for a moment, and then said, "No, I don't think so." Scott knew a lie when he heard one. "I'm heading out. See you tonight." He gave Scott a quick kiss and then was out the door.

No matter how many years he played, Scott was never quite ready for the sudden end that came when the team was eliminated. He went from skating nearly every day, punishing his body and spirit, to nothing, without any warning. One night, Scott was going full-tilt in the center of a roaring arena, running off adrenaline and a well-placed cortisone shot to his knee, and the next, he woke up to the complete silence of the penthouse. He felt the familiar unmooring that accompanied every end of a season. There was no practice to rush off to, and no trainer waiting to tape him up. He had zero plans. For the first time in years, he hadn't booked a summer vacation to somewhere hot and full of willing bodies. Carter was off to Punta Cana with Gloria, who was shooting some sort of swimsuit advertisement, so there wasn't even a trip with him to look forward to. But what he did have was Kip. Beautiful, idealistic, doting Kip, with his seemingly endless appetite for Scott.

In the first few days, he did exactly what the trainers and coaches would have expected of him. He put ice on his knee when he remembered to and slept twelve hours a night. At first it was blissful, but by the fourth day it started to go sour on him, solidifying into a restless agitation. He was used to strict itineraries, constant exertion, and the displacement of traveling every other week across the nation. But now he was just home.

He had built a delicate, unspoken ecosystem with Kip over the months their lives had become enmeshed, although neither of them seemed particularly willing to admit it. When Scott was traveling, their time together felt like a precious, finite resource, more expensive than diamonds. They were able to ignore the outside world and everything that was happening in Kip's circle because their time together was short. Now, the bubble of the penthouse felt temporary. The walls were shrinking in, and the outside couldn't be kept at bay much longer.

Kip had his own big, entire life that existed away from Scott. His own schedule at the hospital and The Center and the university. He was also used to letting himself into the penthouse while Scott was still gone, decompressing for a few hours from the cripplingly heavy work that took more out of him than he would ever admit to Scott. Some nights, Scott would come home off a plane, landing at two in the morning, and then, a few days later, he was gone again. But now, Kip came up in the elevator, and Scott was there. Every time.

Scott wasn't lounging either. On Monday morning, Kip came out to stare at Scott doing jump squats on the hardwood floor in the living room. "Are you always this loud?" he grumbled.

"Gotta stay in shape," he said unapologetically. "I need to get my knee ready for training camp."

"At six in the morning?"

"That's fair," he said, stopping. He grabbed a towel where he had left it on the back of the sofa and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. "I've got a full day anyway. Better get started."

He left Kip rubbing his eyes in the doorway and headed for the shower. He emerged some time later, scrubbed clean, and walked naked to stand in front of his closet. Kip had taken himself back to bed and was lounging under the sheets, one arm draped across Scott's pillows. "Nice view," he quipped at Scott, who wiggled a little in front of him. That got a good laugh from Kip. Scott picked out a suit and stepped into it. It was dark gray. Conservative. One of his favorites for days like this.

"What are you doing today?" Kip asked.

"Meetings. Coffee?"

"Yes, please."

"I'll make you some. Come in the kitchen?" He walked away before he could get an answer.

Scott had splayed out his work on the kitchen counter. Sprawling stacks of eight-by-ten glossy headshots for him to sign. A branded polo shirt that had been dropped off for a weekend golf scramble in Westchester was draped over the back of a chair. There was a handwritten list of dates that he needed to add to his day planner. Next to all that was Kip's stack of mimeographed newsletters for The Center.

Kip shuffled in a few minutes later. "When did all this get here?" he asked, his voice thick with sleep and annoyance.

"Yesterday. Walt sent it up. Endorsements," Scott said, fumbling with the clasp of a gold watch. "Carolyn's keeping me booked solid now that playoffs aren't happening. I've got a lunch with some car dealership and a ribbon cutting for them this afternoon, and then a charity dinner for a children's hospital tonight."

Kip sighed and shoved a stack of headshots across the counter so that he could plug in the blade coffee grinder. A hundred smiling versions of Scott's face slid over into a stack of fifty more, and Scott felt a flash of irritation.

Scott didn't make the coffee. Kip did it himself while Scott stood in front of the large mirror in the entryway, adjusting an Admiral's red silk tie. Scott came back into the kitchen and kissed Kip, running a hand over his freshly clean-shaven jaw. "I'll see you tonight?" Scott asked.

"Maybe. I promised Kyle I'd be over."

"But you'll come over after?"

"Yeah, of course," he nodded.

The car let Scott out on Third Avenue. Scott stood on the sidewalk with his hand resting on the door and told the driver to come back for him at eleven thirty.

There was a payphone on the terrace outside the office. Scott fed a quarter into it and dialed the number off the card he kept in his wallet. Ansel, Scott's financial advisor, picked up on the second ring. He talked about the season for just about a minute, sorry about how it ended, terrible break in that last game, and Scott knew it was just the things you say about a disappointing event.

"So, Ansel. What do you know about an anonymous donation? And I mean anonymous. I don't want it to get back to me ever, under any circumstances."

There was a long pause from the other end of the line, and he could practically hear Ansel thinking. "How much are we talking?" He asked, finally.

"I think probably twenty-five, but maybe more later."

"Thousand."

"Yes."

"To whom? Wait, you said it was anonymous."

"It's a controversial charity. But it's a nonprofit here in the city," Scott replied.

"Mr. Hunter, this isn't a white nationalist thing, right? Because I can't help you—"

"No, no. Nothing like that," Scott replied quickly. "It's, uh, health services. For a certain, um, disease. But I don't want people to think that I'm associated with that kind—"

"Understood." Scott pulled out a copy of the newsletter from The Center that he had pilfered off the counter one night when Kip went home to see his dad and left a stack of them behind. There was a box at the bottom of the last page with an address in it and a line about contributions being tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. "It says they are 501(c)3," he added. "It's on the letterhead."

"Well, for the tax deduction that's helpful."

"I don't want the deduction," Scott said quickly.

Ansel made kind of a grunt. "I would be a terrible financial advisor if I told you not to take the deduction just because of anonymity. That's twenty-five grand you're paying tax on for the privilege of nobody knowing about it. And we can protect your anonymity still."

"And you're sure?"

"Absolutely."

"Okay."

"Cash is out," Ansel replied. "Anything over ten in cash, and the bank will file a report with the Treasury. That report will have your name on it whether you like it or not. That's federal, not just me being cautious." Scott was nodding along, even though he knew Ansel couldn't see. Okay, no cash. Easy enough. "We can do it through your trust. I'll draw a cashier's check from the firm's account and transfer the funds from the trust to us."

"What does it look like from the other end?"

"The check will read the firm's name only, and we have over four hundred clients, so that should obfuscate your identity enough. The folks on the other end would see a bank in Hartford and the office address. If they call the office, the girls downstairs will say that the donor has chosen to remain anonymous, and they say that sentence all the time, so it won't be suspicious to anyone. One last thing. Do you want to look like it came from a person or from an estate?"

"Probably an estate? Less likely to come back on me?"

"Sure thing."

"I can have a cashier's check couriered to you, or straight to the charity if you'd like."

"Can you bring it to me?"

"Perfect. It'll all be done within three business days."

"Thanks, Ansel. I knew you would know what to do."

Scott hung up the payphone and stood with his hand on the receiver. Twenty-five thousand dollars. Kip was spending whole weeks of his life at The Center, the hours adding up. Kip would be thrilled. He would be absolutely ecstatic. He folded up the newsletter and put it back into his jacket pocket because dropping it in the trash can seemed, for reasons that he did not want to think about, like the wrong thing to do.

Inside the lobby, the doorman said "Good morning, Mr. Hunter," and did not make him sign in. Carolyn's office was up on the eleventh floor, in the corner, with two glass walls and the other covered in framed photographs of men whose careers were long over. Famous athletes that Scott had never met, a tennis player, a middleweight boxer. Several baseball players. Carolyn had been Scott's agent for nearly a decade, but he had never once thought about that wall until this morning, when he sat down in front of it with the newsletter still inside his jacket pocket. Pretty soon he would just be a photograph on that wall.

Carolyn had her desk cleared off for him and a bottle of the sparkling water that he liked because that was just how she operated.

"You look tired," she said when he sat down in one of the chairs.

"It was a long season," he replied.

"I wanted to talk to you about your contract." She sat down and turned a folder around, so it faced him directly. "You have two more years."

Scott didn't touch the folder. "It's only April, we usually don't talk about the contract until closer to the season."

"Well, it's April of the year that you turned thirty-four. Which means at the end of this contract, you'll be thirty-six, and one of the oldest scorers in the League. So if we start this conversation that summer, we'll be having it from a position of very difficult weakness. I don't like that."

Scott usually liked that she didn't soften her words for him, but today it felt harsh and unpleasant. "Ouch," he said.

"That's not what I meant," she said. "Nobody's pushing you out. I want that clear. This is not that meeting. If you want me to negotiate you a new contract, I will, and it will be easier if I do that now, and we overwrite your current terms."

"Who called you?"

"Why do you think someone had to call me for me to have this chat with you?" Scott gave her a dubious look. "Dugan called back in February, just asking if you'd said anything about your knee, or maybe needing to take a break." Dugan was the assistant coach.

"And what did you say?"

"I told him it was none of his business, and if he had a concern, he needed to bring it to you or the team trainers or doctors. I also reminded him that, no matter what, that knee was on his roster for two more seasons." Scott looked out of the giant glass windows. He could see a window-washing rig suspended against the next building over with a man in it pushing hard with a squeegee. The whole of the west side was visible in the bright morning light.

"So if that's not what this meeting is, what is the meeting about?"

