Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

OC/OC

Character:

Original Character Romance - Character

Additional Tags:

Original Characters - Freeform, Background Ilya Rozanov - Freeform, Ilya Rozanov is a Menace, Broadway References, Humor, Hook-Up Turning Into Relationship, Road Trip, The Chips Are Set To Fall #4, The Chips Are Set To Fall Cooper Lee, The Chips Are Set To Fall Follow Up To Chapter 17, Kavita Kingsley, Medical issues

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of Continuing History of Ilya’s Players Series, Part 1 of You and I

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-23 Updated: 2026-06-23 Words: 14,290 Chapters: 8/9

Interesting Men

Summary

Kowalski believed, for a brief and surreal moment, that Ilya Rozanov was coming on to him in the men’s room of the hotel bar. This was unexpected, but Kowalski owes a significant portion of his professional success to his reaction time. In the restroom in question, Kowalski called on the skills he had honed on the ice and made a move in order to capitalize on a potentially fleeting opportunity.

It didn’t work out the way he hoped.

Notes

• Inspired by The chips are set to fall by icopythefax

Chapter 1: Solo Saxophone

Some of the most earth-shattering things to happen in Stanley Kowalski’s life have happened in bathrooms adjacent to hockey events.

In 2017, at the All Star weekend in Tampa, Kowalski believed, for a brief and surreal moment, that Ilya Rozanov was coming on to him in the men’s room of the hotel bar. This was unexpected, but Kowalski owes a significant portion of his professional success to his reaction time. In the restroom in question, Kowalski called on the skills he had honed on the ice and made a move in order to capitalize on a potentially fleeting opportunity. 

It didn’t work out the way he hoped. Rozanov was not looking for company. At least, not for his company. He knows (well, now, due to subsequent events, he knows) that Ilya Rozanov is absolutely not above engaging in amorous activities in the hypothetically sanitary facilities of establishments that serve food and drink. In this case, however, Rozanov had a different project in mind.

Rozanov offered Kowalski a bet. If his team won the cup, Kowalski would come out. If Rozanov’s team won the cup, he would do the same. Rozanov said lots of guys were doing it. Even if use of the phrase “lots of guys” hadn’t blown Kowalski’s mind and suspended his judgment, it would have been an easy bet for Kowalski to take. His team is in a slump that management thinks they can buy their way out of, as if players like Hollander and Rozanov come up for the draft every year. The idiots traded Tanner Dillon to Ottawa when they could have developed him into a fantastic wing. There is close to no chance that the bet will ever force Kowalski’s hand. It felt like Rozanov was offering to make the jack of spades jump out of a brand-new deck of cards and squirt cider in Kowalski’s ear.

(Despite moving to Ottawa, Rozanov hasn’t been alarmed enough about his odds to take real avoidant steps, like playing badly.  When Rozanov moved, it was all Kowalski could do to keep from texting to ask if he was clocking Mindy’s cheesecake. There’s no way Rozanov would have understood the reference by himself, but Rozanov hangs out with Scott Hunter, who hangs out with Eric Bennett. Kowalski is pretty sure a Harvard education includes some exposure to classic Broadway. Rozanov could manage, or outsource, the Sky Masterson-themed chirps from there. Kowalski plays for a team whose logo is a flying butthole, so he’s dealt with worse things than Guys & Dolls jokes, but it would open a whole can of worms with his teammates. He’d have to explain how Rozanov came up with the idea, and why Kowalski was talking to him at all. This is the kind of strategic level Kowalski thinks at. It’s fortunate for his career that he has good reaction time, because otherwise all the mental processing dedicated to theater references would kill him on the ice.)

After Kowalski signed on to come out in unlikely circumstances, Rozanov kept in touch. Kowalski has never in his life had so much evidence that anyone is paying attention to what he says. Once, Kowalski complained about homophobia from Carolina, and then spent playoffs watching Carolina get humiliatingly demolished in ways that had Gay Army written all over them. After years of feeling completely alone, Kowalski nearly died of joy when he realized Rozanov’s “lots of guys” actually exist.

