Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationships:

Kip Grady/Scott Hunter, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Kip Grady/Shane Hollander/Scott Hunter/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Scott Hunter (Game Changers), Kip Grady, Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

POV Scott Hunter (Game Changers), Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Anal Fingering, Rimming, Come Eating, Foursome - M/M/M/M, Voyeurism, Exhibitionism, Intercrural Sex, Vomiting, because scott is perpetually hungover, Instagram, Suicidal Thoughts, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Slurs, ethical nonmonogamy, Internalized Homophobia, Sexual Overstimulation, POV Outsider

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of two weddings and a scandal

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-19 Words: 18,002 Chapters: 1/1

we took the scenic route

Summary

For a second, Scott pictures it—their tragic gay love affair, conducted in Holiday Inns and Marriotts, following the usual routine; the cut-off afterglow, the tied-off condom burning a hole in someone’s pocket because they were too scared to leave it in the hotel trash, the look-both-ways paranoia leaving the room, fleeing the scene head-down-hands-in-pockets. Scott pictured a decade of that—a four-year marriage of that—and felt sick. Two thousand fucking ten. Christ. Kip had cousins younger than that.

Notes

The second-best day of Scott’s life went by in one big long blur. The vendor fucked up the flowers—he’d asked for peonies, not ranunculus—and the caterer delivered the cake to the wrong spot at first, and the officiant was fucking late, and the press he’d invited kept trying to track him down for a soundbite even though he’d made it clear from the start that they were there for photos only, and Carter got rip-roaring drunk before they’d even made it to the venue, so for a while, Scott was scared that his wedding wasn’t going to be a dreamy, beautiful thing at all; instead, he’d always remember it as a series of gradually unfolding disasters. But the moment, when it came, was beautiful. He’d cried walking down the aisle because he was walking it alone, and then he cried when Kip came down with his parents on either arm, and he cried when they said their vows, and cried again when he dipped Kip into a picture-perfect kiss at the altar. That single moment had been the culmination of two years of planning and almost a quarter million dollars. It was absolutely worth it. Scott would treasure the memory for the rest of his fucking life.

And the ride after that was easy. The whole wedding party snuck off for photos while the rest of the guests were being seated for dinner, and Scott felt all sorts of complicated emotions about who was in the pictures—at the end of the day, he really fucking missed his parents. But he wasn’t alone, was the thing. He had people, and most of Kip’s people were also his people in every way that mattered.

So, they took some good fucking pictures. They ate. They made merry. The staff came in after the dinner and flipped the Palm House from tasteful greenhouse dining hall to the sort of fairytale rave spot that would’ve made eighteen-year-old Kip drool, and did actually still make thirty-three-year-old Kip drool, just a bit. And after one tasteful first dance they’d flipped the lights to something strobing, and the DJ dropped the bass, and they’d spent an hour or so grinding in the middle of the dance floor, until Scott couldn’t take it and dragged Kip outside, to find a convenient bush where he could suck his husband’s dick in relative peace.

They’d stumbled out a side door, him and Kip, hand in hand, and wandered down a path they picked at random. They kept knocking into each other and giggling, like they were drunker than they actually were. It was a beautiful feeling—young and blissed out and carefree. Scott hoped he felt that way forever.

“Maybe the open bar was a bad idea,” Kip had said, and hid a half-drunk giggle in Scott’s shoulder, right before he knocked into Scott again, and sent him stumbling towards the carefully maintained flowers at the edge of the path.

“You too drunk already, baby?” Scott teased, and swung their clasped hands like they were high school sweethearts sneaking out of prom.

“Not me,” Kip said with his nose in the air. “I can handle my liquor, thank you very much. One of your hockey bros definitely overindulged, though,” he said, snickering, and he pointed to nearby bench, where a pair of black dress shoes were left, abandoned, in a puddle of vomit.

“Jesus,” Scott said. Maybe the open bar was a bad idea. “It’s barely even nine-thirty.”

Kip gave him a look, then, and shoved Scott off the path entirely, until he was standing behind a very convenient tree.

“Hey,” Scott protested, halfheartedly, when Kip sank to his knees. “I was going to do that.”

“You snooze you lose, old man,” Kip murmured, which really shouldn’t have been as hot as it was, and undid the button on Scott’s pants. “Remind me to try and see who’s barefoot when we go back,” he continued, and god, Scott loved how much of a fucking bitch he could be sometimes. And then he licked Scott’s cock from root to tip, and Scott forgot all about some random Cinderella’s puke-covered size eleven dress shoes, and almost concussed himself on the tree trunk behind him when he whipped his head back and moaned.

And so it went. Kip sucked his dick, and then Scott sucked Kip’s, and they went back inside with fucked up hair and new wrinkles in their pants. Eric wolf-whistled when he saw them, which was hypocritical, considering how he’d looked after he snuck off during his wedding. They bellied up to the bar and did half a dozen shots between them, and then got back out on the dance floor and stayed there for hours. People kept bringing over shots, and they both kept drinking, and drinking, and drinking. The last couple hours of the night were one big long blur of Kip’s hands on his hips and Kip’s arms around his shoulders and Kip’s mouth fucking everywhere and, later, Scott hanging onto the back of Kip’s shirt while he puked out the window of their limo on the way home.

And it was all perfect. It was absolutely fucking perfect. They fell into bed and passed the fuck out with all their clothes still on, shoes included. Scott barely remembered falling asleep, and if he dreamed, he didn’t remember any of it.

_____

Scott woke up to the sound of Kip blasting Halsey in the kitchen and the smell of quiche in the oven. His eyes felt like two inward-pointing spikes, and his temples throbbed in time with his heartbeat, and the smell of food made his stomach twist so bad he threw up in his mouth, a little, and it burned when he swallowed it back down.

So, Scott lay there, for a while, until the need to see Kip overwhelmed the urge to roll over and die. He hauled himself out of bed, wrestled his way out of everything except his boxers, pissed, put a pair of sunglasses on, and didn’t bother to brush his teeth before he wandered out into the kitchen. He sat on a barstool and collapsed over the cool marble. It felt incredible. The sunglasses dug into his temples and the bridge of his nose, so he tried to take them off, and dropped them on the floor in the process. He groaned, long and loud, and tipped his head just far enough to the side to squint a single eye open and look at Kip, who was leaned up against the counter next to the oven and scrolling through his phone. He was shirtless. Scott really wished he could appreciate it.

“Morning,” Kip said, cheerfully. Scott’s temples throbbed, and his eye slipped closed.

“How are you not dead,” Scott mumbled. His stomach turned. He really, really didn’t want to throw up. “You puked in the fucking limo.”

“It cleared out my system,” Kip said, loftily, “and I’m still in college, which means I’ve retained the metabolism of a twenty-something undergrad.”

Scott swallowed. It tasted a little like bile. His back hurt. Why the fuck did his back hurt. “You’re a PhD student in his thirties,”  he said, a little mean. “A wild night for you is three glasses of wine at a gallery showing.”

Kip raised an eyebrow. “Keep that up and I won’t share my quiche with you. Or my tums.”

“Sorry,” Scott mumbled. Kip smiled, and slid him a glass of orange juice, a bottle of ibuprofen, and half a dozen tums. Scott briefly unburied his head to medicate. The pulp in the orange juice made his stomach riot. And it was probably just the placebo affect, but Scott swore he felt a bit better the second he’d finished the glass of orange juice. Maybe the stuff really could cure the common cold.

Kip walked around the kitchen, and sat on the barstool next to Scott. He slung his arm over Scott’s upper back, and gently ran his fingers through Scott’s hair, which made the headache feel a little less bad. And they sat there in silence for a while, while the quiche baked; Scott slowly dying, Kip playing with his hair and scrolling through Instagram, occasionally making a bitchy tch noise—he was still seeing a ton of wedding content, and even though Kip hadn’t had many opinions when Scott was planning their wedding, he sure as shit had opinions about other people’s tacky centerpieces.

“Oh,” Kip said, after a beautiful, blissful silence, “my god. Have you seen this?”

Something inside Scott perked up a bit, at that. It was Kip’s hot goss voice, and secretly, there was nothing Scott loved more than listening to Kip talk about his coworker’s love lives, or his family’s messy interpersonal dramas, or the crazy shit people got up to when they were drunk at the Kingfisher. “Seen what,” Scott said, and concentrated hard on willing his headache to go away.

“Look.”

Scott peered at Kip’s phone. The brightness was turned all the way up. It was like looking straight into the fucking sun. “Read it to me,” he begged. “If I open my eyes, I’ll puke.”

“Okay. Okay. So, it’s an Instagram post from Shane fucking Hollander’s official fucking Instagram, which says, and I quote, ‘you’re all probably about to see some interesting pictures pop up on TMZ’—”

Scott sat up and turned to stare at Kip, incredulous. “What? What the fuck did he even do? Hollander is like, the most boring guy in the league. I don’t even think he drinks.” The nausea got worse. Scott couldn’t tell if it was because of the hangover, or because the idea of Hollander doing something TMZ-worthy at his wedding made him want to die.

Kip leaned in closer. “Shut up, babe, there’s more. It says ‘so, to clear up the rumors before they begin: I’m gay’—”

Scott saw red. Actually, genuinely saw red, he was so angry. Strange. He’d though that was just a cliché. “Oh, that little—”

“I’m not done!” Kip cried. Scott hissed—the sound made his head hurt. “‘Ilya and I have been involved since 2010—”

“fucking Rozanov?” Scott yelled. He felt bad for the neighbors in a distant sort of way.

“—‘we got married in 2017, he’s the love of my life’—”

“Jesus fucking christ.” Scott muttered, and dropped his face into his hands. He shook his head, unconsciously, and ran his fingers through his hair, which was still tacky with gel and sweat.

“And then, and then, it fucking ends with ‘can’t wait to crush him in the playoffs next season.’ And a heart emoji. A red one.”

Scott sat in absolute silence for a beat. For two. For three, and four, and five. And then, he turned to Kip, and he said, “there’s no fucking way this is real. This has gotta be the world’s stupidest prank.”

“Scott,” Kip said, serious as the fucking grave. “He posted a picture of his fucking marriage license. It’s real.”

“I’m gonna fucking kill him,” Scott said, distantly. He felt like his ears were ringing. Like he wasn’t quite attached to his body; like he was so fucking confused and so fucking angry that he just sort of forgot how to feel anything at all. He also still felt like he was going to puke. He was never, ever going to do shots again—from now on, he’d stick with beer like a respectable adult. “He emailed me last week. He wanted to know what it was like after I came out. I told him we’d talk after the wedding.”

“Well, he probably waited until the reception, right? I bet he got caught sucking dick in a bush.” Kip giggled, then, and said, “Too small, this bush was. You have chosen… poorly.” And then he mimed taking a photo, and made a little clicking noise at the back of his throat.

“It’s not funny,” Scott spat. “I spent—so much time. So much fucking money. And now, when people talk about our wedding, they aren’t gonna talk about how beautiful it was, or how much we love each other. They’re gonna fucking talk about Hollander and Rozanov getting papped with their hands down each other’s pants.”