"I wanted to ask you directly if you were wanting me to negotiate you another contract after this one is up. Or, if you'd like to call it. If you decide that this is it, and maybe it is—that is totally up to you, your salary will stop. I'm not worried about you one bit. You've got a trust and a great financial advisor and you don't gamble or drink or have a string of women hoping to snag you for child support, so you'll be all right. But the endorsements don't retire with you, Scott. They go first. They follow the ice time, and it's going to go before you do."

"What do you mean?" he asked. Scott had a number in his head as to what he felt he was worth, but he'd never said it out loud, even to Carolyn.

"I want to load you up with endorsements this summer and next. Really keeping you busy. Booked every week. And I want next season to be heavier than this one. I know you hate doing the ads, and I want you to say yes anyway. CCM's coming back around. They want you in the fall for some kind of legacy campaign with younger players. They also have the Super Tacks coming out. There's also a razor company that's mostly print and only wants one afternoon of shooting. The milk people wanted the whole team to do some ads about calcium building strong athletes or something, but they'll take just you. There's also multiple charities that are looking to engage you as a speaker if possible. It's real money and almost no work."

"Sounds like a lot of ballrooms." He listened to her.

"It's an enormous amount of standing in ballrooms," she agreed. "It is the opposite of glamorous. But I want to load you up so that no matter what happens next, you're ready."

"What does happen next? If I decide this is it." He'd thought about it fleetingly, over the past years, but now it seemed like the time was closer than he had ever imagined.

"Well, that part is up to you. You could coach, if you wanted, the buses in the motels and somebody's angry dad yelling at you in an arena in the middle of nowhere, Canada. You'd be very good at it, but I don't recommend it. With your stats and your general demeanor, I'm certain I could get you in at a pretty good college, or, perhaps, an assistant coach at a real team, and then you could work your way up."

"And if I don't want to coach?"

"I'd try to find you a place in broadcasting. You're articulate. You're very good looking, and I'm fairly certain I can find a place that would be interested."

"I'm not articulate or good looking," he scoffed. He was thinking of Kip with his eyes that seemed to read every newspaper and press release like it was one of his textbooks, discerning meaning and subtext and seemingly endless amounts of information out of what Scott saw as plain words. He could never be like that.

"You're incredibly articulate for a hockey player, which is the relevant thing. There's also the option that the team might want to offer you a position. Donor relations or something like that. You'd do a lot of golf things. You wouldn't really leave the team that way. Fifteen years from now, you're the one that they bring out on anniversary night. The whole place stands up and cheers for you, and you shoot a couple of pucks, and everybody's happy."

Scott looked outside. The window washing unit had moved down a floor. When Carolyn spoke like this, he could see his entire life laid out before him with complete clarity. There were ballrooms and golf tournaments and anniversary nights and a life built entirely out of being welcomed into rooms and everyone knowing who he was, even if his career had ended decades before. But every piece of it was resting on one fact that had never been said out loud in this office.

It was on the tip of his tongue. He could say it right now. He could tell Carolyn. He could tell her that she needed to rethink her plan. Because there wasn't going to be any standing ovation for him in any ballroom in this city or any other. If his photo ever went up on the wall, with the rest of Carolyn's famous clients, she would certainly be taking it down shortly after. He knew all of this. And it was still there, he could tell her. She could be in on the secret. But that would mean he would have to say it out loud. Which he had not, in thirty-four years, to anyone, but the man was asleep in his bed this morning. And there was absolutely no reason on God's green earth to think, until Kip showed up in his life, that he ever would say those words out loud to anyone.

Scott," Carolyn said, eyes on him, "Are you doing okay?" Scott realized he must've been quiet for quite some time.

"I'm sorry. Long night."

Carolyn watched him for quite a bit longer than she needed to. "So can I count you in for the summer? We can deal with the rest later."

"Yes, that's fine," he agreed. "Whatever you think."

"Good. We can go over the contracts now. How about we also plan on CCM in October?"

"Sure," he replied.

"Perfect." She began pulling pages out of the folder, tiny flags where he needed to sign. "We have some time to do this now. We've got lunch with the dealership at noon and the ribbon-cutting at two, and I'm going to come with you because I know you'll agree to something stupid for not nearly enough money."

"You're a lifesaver, Carolyn."

The next evening, Kip came towards Scott while he was sitting on the couch with a manila folder clutched to his chest.

"Can I show you something?" he asked.

"Do you want a beer first?"

"No."

He cleaned off a space at the coffee table and pulled out two typed pages. The second page was mostly blank space under a line that said signatures. The top had an address block directing it toward the mayor's office.

"It's about beds," Kip said. "I helped write it." Kip sat on the edge of the table, facing Scott, the news going on the television behind his head. "There's meant to be dedicated units, but there are never enough beds. You know. I tell you about it all the time."

"You do," Scott agreed.

"It's not money," Kip said quickly. "I need you to sign it."

Scott skimmed it. The letter wasn't bad. Kip was a good writer and he had no doubt The Center was full of brilliant, artistic people who had crafted a perfect letter. The signatures page had eleven names on it. Two doctors, both with the hospitals they represented, typed neatly under their spiky illegible scrawls. A city councilman. Someone from some foundation that had something to do with public health. The head of a restaurant group Scott knew of. A few other names Scott didn't recognize.

"How many signatures are you trying to get?"

"Fifty would be perfect. The plan is to send it to City Hall, but also all the papers. If there's names on there the reporters recognize, we have a much better chance of it getting picked up."

"Kip," Scott started.

"No. Nope. You're not doing that."

"I didn't say anything."

"But you're going to."

"Kip, you know—"

"Can you please hear the whole thing before you answer?" Scott waved a hand. "It's a letter about how there aren't enough beds in a hospital. That's it. It doesn't talk about gay people. It doesn't even say AIDS. It says hospital beds and infectious disease. That's all. I did that on purpose. You can sign it, and it's not anything." He was speaking very precisely, like he had rehearsed it several times. "You already do a lot of hospital things, and you've been in the news for them, and nobody thought a thing except that you were a nice local guy."

"That was for children's cancer. It's different."

"It's not. Ryan White is a child. He still got AIDS. But let me finish." He took a breath. "You sign it with fifty other people. Forty-nine. You aren't the first name or the last. You're buried somewhere in the middle. And you care about the city. That's all you say when they ask about it."

Scott looked at the signature page again. There was an enormous expanse of white space, waiting. He could see how it would go. Someone would call Carolyn for a comment, and she'd brush them off, but eventually one of them would approach him for a comment at morning skate, or on the street, and he wouldn't make one, and then they'd start approaching the team, and he couldn't have that. "I sign, and it will be in the Post with my picture."

"Maybe."

"Definitely. But that's the point, right?" Scott heard how harsh his tone was but didn't know how to soften it. "You aren't asking me to be a name on a list. You want me to be the name that makes the story."

Scott waited for Kip to deny it. To make it smaller, more palatable. He didn't at all. "Yes. That's exactly what I'm asking."

"Then you know the answer is no."

"Scott—"

"No."

"Can you take the night and think it over?"

"I don't need the night to think it over." Scott stood up.

"It's just hospital beds!"

"All the people on your page have a reason to be there. Doctors. Councilmen. Some hospice person. Why me? Why a hockey player? I can't answer that question."

"There's some regular guys on this list too. Businessmen. Artists."

"And I bet everyone is going to look at their names and think they have the same secret I do. It doesn't matter if it's true or not."

"What secret? Maybe you signed because you love New York and care about this city."

"No reporter is going to believe that's the answer."

Kip picked up the pages off the table and slid them back into the envelope. Scott would have preferred him to do anything besides how carefully he shuffled them in there, making sure not to crease them even a little.

"Kip."

"It's fine."

"You're upset with me."

"It was stupid of me to ask."

"I'll give money."

"To who? The fucking mayor?" Kip walked into the bedroom and shut the door with a click.

Scott stayed on the couch. The news finished, and he didn't absorb a single word of it. Finally, a little after one, he went in. Scott got into the bed and lay on his back, keeping a solid foot of space between the two of them. He listened to Kip's breathing and knew he wasn't asleep, but he wasn't going to be the one to point that out. He was still awake at two when Kip turned over and his hand came to rest against Scott's arm, and that was that.

Eric had gently reminded Scott several times during the end of their hockey season that he needed to give him Kyle's number, and that he still wanted it. He had eventually passed it over after practice one day, after thinking that perhaps his caginess was much worse than simply connecting the two of them. Eric met up with Kyle sometime after the hockey season ended. Scott got to hear about it from both ends. Eric called to let him know that he had gone to a gallery out on Greene Street. He didn't use any pronouns at all while he was doing his telling of the story. It was fine, he had seen a couple pieces that he liked, but nothing that he loved enough to put down serious cash on. They had gone out for coffee afterward.

"Have you ever been to the Dia?" Eric asked.

"I don't know what that is."

"I haven't been either," Eric said absently. The conversation meandered for a few more minutes and then Eric hung up.

Later that night Kip had come home and had started to tell almost the exact same story, only from Kyle's perspective. He said they hung out for hours. He was sitting up on the counter, holding a beer as his heels knocked into the cabinet.

"Kyle likes him. He says he asked a million questions. It was like a deposition."

"That's Eric," Scott said. "He genuinely likes people. He's a nice guy."

"He says he's sure Eric has never once in his life said a single sentence about himself. He also wanted me to know that Eric is definitely the hottest hockey player on the team."

"Please don't tell me things Kyle says about Eric."

"Oh, that's not even the start of it. I could tell you much worse things."

The stories continued over the next few weeks. Scott heard them in between Kip's attempts at collecting signatures for the letter, and between endorsement meetings with Carolyn. Eric and Kyle went back to the gallery on Greene Street when they got new things in. They went to the Dia twice, which Scott had finally established was an art museum, or a gallery. He didn't have a great understanding of the distinction between the two. Kyle took Eric some place on Prince Street where Eric could order a salad. They went to a new vegetarian place that had four different kinds of tofu on the menu. Eric always paid, and Kyle didn't know if they were dates or not. He didn't know if Eric was like that at all. Kip asked one night directly.