Rozanov and Hunter are committed to making a jack jump out of their deck once or twice every year. Kowalski knows they have plans about it, so he’ll wait until he wins the cup, or retires, or until they ask him, and then he’ll do his best to squirt cider in the commissioner’s ear. He owes Rozanov, and all the other gay players he doesn’t know the names of. He’s already out to his family anyway. It’s not like they’d make him own up that he’s seriously into early Marlon Brando.

The Cup Bet was also central to the second earth-shattering thing to happen to Stanley Kowalski in a bathroom in connection with a professional hockey event. Because of the bet, Kowalski was invited to an off-site party while he was in Vegas for the MLH awards. It was there that he met Cooper Lee.

Kowalski did not know Cooper Lee’s name when the man fell off a barstool on him, and he didn’t get a chance to ask. When he reviews this memory – which he does on a schedule he has chosen not to interrogate – he pastes in the name he learned later, via morally unassailable internet research into the Irina Foundation. You can’t stalk a charitable foundation. (Kowalski is also not interrogating the statistical incidence of fancy words in his stream of consciousness when he thinks about Cooper Lee. He’s not trying to come up with thoughts that would impress a lawyer. That would be ridiculous.) Cooper Lee never told Kowalski what he preferred to be called, so Kowalski has labelled him with his last name, the way he would a fellow hockey player.

Unlike everyone else at the party, Lee was not a professional hockey player. Lee was – is, the man’s not dead or retired or anything – an adult human whose livelihood does not rest on Roger Crowell. A person who makes a living not by innate talent, or physical skill, but with his brain. Making a living with his brain means that Lee has to have one, and that brain has to be of high enough quality that Lee can’t be in the habit of making truly terrible mistakes. He would never accidentally trip getting off a barstool, fall against someone’s chest, and stay there longer than strictly necessary. That sequence of events could absolutely happen, but not by accident.

Fresh off the barstool, Lee put his left hand on Kowalski’s right bicep and said “oh my.”

Kowalski tensed his thigh against the other man’s. “Would you like to get out of here?” 

“I’m afraid I can’t just leave,” Lee said, “but I bet…”

Kowalski went along, expecting that Lee would have identified a storage closet, or found his way to the unoccupied restaurant kitchen, someplace you could plausibly fit someone Kowalski’s size. Kowalski gets a little euphoric any time Rozanov passes on messages from other gay players, so he shouldn’t have been operating heavy machinery or making decisions on the same evening that he attended a party with seventeen queer players and a lawyer. This is what he tells himself to explain how he wound up making out with a very hot, very handsy lawyer in a bathroom stall.

The venue would have worked better for two horny lawyers. It seemed to work just fine for Lee. For Kowalski, it was a cramped space defined by breakable objects.  It was tough to find anywhere to put his feet. He didn’t dare lean on anything, not even Lee. Lee is about his height, but he’s not built for full-contact sports. He’s got beautiful hazel eyes behind adorable wire-rimmed glasses, and long graceful hands that, based on the grip he has on Kowalski’s waist, under his tuxedo jacket and over his dress shirt, are a lot stronger than they look. Kowalski tilted his head and kissed down the side of Lee’s neck, pulling him closer. He was yanking Lee’s shirt out of his trousers when they heard the door open.

The door slammed shut, and there was a click as someone threw the lock. Lee tried to smile at him reassuringly, converting it to a silent snort at a sound like someone being shoved against a wall. Kowalski could have kicked himself for missing the lock. He could have been braced against a wall, dammit. It sounded like whoever was out there was making out, so Kowalski and Lee, suppressing laughter, carried on with what they’d been doing. Kowalski had about reached the limits of what he could access with Lee’s tie askew and was working on loosening it when he heard “Marry me, Shane.”

Lee froze. He put two fingers on Kowalski’s lips to keep him quiet. His eyes sparkled. He wasn’t bad looking in the bar, but the look on his face right then – he was practically on fire. There were a few seconds of silence before Shane Hollander said “What the fuck?”