Kip took Scott’s hands in his. “Hey,” he said, soft, and rubbed his thumb over the back of Scott’s hand, “I don’t care what anyone else says. It was fucking perfect, Scott. The best wedding I could’ve possibly asked for. And, you know, I think we’ll come off looking pretty good, all things considered.” Kip shrugged, and tilted his head to the side, the way he always did when he was about to say something catty. “We’re like, mature, dignified gay statesmen compared to whatever insane mess those two have got going on. I bet the headlines are all going to say how dare these two meddling kids ruin such a perfect wedding?”

Scott pictured it then—some Scooby-Doo-style reporter with stupid-looking glasses and an oversized microphone, fast-talking the headline with a Trans-Atlantic accent. It was, he had to admit, pretty fucking funny, so he laughed, a little, and then laughed some more, until it was a little hysterical and strained. And then he thought about what the articles would actually say, and it sobered him up quick.

“They’re gonna get eaten alive,” Scott said, quiet. He thought of the aftermath after his own very public, very improvised coming out; the suspicious silence from some of his teammates, the all-hands meeting with management, the homophobic think-pieces published in the fucking New York Times, the hush-hush meeting with Crowell, where he’d said that Scott’s sexuality better not distract from the sport, or else implied. And he’d been uncontroversial; an unobjectionable man with a squeaky-clean reputation, riding the high of a cup win. And he’d timed his coming out perfectly, too; the perfect ending to his own personal fucking fairytale. God knows what the public would do—what the league would do—to Hollander and Rozanov, with their messy rivalry that might’ve never been real, and their four-year secret marriage, and whatever crazy shit they got papped doing in a bush at Scott’s reception. Scott used to have nightmares that went better than this.

The nausea won out. Scott lurched to his feet and puked in the kitchen sink. Fucking Rozanov. He was always at the center of this shit, somehow. It was like he was divine punishment for a crime Scott didn’t remember committing.

_____

And, the thing is, it wasn’t like Scott was unaware. They’d both come to him, separately, in their own bizarre ways. Back in 2017, after the Kiss with a capital K, Hollander had sent Scott a suspiciously worded email—no straight man said thank you in response to someone coming out. And then there was that brief moment, at the MLH awards later that year, where Rozanov cornered him on a balcony for a minute or two and said that Scott had changed things for a lot of people, and made meaningful eye contact, and left Scott to fill in the blank.

And there was more, over the years, that Scott had purposefully ignored and pretended he didn’t understand. All Stars games where they’d smiled at each other in a way that seemed too friendly, considering that they were supposed to hate each other’s guts. Hollander wasn’t particularly subtle when he stared at Rozanov’s ass. Rozanov, in turn, was even worse, because there was a wide fucking gulf between calling a man pretty boy and just plain saying he was pretty. Scott thinks he only got away with it because he could wave a hand around in some vague gesture and say my English, sometimes is not so good, and people believed him, Scott included. God, he felt so fucking stupid.

So. Scott knew, but he didn’t really know. He had all the pieces, in theory, but never bothered to put them together. And the picture they painted was fucking depressing, because Hollander and Rozanov had been the same type of weird about each other for as long as Scott had known them. 2010, Hollander had said in that Instagram post. Scott had been having mediocre, anonymous sex in Ibiza in 2010, and he’d been reading a lot of biographies about rockstars that overdosed in hotel bathtubs, and he’d idly contemplated whether it would be more embarrassing for people to find his dead body with his dick out or posed in his boxers. It was a tough question. The bathtub wasn’t as glamorous a place to die as Hollywood made it seem.

Hollander and Rozanov would’ve spent a lot of time in hotel rooms, too. For a second, Scott pictures it—their tragic gay love affair, conducted in Holiday Inns and Marriotts, following the usual routine; the cut-off afterglow, the tied-off condom burning a hole in someone’s pocket because they were too scared to leave it in the hotel trash, the look-both-ways paranoia leaving the room, fleeing the scene head-down-hands-in-pockets. Scott pictured a decade of that—a four-year marriage of that—and felt sick. Two thousand fucking ten. Christ. Kip had cousins younger than that.

_____

Kip cleaned the puke out of the sink, because he was kind, and beautiful, and had promised to love Scott in sickness and in health just the day before. And then they sat, side by side, not saying anything at all, until Kip’s phone made a melodic little sound that meant the quiche was done. They ate in silence, scrolling on their phones. Scott kept refreshing the team chat, but it was dead, and would probably stay dead for a while. If everyone was as hungover as Scott felt, they wouldn’t be out of bed before three in the afternoon.

Kip was still on Instagram, reading through the comments on Hollander’s post, trying to get a feel for the backlash. Scott checked, briefly, and tried to strangle his phone when he saw that Hollander and Rozanov had somehow made fucking Nunavut trend above Scott’s wedding, which had been very carefully and meticulously planned by three separate wedding planners who had all assured him they could make it go viral. Scott hadn’t even heard of Nunavut yesterday. Life was a fucking joke, sometimes. Next time he played Montreal, he was going to break more than Hollander’s kneecaps.

“Oh!” Kip said, around a mouthful of quiche. “Rozanov posted!” Scott eyed up the kitchen sink—he’d hate to throw up in it after Kip had just finished washing his puke down the drain. And then, Kip tilted his phone so Scott could read it. The rumors are true, he read. This is how he proposed. “Aww, this is cute,” Kip said, zooming in on the attached photo to read it.

Scott read through the whole thing. Read it again. And then he looked at Kip, incredulous. “Really?” And then he thought, privately, to himself, they ruined my fucking wedding with this? Scott briefly tried to picture the two of them together, Rozanov and Hollander, but he couldn’t fucking do it. It was like the image slipped sideways before he could reach out and touch it.

“It’s romantic!” Kip cried, and clutched his phone to his chest like it was something precious, and leaned so far into Scott when he attempted to fake-swoon that he almost overbalanced and tipped his barstool over. God, he was so fucking silly sometimes. Scott loved him to fucking pieces.

Scott steadied him as best he could, and gamely ate the last bite of quiche left on his plate. It didn’t feel particularly good going down. The tums hadn’t kicked in yet. “He talked about taxes twice, Kip. That’s like, the exact opposite of romantic.”

“Well I think it’s sweet,” Kip declared, and put his foot on the lower rung of Scott’s barstool, just because he could. “And I’m feeling kind of left out here. Where’s my list of reasons why we should get married?”

“Didn’t you already get that in our wedding vows?”

“I should’ve married Shane Hollander,” Kip said. God, he was in fine form this morning. Really putting that elective drama class he took in undergrad to work. “Clearly that man has the heart of a poet.”

Scott snickered, a little meanly. The idea of it was just so funny—Hollander and poetry went together like pickles and ice cream. “He’s listing the legal benefits of marriage,” Scott replied, and wiped a stray bit of moisture from the corner of his eye. “He’s about as poetic as a Wikipedia article.”

“Well, you wanna hear my list? I married you,” Kip declared, a hand splayed over his heart and his nose in the air, “because you’re, like, the most generous person I’ve ever met. And you’re so hot, and nice, and considerate,” Kip paused, for a second, and looked at Scott out of the corner of his eye. “And, you’ll do the dishes for me even though you’re more hungover than Jesus the morning after the last supper?” he asked, a sly curve at the corner of his mouth. “So I can finish packing all your teeny tiny swim shorts before we leave?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Scott sighed. And then, before Kip could slip out of the kitchen, Scott said, “how do you think it like, works. For them.”

“Why are they together, you mean?”

“Yeah,” Scott replied. He didn’t know much about Hollander, but he liked him well enough, and he’d seemed normal, as far as Scott could remember. Neurotic, sure, but normal. Definitely not the kind of crazy that would willingly shack up with a guy like Rozanov, who was so pathologically annoying that it could probably be classified as a personality disorder, or maybe a medical condition. Hell, there was a backhand insult somewhere in that Instagram post—why else would he share something that chirp-able?

“Well,” Kip said, “They’re professional athletes in peak physical condition, and they’re both still in their twenties, I think. I bet the sex is insane.” Scott blushed, furious. He thought, then, briefly, of Hollander and Rozanov naked and sweaty and writhing, and promptly banished the mental image to a deep, dark corner of his mind where it would lurk, waiting, for some sleepless night, at which point it would haunt him relentlessly. “More seriously, I’m not sure. I barely know them. I bet not many people do,” Kip said, with a pointed look at Scott. Scott grimaced. He didn’t very much like remembering the bleak, miserable person he was before he met Kip. “But they’ve got a lot in common, you know? Big hockey stars, world on their shoulders, et cetera. Plus that whole rivalry thing kind of threw them together. And,” Kip said, a wicked gleam in his eye, “I bet it was pretty hot. In your experience, do you play better when you’re hard in your jock?”

“Oh my god,” Scott said, red down to his roots, his traitorous dick chubbing up in his boxers. He crossed his arms on the countertop and buried his face there. “Stop, stop. I regret asking. Please let me do the dishes in peace.”

And Kip had laughed at him, not unkindly, and pressed a kiss to the hot, hot back of Scott’s neck, and reached around to cup Scott’s half-hard dick, and he whispered “come help me in the bedroom when you’re done,” which got Scott all the way hard, and then he had to stand there with soap suds up to his elbows, scrubbing the shit out of Kip’s good Le Creuset because he’d forgotten to grease it. He’d pressed his dick against the cabinets for a little relief, which made him feel a bit like a desperate animal, and then, when the pan was finally clean, he went into the bedroom and fucked Kip into the goddamn mattress, which was perfect, because sex with Kip was always perfect, even if Scott was still hungover enough that his head pounded in perfect time with his thrusts. And he forgot about everything, for a little bit. His whole world narrowed to Kip’s moaning, perfect mouth, and the span of his hips, and the sweat beading on the bridge of his nose, and the lube-wet heat of him. But the awful twist in his gut lingered, even though the nausea was mostly gone. And Scott didn’t know what it meant, or what the fuck he was supposed to do with it.

_____

The airport was packed, same as it always was. Scott and Kip waited for their plane to Rome in an out-of-the-way corner near their gate, sat in uncomfortable chairs, leaned into each other; Kip’s head on Scott’s shoulder, Scott’s hand on Kip’s knee. Scott was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, partly because he was still fucking hungover, and partly because he didn’t want to be recognized today, or deal with all the fucking hassle that sometimes came with it.

The silence was nice. Companionable, was the word. That was one of Scott’s favorite parts of being with Kip—he’d never really felt like he had to keep the conversation going to get Kip to stay. But, eventually, Kip sent Scott on a mission to get coffee from a Starbucks nearby, because he’d gotten used to living off energy drinks while working on his master’s thesis and got caffeine headaches if he went more than three hours without some sort of fix. So, Scott was standing in line, waiting for his turn to order one drip coffee and one, uh, venti iced brown sugar oatmilk shaken espresso with two extra shots of expresso, pistachio cold foam, and mocha drizzle, when the most bizarre email he’d ever received showed up in his inbox.

It was, of course, from Shane fucking Hollander. There was no subject line, no intro, and no signoff, which was so out of character that Scott was briefly worried that Hollander had, on top of ruining Scott’s beautiful fucking wedding, somehow managed to get his gmail hacked. And what actually was written there was strange and rambling. I’m so sorry for all of this, it said. We really, really didn’t mean to take the spotlight off your wedding. We’re usually much more careful than that—we’ve just both been dealing with a lot of heavy stuff recently, and we got carried away. Sorry, that sounds like an excuse. I’m not trying to excuse anything. I’m really sorry. I feel awful, and I really want to make it up to both of you. Maybe I could pay for your honeymoon or something? And then, at the bottom, it said sent from my iPhone. Jesus fucking christ.