"Is Eric like you?"

"I don't know what you mean by that."

"Does Eric fuck men?" Kip said bluntly. For a long beat, Scott didn't know what to say.

"No, I don't think so. I think he would tell me."

"Well, you didn't tell him," Kip retorted.

"That's different. And besides, Eric was married."

Kip looked back to him with a patronizing grin. "Scott, I hate to tell you this, but lots of men sleep with men who were married to women. Some of them still are married to women."

"Not Eric. It's not like that."

It was strange for Scott to hear about this new life and new friend now that Eric was divorced. He was still the same Eric, but he was different somehow. He sounded more jovial, more alive than he had in years. Definitely the entire time that Scott had known him. It was like being divorced from Holly had reawakened something in him.

In late April, Eric called about a gallery. "There's a show at a place up at the Fuller Building," Eric said. "Photographs. Kyle wants to go, and I thought maybe it might be nice if all four of us went. You know, you, me, Kyle, and your buddy Kip."

"I don't know. Kip and Kyle out with us, won't that look—?"

"It's just an art gallery, Scotty, four guys standing around looking at pictures."

Scott thought about it for a couple of days, but did not mention it. Kip eventually found out from Kyle and came home one night and stood at the bedroom doorway with his coat still on and asked Scott about it.

"The Robert Miller Gallery," he said.

"I said I'd think about it."

"You didn't even ask me."

"Kip."

"I'm not here to fight about it." He came and sat on the end of the bed. Scott watched his face transition through several different emotions. "I'm going to just ask you for it instead. It's my birthday on Saturday. Will you go with me to this museum as a gift?"

"You want me to go to the museum for your birthday."

"I want an afternoon. I don't want you to act like it's a date, we don't have to touch. You don't even have to say my name. Everyone in that building will just see four boring men looking at photographs. You'll be indoors, we won't have our picture taken anywhere. Afterward, we can come home and lock the door, and I will never bring it up again." Scott looked at the ceiling. "Please do this for me."

Scott thought really, really hard for a long moment. "Okay. Does this mean you don't want the steak dinner I have planned?"

"Oh no, I want the dinner," Kip grinned.

Scott pulled him in for a kiss. "I will give you an afternoon at the museum. And maybe even dinner out." Kip did not say thank you. Scott noticed it, but he didn't mention it.

Kip turned twenty-seven on the last Saturday in April. Scott bought two porterhouses that cost a small fortune. The butcher talked him into needing an outlandishly lengthy dry-aged cut that he promised would be the absolute best thing he'd ever eaten in his life. Kip mentioned liking asparagus once, so he bought some, even though he had no idea how to cook it. There were also potatoes and far too many cloves of garlic. He also had to go back to the market a second time because he had forgotten to buy rosemary and thyme, and also the salt in his cupboard had solidified into a brick in the humidity, and he felt like that was a bad sign.

Kip came in a little after five in a clearly good mood, but his face fell a little when he saw Scott. "You're not dressed."

"For what?"

"You said we were getting a steak dinner. I mean, I wasn't expecting Peter Luger, but maybe somewhere we had to wear something nice."

"Oh. I see. I, uh, made it."

Kip hid his disappointment quickly.

"You made it? You didn't have a chef do it or something?"

"No, I really did it. All by myself."

"Okay. Hopefully it's better than going out," Kip teased.

"It will be. I'll make sure of that. Or I'll just blow you while you eat and then you won't remember if the food was bad." Kip grinned and kissed him.

Kip watched him work. A bulky but clearly brand new cast iron pan went onto the burner and Scott carefully added in the thick cuts of meat. The sizzle filled the apartment. There was a little smoke, and he tried his best not to panic. Thyme and garlic at the end, basting the melted butter over the steak until it formed a dark crust. He pressed the steaks with his thumb to test for doneness.

"Are they done?" Kip asked.

"They need to rest."

"Oh." Kip looked at him ponderously. "Where did you learn to do this?"

Scott looked at him sheepishly. "I watched Julia Child on TV a lot as a kid."

"You didn't remember this from back then, old man," Kip grinned.

"Okay, fine. I called up a chef I know and he told me what to do."

Scott plated up huge dollops of mashed potatoes and glistening asparagus spears. He cut the steaks after ten minutes, thick slabs sliced against the grain. The knife went through with no resistance, the pink coming to the edge. He fanned them out on the plates. He carried the plates to the table and put Kip's down in front of him and stood there expectantly like a waiter.

"Sit down, you goof."

Kip sliced a bite of the steak and popped it into his mouth, moaning around it. "This might be the best thing I've ever eaten."

"That's the aging, I think. They said it was three months or something."

"I don't think that's what it is," Kip said, looking at him fondly.

Scott ate his own dinner, and it was in fact the best steak he had ever eaten. Kip ran his foot along Scott's leg while they ate silently. Just making eyes at each other.

"I like what you did with the asparagus," Kip said finally.

"Oh good. I didn't know how to do them at all. I don't even like asparagus."

"Why did you make it then?"

"You like it."

"How do you know that?"

"You said it once. There was a commercial on TV and you said nobody ever made good asparagus."

"You remember that?"

"Of course."

As the dinner wound down, Kip began to stir.

"Don't get up," Scott said.

"I can clear the plates."

"No, no. There's a dessert. And uh, presents. Just wait there, please."

Scott went into the kitchen and pulled out the Chocolate Blackout Cake he'd gotten from a bakery off Fifth that afternoon and dotted it with the rainbow birthday candles he'd picked up. He had a pang of fear. Was this ridiculous? He knew it was. He lit them and carried it out to Kip.

"Oh my God, Scott. What on earth—"

"It's your birthday. Do you want me to sing?"

"Don't you dare."

"Fine. But you need to make a wish."

Kip sat there with his hand over his mouth and thought for a moment before he blew them out. Scott cut two brick-sized pieces and put one onto Kip's plate.

"Thank you," Kip said, finishing his piece.

Scott placed a neatly wrapped package on the table. Kip wiped his hands on the napkin before he touched it.

"You already did all this. I didn't need anything."

"Just open it."

Kip tore the paper carefully along the seams. Inside was a copy of Giovanni's Room in a Mylar sleeve. The dust jacket was faded on the edges. Kip went still.

"Is it wrong?" Scott asked. "I talked to a book dealer. I told her about you and that you're at NYU and she brought this out."

Kip pulled it out of the sleeve. "It's signed," he gasped, opening the front cover.

"Do you—like it?"

"Scott, I love it." Kip coughed out a laugh. "Have you read it?"

"No."

"Do you know what it is?"

"Not really," Scott admitted. "She said it was a love story."

"It is," Kip was beaming at him. "It must have been a fortune."

"Don't worry about that."

"So it was."

"There's also, um. A bookmark in there. You should look at it."

Kip opened the book up to find the folded cashier's check. He took it out, turning it over. Scott watched his face with a flush of anticipation. Kip's hands were over his mouth, and then he was up out of his chair.

"What is this?"

"It's clean. You can walk into any bank and they'll give you the cash."

"Whose money is this?"

"It's mine."

"So an anonymous donation."

"I needed it to be untraceable. If anybody looks into it, it looks like it came from someone's estate."

The blood ran out of Kip's face. "An estate. Like you're dead?"

"That's not—" Scott tried to take it back.

"Those are the only estate gifts we get, Scott. It's the fucking definition of the word. You decided you'd rather pretend to be dead than be associated with my work?"

"It's only a technicality. To stay anonymous."

"Are you fucking crazy? I can't take this into The Center, Scott. They'll ask where I got it, and I can't tell them. You're going to put that on me, for forever? People don't just walk in off the street with thousands of dollars."

"It's a gift."

"Every time money comes up, and it will come up, because that's all we ever talk about, I'll have to keep my mouth shut. Next week, and the week after, and the week after that. When they ask for more, I'll have to pretend I have no idea where it came from. This isn't a little lie anymore. I can't believe you're putting all of this on me."

"It's not supposed to be something I put on you."

"And then because it's an estate, they're going to try to figure out who it was, probably so they can plan some kind of memorial or tribute or something for their best donor and I'm going to have to pretend I have no idea. Fuck, Scott. Everything was great. The steak and the cake and the goddamn Baldwin."

"Take the gift, Kip. You said The Center needed the money."

"You could have just signed the damn letter. That would have been enough. That would have been free." Kip pinched the bridge of his nose and took a few deep breaths.

"Let's just forget about it. I can have it couriered over. I'll keep you out of it. I was being stupid. I wanted you to be excited about it, for your birthday. I wanted you to have a nice birthday."

"So you thought giving me more money than I'll make this year was the thing to do?"

"I'll figure something else out. Some other way to give the money. I didn't realize—" Scott pleaded.

"No. I'll take it in. Of course I'll take it in. I'm sorry. I'm being shitty. I'm being so shitty. Thank you. Thank you for the generous gift. This is going to buy so fucking many groceries."

"I did it for you, Kip. I'm trying."

"And we're going to the gallery still."

"Absolutely."

"This is the best birthday I've ever had. Thank you." He did not sound particularly enthused.

"I want you to be happy, Kip. I know your work means a lot to you. Can we just," he paused. "Pretend for a little while? Pretend I didn't try to give you the money and go back to fifteen minutes ago. We can talk about the donation later."

Kip nodded. "Take me to bed."

They made it as far as the hallway before Kip slammed him into the wall. Scott let him do it, his lips pressing hot kisses into Scott's neck. Kip was in a hurry to move it along. He worked Scott's shirt open.

"I want you to fuck me," he whispered against Scott's chest.

Scott's hands froze on his back. He knew that this was coming. Kip had never outright asked, though, not until tonight.

"Baby," Scott murmured. "Not tonight."

Kip pulled back. "Why not?"

"You know."

"You have to say it. It's my birthday."