As Shane goddamn Hollander and Ilya goddamn Rozanov discussed whether they would or would not get married immediately, Lee silently tucked his shirt back in and straightened his tie. There was a series of gestures that Kowalski interpreted as “I have to go deal with this.” Kowalski nodded. Lee pecked him quickly on the cheek and went forth, into the rest of the men’s room.

Kowalski relatched the stall after Lee left. He needed a minute.

Kowalski has given passing thought to the question of whether Lee knows his name. Kowalski isn’t Scott Hunter or Shane Hollander - no one is seeking him out to advertise menswear. He doesn’t appear on magazine covers. He’s a professional athlete, so he’s not completely low profile. He doesn’t know whether Lee has a list of people in on the bet. He considered being bothered by that possibility, but if Lee has that list, it’s probably covered under legal confidentiality. Maybe the guy knew the names of everyone at that party. Maybe he’s a Detroit hockey fan. Maybe Lee has some unassailably moral way of his own to research guys he makes out with. Maybe he doesn’t bother. Maybe, since he actually is low profile, Lee can pick up a fresh guy at a gay bar in Toronto every night (his professional bio is on the website of a law firm in Toronto, and includes a head shot that assures Kowalski he wasn’t imagining how attractive the guy is), and he sees no need to keep track of them. Maybe he wants what happens in Vegas to stay in Vegas.

Kowalski is not interested in keeping things in Vegas. He doesn’t want to date anyone who doesn’t want to date him, but he wants Lee to want to date him, and this year, he wants to take that back with him to Detroit. Kowalski starts this process by doing the same things he did last year. He goes to the MHL awards. He goes to the reprise of the party.

Cooper Lee isn’t there.

Kowalski has obviously learned nothing since the day he let his hope be unreasonably inflated by some lyrics from Rent, and tried to kiss the best baritone in his high school. Lee is a really high-powered lawyer. He doesn’t have time to trail around after Ilya Rozanov, and if he did (which he doesn’t, because that would be ridiculous), he wouldn’t necessarily have moments to spare for a guy from Detroit who just happened to be in the same place. What, Kowalski asks himself (as he did after the incident with the lead baritone), did he think was going to happen?

Lee not being where Kowalski hoped he would be is probably the best thing that could happen – if he had shown up, Kowalski would only embarrass himself. As it is, without his main target, Kowalski makes a radical strategy change for the evening: he dives into being a complete slut. His spare hotel room key is burning a hole in his pocket. He only barely resists coming on to Shane Hollander. (Rozanov and Brophy got into a dustup at one of these things two years back. Rumor has that it was about Hollander somehow.) He discovers an inner gossip queen he didn’t know existed – when Rozanov and Hollander announce that they’re married, he whines so that he can tell the room he witnessed (okay, overheard) their engagement. It feels good for about a second. As soon as the conversation moves on, Kowalski is glad Lee wasn’t around to see it.

He wants to kick himself for thinking that. There’s no point regretting that people he barely knows didn’t come to this party.

Kowalski doesn’t make it to the official MHL afterparty. He winds up singing karaoke with a few other gay players, and then in a hotel room with one of them. He gets dressed around four in the morning, and has to do a walk of shame to the front desk to ask for a replacement keycard. On the way back to his own floor, he notices that his reflection has a hickey below the right ear.

Chapter 2: Non-Stop

Chapter Summary

Only an idiot would let Ilya Rozanov wander around the MLH awards without readily available legal representation.

Cooper Lee has problems.

The first problem is a friend: Kavita Kingsley. It’s unfair, really, for Cooper to think of her as the problem, but in his head, there is a problem that he has labelled with her name. Cooper and Kavita met at the QuILTBAG Student Association at McGill, which they were running by the end of their second year. They were the kind of friends who lived in each other’s pockets: got drunk together, lobbied the administration together, wrote for the student newspaper together, shared an apartment, and eventually went off to different grad schools individually. They kept in touch. Kavita used to give his name out to people who needed the certain kind of lawyer that Cooper is.