“What the fuck did you do to him?” Kip asked, when Scott returned with their coffees in hand and the email still open.

“I don’t know,” Scott replied, and slurped up a bit of too-hot coffee. It tasted a little weak, but that was okay. Scott was so used to shitty hotel coffee that it was kind of nostalgic. “I haven’t said anything to either of them yet.” Scott thought for a minute. “Well, when he sent me that weird email and asked how it was after I came out, I told him I’d break his kneecaps if he trended above our wedding. That was a joke, though.”

“Scott,” Kip said, slowly, “I don’t think he thought it was a joke.”

And that was so baffling that Scott didn’t know what the hell to do with it. He sat there, for a minute or two, just sipping at his too-hot coffee. And then, he started drafting a response, but before he was even halfway done, Kip whispered oh, jesus, and wordlessly tilted his phone so Scott could see it better.

It was the promised TMZ article, with a singular photo splashed across the top of the page. The photo was of Hollander and Rozanov kissing. It didn’t look very gossip-worthy to Scott. It looked painful. Hollander was all red and blotchy, and Rozanov didn’t look much better, and Hollander had obvious tear tracks across his face and down his neck. Their lips were barely touching. Rozanov was holding Hollander’s arm so tight that the tendons on the back of his hand popped out, and his knuckles had gone pale and bloodless. It was a terrible kiss. It was, Scott thought, the exact same way he’d cried into Kip’s mouth on the anniversary of his mother’s death.

“Fuck,” Scott said, rather eloquently. He scrolled, but there were no other photos in the entire article. Just this one terrible kiss, that looked like it happened at a fucking funeral.

“Fuck,” Kip agreed. And then he said, very small, “I feel bad for making fun of them earlier.”

Privately, Scott agreed. But out loud, he said “I fucking don’t. I spent a quarter million dollars on our wedding, specifically because I wanted to piss off Crowell and overshadow the fucking playoffs with our beautiful gay love. And they go and steal the show with the world’s worst kiss? Jesus fucking christ, there really is no justice in this world.”

Kip elbowed him in the side, and said his name like it was a warning, but he was smiling, and that was all that mattered. “Okay, okay,” Scott said. “I feel a little bad. Don’t tell Rozanov.”

And they sat in silence after that. What else was there to say?

_____

Kip never really got it, was the thing. He hadn’t exactly had it easy, but he’d never really felt like he had to hide, the way Scott had, so Kip just didn’t. It had been incomprehensible to Scott, back when they first started dating, but, in a strange way, it made sense. Sure, he’d played rugby, but the sport wasn’t his whole world, the way hockey had been Scott’s whole world for most of his life. Kip’s parents were the sort of working class that voted straight-ticket democrat and believed, fervently, in the power of unions, and had organically arrived at the conclusion that racism and sexism and other such things got in the way when trying to build community, so they should obviously make an effort to be kind to everyone, no matter who they were. Kip had gone to a nice, progressive New York high school, so most of his high school friends were gay, or the sort of artsy person that would proudly brag about their gay experimentation phase once they got a couple drinks in, or, in Elena’s case, the sort of bitchy straight woman that saw gay men as nonthreatening comrades in the war against men who wear camo sweatshirts and drive a lifted truck and put pictures of themselves holding up a fish on tinder. College was more of the same—Kip was an art history major, for god’s sake.

And there was something in Kip that Scott admired more than anything—some instinct that, when someone called him a faggot, told him to lean in harder, and become the faggiest faggot to ever walk the fucking earth. It was beautiful to watch, every time it happened. Scott’s husband, who didn’t know he was a smokeshow, who spent years too scared to apply for jobs because he was so sure he’d be rejected, finding this hidden well of confidence that had him cocking his hip and tilting his head and saying shit like and what are you gonna do about it in the most nasally, gayest lisp Scott had ever heard. He had the muscle to back it up, too—Kip worked out like he was still on a rugby team.

He fucking loved it, but this was the fundamental disconnect between them—the thing that had torn them apart, over and over, before Scott finally got his shit together. And he would never tell Kip, but sometimes, he wished Kip understood where he was coming from a little better. Sometimes, he wondered what life would be like if Kip had been closeted at some point, the way Scott had been closeted for years and years. Maybe they wouldn’t have fallen apart so much, or so often. Maybe they would’ve stuck together through it, the way that Rozanov and Hollander have, apparently, stuck together for over a fucking decade. It was, of course, a terrible thing to wish, and a stupid thing to be jealous over. But, there it was regardless: an ugly thing, impossible to ignore.

_____

They got into the hotel late. Scott didn’t have time to appreciate the clean architecture, or the dozens of terraces filled with little chairs and tables, or the extravagant pergola next to the pool, or the attached restaurant, bar, café, and cake shop. He barely noticed the décor in the room—soft beige, backlit mirrors, clean and modern in a way that, he hoped, read as expensive instead of tacky. The next morning, he and Kip took the train to Santa Marinella, claimed a spot on the sand, and stripped down to their tiny little swim shorts. They found a place called La Colazione, close to the water, where they ate a bunch of pastries Scott didn’t know the names of, and split a bottle of wine.

And then, back to the beach, to laze in the sun. Scott tried desperately to enjoy it. But there was Kip, at his side, on his fucking phone, so it wasn’t long before Kip was turning to him with a strange look on his face and holding his phone out, so Scott could see what was there.

This time, it was Rozanov’s Instagram account. He’d posted again, sometime while Scott and Kip were busy with the takeoff and landing and sleeping off the jet lag. Proof for the doubters, the caption said, with five photos attached, arranged in a grid with one row of two and another of three. Scott flipped through them, curious and sick and, secretly, still a little angry. And honestly, the proof wasn’t very good: a slightly blurry selfie of Hollander and Rozanov kissing in front of a gas pump, Hollander holding coffee cups in both hands, both of them smiling too hard to kiss properly; a screenshot of a snapchat mirror selfie, where Hollander is wearing one of Rozanov’s old Raiders jerseys, captioned you forgot something; a screenshot of a 1,095-day duolingo streak, presumably from Hollander’s duolingo account, because Rozanov wouldn’t need to use duolingo to learn fucking Russian; a selfie from that awful awards show they’d hosted together, years back, miraculously saved instead of rightfully deleted; a picture of Hollander wearing glasses, sitting in bed, reading a book, clearly taken by someone sitting in the bed next to him. And that was it. Eleven years together, and that was all the fucking proof they had.

It was the comments that did it. Someone asked what, no wedding photos? And Rozanov replied no, wedding was secret, not even Shane’s parents knew. Another person asked whether they were really supposed to believe that Hollander and Rozanov ran off to get secretly married like fucking Brontё protagonists, and Rozanov replied yes, is like Romeo and Juliet. Two houses alike in dignity. If Russia finds out Romeo fucked Juliet and wants to keep fucking Juliet for the rest of his life, they come to his house when he is visiting relatives in Moscow and throw him in Siberian prison. So maybe Romeo and Juliet don’t mail save the date cards to everybody they know. Maybe only person who knows Romeo and Juliet got married is nice lady named Gina who lives in Nunavut. A third person said so you top? And Rozanov replied pervert, if you do not already know the answer, you are beyond help. A fourth said how do you even manage to keep a secret like that for a fucking decade? And Rozanov replied we have codenames, like soviet spy shit.

And all of the sudden, Scott was tearing up, just a little, on the first day of his fucking honeymoon, at a beautiful white-sand beach in fucking Italy, and Kip was looking at him like he was fucking crazy.

“You were Kris, in my phone,” Scott said. “Like the Kardashians.” And he watched as a sick, sad understanding bloomed over Kip’s face. “This shit is so depressing. They didn’t even have their parents at their wedding. And,” Scott sniffed, and stubbornly wiped a stray bit of moisture away from the corner of his eye, “that would’ve been us, if you’d went along with what I wanted.”

Kip reached out, then, and tugged Scott sideways, forcing his face into the crook of Kip’s neck. Scott wrapped an arm around Kip’s waist and held on tight. “Thanks for breaking up with me,” Scott mumbled, into Kip’s sweat-damp skin.

“Anytime,” Kip replied, and rubbed at Scott’s shoulder. And they went back to La Colazione for another bottle of wine, and another, until Scott was thoroughly trashed and Kip was only a little bit better. The train ride back to Rome was rough—Scott was too drunk, the motion made him want to puke. So. Not a great start to their honeymoon. Scott would have to make up for it in the second half.

_____

Scott replied to Hollander’s email at ten in the morning, sat at a café while Kip was in the bathroom for the fourth time that day. Apparently, Kip’s gut really wasn’t prepared for the sixty or so oysters he’d slammed the night before. I’m not mad, Scott typed. And you should bring your husband to dinner, next time you’re in New York.

He wasn’t expecting Hollander to reply at all—it was more about the gesture than anything else; something to make Scott feel better without actually having to talk about feelings and shit in a goddamn email. But he did, the fucking madman. He replied and said that he’d be in town for a shoot in the middle of June, would Scott and Kip be back from their honeymoon by then? So. They had a dinner party scheduled for June sixteenth. And Scott didn’t really know how he felt about that.

_____

It was like this: Scott always thought Hollander was something like a nervous prey animal in a room full of slobbering dogs. Everybody wanted a piece of him, and why wouldn’t they? He was fucking good, in the GOAT conversation, a future hall-of-famer. And despite that, he was still so careful, so polite, so heart-on-his-sleeve, so pathologically hesitant to offend anything or anyone. And there was something about it that called to Scott; something that said we are the same kind of animal, you and I.

So, Scott had sometimes wondered what it would be like to be Hollander’s friend. Scott had also wondered what it would be like to kiss his sulking little mouth, or maybe suck his dick, because Scott was a bit of a pervert and Hollander had the sort of face that was, perhaps, wasted on hockey when he could be off modeling underwear or perfume or something. Scott wasn’t stupid. He knew why Hollander got all those Calvin Klein spreads. He had functioning eyes.

And it was also like this: Scott hadn’t understood why people called Rozanov an asshole, at first. Scott heard he’s an asshole from guys that tossed around slurs because they thought it was funny, and he assumed that meant Rozanov was somehow worse, like he’d unlocked levels of derogatory language that weren’t available to normal people, or was the type of guy to make your mom jokes about Scott’s dead mom, or inclined towards something even shittier that Scott couldn’t possibly imagine. But when he saw Rozanov in person the first time, at a pre-season game, his first thought was oh, wow. Because Rozanov was, objectively, hot, even when he was nineteen and skinny in a way that meant he wasn’t quite done growing yet. Scott had felt a bit like a perv for noticing. And when they met at center ice for the faceoff, Rozanov had bent over and fucking winked, like he knew what Scott was, and didn’t care, and maybe even liked it. He’d won, of course, because Scott was off-kilter and weird about it, and that was, coincidentally, the first time Rozanov scored a goal while playing for the MLH. It wasn’t a real goal, in a real game, but it still pissed Scott off.