Scott tipped his head back until it thudded against the wall. "It's all I'd be able to think about. Until the test comes back. I know it's not," he hesitated. "Reasonable. But I want to only be thinking about you. I don't want to do that."

"Okay."

"That's it?"

"I am having a perfect evening. I think you're wrong."

"Duly noted."

"But I can wait two more weeks."

"Nineteen days."

"Nineteen days. But you are going to take me to bed right now and do all the things you are willing to do and I'm going to have a very good time, and tomorrow you're going to make me breakfast. In bed."

"I can do that."

"And in nineteen days, you're going to fuck me through that mattress."

Scott shivered. "Deal."

On May fifth, Kip came home from his testing appointment a little after noon. "Well, that's done," he said with finality.

"How was it?"

"Totally fine."

"Did anybody—" Scott stopped.

Kip looked at him piercingly. "Did anybody recognize me?"

"Yeah," Scott said.

"Yeah. One of the counselors knew me. She was at a training thing I did in March."

"Okay."

"Nobody knows about you, Scott. And they know I have sex with men."

"Used to," Scott corrected.

"I'd like to some more," Kip teased. "They ask a bunch of questions and then take some blood and that's it."

"What kind of questions?"

"How many partners in the last year, and if I topped or bottomed." Scott cleared his throat. "Scott, you don't want to know the answer to these questions, so don't ask."

"Yeah, okay."

"There were more. If I use needles, ever. Blood transfusions before 1985. If I ever paid or was paid for sex."

"Jesus."

"They're just questions. Then they ask what you're going to do if it comes back positive. We already covered how shitty the options are."

Scott was very still. "But you're sure it's negative."

"It's still a required question. They're worried you'll go home and kill yourself."

"What would you do? Actually. You didn't tell me."

"Tell you, first. Probably cry. Then I'd try to get into a drug trial as soon as I could. That's the part I told her. I didn't have a good answer, though. Because it's not for me. It's for you."

"And we'll know in two weeks."

"Can't wait."

There was, however, nothing to do but wait. The days went by, blending together. Scott got as close to being in a routine as he could for the off-season, exercising and trying to put on the weight he'd lost and attending events when they came up on his calendar. He was busy, and he liked it that way. Neither of them talked about what day it was, or how many days were left until Kip could return to the public health clinic.

Kip continued to work on collecting signatures. He made phone calls for hours every day and spent most of his time in the office. Scott pretended not to notice as Kip's optimism for the number of signatures began to wane.

He only made it to thirty-six. Then two withdrew when they saw who else was on it, so down to just thirty-four. A doctor at one of the city hospitals said he'd sign, but stopped returning Kip's calls. A man on some healthcare foundation said he'd have to run the request past his board, and they didn't meet until September.

"What happens to the letter?" Scott asked one night. "Since you didn't get enough people."

"They want to wait until fall," Kip said.

"Is that a bad thing?"

"It's not a bad thing when you hear it, exactly," Kip said, "But it means there's nothing. So we try to do it again in the fall. In October. We ask everyone to sign it again, but of all the people we asked, a few have changed their mind. And we're in a worse spot than before."

"I'm sorry. I know you wanted it to work out."

Kip went to bed and lay on his own side on his back, not touching Scott. Scott stayed awake for a long time doing the math that he didn't want to be doing. If Kip had made it to thirty-six signatures, he only needed fourteen more. Just fourteen. If Scott signed, one less. He couldn't convince the entire hockey team to sign. But surely there had to be thirteen players he could rely on. No, he knew he couldn't ask.

Somewhere in the city there were fourteen more men with reasons just like his. He'd never met a single one of them. He wouldn't recognize them if he did. The thought occurred to him, lying there in the bed next to Kip. His perfect, beautiful Kip. This was the only club he'd ever belonged to in his entire life, outside of sports. It didn't have meetings, and it didn't have a roster, and he didn't have to have a way of finding out who else was part of the club, but they were together anyway. How many men had gone home to their secret lovers and asked for their signatures? And all of them had said no. Just like Scott.

On a perfectly gorgeous mid-May afternoon the following week, Scott saw himself on the ninth floor of a building on Fifty Seventh Street and Madison Avenue through several stories of granite and brass. Scott had not accounted for many things about this experience. He had thought of this as a museum, maybe something like the Met or MoMA. He was thinking there would be four hundred people and a coat check and a docent to provide a buffer between you and the art. A place to stand where no one would ever look at your face. But this was not a museum. It was a gallery, inside an office building. They walked in past an immense carved clock flanked by two gigantic shirtless art deco workmen leaning on their hammers. The glassed-in vestibule had an ornate F worked into the mosaic floor. Kyle signed them in using the guest book at the desk. Eric put his sunglasses into his shirt pocket. The girl standing at the check-in desk looked up at Scott for a little too long, perhaps with a spark of recognition, but then looked back down. Scott pushed the anxiety and the fear of that simple interaction out of his mind and went into the first room.

The first room appeared to be entirely photos of flowers. He had known somewhere in the back of his mind that Mapplethorpe did flowers. However, these were flowers in the way you might consider an X-ray to be a portrait of a person. They were dramatic. They were certainly considered art even though Scott had never in his life considered photography to be art. Calla lilies, sweeping downward, their petals opening up and flaring like a dress moving in the wind. Stark black-and-white orchids and irises. Tulips reaching out to each other on a dark background. They were beautiful. They were evocative. Kip walked him through them. He did it without any kind of flamboyance or showing off that Scott could tell. He talked about the lighting and the inspiration behind the pieces. Scott found himself liking Kip's explanation a great deal. For that first half hour, it was the best time he had had in months. Out with his friends and his boyfriend, looking at beautiful art together. It reminded him of that first night, staring at the Basquiat, thinking about how he would do anything to have this man. How he still felt that way now.

"How do you know all this?" he asked Kip.

"Sometimes he's here. Talking about the work."

"Actually?"

"Artists are just regular people, Scott," he smiled.

The second room was all portraits, clothed people, hung in a long line at a high level. But there was a hush in this room that hadn't been in the room with the flowers. Kip and Kyle moved ahead of Scott and Eric, murmuring about the different pictures. There was a woman in a chair with her hands folded elegantly into her lap. A man in a dinner jacket holding his chin defiantly up. He recognized one of the people. It was some composer he had seen on PBS once.

Eric moved up to stand beside Kyle. The three men appeared to have a language of their own as they talked about the art, leaving him behind. Scott approached them. Kip pointed at one and said, "That's Lisa Lyon."

"Oh," Scott commented. He did not know who Lisa Lyon was. It turned out she was a bodybuilder. She was standing in one of the photos wearing a black dress and a large hat. Her arm was raised, flexing in the foreground. It was lit the same way the lilies and the tulips had been lit in the room before, the dark background swallowing up everything behind her. Scott stood in front of that one for a long time.

He knew that art was supposed to evoke some kind of feeling within you, but he couldn't figure out what feeling this was supposed to be evoking in him right now. She was beautiful in an odd way, not like the soft lines and curves photographs of women usually employed. It wasn't conventional, but he still liked it. Maybe he would've liked it differently, or more, if he was attracted to women, but Eric also seemed to be nodding appreciatively at it. Scott looked at it the same way he'd look at a photograph of a horse. Maybe if Mapplethorpe had photographed Secretariat, it would also look this elegant.

At the end of the wall was a self-portrait. Robert Mapplethorpe. He was in his early 40s, and he had a hard, narrow face. He looked straight down the lens with a completely blank expression. Scott had to think adding your own self-portrait to a gallery steps away from Fifth Avenue had to be a certain kind of indulgence, he didn't think he would ever come to. Kyle came by and quietly said he heard that Mapplethorpe was sick. Kip replied that he knew that he was. He'd heard it reliably at The Center, and he wasn't doing well. Neither of them said anything more about it.

Scott looked at the narrow face a while longer. Mapplethorpe was sick. He would die. When he took this picture, did he know? What did he look like now? Had he started to wither away like Kip described all the people he saw at St. Vincent's? Or did he still look just like this, staring down camera lenses with a blank face? Was he still making new work? Eventually, Scott knew he needed to move away. He had been lingering too long in these thoughts.

They made their way into the third room. Scott was four steps behind everyone else. He did not get much further than the doorway. The photographs in this room were quite a bit different. He had seen some of the photographs before, mostly just the flowers. Then he realized why he had never seen any of Mapplethorpe's other works in magazines.

The one that caught Scott's eye was of a Black man, or rather, the torso of one. He could only see from the collarbone down to his knees, but he was nude. He had spectacular musculature all through his stomach. You could see all of his abdominal muscles, but what was distracting Scott was that he had never seen a penis photographed like this one. Certainly not displayed in a gallery. Those types of photos only belonged in private magazines bought at seedy stores.

He knew they weren't pornographic, but he couldn't put his finger on why. Greek statues were nude, and he didn't think of those as obscene, but these were unnerving to him. The majority of the pictures were of men, all of them nude, in various poses. Some of them were erect. Others showed bare buttocks, or men holding arrays of flowers, splaying in front of shirtless chests. All of them were strikingly beautiful. On the opposite wall were some similar photographs, but of women. Scott couldn't help but notice that the ones of women were much less sexualized than the ones of the men. He was having a hard time explaining why he thought that they were sexualized, though. They weren't posed on a bed or touching other people. But there was something about the way in which the bodies were contorted or arranged that certainly suggested some sort of eroticism.

A couple in their sixties came in behind him, and he had to step aside to let them pass. They went along the wall, viewing the gallery, slowly stopping occasionally. The woman had a pair of reading glasses hanging from a chain around her neck. She said something to her husband about the range of the tones that you could see in the photos, and he said something about the quality of the paper, and they moved on to the next photo.

With a jolt, Scott realized this meant there was an audience, and he could hear the blood begin to roar in his ears. He didn't know what to do. He wanted to leave. But he had told Kip he would go, and leaving would look so strange to Eric, who genuinely seemed to be enjoying the art. Maybe Eric was seeing something in these photos that Scott was not. Without warning, the room was swirling.