Cooper has been working for Ratchet, Marley & Dunwitte for ten years now, and as far as his employers are concerned, there is nothing Cooper Lee does that benefits the firm half so much as lunch with Kavita. This used to be fantastic. There was a period of professional idyll, when Cooper could put lunch with Kavita on his calendar a few times a year and have the appointment religiously respected by everyone from summer interns to the managing partners. He would return in the dwindling remains of the afternoon, and put receipts that would make mobsters blush straight into the hands of the firm’s CFO. Everyone loved it. Cooper is no longer able to do this.

There are a number of reasons Cooper is no longer able to do this. He generally tries to list them in order of causation.

The first reason (this is more firsts than Kavita would ever have let him use back when they read over each other’s papers) because, from the law firm’s perspective, it worked so very beautifully. Kavita referred them (Cooper, and therefore Ratchet, Marley & Dunwitte) Ilya Rozanov. Very few individual human beings need anywhere near so many legal services as Mr. Rozanov. The average professional athlete could benefit from the services of a contract lawyer and a tax advisor, with occasional references to a firm’s labor and entertainment practice areas. Cooper happens to know that Ilya Rozanov is near and dear to Yuna Hollander (Cooper didn’t understand this at first, but he’s learned some things that explain it). Ms. Hollander could handle Mr. Rozanov’s professional contracts with wet nails and bad cell reception. When Cooper has meetings with Ms. Hollander, Accounting makes him sign forms, and they process reimbursement in their own idea of good time. Cooper comes back feeling like the inside of his skull has been scrubbed out and his brain plopped back in to a freshly cleaned workspace where it operates more efficiently. Being able to accomplish in a quarter hour what usually takes thirty minutes is not an unmitigated blessing to anyone with a budgeted target for billable hours.

RM&D would prefer Cooper to spend more time with Kavita Kingsley and less with Yuna Hollander, but Yuna Hollander goes hand in… Cooper would prefer not to figure out a perfectly descriptive anatomical relationship, with Ilya Rozanov. Rozanov is secretly Cooper’s favorite, because he (Cooper, not Rozanov) is the kind of nerd who likes a challenge. There are less flattering and more accurate ways to say that – Cooper has called himself lots of them. Rozanov is a racketeering charge waiting to happen. He (Rozanov, not Cooper) needs a contract lawyer, a labor lawyer, an immigration lawyer, regular consults with a criminal lawyer (Cooper spends a lot of time there, fending off the incipient racketeering charge), and 40% of the annual billables of a three-person research team. The firm’s profitability analysis unquestionably supports keeping Rozanov on the client list. He justifies an infinity of lunches with Kavita.

Unfortunately, association with Rozanov has done horrible things to parts of Cooper’s body that, in the long-ago youth in which Kavita would have left bright red, irate comments all over any document in which he was as discursive as he currently is (ARE YOU DRUNK?), never crossed Cooper’s mind. That was then (CLICHÉ). Cooper is ludicrously, appallingly (REPETITIVE) aware of his stomach. The interface between his stomach and his esophagus (FRAGMENT). That whole area. (FRAGMENT)  (STOP QUOTING FIREFLY) And his gall bladder. (FRAGMENT) Periodically, a doctor says something ominous about arterial plaque, but his blood pressure doesn’t hurt, so Cooper has bigger fish to fry. Like his kidneys. (ARE YOU IMPLYING YOUR KIDNEYS ARE FISH?) (FRAGMENT) Cooper’s spice tolerance and Kavita’s tolerance for white guy spice tolerance (WHAT IS YOUR POINT PLS GET THERE FASTER) have parted ways. (CAN YOU STILL EAT THAI? ARE YOU FREE ON THURSDAY?)