The next faceoff, Scott’s back cracked when he bent down, which was perfectly fucking normal, but Rozanov’s eyes had lit up, and Scott had a beautiful half-second to admire the way his whole face transformed into something almost cherubic, but then he opened his fucking mouth and said poor dedushka, team doctor put you back together wrong, should have left you in, what is called? House for old people? And Scott had, foolishly, replied shut the fuck up, Rozanov, because the little chirp made him feel like an even bigger perv, and that was that. He’d called Scott old whenever he could ever since. These days, the irritation was less because he felt like a disgusting pervert and more because it was played out, done, fucking old news. He both prayed for and desperately feared the day Rozanov finally got new material.

Scott had lost that particular pre-season game. When he was doing cooldown stretches, Rozanov came up to him and said you have stiff hip, yes? Come to Russia for surgery, I know a guy, gives senior discount, and later that night, Scott had gone home and jerked off to an intense vision of sticking his dick in Rozanov’s mouth and finally shutting him the fuck up. It became part of an embarrassing routine that Scott kept up for a couple years—play Boston, lose, jerk off imagining he was fucking Rozanov’s face. And then he met Kip, and the fantasy sort of lost its appeal when Scott had a much nicer man waiting for him at home. Truth be told, he hadn’t thought about it in years. Thinking about it now just felt weird—strange and unsettling, like he was doing something wrong. So, he tried not to think about it at all.

_____

Scott had a lot of ideas for their honeymoon, way back before he’d even proposed. Kip had never been out of the country before they’d met, and Scott had got it into his head that he wanted to be this fairytale guy from a hallmark movie, sweeping Kip off his feet with wine tastings and bespoke tailored suits. So, after embarrassing himself on the beach, Scott argued Kip into the blue Hugo Boss suit he’d given him, years ago, and which still fit perfectly, because of fucking course it did, and he took Kip to the sort of wine tasting where a sip is free, but a bottle costs at least a couple hundred bucks.

“This place is ridiculous,” Kip whispered, after the sommelier delivered a speech about notes of white pepper and char about a red wine that, if he was perfectly honest, wasn’t nearly as good as the blueberry Barefoot shit Kip kept in the liquor cabinet.

“Do you think we should get a couple bottles?” Scott asked. Kip looked at him like he was crazy. “For the dinner thing,” Scott clarified. “I don’t think Hollander drinks, but you’re supposed to have wine with dinner, right?”

Kip knocked back the dregs, because he hated wasting anything, and grimaced. “Scott, you didn’t even like that one.”

He stared down at the string of Italian on the wine list. It looked fancy. The price tag certainly implied that Scott probably should’ve liked it more than he did. “It wasn’t so bad,” he hedged. “And the bottle’s pretty, right? It’ll make a good souvenir, or something.”

Kip looked at him, long and searching. “You’re nervous,” he said, with a dawning glee and a twinkle in his eye.

“Absolutely not.”

“No, you are! You’re so nervous!” Kip turned fully towards him, and swayed closer, like he couldn’t help himself. “It’s cute,” he said, and put his hand on top of Scott’s, which stopped him from drumming his fingers against the fine marble bartop. Funny. He hadn’t even noticed he was doing it. “You weren’t even this nervous on our first date.”

“Oh, I absolutely was,” Scott replied, and huffed out a breath of a laugh, and tipped his head towards Kip at the exact angle he used back when the only action he got was from getting picked up by strangers at the bar. “I just took you home before I chickened out, or acted like a crazy person.”

Kip laughed, then. “I love you,” he said, “but you’ve always acted like a crazy person. You started flirting with me by talking about serial killers, and then you asked me to move in with you after you ended our first date early to take me home and fuck me. These are not the actions of a sane man, Scott.”

“Oh my god,” Scott said, with dawning horror. “You thought I was going to serial kill you.”

“Maybe a little,” Kip agreed. “But hey, what a way to go.”

They leaned into each other. The sommelier poured them another sip of a deep maroon wine that stole all the moisture out of Scott’s mouth and left behind the idea of a taste that might, perhaps, be something akin to cherry, or currant. Scott couldn’t really tell. It was fruit without any sugar. At the end of the tasting, Scott bought three bottles, and carefully tipped the bill so Kip wouldn’t see the total. And Kip gave him a calculating look, then, but it wasn’t about the money, because he didn’t look disgusted or put-out. It was something else—something hot and cunning. Something that scared him, a little, after the last time Kip got that look on his face and enrolled them in a shibari workshop for Valentine’s day. Something Scott recognized, and loved, and had his dick twitching in his bespoke tailored slacks.

_____

They hit up all the classic spots—the Spanish Steps, the Colosseum, the Sistine Chapel. They took an entire day to trawl through as many art museums as Scott could book; Galleria Borghese, Palazzo Colonna, Roman National Museum, the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. Kip spent that whole day in a daze, his head craned back to look at the ceiling, mouth open in a way that made Scott want to stick his fingers between Kip’s wet lips.

And then, there were the days where they had nothing on the docket, so they fucked slow, until they were lazy with it, and stayed in bed until noon, and finally left the hotel room to get lunch at the attached restaurant and laze around, poolside, while they argued about what they wanted to do with their afternoon. These were Scott’s favorite days, because, truth be told, he didn’t really care about art, or wine, or architecture. But Kip loved it, and Scott loved Kip, and he’d happily spend the rest of his life looking up history museum near me if it meant he’d also spend the rest of his life with Kip crowded onto the same pool chair as him, his hips between Scott’s thighs, his head on Scott’s chest.

“We should go out,” Kip mumbled, halfhearted and lazy. Scott wrapped an arm around Kip’s waist and held him where he sat, pressed against Scott from the top of his spine to the dimples in his lower back. He was scrolling through Instagram again, his phone propped over his heart and held steady with a careless, lazy hand. His other hand was busy tapping out some unknown rhythm on Scott’s knee.

“Mm,” Scott said, intelligently, and rubbed his stubbled cheek against the side of Kip’s neck. He watched as Kip scrolled past post after post; high school friends bragging about their babies, college friends bragging about their incomprehensible queer art projects, wedding inspo, a new exhibit announcement from the MET. He watched as Kip paused on a new post from Rozanov—a photo of him and Hollander kissing, hands on each other’s faces, plain gold wedding bands glinting in the sun. Took four years, but he finally bought a ring, is what the caption said.

Kip paused on the photo for a long time, his thumb hovering just to the right of Hollander’s temple. “They look good together,” he said, but he sounded like he was thinking about something else.

Scott shrugged, and pressed a kiss to the side of Kip’s neck. “I guess so.” And then, Scott clocked the grayed-out following button, and he tightened his grip around Kip’s belly. “You followed him?” he said, and it came out whiny and petulant instead of vaguely accusatory, like Scott had intended.

“Mhm,” Kip replied, still distant. He took his hand off Scott’s knee so he could swipe his bellini off a nearby side table and take a hefty sip. The sweaty glass dripped over Scott’s leg. The cold made him twitch.

“You remember that talk we had?” Kip continued. He was still staring at that goddamn picture of Hollander and Rozanov. “About ethical nonmonogamy?”

Scott tensed. “About how it was never gonna happen, you mean?”

“You didn’t say that,” Kip made to turn around, but Scott clung on and didn’t let him. “You said you wouldn’t want to do it with a stranger because you wouldn’t be able to trust them, and you wouldn’t want to do it with a friend because you’d worry about making things awkward. That’s not a no, that’s specific criteria.”

“Impossible criteria,” Scott muttered, mulishly, into the back of Kip’s neck.

“Well—“

“Kip,” Scott said, one part warning, one part plea.

“Scott,” Kip replied. He wrestled his way out of Scott’s grasp, then, and turned, so he was sitting sideways on the pool chair, and cranked his torso around the rest of the way, so he could lay an arm across the back of the chair, behind Scott’s head. “I’m just asking. Is it a hard no? Would you be interested if we ever, like, met someone who fit your criteria?” Kip looked at him, searching for something. Scott wondered what he was reading in Scott’s body—in the blush blooming behind the faint sunburn on his cheeks, his gaze fixed on Kip’s sweating bellini, his front teeth gnawing at the inside of his lip. “You don’t have to say yes, you know. Same penis forever is fine with me. I love your penis.”

Scott buried his face in his hands. “Jesus christ,” he whispered, into his palms, and then reached out and downed the rest of Kip’s bellini in one long, desperate swallow. “Yeah, okay,” Scott rasped. “If you found someone, I think—I think I would be interested.”

Kip smiled, then, and leaned in to kiss Scott, careful and hot. “We should go out tonight,” he said, again, against Scott’s lips, and it might’ve sounded like Kip was going to start hunting for thirds in whatever club Scott found after googling gayest club in Rome, Italy, but that wasn’t what happened. They went out, and once they got there Kip leaned in close and whispered pretend I’m a stranger, and then disappeared.

It had taken Scott a while to find him—he was perched at the corner of the bar, on his phone, thumbs flying. And so, Scott had sidled up next to him, and he said can I buy you a drink, because Scott only knew how to flirt in cliches. And they spent the whole night dancing around each other, like Kip was picking him up, and it was such a weird, strange, nostalgic head trip that Scott came in his pants while they made out in the bathroom, and Kip only laughed at him a little, which Scott took as proof that Kip really, really loved him.

_____

It was also like this: in the early days, back when Kip hadn’t claimed a drawer in Scott’s dresser or a side of Scott’s bed or a shelf in Scott’s fridge, they’d had a long, meandering talk about what their lives had looked like before they met each other. So, Kip had told Scott all about his first crush—a curly-haired boy who never gave Kip the time of day, and he’d told Scott about his first kiss under the bleachers in high school, and his first time sucking dick, which happened about five minutes after his first kiss. It felt good, in a way, to live vicariously through Kip. The only stories Scott had to tell were sad; keeping his eyes to himself in various locker rooms, shame-filled hookups in seedy club bathrooms, nights he’d parked himself at some resort bar and tried very hard to look like he was less desperate than he actually was.

And Kip had also told him about the first, longest, and only relationship he’d had before Scott; a convoluted arrangement between half a dozen of his fellow students at NYU, the dynamics of which were impossible to follow. He could never remember which Ryan had been Kip’s sort-of-boyfriend, and which one had been Kip’s sort-of-boyfriend’s actual boyfriend’s friend with a permanent invite to their bed. Not that it mattered. Kip was with him now, and if, sometimes, Scott jerked off while he whispered stories about how it felt to have sex with that many bodies in the room, well. It was hot. What else was there to say?

And it was also like this: Scott had run out of that art gallery, that final, worst time he and Kip broke up. He’d done it for a lot of reasons. Good reasons, at the time. But right before, he’d stood a little too close to Kip, in front of some painting Scott knew nothing about. Someone had just barely glanced at the two of them, and Scott’s dick had twitched and blurted out a bit of precum into his boxers. And for a moment, Scott couldn’t tell whether the sick swoop in his gut was pants-shitting terror or intense arousal or something more fucked up, like he was worked up and desperate because he was so afraid. So. Of fucking course he ran away from that.

_____

They’d agreed on nine p.m., so, of course, Hollander and Rozanov knocked on Scott’s door twenty minutes early. It sent Scott into a bit of a tailspin. Nothing was ready. Kip was still in the kitchen, spooning broth into a pot of toasted rice, heating up their good olive oil in a pan, salting and peppering ribeye, checking the broccoli roasting in the oven. The sink was piled high with cutting boards and bowls and knives; the garbage was overflowing with onion skins and garlic peels and trimmed-off gristle. The table wasn’t even set. So, instead of answering the door in a nice, respectable outfit with nice, respectable manners, Scott yanked open his front door with his fingers still smelling like garlic and a dish towel slung over his shoulder.