He was in a room with photographs of men doing what he did, being photographed in front of another man who was dying of AIDS. There was a book at the front desk that he had not signed, but Kyle had put his name in, and there were ten elevators in this building and any one of them could open up at any second and there was no possible way to control for all ten and if anyone came through that door with a camera, there would be no story that could cover this up. There was no oh, this is my assistant, no oh, all four of us were at the museum because he was standing in this room and everybody in this room was with the photographs of giant naked men and they would know that he was Scott Hunter, and he was gay and had sex with men and he was standing here looking at erotic photos of men.

Across the gallery, Kyle was laughing at something. Eric was mumbling back quietly and he was laughing again. Suddenly Kip was next to him. He looked like he wanted to reach out and rest a hand on Scott's shoulder, but he didn't.

"You look like shit," he said very quietly.

"I'm fine," he said through gritted teeth.

"You look like you're about to faint." Kip kept his volume soft and even, making it clear that they were the only ones who could hear this conversation. "Scott, there's no one here. There are only nine people on this floor, and four of them are us."

"I know exactly how many people are here."

"I know you do, Scott. I know that you are really freaking out right now. Do you want to look at a picture with me, or do you want to leave? Either one is fine. I mean that. We don't have to stay. I can make some kind of excuse, and we can leave."

"No," Scott said. "This is what you wanted for your birthday. You deserve that. Let's go look at a picture."

Scott forced himself to walk away from the wall and made himself go and stand in front of a picture that Kip was gesturing at of a standing man. Scott was immediately grateful that he had chosen this photograph rather than many of the others in the room. This one was of another well-muscled man, but he was posing in a way that was more athletic than sexual. He looked at the image. Truly, looked at it.

The man in the photograph was probably about the same age as he was. He had a great body. Maybe if Scott had met Robert Mapplethorpe at the right time, he would've also had his photo taken. The photographer had spent time lighting him with extreme care. And then his photo was taken, and as far as Scott could tell, nothing bad happened because of it. Nobody died. Nobody lost a contract. The photographer was, as far as Scott could tell, a totally normal man. He wouldn't have recognized him if they were out and about on the street. Presumably the man in the picture right now was somewhere in the city doing something absolutely ordinary.

He felt himself go slightly nauseous. "I need a minute," he told Kip. "I'm not feeling well."

"If you go back to the first room, there was an open window," Kip said helpfully. Scott walked as quickly as he dared into the first room. He stood at the window looking down nine floors towards Madison. He remained extremely unsteady. Scott had made sure that his closet was made out of iron. He had built it rivet by rivet since he was in high school, and now he was out here in the light, and he couldn't stand it. He felt sick. He felt like a coward. If he had been someone else. If he hadn't been a professional hockey player. Maybe he would've been one of the men in the photograph. Maybe he would've been at one of the meetings at The Center that Kip went to every week. Maybe he would be sitting in hospital wards with Kip holding people's hands as they shook with fever. But instead, he was here, stuck in this gallery, feeling like the worst person who had ever been born.

Soon he felt a presence sneaking up on him. He thought that it was Kip, but he turned to see Eric, looking at him with a curious expression.

"I really could use a coffee," Eric said. "Do you want one?"

"We shouldn't leave Kip and Kyle."

"Kyle wants to keep looking through the pieces, and Kip said he'd keep him company. I said you and I would go get some air."

"That sounds wonderful," Scott said. They ended up in a little diner on Madison Avenue a little bit over twenty minutes later. Scott was surprised Eric didn't even get a coffee. He ordered a tea, wrapping the string around the spoon and gently squeezing the bag out. Scott sat with his hands on a cup of coffee that he didn't have much of an intention of drinking. It would only aggravate his nerves even more, and he already knew he was being weird, and Eric was going to catch on any time now.

"Are you doing alright?" Eric asked. Scott nodded. "You looked real bad in there."

"Gee, thanks," Scott replied.

"I'm only saying it because I know you." Eric set the spoon down on the saucer that went with his tea. "Your guy noticed, but he also knows you pretty well. Kyle didn't. I don't think anyone else in there would've noticed either."

"I don't know what to say," Scott said. "That kind of art makes me uncomfortable. You know, it's a little too racy."

"Yeah, I get that," Eric said. "I forget you're a good Catholic school boy. It's a little too much for me too, but Kyle wanted to go and he's done such a great job helping me pick some things out for the new place. Once they come, you should come over and take a look."

"You're good together," Scott said. He said it lightly, teasingly. "You two with your art. You'd make a cute couple, you and him." He didn't know why he said it. It was the kind of chirp you would make in the locker room. The kind of casual ribbing that he was so used to doing. He waited for the wave off. The hey get lost Hunter. He had said a sentence like that a million times, and he had taken a million wave-offs. He had done them himself. But Eric didn't wave it off.

"He kissed me, you know." Scott's hand froze on his coffee cup.

"He did what?" Scott asked.

"We were just going to a gallery. There's a place over on Prince I wanted to go to. We were talking about art, and then he stood up on his toes and kissed me on the mouth."

"What did you do?" Scott asked.

"What you do when you get kissed. I stood there and my heart was pounding like it does at the end of third period after spending the whole game in the goal and I thought this is it, somebody's gonna see me, but nobody did. I kept waiting for it to hit the papers, but no one recognized me. And then Kyle said he had to go and he left."

"Have you guys talked about it?"

"No. Not at all. This is the first time I've seen him since, but we've talked on the phone a few times since then."

"Eric, you don't have to tell me. This isn't the right place, or the right time, but are you—do you think you want to—"

"I loved Holly. Still love her. But I think, maybe, I might be able to feel that way with other people too."

"Okay."

Eric let out a long breath. "Is it really okay?"

"You're my best friend. It's okay."

"You don't look like it's okay."

"It's a lot to wrap my head around. That's all."

"It took me a long time to think about it."

Scott made himself take a drink of the burnt coffee. Right in this diner. He could say it to Eric right now. The words were on the tip of his tongue. Kip is my boyfriend. He lives with me. I love him.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"You never call anyone a fag or a cocksucker in the locker room. And you didn't fire Kip, even though Kyle was sure you were going to."

"Kyle said that?" He wanted to tell Eric that he wasn't being a decent boss.

"Yeah, he was feeling really guilty he got Kip fired. But clearly you've got a soft spot for him. Apparently getting Kip to go to the party at all was tough. He kept saying Scott will be so disappointed."

"Kip shouldn't worry about me."

"Well, he does, or at least about what you think."

"So what happens now?"

Eric shrugged. "I don't know. I've never had to start over before. Kyle is so young. He's twenty-four. He wasn't even in high school when I won my Stanley Cup. But I want to eat dinner with someone every night again. I want someone to talk to about my day. And it could be him."

"There's no rush."

"I know."

"And he's very twenty-four."

"How do you know that?"

"Kip talks sometimes. Be careful. You know what I'm saying."

"I read the same papers you do." Somehow I doubt that, Scott thought.

The waitress came past and warmed up his cup of coffee.

"Eric."

"Yeah?"

"Thank you for telling me." Eric nodded at him. "Can I ask you something?" Scott continued.

"Of course."

"Are you worried about the guys? Knowing. About you, I mean."

Eric thought about it longer than Scott expected. "Not really. I don't smoke, drink. I'm a vegetarian. I do yoga in the trainer's rooms. I think if I showed up tomorrow and told everyone I was moving to San Francisco, no one would actually be surprised."

"You've thought about this."

"They can't say anything to me that I haven't thought myself. But I'll still wait until I'm done. I also don't think there will be a big spectacle to it. I don't do the photoshoot thing like you do, or the magazine pieces. I'll be just another retired guy. No one would come asking."

Eric looked like he was about to say something more before the bell over the door rang. Kyle came in first, flushed from the walk, still talking to Kip.

"I'm glad we went, even though I know that none of these really have a place inside of Eric's house. We have a few other places we still need to look, but today was just for fun." Kip took the seat across from Scott. Scott felt the urge to reach under the table and put his hand on Kip's knee. The waitress came by with two more menus.

"Iced tea, please," Kip told the waitress. She jotted it down on the ticket and walked away. "We're going to eat," he continued. "Are you two going to eat?"

"No," said Eric and Scott in unison.

"Come on, Scotty. Get something," Eric said mildly.

"I'm not feeling well," he replied.

Kyle ordered a grilled cheese and a chocolate egg cream. "They still do them right here," he said by way of explanation. Scott didn't order anything, so Kip ordered a burger and two cups of soup, giving him a pointed look.

Eric didn't order anything either. "You should have gotten something," Kyle nagged.

"There's nothing for me here."

"You picked it," Scott pointed out.

"For a coffee with my friend," Eric replied. "Not for lunch."

"There's a lettuce and tomato sandwich," Kyle pointed out.

"There's also cottage cheese with a peach on it in case I want to eat like a woman recovering from surgery rather than an athlete."

"What about eggs?" Kyle asked.

"Too late for eggs."

"Fine," Kyle snapped. "So that back room."

"He photographs everybody like they're in a still life," Kip added. "Like they're objects, which I think sounds insulting and shouldn't be."

"They were gorgeous. But probably could only get away with some of the flowers for the house. Definitely not the others," Eric said.

"No," Kyle agreed.

"It's a real shame about him," Kip said. The table quieted.

"Yeah," Kyle said. "Yeah."

"How bad is it?" Scott asked.

"Bad." Kip stirred a packet of sugar into his iced tea. "That's what I hear. He's very weak. He's still working, but he needs people to carry the camera for him."

"Jesus," Eric breathed.

"He's going to have a hell of a retrospective," Kip said lightly. "Probably a whole floor at the Guggenheim or the Whitney, and every single photograph of his will be worth ten times more. Not that it will be of any use to him at all."