Kavita gave him Rozanov, and because of Rozanov (who Cooper has no qualms about labeling as A Fucking Problem), Cooper is in Vegas. He hates Vegas. It’s an entire city full of carefully cultivated fake things. The lights are too bright. The air in the casinos smells weird, and he can’t go anywhere without going through a casino. Cooper has only had fun in Vegas once, for about five minutes. Last year, Cooper came in for the MLH awards, because only an idiot would let Rozanov wander around the MLH awards without readily available legal representation. Yuna Hollander came too, in case any friends or family members needed her to post bail. He let Rozanov talk him into attending a party for a group that is absolutely not a criminal syndicate, despite having an uncomfortable number of features in common with some well-known criminal syndicates. Cooper wound up in a stall in the men’s restroom with what he’s pretty sure was an MLH All-Star. It would be a great war story, if client confidentiality didn’t mean Cooper would never be able to tell it. There he was, disarranging a hockey player’s evening wear to their mutual gratification, when Ilya Rozanov burst in and proposed to Shane Hollander. One moment, he was wondering if he could get a hand down the front of the guy’s trousers; the next he was fixing his tie and talking about open records.

Cooper did not manage to get the guy’s name.

That was a year ago. Cooper is back in Vegas, because Rozanov is back in Vegas, and letting him wander around his professional events unsupervised hasn’t magically become a smart thing to do. Yuna Hollander is there to be conveniently located in case anyone needs her to post bail. Cooper has no shot at a second chance with his men’s room hookup, because he learned his lesson about trying to keep up with Rozanov in person last year. This year, he’s planted himself in a hotel suite. Yuna knows better than to offer to be in the room, but she met him at the airport with a curated selection of take-out menus and also set up coffee service for his suite. Someone came in with a fresh carafe every four hours. Cooper spent most of the weekend calling Toronto to ask for research on labor law and the structure of MLH’s player’s union. He can’t tell that Rozanov slept, so he didn’t either. When Yuna called to say her son-in-law had cleared local airspace, he caught a cab to the airport. A flight straight back to Toronto would be too much to hope for, but there’s space on a delayed flight to Detroit. He’s pretty sure he can catch something to Toronto from there. Worst case, a night in Detroit is better than a night in Vegas. This may not have been his best decision.

Cooper is pretty sure his men’s room hookup is sitting across from him here in the American Express lounge. He might be better-looking than Cooper remembered. Cooper might not be firing on his usual number of cylinders.

Chapter 3: Not While I'm Around

Kowalski knew he was feeding an obsession every time he looked at Lee’s firm’s website, and he knows he’s unlikely to get over that in one night. From across the lounge, even in the bleary light of his hangover, Lee looks good. Kowalski tries to make his higher intellectual faculties engage. It feels like trying to shift a manual transmission and missing with the clutch. Maybe he doesn’t look quite as good as Kowalski remembered. Certainly, he looks a lot roughter than he did in the headshot on his law firm’s website. He’s sitting alone, one arm resting on the handle of his carry-on. He’s not reading the paper or scrolling his phone, just sitting. Kowalski watches Lee watch him stroll over. It’s possible Lee’s eyes are tracking a little slowly.

“Hey, man!” Kowalski says. “I didn’t think you made it to town this year! I didn’t see you at any of the…” He realizes he should probably not give all the details of the places they didn’t run into each other.

Lee nods like he understands. “I skipped the social events this year.”

“That’s a bummer.” Kowalski hopes he doesn’t sound whiny. “Did you have time for anything fun?”

Lee smiles. It looks plastic. “It can be a pretty intense work trip.”

Kowalski attempts to smile back. It’s hard to be convincing while he’s wondering what Lee might be on. “Did you come alone?”

Lee breaks down laughing.

It takes a while for Cooper to stop wheezing. The guy - Cooper wishes he knew his name – has taken the chair next to him.

He leans over like he’s whispering an important secret. “Are you drunk?”

“Oh gosh.” That would be so much more fun. “No. No.”

The guy – the captain? Maybe? Of a hockey team in Minnesota? – clearly does not believe him. “They won’t let you on the plane if you’re drunk. When’s your flight?”

Cooper fumbles with his phone. “Two hours. Flight 855.”