“Your watch broken or something?” Scott said, meanly, to the two assholes in front of him. Hollander had the decency to look ashamed. Rozanov shoved a cardboard bakery box into Scott’s arms and pushed past him, like he fucking owned the place, which was so bafflingly rude that Scott just let it happen.

“Sorry,” Hollander said, awkwardly poised on the threshold.

“Nice place, Hunter,” Rozanov called, from the fucking living room. “Was surprised! Many stairs for an octogenarian like you.” That was a new one. Scott would bet he’d looked it up in the cab, based on how Rozanov slowed down, just a little, when he said it.

“Sorry,” Hollander said again.

Scott sighed. “Just come in.” And then, louder, directed where Rozanov had already sank onto Scott’s couch and kicked his socked feet up on the coffee table, “sure, sure, make yourself at home.” Scott held up the cardboard box. “The fuck is this anyways?”

“Host gift,” Rozanov said, lazily, from where he was taking up most of the couch. “Kip says not to bring alcohol, so I bring dessert. Is medovik, from very good Russian bakery.”

Hollander briefly closed his eyes—praying for strength, or something. Scott watched as he lined his shoes up neatly by the door, and then lined up Rozanov’s for good measure. He stared out over Scott’s apartment like a soldier sizing up a battlefield, which made Scott curse his apartment’s stupid open floorplan when Hollander eyed up the mountain of dishes in the kitchen sink. For a moment, Scott was afraid he’d do something like, fucking, offer to help wash. Instead, he went and sat down next to Rozanov with the sort of deliberateness that meant he was making some sort of statement, but Scott couldn’t be bothered to suss out what that statement was.

“Hey guys,” Kip called from the kitchen. “Food’s not done yet. Gimme like fifteen? Twenty tops.” Scott set Rozanov’s host gift on the kitchen island, between a tub of ricotta and a pile of peeled garlic. “Go offer drinks or something,” Kip said, low, when Scott made to keep washing dishes. “And relax. I got this.”

So. Scott poured three glasses of wine that was supposed to have notes of red currant and cedar with hints of iron and dried herbs, according to the wine list he’d discreetly stuffed in his pocket back in Italy and kept in a drawer next to the liquor cabinet. He handed them off a little reluctantly—he’d forgotten what an asshole Rozanov was, when he was all caught up in feeling sympathy and shit, and now he regretted trying to impress with a five-hundred-dollar bottle instead of backhandedly insulting him with a better-tasting box of Barefoot moscato.

Rozanov swirled the wine in his glass and made an appreciative noise after he took a sip. Hollander held it like he didn’t know what the fuck to do with it. Scott downed half his glass like he was knocking back a shot.

“Oh my god, Hunter,” Rozanov whined, like the fucking overgrown child he was. “Are you a fucking animal? Wine like this is supposed to be savored.”

Scott downed the rest of the wine in his glass, and poured himself another. “Yeah, and your sparkling personality is only tolerable in short bursts. I’m not drunk enough to put up with your shit yet.”

Rozanov sniffed. “You should be careful, Hunter. Alcoholism can make CTE worse, you know. Is a limit to how much wine you can chug before you end up with dementia, and poor Kip will be stuck wiping drool off your chin.” And then, Rozanov blinked and stared down into his wine glass for a bit, like he’d hurt himself, a little, in trying to hurt Scott.

Hollander set his wine glass down on the coffee table—on a coaster, jesus. “Ilya,” he said, and Scott couldn’t tell if he was stern, or concerned, or just saying it because he liked the sound of it in his mouth.

The two of them looked at each other for a long moment. It was, Scott realized, their version of the silent conversations he sometimes had with Kip. And then, Rozanov looked down at his glass again, and the moment was over. “Okay, okay,” Rozanov said. “Hunter, you have balcony or something?”

Scott looked back and forth between them for a second. “Yeah,” he replied, slow, “I’ll show you.” And he walked Rozanov across the living room and through the kitchen, past where Kip was furiously stirring a pot of risotto, to the big glass door that led to Scott’s balcony, which held two tiny chairs and a collection of half-dead plants in colorful pots, leftover from when Kip decided to try his hand at growing fresh herbs in the spring and failed somewhat miserably. And he watched, incredulous, as Rozanov pulled a lighter and a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, and casually lit up when the door was still wide open, and the smell of pan-searing meat was still wafting outside.

Scott stepped through and slammed the sliding door closed behind him. He took a long sip from his wine glass, and did his best to hide his grimace. “Jesus christ,” he said. “You’re actively tanking your lung capacity, you know.”

“Yes, yes, I know.” Rozanov turned his head and blew a perfect smoke ring out over the street. “Eleven years, Shane has been telling me this. Is hard habit to quit. Patches leave terrible rash, and I do not like gum. Vaping is also very stupid. If I want to taste mango, I eat a fucking mango.” Rozanov took another drag off his cigarette. “Besides. Your wine is not much better. Do you think the dementia or the liver failure will get you first?”

Scott let that one go. It was low-hanging fruit, and besides. There was that same blink, again. That same hurt little downturn at the corner of Rozanov’s mouth. And then, he was turning to look out over the skyline, and Scott took the opportunity to stare; the purpling sunset painting over his back like bruises, the glowing orange tip of the cigarette perched between his fingertips, his thumb rubbing against the inside of his plain gold wedding band, over and over. It was funny. Scott had always thought of Rozanov as this annoying upstart rookie, perpetually young and dumb and cocky because the world had never gotten around to humbling him the way it did for everyone else. But here, he didn’t look young, or dumb, or cocky. He didn’t even look like he was having fun. He—christ, he just looked tired.

“Eleven years, huh,” he offered, and took a fortifying sip of his wine. “I don’t know how you guys did it.”

Rozanov laughed, but it was joyless and a little disturbing. “Very stupidly and irresponsibly,” he replied, and turned his back to the skyline, so he could lean against the railing. He took another drag off his cigarette, and turned his head away to exhale the smoke. “Be glad you are old enough to know better.”

“Was that a compliment, Rozanov?”

“If you want, grandpa. I am on best behavior.”

Scott choked, a little, midway through his next sip. The wine almost went up his nose. “This is your best behavior?”

Rozanov shrugged. “Shane said play nice. He is very nervous. He wants this to go well.” Another drag. The wind caught the smoke, this time, and blew it back over both of them. Scott wrinkled his nose at the smell. “He likes you, Hunter. Wants to be your friend.”

“And you?”

“I like to, what is the phrase. Pull pigtails?”

“Yank my chain.”

“Sure, sure. You have a little vein here,” Rozanov said, and tapped his temple. “It goes like this.” He made a pulsing motion with his free hand. It looked vaguely sexual, somehow. “Very funny.”

It was a good chirp, but Rozanov didn’t finish it off with his signature smirk, so it didn’t quite land. Instead, he was staring at something inside, absolutely transfixed. Scott turned to look, and there Hollander was, in his kitchen, washing the fucking dishes. He couldn’t hear what Kip was saying, but he didn’t need to—he’d seen that exact same song and dance before, on rare occasions when Scott had cooked dinner for them both and Kip had doggedly chased him out of the kitchen, because the rule was that whoever cooked didn’t do the goddamn dishes. It wasn’t working on Hollander, who politely dodged all of Kip’s attempts to shove him out without actually touching him.

Scott glanced back at Rozanov, and the look on his face was so soft, so patently, embarrassingly lovestruck, that Scott had to look away.

“I want you to know,” Rozanov said, quietly, “I do not regret it.”

Scott scowled into his wine. “Gee, thanks.”

Rozanov shrugged again, wholly unbothered. “Was bad timing,” he offered. “We had plan to come out end of August. Give you plenty of time in the spotlight. So, I am maybe little bit sorry for that. But,” Rozanov said, “look at him.”

In the kitchen, Kip was laughing at something Hollander had said, and Hollander looked surprised and quietly pleased. “For years, he only tells jokes after I make him cum. He was like clenched fist all the time. And now he laughs so easy, it is ridiculous. Yesterday, I raise my eyebrow at him, and he laughs so hard he cries.”

“Makes sense he’s with you, then,” Scott said, and for the first time maybe ever, Rozanov looked completely baffled, like Scott had just said the sky was yellow, or grass was purple, or something equally ridiculous. “It’s the same for me and Kip. He’s so goddamn funny. He makes me laugh more than I’ve ever laughed in my entire fucking life.”

“You are first person that says this,” Rozanov said, pleased. Something fluttered, low in Scott’s belly, but he resolutely ignored it. “Most people, they say ‘oh, what a shame that a nice boy like Shane married such a terrible asshole!’ or ‘Shane, were there no nice men in Montreal?’ as if Shane would want boring nice man from boring Montreal.” Rozanov took a drag, then leaned in close, like he was about to tell Scott a secret. “Do not tell him I said this,” he whispered, “but when it is just the two of us, he is meaner than I am. You should hear what he says about Finland. Is like personal grudge he has. Fuck if I know why.”

Scott laughed, then. A real laugh that beat in his chest. And that made Rozanov smile for real. It was, perhaps, the first time Scott had seen it. Usually, when Rozanov smiled, it was insincere and a little mean. And he looked good like that, Scott thought. He kind of wanted to see Rozanov do it again.

“Got any advice for me?” Scott asked, because that was what you were supposed to do as a newlywed meeting a couple that had been married for a while, and he couldn’t think of anything else to say, and Rozanov’s cigarette was running low, and for some reason, he didn’t want to go back inside just yet. “Seeing as you’ve apparently been at this longer than we have.”

Rozanov thought for a moment. “Most of what people say is bullshit,” he replied, surprisingly serious. “Happy wife happy life, don’t go to bed angry, all bullshit. You go to bed angry, and you fuck, and the sex is so good you think to yourself, this is as close to touching God as I will ever get.” He smirked, then, and took one last drag off his cigarette before stubbing it out on the railing and pocketing the butt. In the kitchen, Hollander was not-so-discreetly rearranging all the dishes in the dishwasher while Kip finished pan-frying a ribeye. Something softened in Rozanov just watching it. “Marriage is no different from what you were already doing,” he said, with some fond little smile on his face. It wasn’t for him, Scott knew. It was for the man in his kitchen, fussing over dishes that weren’t even his. “Love is built on more than chocolates and roses and, fucking, Gucci menswear collection. Is built on one million boring moments like these. Dishes. Laundry. Grocery shopping. Is all a gift. Should be treasured, yes?”

“Yeah,” Scott said, surprised that Rozanov was such a romantic. And then, he thought of the sway of Kip’s hips as he wiped down the kitchen counters, and Kip singing at the top of his lungs, off-key, when it was his turn to clean the bathroom, and Kip, years ago, pressing a smoothie into his hands and a kiss to his lips before darting out the door, already late for his early-morning shift. And he got it, he really did. All of it was so precious—even the ugly parts, the petty sniping over whose turn it was to do the laundry, the gross pubes Kip left in the shower after he manscaped, the fights over who was paying for dinner or gas or groceries. What a gift, to fight with Kip over toothpaste crusted in the sink, after spending most of his adult life convinced that clandestine sex with strangers was all he’d ever have.