Scott swirled his cup of coffee. It was the twelfth. He thought about Kip's number, written in ballpoint pen, that he would use to get his results on the nineteenth. Had Mapplethorpe done the same? Did he have a list of people he needed to call after it was all confirmed?

"Anyway," Kyle said. "It was a great show."

"Such a great show," Kip echoed.

The food came. Kip inhaled the burger. Kyle ate half his sandwich and then pushed it across the table to Eric, who picked it up without anyone saying a thing. Kip had placed one of his cups of corn chowder in front of Scott. It was so casually intimate that it made Scott nearly ill to be out here, doing this. And then it was broken when someone approached their table.

It was a kid who couldn't have been older than twelve, which was part of the issue. He was holding a paper place mat in both hands. "Excuse me. Are you Scott Hunter?"

Kip was grinning like it was Christmas. "I am," Scott replied.

"I told my mom it was you. She didn't believe me."

"It's me. And this is Eric Bennett. You might not recognize him without the goalie mask." Eric gave a friendly wave.

"Can you sign this?" He shoved the place mat and a pen towards Scott.

"Sure. What's your name?"

"Michael."

"Nice to meet you, Michael. Do you play hockey?"

"Yeah."

"What position?"

"Defense, but I want to be a forward. It's boring."

"Defense is important too," Scott replied. He signed the place mat with a note about defense saving his butt all the time, and then he slid it over to Eric who signed as well.

"Thank you," Michael said, taking back the place mat and pen.

"Tell your mom she owes you a dollar for not believing you," Eric winked. The kid went off toward a booth. Scott raised a hand at the woman who was there. Michael was showing her the place mat and she smiled at Scott.

"That was amazing!" Kyle said. "Does that happen all the time?"

"Sometimes, yeah," Scott admitted sheepishly.

"Not to me," Eric teased. They continued chatting, but Scott had stopped listening. The kid had definitely needed to be watching them for a while to be sure who he was looking at. He would have seen Kyle share his sandwich. He would have seen Kip push the chowder over to him. He didn't even like corn chowder. His pulse was in his throat, and he made himself eat a spoonful of the soup so that his hands would have something to do. Anything.

It was nothing. Absolutely nothing. They would go home, and the woman would tell her husband that Scott Hunter had been at the diner and signed Michael's place mat, and she wouldn't add on that he was definitely there looking flamboyantly, hellaciously gay with his three gay friends. Was Eric gay now? It certainly looked like it from the outside while he was sharing a sandwich with Kyle.

His panic was interrupted when the check came. He had it off the table and was fishing out the cash before anyone else had a chance to think about it.

"I can get it," Eric said.

"No, my treat. Thanks for the conversation," Scott stammered, his throat still desert dry. "But I think I'd like to go home now."

They said goodbye to each other on the sidewalk. Kyle was heading home, and Eric was walking to the garage where he'd parked. There was a stretch that went on a little too long where Kyle stood closer to Eric than he needed to and said something about Thursday. Eric nodded back.

"It was nice to meet you, properly, soberly," Kyle said, holding out a hand to Scott.

"Nice to meet you as well, properly," he replied.

"And thank you for not punishing Kip for my little wild night."

"Kyle," Kip pleaded. "Time to go."

"I'm going." Kyle leaned over and gave Kip a kiss on the cheek and walked away.

"Right. I'll call you, Hunter." Eric said, watching Kyle walk away for a few seconds longer than he should have.

"Perfect," he replied, and then Eric was gone too.

Scott and Kip stood on the sidewalk together. "Cab?" Kip said.

"You're coming to my place?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Scott couldn't argue with that logic, and hailed the yellow taxi.

They didn't speak at all in the cab, and eventually made their way into the penthouse.

"I wish you had eaten more."

"I had the soup."

"Maybe two bites, Scott."

"You didn't have to order it for me."

"You looked gray. I thought it would help."

"Well, it didn't," he snapped.

"I wanted to say today was nice. I had a good time, until you freaked out."

"Everyone saw us there."

"Nobody saw anything."

"You know that's not true. That kid had to have been watching us for twenty minutes. She saw Kyle make Eric eat that sandwich. And the fucking soup. Four guys eating off each other."

"You're making this a whole thing. It was just lunch." Kip sighed. "It was nice. You and me. It felt normal. That's all I wanted to say."

"Normal," Scott scoffed.

"I got to go to a really lovely gallery with you and our friends and then we had a very normal lunch."

"I'm sorry."

"It's fine. We're fine."

"Are we?"

"Yes. Today might have been too much. We'll try something lower stakes than a gallery full of erotic nudes next time."

Scott laughed wetly. "Are you staying?"

"No, I really do need to see my dad."

"Okay. Call me."

Kip went home to Queens that night. Scott wished he hadn't. Being alone with his thoughts wasn't the most helpful, but he did manage to sleep that night. He might have pushed back harder on Kip leaving that night if he knew what a horrific week he was in for. Scott's word to Carolyn that she could load him up turned out to be eleven different commitments in seven days. There were two golf tournaments, where Scott was reminded exactly how little he golfed. Then there was a photoshoot for a sporting goods store that was opening in midtown. Meetings. So many meetings. So many hands to shake.

Kip had finals. Not his own, being long past that, but his section of undergraduate students who all had questions and who all needed their extremely urgent questions answered. There were stacks of blue books on the dining table instead of the usual thick textbooks. His advisor also wanted an update on his work before the month was out. Between that and all his other commitments, they barely saw each other, crawling into bed and falling asleep at different hours.

On Monday, Carolyn reminded him about the gala.

"Lincoln Center. Black tie."

"When?"

"The nineteenth." Scott had the day planner open in front of him. The box for the nineteenth said gala but was otherwise empty. He couldn't have brought himself to write anything else there. "Is that a problem?" she asked.

"No, I'll be there."

The evening of the nineteenth was far too hot for an event like that. It was one of the hottest, driest Mays on record, and the rest of the summer was shaping up to be similarly record-breakingly hot. There was a fountain spewing water on the plaza when they arrived. The whole of Lincoln Center was standing bright white against the sky that had still not gone dark. The summer days were growing longer, and it felt like it was never dark at any of the evening events, even though Scott was sweating in a black tuxedo. It was still eighty-seven degrees at nine in the evening. There were hundreds of people in black tie, crossing the plaza in the heat. Carolyn had put them on the list for the gala in February and then added herself as his date later on, when it became clear he wasn't going to find one himself. He could have. He had a string of women who liked this sort of thing —the dressing up and the chatting with strangers—who also knew Scott was a good and honest man and wouldn't make them uncomfortable. But thinking about reaching out to them when Kip had his leg thrown over Scott's hips didn't feel right. Not that Scott minded being Carolyn's date to this type of event, even though he supposed she was supposed to be his date. She looked a vision. She had come down the steps of her building in a navy silk dress with her hair swept up off her neck. She had on dangling pearl earrings, and Scott, who had known her for years and had mostly seen her in a boxy polyester suit sitting behind a desk, found himself standing up straighter, arranging his face into a friendly but stoic expression, trying to look good next to her instead of like the complete brute in a costume that he felt like.

She put her hand through his arm at the bottom of the stairs and kept it there until they walked into the gala. Scott was always amazed at how good Carolyn was at all of it. The photographers on the plaza took several pictures of them before they reached the doors. It was Scott who appreciated that, although he loved the way Kip looked draped over him in the dark of their penthouse, he knew a few pictures of him with a woman in the paper wouldn't hurt anyone.

The promenade was already full. There were waiters carrying trays of delicate champagne flutes. A string quartet was playing a Mozart piece Scott recognized softly underneath all the voices. Scott walked around, shaking hands, rubbing elbows with everyone who he was being trotted out here to meet. He was there as the guest of an investment banking firm. They were the official bank of the New York Admirals, whatever that meant. Scott certainly didn't use them, but they had bought his plate at this dinner, and they would also be making a hefty donation to the arts. It was a good cause and he didn't mind.

Carolyn stood by his elbow, gently whispering names into his ear, allowing him to appear to know everyone. He was standing at the far end of the party when Carolyn whispered into his ear, "That's Elena Rygg."

"I don't know who that is," he admitted.

"She's one of the top lawyers in Manhattan, and one of the only Black women in the city to be clearing seven figures. I'm certain her firm is trotting her out here as some kind of diversity success. Affirmative action and all that, but she's good. If I ever need a lawyer, she's the one I'd want. She's gorgeous, isn't she?" Carolyn said, noticing Scott staring.

Carolyn was right. She was gorgeous. She had on a scarlet dress that made her stand out in this room of mostly black and navy, the color standing out sharply against her dark complexion. But Scott wasn't looking at her. He was looking at her date. Because next to Elena was Kip wearing a rented tuxedo.

"Come on, let's go say hello," Carolyn said. Scott didn't react fast enough and suddenly they were walking towards them. Kip had certainly seen him. He was very still, his conversation with Elena cutting off abruptly. His eyes were on Carolyn's dress, low-cut through the chest and the hand that she had tucked inside of Scott's elbow.

Elena closed the distance. "Elena Rygg," she said, putting out her hand. "I'm with McCone Reid."

"Scott Hunter," Scott said, holding out his hand.

Elena said, "Oh, I know who you are. We're big fans of the Admirals at my house."

"This is Carolyn Dufresne," Scott said, gesturing at Carolyn, who held out her hand delicately for Elena to shake.

"This is my date for the evening," she replied, looking at Kip. "Christopher Grady."

"Mr. Grady," Scott said, holding out his hand.

"Mr. Hunter," said Kip. Scott took his hand. His palm was dry. He had shaved close and come to her apartment and he had rented a tuxedo to be Elena's date at this benefit. And Scott couldn't for the life of him figure out why Kip never mentioned it. Although now he thought about it, he didn't tell Kip he would be here either. He thought he said something about an endorsement dinner.

"Do you two know each other?" Carolyn asked.