Cooper can’t keep thinking of him as ‘the guy.’ He knows what the man’s nipples feel like, that’s too acquainted for a generic label. The person about whom Cooper knows nipple facts but not a proper name says “That’s my flight. Do you live in Detroit?”

“Toronto.” Cooper says. “I’ll get a connection from there.”

There is a look on No Name Nipple Facts that definitely says Team Captain. “Are you traveling with anyone?”

Cooper shakes his head. “My staff is remote for this.”

The Captain nods, his eyes narrow. “So, did you have to chase, um, clients around all weekend by yourself?”

Cooper shakes his head again. “Oh no! I have excellent staff.”

“…in Toronto?”

“Yeah.”

 “Did you get any sleep this weekend?”

Cooper does not remember the Captain being funny, but then, they didn’t talk very much. He remembers what happened last time he laughed and manages to stop himself from doing it again. “No.”

“Do you have any food allergies?”

That’s a bewildering change of subject. “What?”

The captain is reaching into his bag for something. “I’m getting you a sandwich. Is there anything you can’t eat? Are you kosher or vegetarian or anything?”

“The tuna salad is really gross here.” Cooper remembers it from previous trips.

“No tuna,” the Captain agrees. “How about a cup of coffee?”

Cooper’s stomach turns a little at the thought. “No more coffee.”

“Okay.” The Captain is holding a ziploc bag now. The gallon size. “I have two kinds of antacids. Do you want some?”

“Please.”

“Which kind?”

“What are the choices?”

“Pepcid and Tums.”

This is the best luck Cooper has ever had in Vegas. “Can I have both?”

“Yeah.” He hands over one small oval tablet and two big round ones. The Captain is such a generous guy. Or Cooper is very jetlagged. Or maybe it’s like the antacids and it’s both.

Having someone hand him antacids and bring him sandwiches is slightly embarrassing. He doesn’t know the Captain, what if he’s a total creep? Cooper reasons this is unlikely, because Rozanov is not a fan of creeps and doesn’t invite them to private events. Although it’s also possible that some creeps are strategically not creepy to Rozanov. Everything is so complicated when he’s tired. He can’t remember how he made it through law school. The Captain goes away again and comes back with a cup of herbal tea and a handful of packets of sugar.

“I have to admit something,” Cooper takes the tea and begins making a neat stack of the sugar packets. “I don’t know your name.”

“Well, now I feel special.”

Cooper winces. “Don’t be funny. Any other time. I can’t handle it right now.”

“Got you.” He smiles. “Stanley Kowalski.”

“Are you messing with me?”

“You can look it up on the team roster.”

Cooper buries his head in his hands. “Stella?”

“I’ve tried the thing with the twisted shoulder strap on an undershirt,” Stanley says. “It doesn’t work without the Brando magic.”

“Do you go by Stan, or…?”

“Kowalski, usually. You?”

“Cooper.”

“Nice to be introduced. Are you catching a connection in Detroit? This flight is pretty late.”

Cooper sips the tea, which has a tag that says “Sleepytime.” He should stay awake at least until he’s on the plane. “I didn’t book a connection yet,” he admits. “I cleared my schedule for a few days. I might have to grab a hotel overnight.”

Captain Kowalski’s eyes narrow. “I don’t love that as a plan.”

“It’s okay,” Cooper tells him. “I’ll just find a hotel near the airport. Are you always this protective?”

“It’s part of the job,” Kowalski says. “Keep the rookies from embarrassing themselves or the team.”

“I’m not a rookie,” Cooper points out.

“I can tell,” Kowalski says, “because you’re not dumping sugar in your tea. You’re a real adult, I’m sure you’d be fine. But the last commuter flight from Detroit to Toronto takes off at about six on weekends. I have a guest room, if you want.”

Cooper absolutely does not believe this guy. “A guest room?”

“Yeah. Nothing else, no pressure. Just a guest room.”

Cooper rips open one of the packets of sugar. “Okay.”