Rozanov appraised him, and nodded, just once, like he knew exactly what Scott was thinking about. “You know this already,” he said. “So long as you remember to load dishwasher how he likes, you will be fine. Speaking of,” he said, looking at Hollander, who had moved on to washing kitchen knives in the sink while Kip halfheartedly tried to get him to stop, “my terrible husband will deep-clean your whole kitchen if I do not intervene.”

“Maybe you should let him,” Scott said. “I can’t remember the last time I hand-washed anything.”

Rozanov raised an eyebrow. “I think no. Only person allowed to take advantage of Shane is me.” And then he opened the door and beelined for Hollander, and plastered himself to Hollander’s back like an overgrown limpet, and whispered something in his ear that made Hollander turn so red Scott thought his head might actually explode, like some fucking Tom-and-Jerry shit. Hollander turned and abandoned the dishes in the sink, so he could slap a handful of bubbles into Rozanov’s face. And Rozanov mean-mugged him, and scooped suds from the sink to get him right back, and christ, they were both just kids. Silly, stupid kids who’d never really grown up all the way, just like Scott had never grown up in any way that really mattered.

And, so. From then on, it was easy. Rozanov bullied his way into helping plate the ribeyes, and snitched whole cloves of garlic from the pan and popped them in his mouth with an obnoxious smacking noise, which made Hollander wrinkle his nose and say better brush your teeth if you want that mouth anywhere near me tonight, but then he was giving Rozanov a casual peck barely a minute later, so everybody knew he didn’t really mean it. Scott opened a new bottle of wine that everybody tried and only Rozanov seemed to like, so Rozanov had hollered Kip, you make cocktails, yes? where are your mixers, and doctored it up with orange juice and grenadine and slices of a lemon he stole from the fruit bowl on the counter. Hollander asked Kip a polite question about their honeymoon that somehow spiraled into a twenty-minute conversation about fucking museums in fucking Ottawa, of all things, and he begged Kip for the risotto recipe after dinner, because he was so fucking tired of eating quinoa to carb-load, oh my god, fuck what my nutritionist says, and the medovik was, as promised, really fucking good. Sweet in the more subdued way than European desserts usually were.

And, after dessert, Scott pulled Hollander to the side, while they were both in the kitchen and Kip and Ilya were busy with second helpings of medovik, and said “seriously, I’m not mad.” And when Hollander looked at him like he saw right through Scott’s bullshit, he said “okay, maybe I was, a little. Mostly, though, I’m glad I’m not the only one in the league anymore.”

“Yeah,” Hollander said, soft. “It gets lonely.” And then, he turned and stuck their dessert plates in the sink, and said, even softer, “we’ve never had the chance to do this. Hang out with other people as a couple, I mean. So, uh. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Scott said, and clapped Hollander on the back in a move that would’ve probably had Rozanov calling him worse than, fucking, stupid American sitcom dad if he was there to see it. “And uh, we should do this again sometime.”

“Yeah,” Hollander said, with a small, shy smile.

Scott leaned back against the countertop and watched as Hollander washed the dessert plates in a very careful and particular way that, Scott was realizing, wasn’t an extra-special effort he extended to be polite—Hollander was just like with everything he touched. “You guys staying in town?”

That got Scott another one of those shy little smiles. “Yeah. We scheduled all the shoots and stuff to be back-to-back, so we’ll be around for a couple weeks.”

“Come out to the Kingfisher with us tomorrow,” Scott said, on impulse. He didn’t really know what he was offering; another olive branch, a good time drinking eyewatering rainbow-colored shots and shooting pool, a piece of that fucking community everybody was always talking about so goddamn much.

Hollander’s brow furrowed. He carefully dried off the last of the dessert plates, and turned his back to the sink, and stared across Scott’s apartment, towards Rozanov, who had gotten into Scott’s liquor cabinet and was knocking back the dregs of a glass of vodka he’d called passable, for American shit.

“Sure,” Hollander said, a little distant. Probably distracted by the way Rozanov’s throat moved while he swallowed. “That sounds fun.”

And then, Rozanov hollered Hollander, Hunter, what is taking so long, Kip wants to play card game, and they went into the living room, where Kip had pulled out the battered Cards Against Humanity box that he’d had since undergrad. The rest of the night went by in a drunken sort of blur: Hollander got cartoon-character red again and stayed that way for hours; Rozanov slowly slipped sideways until he was laying across Hollander’s lap and whined because these cards are so stupid, Shane, what the fuck is smegma; Kip consistently played the dirtiest thing he could possibly think of and waggled his eyebrows at everyone like a fucking pervert. And there was Scott, at the center of it all, drunk off his ass because he was having too much fun to stop, sitting so careful to hide his fucking half-chub, sneaking glances alternately between Kip’s sly face and Hollander’s hand idly playing with Rozanov’s hair.

They saw Hollander and Rozanov off well into the wee hours, stumbling drunk and giggling like teenagers. The second the door closed behind them, Kip turned to him and said “so, about your ethical nonmonogamy criteria,” and Scott shoved him into the front door and kissed him stupid, then took him to bed and took him apart.

_____

Hollander and Rozanov came out to the Kingfisher, just like they promised. And they drank eyewatering rainbow-colored shots, and they played pool two-on-two, which Scott and Kip won, because Kip was fiendishly good at it, and Rozanov kept getting distracted whenever Hollander bent over to line up a shot. He was a handsy motherfucker when he wasn’t deep in the closet, as it turned out. He kept slapping Hollander’s ass and laughing when it made him squeak and hiss cut it out, asshole, I’m trying to fucking win here. And when he wasn’t slapping Hollander’s ass, he was touching the small of his back, or the back of his neck, or bumping their shoulders together. Scott watched like the fucking pervert he was, and thanked god that the pool table was tall enough to hide his dick.

He wasn’t the only one watching, either. Kip was licking his lips, over and over, and once, when Scott bent to line up a particularly tricky shot, he stood behind Scott and accidentally-on-purpose swayed forward and knocked into the back of Scott’s thigh, which in turn pushed Scott’s half-hard dick into the edge of the pool table, and Scott bit his lip instead of moaning or rutting into the wood like a misbehaving dog. When he finished the shot and narrowly missed sinking the nine-ball, Rozanov was looking at him with his brow furrowed a little, like Scott was a complicated math problem he didn’t know the answer to yet.

They played another round of pool, and another, and another, until Hollander and Rozanov had to concede and admit that Kip was, in fact, fucking undefeatable. They snagged a booth, after, and Rozanov bought the them all another round of rainbow-colored shots. Hollander grimaced after his, and Rozanov leaned in and wiped a bit of moisture away from the corner of his mouth with his thumb. Scott inhaled, a little too sharp, and beside him Kip did the same.

Rozanov turned away from Hollander, then, and leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “Okay, enough, what is the fucking phrase, beating the bush?”

“Beating around the bush,” Hollander supplied, and leaned into Rozanov’s side, and put his head on Rozanov’s shoulder.

“Yes, yes, whatever,” Rozanov said, and flapped his hand near his temple like he was brushing away a housefly. “There is a vibe—”

“—oh, so you know vibe, but you don’t know beating around the bush—”

“—shut the fuck up, Hollander,” Rozanov said, fondly, and slung his arm around Hollander’s shoulders. “There is a vibe I am getting from you two. You want to ask something, yes? So fucking ask it already.”

Hollander pulled away, and turned to look at Rozanov, his brow furrowed. And then, he turned to look at Scott, at Kip, confused and assessing all at once.

Scott stared at Kip, helpless. Kip stared back. Should I tell them, Kip’s eyes said, and Scott didn’t know. He didn’t fucking know anything.

“I,” Kip started, and then cleared his throat. “We,” he corrected, and reached for Scott’s hand, and cradled between his like Scott’s fingers were something precious, “were wondering what you guys thought about, um, ethical nonmonogamy.”

Rozanov blinked. He leaned over to Hollander, and said, quietly, “Shane, what is that?”

Hollander blushed red as a stop sign, and stared down at the tabletop, looking a little bit like he wanted to die. “It’s uh, having sex with other people.”

“Ah,” Rozanov said, rather delicately. And then, he sat back blushed just as red as Hollander, and for a second, it was almost like he looked fucking bashful, which was an expression Scott never, ever thought he’d see on Rozanov’s face. “You want to have sex with us,” Rozanov stated, matter-of-fact, and the blush was rapidly getting replaced by something sly and gleeful. It had Scott quaking in his fucking boots.

“Ilya,” Hollander hissed, and slapped at Rozanov’s shoulder.

”What? Is true!”

Hollander turned and looked between Scott and Kip, back and forth. Scott scratched at the back of his neck. “I mean, yeah. I guess,” Scott said. “If you’d want to.”

Hollander made a barely audible noise, then, high-pitched and sharp. Rozanov gave Hollander a long, searching look. “We have not talked about it,” he said, slowly. His eyes were darting over Hollander’s face so fast it looked like he was having a stroke. “But I think maybe we should.” Rozanov slid out of the booth, then, and dragged Hollander with him. “We will go. Talk. You stay, have fun. And maybe, if Shane wants,” he continued, with a cocky little grin and a teasing glint in his eye, “I’ll text, later. Kip, give me your phone.”

And, so, Kip handed over his phone, and Rozanov punched his number in, and then the two of them were gone, stumbling out of the bar holding hands, Hollander’s shoulders up around his ears.

Once the door closed behind them, Kip slid forwards, and mashed his face against the tabletop. “Fuck,” he muttered, and lightly beat his forehead against the sticky laminate. Scott rubbed his back, made little circles with his thumb. “If I fumbled that, I’m never gonna forgive myself,” Kip moaned, pitifully. “They’re so fucking hot. It’s unfair.”

“I don’t know,” Scott replied, and resolutely ignored the churning, sick feeling in his gut. “Rozanov gave you his number.”

Kip pulled his face off the tabletop. He had a red mark on his forehead. “He did. That’s a good sign, right?”

Scott shrugged. He didn’t know how any of this shit worked. “You want a beer?” he asked, instead of answering.

“Yeah,” Kip replied. “Just one, though. And come play pool with me. I’m not done winning yet.”

And, so. Scott got Kip a beer. They played another round of pool, which Kip won, because he really was undefeatable. And they sat around in the Kingfisher, on tenderhooks, pretending to be less nervous than they actually were. Kip kept compulsively checking his phone, and drumming his fingers against the bartop, and biting his thumbnail without actually chewing through the nail. Scott just kept picking at the label on Kip’s beer bottle, replaying that trainwreck of a conversation in his head, the way he ran back through plays when he knew he fucked up during a game.

An hour went by. Another. He and Kip sat at the bar and dutifully kept watching when Kyle switched the TV from a baseball game to the newest season of Love Island. Kip nursed his beer, and Scott stuck with diet coke, which had Kyle shooting him weird looks during commercial breaks. And it wasn’t until after they’d packed it up and were halfway home in a taxi, because Kip refused to use uber, that Rozanov finally texted.