"No," Scott said quickly. "Unless maybe you're also a hockey fan."

"My dad is," Kip clarified, clearing his throat. Elena was staring at Scott oddly. Everything felt far away and kind of blurry. Carolyn asked whether Kip was also with the firm.

"Oh no," Elena said. "Christopher is far too smart to be a lawyer. He's at NYU. The firm bought a table, but they were really just hoping to fill it with people like me to show off how cool and progressive they are now. But they let me pick whoever I want to be my date and I, of course, picked Christopher because he's the most photogenic person I know."

Carolyn laughed at that. Scott stood there while his date and the best friend of his lover started to chitchat. Kip was looking at the floor, at the wall, at the ceiling, at the quartet, at the precarious centerpieces, at anything except for Scott. Somewhere behind them, the music finished a swell of a movement, and the room's chatter increased as there was no more music to keep it held down.

"Save me a dance, Scott?" Elena said. "I hope to see you out on the floor later."

"I'm an awful dancer," Scott said. "But if you insist." He tried to give her his most media-friendly smile, knowing already he was going to try his hardest to avoid that dance floor.

"It was nice to meet you," Carolyn said to Kip, and they parted ways.

The dinner service was under a tent out in the plaza. Scott could see Kip's table from where he sat, more than seventy feet away. He was doing everything right this evening. He talked to the woman from the bank's charitable foundation about a rink that they were going to fund for underprivileged children in the Bronx. Scott didn't correct her that the rink wasn't usually the issue, it was the intense amount of gear and equipment kids needed to play this sport safely. He said yes to cutting the ribbon in September. Carolyn wrote the date on the planner that she carried around inside her purse. A few times his gaze wandered to Kip, and every time, Scott noticed Kip was already looking at him. Kip in his almost-fitting tux. If Kip had said something, he could have lent him something nicer. A pair of cufflinks. A nice watch. A little piece of Scott to carry with him.

Carolyn put her hand on his arm and introduced him to the people at the table. He made small talk. He was extremely good at it. He had been practicing at it for years.

"You're not eating," Carolyn said.

"Yes, I am," Scott replied.

"No. You're just moving the food around. We have a couple of more hours and then I'll get you out of here," she assured him.

Dinner ended, and the band came out. The floor filled with women who had come with men who would refuse to dance. Scott stood on the edge of it with a club soda when Elena appeared near his shoulder.

"I asked you to save me a dance," she said.

"I don't dance."

"Come on, Scott Hunter. You're the only guy here under sixty willing to take to the dance floor and I have been at that table for two hours schmoozing with people who wouldn't dream of letting their wives work outside the home, much less who might know a black woman who isn't their cleaning lady. So you can give me one dance."

He took Elena's glass out of her hand and set it, along with his, on a passing tray. "Fine. One," he smiled. He looked over at Carolyn, who was always the first to approve or deny his social choices at an event like this. She gave him the nod that said this is a good idea. A man dancing with a high-powered woman from a law firm might be useful to her. Scott put his hands where you're supposed to, or at least that's what he thought. One giant hand stretched across the small of her back the other clutching her left hand. Elena was a good dancer. They moved in a small square for eight or ten seconds, and he definitely let her lead. If he was going to keep this up, perhaps he should invest in some dance lessons. Or maybe Carolyn would just show him how to do it. He was sure she was good at things like this.

"I didn't actually want to dance," Elena said.

"What do you mean?"

"I wanted to talk to you about Christopher. I know it's you."

Scott's blood ran cold. He kept moving her in the careful square that they were dancing. "I don't know what you mean," he said lightly.

"You do. I've been friends with him for a long time. Suddenly, he's off the market. He gets a few nice things. He stopped seeing his old friends. You might think you're being sneaky, but I don't know if anyone's ever sneaky enough. He's never said who it was, which is exactly how I knew there had to be someone. And the sudden interest in hockey? The Christopher I know wouldn't be caught dead there."

Scott tried very hard to keep his face completely straight as Elena laid out these facts.

"You're very good looking. I'll give you that," she continued.

"Did you wanna dance with me just so you could tell me that you know?"

"No," she said. "I want you to end it."

The band shifted into something slower, but they kept dancing with each other. "You don't know a thing about what you're talking about."

"I know what his face looked like when you said you didn't know him. Absolutely tragic. He's never been good at hiding who he is or what he knows. He was so excited to see you here you know. He saw you and said that's Scott Hunter. Your date is lovely, by the way."

"She's my agent."

"Does she know?"

"About Kip?"

"About you."

"No. I'll need to tell her eventually, but not anytime soon."

"Don't do this to him, Scott. He looks at you like a dog you tied up outside a grocery store." He leaned in closer, their cheeks brushing. To a passerby, it might look loving, intimate, but he needed to know only she could hear him.

"I love him."

"I didn't ask if you loved him. And I'm not asking you to change your entire life here. I know you'll never be that brave. I've stopped asking men like you to be that kind of brave. It is not a productive use of my time and my time is worth a lot these days. I'm asking you to be done with him. It will hurt him. Maybe it will also hurt you. But you need to do it. Because he is not going to leave you. He will stay with you every day that you let him, waiting for a day that you will never give him. He'll do it cheerfully to your face because he does love you. But then one day he'll wake up and he'll be thirty-five, and he'll realize that all of his friends have either moved away, moved on with their lives, or died, and he will be alone and have spent the entire time hiding inside with you."

She stepped back and looked up at him with a deeply analytical composure that he found truly frightening. "He deserves sunshine. And so do you. But if you can't have sunshine, don't be the shade that stops him from getting his. He needs someone who will claim him. Who will love him in the light. You won't do it, and you know, somewhere deep down, you won't. Letting him find that out slowly is the cruelest thing you can do." She leaned in and planted a kiss on his cheek. "I'm not trying to be mean. But I love him too."

"It was nice to meet you, Elena," Scott replied coldly.

"Sure," she replied. She went back to her table and found Kip and they went to dance. Scott stood at the edge of the floor, finding a glass of bourbon to sip until a man from his table came and found him and wanted him to meet some trustees. Carolyn got him out into the car by eleven as she promised. She held his arm as they went down the steps. The photographer took more pictures of them as they reached the bottom and got to the car.

"I'm sure you'll be in the Post on Sunday," she said.

"With you."

"Yes, with me." She pulled the pins out of her hair, one at a time, dropping them into her purse. Scott watched her suddenly look more like herself again in the dark of the backseat. "Getting photographed with a woman does your world good, you know. A man, your age, still single, living in this town. People might start to think things. Things I know aren't true, but the whole world doesn't. I'm much cheaper than a girlfriend and I won't ask anything of you."

"I know."

"Say thank you, Carolyn."

"Thank you, Carolyn," he parroted. She patted his knee and stared out the window and didn't say anything else.

They rode down Broadway and he counted the endorsement money they had signed on for this morning in his head. He thought about the tuxedo he was wearing, that he owned. One of six he owned, and then he thought about the one that Kip was wearing. Clearly rented. That would definitely need to be returned by the morning. Maybe if he was lucky, Kip would come over tonight. He didn't think so. He was under the impression that Kip was going to spend the night out in Queens with his dad, but maybe he was going to spend it at Elena's, or Kyle's, or Joel's, or one of any of his other friends. What he wouldn't give to have a night like this with Kip. To schmooze and meet businessmen with Kip on his arm, then to complain about the dry chicken, and the salad drowned in too much dressing, and the desserts that were never good. And then to dance. What would that even be like, to dance with a man? Maybe, Scott could turn on some music and they could dance at home. That would probably be the closest he would get at least for a long time. But it was a nice thought, what could be.

The penthouse was empty when he arrived, not that he had expected anything different. He hung his tuxedo up and put the shirt into the hamper for the cleaners. Looking around the penthouse, it was full of the signs of his life with Kip. If someone, especially someone who knew him—Carolyn, Eric, Carter—had come up, they would have known in an instant. The two cups in the sink, the stacks of books that Scott would never read taking over every surface that should have annoyed him with their clutter and never did, the sneakers by the door in two sizes. The signed Baldwin with a still-uncashed check inside it. In less than a year, he had allowed Kip to infiltrate every inch of his space, every corner of his brain. But only in here. And without Kip here with him, he felt completely, utterly alone. Fuck, Scott thought with a start. Eric had been here. He had to know. He had to have seen all the signs.

Eric had been giving him the opportunity to say something since that night when they met Kyle. He knew he could trust Eric, especially now, especially compared to even a few months ago when he was still living in Long Island, but he was keeping the most important thing in his life from him. It was a door he never opened, even while he could see Eric waving at him from the other side. Seeing his home, with none of Kip's vibrant energy but all of the evidence of him, he felt the urge to throw the closet door open. He had wanted Kip tonight. To claim him as his own. To pluck him off Elena's arm and tell everyone there that this brilliant, caring, beautiful man belonged to him in every way that mattered.

He also knew he would never be able to do that. He couldn't handle sitting in a diner together. How on earth would he be able to walk in the sunshine? Maybe Elena was right. Maybe he needed to let Kip go. Kip would probably be better without him. It would be safer for both of them. Kip wouldn't be so burdened by the weight of his secret double life, and Scott could go back to living without the fear of being found out at any moment. It would hurt. It would hurt so fucking bad, but he could do it, for the both of them.

He got so far as to pick up the phone. He didn't know what he'd say. He also didn't know Elena's number, or Kyle's. He could find one in the phone book for George Grady in Queens, probably, but then George would be the one who picked up and what would he do if that happened? Scott realized with a start that when Kip was outside these walls, he had no idea where to find him. He could be anywhere right now. This is stupid, he thought. He went to bed and lay on his back, trying to think about anything except the gala and Kip and the gallery and the diner and Eric and Kyle, and all the ways he was fucking this up.

He was still awake at a quarter after two when he heard the key in the lock. Kip came in without turning the lights on.

"Did Walt say anything to you?" Scott asked.

"I told him you left your wallet at the gala and needed it."

"At two in the morning?"

"It wasn't a perfect excuse." Scott patted the bed next to him. Kip sat down on the edge and started untying his shoes. "I was going to stay at Elena's, but I just couldn't do it."

"You looked really good tonight," Scott said.

"So did you."

"I wished we could have danced."

"I'm an awful dancer."

"Elena said that about you," Kip grinned.

"I thought about it. What it would be like. You and I walk in together. Meet the man who owns four car dealerships. Complain about the shitty food. Dance, you and I."

"Someday."

"Maybe, yeah."

Kip looked at him skeptically. "I got my results today." The room seemed to shrink. Scott's chest felt unexpectedly tight. This was it. "It's negative, Scott."

Scott didn't remember moving, but suddenly his arms were around Kip, crushing the two of them together. Kip made a small groan against his shoulder. All his thoughts from before were completely gone.

"I knew it would be and still," Kip said.

"You should have called me as soon as you knew."

"I know."

"I would have—" Scott let that sentence trail away because he didn't know what he would have said.

"Yeah, that's why I didn't." Scott pulled him in again tightly, mouthing kisses all over his face and neck.

"Say it again."

"Negative."

"Again."

"Don't be weird." Scott pulled Kip into his lap and pulled off his jacket, and worked the buttons of the shirt. "Careful," Kip said. "I have to return that by noon."

"I would have bought you one."

"Not tonight, Scott. Let me enjoy this." Scott's hand was down the front of his pants, stroking in no time. Kip's hands were shaking, and Scott knew exactly what he was thinking. This was it. This was the moment. But it was also the middle of the night. The time for soft, sweet luxurious taking their time wasn't now.

Kip's pants ended up on the floor. Scott was on his back, and Kip worked down his chest with deliciously searing kisses that set Scott on fire. Kip was working his own cock with one hand while he was sliding his tongue along Scott's thick erection. Scott put a hand on Kip's cheek, interrupting him.

"I was almost there," Kip whined. "Why did you stop?" Scott moved Kip's fingers lower, lower until they were behind his balls, waiting.

"I want you to fuck me."

"Excuse me?"

"You. Fuck me. Now, preferably. I can't give you everything you need. But I want you to know that I want you in every way you'll have me."

"No, I don't doubt your motives. But I figured. A guy like you might be a little more—"

"More what?"

"Uh, toppy?" Kip said.

Scott hesitated. "Do you, uh, not do that?" he asked.

"Oh, I'll do it," Kip said with a grin. "I didn't think you did that."

"I do everything. Especially with you."

Kip moaned his name into his mouth.

"Kip, if you don't get in me soon—"

"You'll what, fall asleep on me?"

"Yes!" Scott said emphatically.

"Lube?"

"In the drawer, and condoms."

Kip settled back on his ankles, popping the cap on the lube.

"How long has it been?" He asked Scott.

"Does it matter?"

"It matters a lot."

Scott put his hand over his eyes. "Uh, it would have been 1980 the last time I bottomed."

"Eight years, Scott!" Kip's hands were on the inside of Scott's knees. "We have to take it slow."

"I don't want slow."

The first finger went in. It was easier and simpler than he remembered. He hadn't been in this position in so long, instead preferring to take control. It was much harder to be hurt, physically or metaphorically, if you never put yourself in that position. He was feeling so glad, so profoundly lucky, that those thoughts never crossed his mind with Kip. He had no doubts that this would be the religious experience he had been hoping for.

There was the stretch and the heat to it that felt familiar, but it was so spectacularly blissful he made a satisfied noise and turned his face into the pillow.

"There it is," Kip murmured.

"Don't stop."

"I wouldn't dare."

"More."

The second finger went in, and Scott's back arched off the bed. Kip pressed down on his stomach with the flat of his hands.

"You should hear yourself," Kip said.

"Shut up."

"No, I've been waiting to hear you make that sound for over a year."

By the time he worked in a third finger, Scott was leaking all over his own stomach and breathing harder than he ever did at the end of a shift on the ice. Every slow drag of Kip's hand was pulling feelings out of him that he had shelved years ago and refused to look at since.

"You're beautiful," Kip said. "You have no idea what you look like right now."

"Just fuck me."

Kip got a condom open and on faster than seemed physically possible. He slicked himself up and then there was a heavy pause. Scott opened his eyes. Kip was looking at him with an expression that could only be truly described as loving.

"Do you want me to turn over?" he asked.

"No, I need to see you."

"I'm here."

"I'm going to fuck you and you're going to come all over yourself. "

"Jesus, Kip. Just do it."

Kip lined up and pushed in, one hand slowly pumping Scott's cock the entire time. Scott felt himself relax. A moan escaped him. He didn't care. He had expected this to be difficult, the first time after so long, but Kip was so careful and gentle with him, it was perfect.

"Okay?" Kip asked. His arms trembled a little where they bracketed Scott's head.

"Deeper."

Scott pulled his knees to his chest and Kip took him by the hips, sliding back and thrusting in hard. Scott cried out, but was grinning the whole time. "Just like that. You don't have to be careful with me."

Kip's grip tightened. Scott hooked a leg up over his shoulder and raised his hips off the bed to take him even deeper. The slap of flesh and the headboard slamming into the wall would have completely mortified Scott under any other circumstance, but now he would do anything to get Kip to keep moving. He wanted to take Kip as far into him as possible. To live inside his skin if he could. To be one with this man until the end of time.

Scott palmed his impossibly hard length and fervently began pumping with abandon. Kip's rhythm faltered.

"Scott—"

"I know.

"I'm close, I can't—"

"Come on," Scott panted.

There was no part of Scott that existed outside of this singular instant. The world had narrowed to the two of them on the bed. Kip's breath had gone ragged and uneven, hoarsely saying Scott's name over and over into the side of his neck. Kip was fucking into him hard and graceless and without any other thoughts. Scott felt it building in his stomach and let it wash over him, his back jolting off the bed as it felt like his entire body was bursting out of him.

Kip let out a strangled cry and plunged as deep as he could into Scott, convulsing within him. Kip collapsed down on top of him, winded and spent. They stayed like that, Kip on top of him, for a long time, just catching their breath.

Eventually Kip pushed himself up enough to deal with things. He got rid of the condom, and came back with a not-warm-enough washcloth to tidy up Scott's stomach and chest, and cleaned between his thighs.

"It's too late for a shower," Kip said apologetically.

"Thank you," Scott said in response.

"Please don't thank me for doing the bare minimum."

"Not for the cleaning. For the, you know, the rest of it."

"Scott, don't you think for a second that any part of this was selfless." He tossed the cloth into the hamper. "I remember you agreed to fuck me through the mattress."

"And I will. Just not tonight."

"No, I have a tux to return tomorrow."

Kip snuggled against Scott, throwing a leg over his body. His head had barely hit the pillow and he was snoring. Scott stayed awake a while longer. The soreness was setting in. He had a deep ache in his lower body that he found, with a little embarrassment, that he liked. Every shift of his weight, there it was. Evidence that they were there, together. That he was loved. That Kip was his.

Negative. He hadn't expected it to be anything else, but the relief had been so complete and unexpected. He needed to go to sleep. It was past three and he had a meeting tomorrow, and all he could think about was how he'd still be able to feel Kip through the whole thing. He could do this every day for the rest of his life. He looked at the discarded tuxedo on the floor as he drifted off.

Chapter End Notes

Phew. Thanks for your patience with updates moving forward. I'm really struggling with the work-life-writing time balance at the moment. I also don't want to talk about all the time I spent staring at Mapplethorpe photos. All the photos Scott views are real, but perhaps wouldn't all be displayed at the same time. It is still fiction. I also want to apologize to the woman next to me at the cafe, who definitely got an eyeful when I opened my laptop and a tab from before I left the house was still open.

I appreciate every comment. Thank you so much for reading.

Context details for the curious:
ACT UP had a very intensive letter-writing campaign where they tried to lobby for funding for creating infectious disease wards at hospitals and additional beds and staff, plus hospice care. Kip trying to get signatures for his letter is based on that.

I namedrop Ryan White here. He was a child who contracted HIV after receiving a blood transfusion. He was in the press quite a lot in early 1988 because he testified before the President's Commission on AIDS, and later became a somewhat frequent guest of the Reagans. He was a very "socially acceptable" victim, because he was framed as an innocent party, which, of course, implies that gay men, sex workers, and drug users were guilty of causing their own illness.

The Fuller Building where the Robert Miller Gallery was at this time in described accurately, but the Robert Miller Gallery was actually on the second floor. I wanted the vertigo of Scott looking down, and the elevator panic. I also took some liberties describing the rooms of images. It was Robert Mapplethorpe's primary gallery. Mapplethorpe's health was also failing, and he would die in March 1989. He does indeed get one hell of a retrospective. His photographs are incredibly beautiful.

Some more thoughts on AZT. AZT frequently caused such severe anemia that people would need blood transfusions. The science behind why that is, and how AZT works is really interesting, but the short version is that it makes your bone marrow unable to make new red blood cells as a result of the process it uses to shut down HIV replication. It didn't help that HIV also can develop resistance to AZT within a few months. So, getting a positive test result, and therefore access to drugs, was not necessarily helpful. I don't want to discount that some people took AZT and survived until better medications were developed. That is definitely true. It wasn't a miracle by any means, though.

Giovanni's Room was a really careful choice here on my part. It's about an American in Paris who has a deep fear of being seen as gay. It was very controversial at the time (shocker). It is such a great analogue of Scott's fears. No spoilers, but Elena's dialogue with Scott is designed to mirror the themes at the end of the book. Scott getting him a signed copy is a bit of a stretch. It would certainly have been several hundred dollars, and nearly impossible to find. James Baldwin had died in December 1987 and his signed copies wouldn't be the kind of thing you stumbled across. Kip would almost certainly get the irony of being given this as a gift.