It wasn’t a rejection, but it wasn’t exactly a go-ahead either; just an address in midtown, followed by room 1431. Kip tilted his phone to show Scott, and then looked at him, like what do you think? Scott shrugged, as if to say I’m game if you are, and that was that. Kip replied with a thumbs up emoji, and leaned forward, and asked the cabby if they could stop at a convenience store, please and thank you, and then maybe go here instead? So, Scott bought condoms and lube at a Walgreens, and he held Kip’s hand in the back of the cab, and he watched the city lights flash by, and he tugged and tugged until he could shove their clasped hands into his lap and grind against the back of Kip’s hand for the rest of the ride.

_____

Rozanov opened the hotel door with an evil grin. He was wearing a pair of black sweatpants so old that the elastic was barely holding itself together. He was very obviously only wearing the black sweatpants. He was also, obviously, half-hard inside his stupid sweatpants, and his dick was probably the only thing keeping them on his hips. Jesus christ. Scott hadn’t seen pants slung that low since the early aughts.

“You got here fast,” Rozanov drawled, and ushered them inside with a quick, practiced glance down the hallway behind them. “Eager for something?”

Kip rolled his eyes and kicked off his shoes. “Like you aren’t,” he said, and gestured at Ilya’s bare chest and stupid pants and the outline of his dick. Rozanov looked at Kip, then, with something appreciative in his eye. A newfound respect, or something. Scott kicked off his shoes, and Kip took his hand, and he let Kip drag him deeper into the hotel room.

It had two queens, was the first thing Scott noticed. It surprised him. Rozanov must’ve clocked the surprise, because behind them, he said “Shane always complains about mess. ‘Oh Ilya, the bed is dirty, I cannot sleep here,’ so we get room with two beds, we fuck on one, and we sleep in the other. Is efficient. Economical.” He over-enunciated that last word, and brushed past them to sit on the far bed, his legs sprawled in the narrow alleyway between them. Scott took the opportunity to cast his eye over the rest of the room, but there wasn’t much to see. The room was almost pathologically neat. The only signs of life were two black suitcases on the floor by the TV stand, a couple of garment bags hanging off the curtain rod, and a half-empty bottle of lube on the nightstand.

The bathroom door cracked open, and Hollander said, through the crack, “it fucking is, you dick. Nobody likes sleeping in the wet spot.” And then he stepped out of the bathroom in a billow of steam, in a baggy sweatshirt he must’ve stolen from his husband, because it was obviously merch for some Russian death metal band, and shorts that ended mid-thigh. The shorts were already bunching up a bit where they rubbed between his legs.

“You have done something like this before?” Rozanov said, watching as Hollander carefully edged past Scott and Kip, and carefully sat on the bed next to him, a little hunched, his eyes fixed somewhere on the floor.

“No,” Scott said, honestly, and Rozanov blinked in surprise.

“Yes,” Kip said, and dragged Scott over to the unoccupied bed, and forced him to sit. Rozanov looked even more surprised. Hollander, too, from where he was peeking out of the corner of his eye, hoodie string in his mouth.

“Interesting. Okay. So. Is also Shane’s first time—”

“Shut the fuck up!”

Rozanov took one of Hollander’s hands between both of his own, and started playing with his fingers. “Is nothing to be ashamed of, sweetheart. Is also Scott’s first time, and he is so fucking old.”

Scott clenched his fists in the bedspread. “Jesus fucking christ, Rozanov,” he hissed, hard enough to pound nails and so fucking mad about it that he could scream, “do you ever stop?”

“No,” he said, and flashed Scott a wink, “I only stop when I have something in my mouth.”

Scott thought, again, of choking Rozanov on his dick. A bit of precum leaked out the tip of his dick and soaked into his boxers. “That on offer?”

“Mm. Not tonight. I am thinking that we keep things simple. We fuck over here,” Rozanov patted the bed he was sitting on, “you fuck over there,” he pointed in their general vicinity, “and we watch. Everyone okay with this?” And oh, that wasn’t really what Scott was expecting. It was kind of cute. He nodded, mostly for Rozanov’s benefit, and Kip was enthusiastically bobbing his head next to him. “Shane?”

“Yeah,” Hollander said, and he was already slurring a touch, like the two shots they’d had at the Kingfisher had fucked him up, or he was already halfway cock-drunk and stupid, even though nobody was even naked yet. And that was all the permission Rozanov needed, because the next second he was manhandling Hollander into a kiss that was so tongue-heavy they were dripping spit everywhere after a couple of seconds.

“Fuck,” Kip whispered, and then he was crawling into Scott’s lap and shoving him down onto the bed and licking his way into Scott’s mouth. He ground down on Scott’s lap, and Scott moaned into his mouth.

“Off,” he gasped, sloppy and wet against Kip’s lips, “take your fucking clothes off, jesus fucking christ.”

Kip stripped his shirt off, and then, instead of working on his own belt, he slid off the bed, onto his knees, and fumbled Scott’s belt and zip open, and yanked his jeans and his boxers down his hips in one rough motion, and swallowed Scott’s cock like he’d been dying for it all night. Scott groaned, expansively, and combed his hands through Kip’s hair, and raised his head to look. And there was Kip, teasing Scott’s dick against his soft palate, and behind him, Hollander was in Rozanov’s lap, and Rozanov’s hands were down the back of his shorts, and then they were shoving them down, and—

There Rozanov’s fingers were, pressing into Hollander’s hole. Two of them, because, as it turned out, Rozanov was just as mean in bed as he was out of it. The lube inside of Hollander made a wet squelch. “Such a slut,” Rozanov murmured, and slapped Hollander’s ass so hard it left a red mark. “How many fingers did you give yourself in the shower? Four?”

“Oh my god,” Kip whispered, against Scott’s balls, and then whipped around to look. The moan Kip let out, once he saw, was fucking obscene.

“Three, just three,” Hollander mumbled, and Rozanov did something that made his whole body jolt and forced a pitched-up grunt from the back of his throat. Scott grabbed the base of his dick and squeezed. “Hurry up and fuck me already,” Hollander moaned, and yeah, he was an impatient little slut, grinding forward onto Rozanov’s lap and backwards onto Rozanov’s fingers. The back of his neck was flushed red, and his face was buried in Rozanov’s neck, still bashful, even here.

Rozanov slapped his ass again, and Scott’s hips jerked forward, reflexively. His dick slapped against the side of Kip’s face. Kip looked back to Scott, then. “Shirt off,” Kip said, and struggled out of the rest of his clothes. Scott blindly kicked his jeans the rest of the way off his legs, and fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, and then Kip shoved him back, and back, until they were both laying sideways on the bed, making out desperately, grinding their dicks together.

“You wanted to show them, yes?” Rozanov muttered, between biting kisses to Hollander’s jaw, and landed another slap on Hollander’s ass that sounded like a gunshot. “So show them,” he continued, and Hollander whimpered, actually fucking whimpered, like a dog, and Kip broke away to turn over and watch as Hollander reached back and spread his own ass cheeks. And god, what a sight. Rozanov’s arm was in the way, a little, but Scott could still see the faint shine of lube against his flushed rim, and he could see him stretched around Rozanov’s fingers, the there-and-gone flash of something deeper whenever Rozanov scissored them apart.

“Oh my god,” Kip moaned, and reached back to grab at Scott’s hip and pull him closer. Scott dragged his dick against the small of his back, and pressed a kiss to his temple. “That’s so pretty, Shane, you look so pretty,” and that made Hollander flinch harder than Rozanov slapping his ass.

And for a second, Scott was worried, but then Hollander gasped “oh god,” and Rozanov went straight from two fingers to four, because he was a mean motherfucker, but the meanness was immediately undercut when he whispered okay? all soft and quiet, and Scott couldn’t help it. He crawled over Kip and snatched the lube off the nightstand.

“He likes that,” Rozanov said, as Scott settled back behind Kip. He’d looked up from where he was sucking bruises into Hollander’s neck, and jesus, he looked intense. That furrowed brow, the set of his mouth. Rozanov fixed that intense fucking stare on Scott, then, and Scott had to pull his hips away from Kip so he wouldn’t bust right then and there.

Scott leaned down, put his mouth next to Kip’s ear, and whispered “let me fuck your thighs, baby,” which had Kip nodding and moaning and lifting his leg, so Scott could spread lube there. His hands were shaking, he was so hard. He poured out way too much. The excess dripped everywhere, soaking into the scratchy hotel duvet, probably all the way into the mattress. Oh, well. It wasn’t his lube. He could afford to waste it.

“Tell him, Hunter,” Rozanov demanded, and rubbed a soothing hand up and down Hollander’s ribcage.

“Real pretty, rook,” Scott said, on impulse, and that made Hollander let go of his own ass cheek and make a break for his dick. Rozanov caught his wrist, bruise-hard, and forced his hand back where it was. Scott groaned at the sight, and finally, finally, fucked his dick between Kip’s thighs. It was so wet and tight and hot that Scott had to take a couple seconds to just lay there, breathing into the back of Kip’s neck.

“Greedy little slut,” Rozanov said, gleefully. “Did I say you could touch?”

“Fuck off,” Hollander replied, pissy and moody, and struggled to pull his wrist out of Rozanov’s grasp. “If you’re not gonna fuck me, I wanna come.”

Scott reached around and fisted Kip’s dick, and pressed a kiss to his shoulderblade. Kip moaned, low, and reached back to tangle his fingers in Scott’s hair.

“You know what I will do to you if you come before my cock is in you?” Rozanov said, low enough that Scott could barely hear it. “I will make you come again, and again, until it hurts to even think about touching your dick. And then, when you are crying big fat tears and begging me to stop, then I will fuck you.”

“Jesus,” Kip whispered, and turned back to look at Scott. His eyes said what the fuck and should we be worried and god, that’d be kind of hot. Scott shrugged, and looked back at Hollander, who had given up on getting his hand free, and was riding four of Rozanov fingers like he was gunning for the whole fucking fist.

Hollander laughed, breathlessly, which made Kip relax a bit. “Don’t threaten me with a good time,” he gasped, choppy, between heaving breaths. And then, “Come on. I thought you wanted to show them.”

Rozanov landed one last slap on Hollander’s ass, and christ, his whole ass cheek was mottled red now, handprints layered over handprints. “On your stomach,” he said, and Hollander complied immediately and enthusiastically, finally stripping off his fucking hoodie and lying in the middle of the bed with his face and his knees digging into the covers, his ass in the air. Rozanov finally took off his stupid goddamn pants, and jesus. That was a lot of dick. No wonder he’d used four fingers.

Scott fucked into the warm space between Kip’s thighs at the same time as Rozanov fucked into Hollander, slow and easy. And then, Rozanov whispered look at them, look at what you do to them, and forcibly turned Hollander’s face towards Scott and Kip, and he got his hand on the side of Hollander’s head to force him further down into the mattress. Hollander’s pretty, pouting mouth dropped open when he saw Scott’s hand around Kip’s dick and the head of Scott’s dick appearing and disappearing between Kip’s thighs, and he moaned, expansively. He moaned higher when Rozanov fucked into him, hard, and immediately set a punishing pace that would’ve probably destroyed Scott’s other hip if he tried to do that to Kip.

Scott didn’t know where to fucking look. At his own dick, fucking between Kip’s thighs; at Kip, tensing up, fucking Scott’s fist, on the edge of coming; at Hollander’s face, screwed up but his eyes open wide, darting all over Kip’s body and up, to meet Scott’s gaze; the place where Rozanov fucked into Hollander, over and over, faster and faster; at Rozanov, red flush creeping down his neck and chest, covered in sweat, alternately slapping at Hollander’s thighs and pressing kisses to his shoulders, muttering filthy shit in Russian that Scott didn’t understand; Hollander’s dick, red and throbbing and fucking dripping, bouncing between his thighs with every thrust.

“Prettiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Scott said, with a wicked grin, and just like that Hollander was coming onto the duvet, hands-free. Kip followed right behind him. And then, Rozanov looked over at Scott with a challenge in his eye, and now the whole thing was a competition to see who could fuck harder, last longer, look better. So, Scott picked up the pace, despite the twinge in his hip and the low ache building in his back. The lube between Kip’s thighs made a wet squelch with every thrust.

In front of him, Rozanov was still fucking into Hollander, so his earlier threat was, at least, a little true. Hollander was tense, biting at his lip and curling his toes and squirming, all over, but he didn’t stop meeting Rozanov thrust for thrust, and he didn’t ask Rozanov to stop.

And then, Kip twisted around, so he could whisper close to Scott’s ear, and he gestured vaguely towards Rozanov, still fucking Hollander, and said, “ask him to fuck you, next time,” and that was it. Scott came between Kip’s thighs with a cut-off groan, picturing how it would feel to have Rozanov’s ridiculous dick buried deep inside him.

Hollander’s eyes finally slipped closed, and he was making these hurt little noises, ah ah ah, every time Rozanov fucked into him. “Please,” Hollander begged. “Fucking give it to me. Come in me. Knock me up.” And that was all it took. Rozanov did exactly what Hollander asked.

Kip turned, a little, so he could raise his eyebrows at Scott. Scott raised his eyebrows right back.

On the other bed, Rozanov wasn’t letting Hollander rest. He slapped at Hollander’s hip, where he’d collapsed belly-down, and Hollander put his ass back in the air. Christ, his thighs were shaking. And then, Rozanov got behind him, spread his ass, and buried his face there to, oh jesus christ, lick his come out of Hollander’s hole. Scott was too old to go again, but fuck, he wished he could.

And Rozanov did not let up. Hollander’s toes were curling, and his whole body was tense and shaking, and he really was crying, now, into the sheets, and drooling from his open mouth, and Rozanov just kept going, and going, and going. He got his hands involved—one thrusting two fingers back into Hollander’s hole, one wrapped tight around Hollander’s dick.

“Gimme another,” Rozanov said, throaty and low, when he pulled back for air. And it wasn’t long before Hollander did, coming into Rozanov’s fist with a sob. Rozanov pressed a kiss to the small of Hollander’s back, and dropped more up his spine, until he got to Hollander’s ear, where he murmured something too low for Scott to hear. And then Hollander was turning over on his back, and they were kissing, all soft and sticky-sweet.

Scott pressed a kiss to Kip’s ear, then his neck, then the bolt of his jaw. On the other bed, Rozanov groaned, and heaved himself up, and disappeared into the bathroom. He came back with two damp washcloths, and chucked one at Scott’s head. It was warm, which surprised Scott for some reason—an extra kindness on top of one he already hadn’t expected. He cleaned between Kip’s legs as best he could, and wiped the cum off his hand and Kip’s belly, and tossed the rag onto the floor of the hotel, because it was a fucking hotel, and he didn’t have to pay the extra if it was trashed, and he was, to be honest, a little annoyed that Rozanov won the unofficial who-can-fuck-longer contest.

Rozanov had finished cleaning Hollander up, and tugged a clean pair of boxers up Hollander’s legs, and then sort of collapsed on top of him; hips between Hollander’s legs, face pressed to Hollander’s chest, arms tight to Hollander’s sides. It was clingy and sweet, and Scott hadn’t expected that, either. The whole thing was surprising, fucking whiplash, a lightning-quick switch from sickly sweet to rough and intense, and then back again, just as quick.

Scott nosed at Kip’s shoulder, and tugged him closer, ran a hand up his belly and curled it across his chest. Rozanov pressed a kiss to Hollander’s sternum, then turned his head and laid it there, like a little kid nuzzling into their pillow for the night. He cracked a tired eye open, and looked right at Scott, still pressing careful kisses to whatever parts of Kip he could reach, and said “was okay? Was good for you?”

Yet another surprise. A good one. They were all good surprises so far, Scott thought. Kip smiled, lazy and sated, and Scott laughed, a little. “Jesus, Rozanov,” he said, “yeah, it was okay. Way fucking better than okay. Stop fishing for compliments.”

Rozanov smiled, a little, but Scott only saw half of it—the other half was buried in Hollander’s chest. “Good,” he murmured. “And you call me Ilya now. You have seen my dick. Is weird to keep using last names.”

“Fuck off!” Hollander cried, in outrage, but the outrage was fond, and mostly a performance.

“Aww, moya lyubov, I thought you knew you were weird already. I am sorry,” Rozanov—Ilya—crooned. “I hate to have to inform, but you are so fucking weird. Maybe weirdest person I have ever met.”

Hollander huffed out a laugh. “You’re such a fucking dick,” he said, the way another person might say you’re so beautiful or you’re perfect or something equally sappy. And it was like they’d forgotten Scott was there at all, or maybe like they’d forgotten that the world was bigger than the two of them and the nonexistent space between their bodies. It was more than a little ridiculous. It made Scott want to kiss Kip until their lips went numb and swollen.

“You love it,” Ilya said, sing-song, and Hollander—Shane, Scott should probably call him Shane—replied “yeah, yeah I do,” and they kissed with a loud, wet smack. Ilya laid his head back on Shane’s chest, and closed his eyes, and sighed like he was about to fall asleep.

Kip rolled over and looked at Scott for a long moment, then leaned forward and kissed him, a thank-you and I-love-you rolled into one. “We should probably head out,” Kip whispered, and Scott nodded, a little dumb, probably still a little drunk from the shots at the Kingfisher.

“No-no-no-no,” Ilya whined, rapid-fire, from where he was sprawled on top of his husband. “We had a nice time, yes? And old man Scott is so tired, and it is so late at night, and there is perfectly comfortable bed you are already laying in, ready for sleep.” Ilya waved a hand in their general direction, and yawned. “So stay. Sleep. In the morning, I feed you terrible buffet breakfast before Shane and I go to whatever ridiculous photoshoot is on our schedule, and we plan for next time.”

Kip raised an eyebrow. “Next time?”

Scott didn’t bother looking, but he could tell Ilya was rolling his eyes. “Yes, next time. This was fun. We do it again, if you want. Who knows,” Ilya said, and a mischievous note crept in, “maybe next time, I let Scott put his dick in my mouth, now that I know he wants it very badly.”

“Yeah,” Scott said faintly, his eyes wide. “Next time.”

“Oh my god,” Shane bitched, “will you all shut the fuck up? I’m trying to fucking sleep.” And then he reached out and turned off the lamp on the nightstand, and Scott slowly drifted off with his arm slung over Kip’s waist, and his leg shoved between Kip’s, and the side of his face mashed against the meat of Kip’s shoulder. Ilya snored, a little, but that was okay. It was kind of like the white noise machine back home, and Scott didn’t mind it. That was the last surprise the night had to offer; how much Scott didn’t mind it. How much he’d liked it. Even the awkward parts, and the weird parts, and the parts that Scott still wasn’t sure counted as hot or genuinely certifiable. God, Kip was a fucking genius. Scott loved him to fucking pieces.

_____

Ilya fed them all terrible buffet breakfast, true to his word. He disappeared downstairs before Scott and Kip had really woken up, and came back balancing four plates piled high with underseasoned eggs, sausage links, little cups of yogurt, slimy-looking fruit salad, and a waffle smeared with peanut butter and doused in syrup for himself. Is the off season, he’d explained. I am bulking. Leave me alone, Shane.

They ate in bed, which Shane hated, and made tentative plans to go out to a terribly expensive restaurant for a late dinner in a few days, and even more tentative plans for Scott to fuck Ilya’s face in a few more.

They booted Scott and Kip out the door early, so they could get ready for one of their endless photoshoots—an ad for Reebok that Ilya was tagging along to, this time, instead of a cover photo for a serious op-ed. Those are the worst, Shane had said. They always say ‘be authentic, be yourself’ and then tell us to wear a fucking rainbow cape or something and stare into the camera with intensity, whatever the fuck that means. If they wanted an authentic picture, they’d take a picture of us looking happy or something.

Laughing, Ilya had replied, all serious and meaningful. They’d take pictures of us laughing. And then he’d chased Scott and Kip out, clamoring on and on about needing to help Shane get ready, because Shane was hopeless at these things, just hopeless, cannot fix his hair to save his life.

And then, when they were halfway down the hall, Shane came tearing out of the room chasing after them. “Wait!” He cried, way too loud for how early it was. “We’re doing a vow renewal next summer. You guys should come.” And then he pulled out an invitation—plain white cardstock, Times New Roman font. Painfully boring, which, Scott was starting to understand, was also painfully them. The address was in Iqaluit, Nunavut, and the date was for next year, on the last weekend of June. “We don’t really want a do-over wedding,” Shane explained. “That was the best day of my life. I wouldn’t change it for anything. But we talked, and, you know. It might be nice, to share some of what it was like with our friends and families.”

And god, that shouldn’t have choked Scott up as much as it did. “Yeah,” Scott croaked, and cleared his throat, and took Kip’s hand. He looked down at Kip; Kip looked up at him. “We’ll uh. We’ll be there.” And Shane beamed at him, then, and it was fucking lethal. Scott wondered how the fuck Ilya managed to get anything done, if Shane was always looking at him like that.

He and Kip watched Shane jog back to his hotel room appreciatively. Kip was also staring at his ass, Scott knew. Why wouldn’t he be? It was a great ass, great to look at. “I love you,” Scott said, out of nowhere, suddenly overcome with the urge to say it.

Kip smiled up at him and squeezed his hand. “I know.”

“Oh my god, you did not just Han Solo me.”

“I did,” Kip said, with a sly little smirk. “What are you gonna do about it?” And, so. Scott chased Kip out to the curb, bad hip and bad knee be damned, and he wrapped his arms around Kip’s waist and rocked them side to side while they waited for a cab driver to fucking pull over, already, this shit is ridiculous, and they held hands in the cab on the way home, and Kip put together a group chat with all four of them and called it Swinging Scandal, because Kip was ridiculous, and Scott felt like he was on cloud fucking nine, he really did. He was married to the love of his life, and he wasn’t the only faggot in the league anymore, and he knew what Shane fucking Hollander looked like when he had four fingers up his ass, and he was going to fuck Ilya goddamn Rozanov’s face next week. What a charmed fucking life he led. What a blessed fucking existence. All those sad, desolate, empty years he’d spent rattling around run-down clubs like the last percocet in the bottle, sitting in his big empty apartment and missing someone that was never real, laying in cheap motel bathtubs drinking whiskey straight from the bottle and thinking about killing himself—it was just water under the bridge; a rough spot smoothed over a long time ago; the tough climb he had to get through before he got to the top of the fucking world. Yeah, that sounded right. Scott pressed a kiss to Kip’s cheek, and felt like a goddamn neanderthal, beating his chest on top of a tumbled-together granite throne, and he rolled the words around in his head, over and over. Thank god. Thank god we made it. Thank god we made it all the way here; you and me, and him and him; four stupid kids paired off at the top of the fucking world.