Chapter 4: The Street Where You Live

Chapter Summary

Kowalski is mentally reviewing the lessons he should have learned from the lead baritone.

Kowalski is mentally reviewing the lessons he should have learned from the lead baritone.

Don’t get your hopes up.

Don’t overfeed your imagination.

Don’t be such a doormat for cute guys.

That third thing is really killing him. It’s only been about thirty hours since the first two things took their best shot, and he is getting into his car to drive a hot lawyer to Toronto.

He watches Cooper fasten his seatbelt. “I am so, so sorry about this.”

“You said that already. It’s okay.” Kowalski checks the mirrors. The parking valets sometimes leave them adjusted weird.

“I’m sure I’d be fine on the train.” He says.

“You said that before, too,” Kowalski hits the ignition. “I don’t know what part of forgetting your seizure meds makes you think you should jump right on to public transit.”

“I haven’t even had a—” Before Cooper can say what he hasn’t even had, or apologize again, the stereo kicks on. Ann Margaret joins the conversation, explaining the relationship between the Gable boat and a sable coat.

“Stop apologizing,” Kowalski can feel himself blushing. Ann Margaret moves on to Mr. Thorne who cornered corn. “Take over the aux, would you?”

There’s a laugh in Cooper’s voice – a real one, not sleep-deprived hysteria. “I’m staying for the Harris pat.”

Cooper is twisted sideways in the passenger seat, looking at Kowalski. He’s going to regret what he’s doing to his spine tomorrow. Kowalski is trying not to imagine massaging the resulting trouble spot. “How do you know so many showtunes?” Cooper asks.

“My mom,” Kowalski says. “She’s a high school choir director.”

“Did you ever…?” Cooper asks.

Kowalski glances over. “Did I ever what?”

“You ever perform in any of these musicals?”

Kowalski groans. “She made me do Nicely Nicely when I was fourteen.”

“Rocking the Boat?”

“My voice cracked all over it.”

Kowalski is watching the road, so Cooper doesn’t hide his glee. “So you got into hockey…”

“Self-defense. Are we going to talk about the American Songbook this whole drive?”

Cooper shrugs. “I get into privileged material pretty fast when I talk about hockey.”

Kowalski nods. “What kind of music do you usually listen to?”

“Um,” Cooper always struggles with this question. This question is where romance goes to die. “I grew up in a seriously musical family, so…”

Kowalski seems to understand. “So, not so much?”

“I have three sisters.”

Kowalski whistles. “What did they play?”

“One violin, and the other two were basically in a pitched battle over the piano at all times.”

“Over or on?”

“Both. You?”

“Did I survive the Piano Wars?” Kowalski asks.

Cooper squirms into his seat a little. The lumbar support is doing nothing for his hip. “You sound like you have.”

“Not personally. I have cousins, and my mom talked about her childhood trauma.”

 “Where were noise-canceling headphones when we needed them,” Cooper says.

Kowalski is watching the road, so Cooper can only see his facial expressions in profile. “So it’s either my aux, or we talk the whole trip?”

“Favorite breakfast cereal?” Cooper asks.

“Okay.” Kowalski says. “My turn. Desert island movie.”

Cooper has settled back into using the lumbar support the way God and the seat designer intended. He takes a sip of his coffee. “I need to understand more about this scenario.”

Kowalski rolls his eyes. “You’re stranded on a desert island. You have one movie.”

“A desert island with a DVD player? And electrical power?”

“Oh my god!” Kowalski takes his own coffee from the cupholder and takes a careful sip. “Okay, just all-time favorite movie.”

“No, I’m still trying to figure out how this happened. Chip?” He tilts the open bag in Kowalski’s direction. “Am I alone on this island? How did I get here? Is this a desert island with the remains of an extremely recent civilization?”

“One movie!” Kowalski cuts him off and takes a chip. “If you could pick one movie to watch and rewatch, and also pass on to future generations of the new culture you will clone from yourself as soon as you get the abandoned fertility clinic up and running!”

“So this is a post-apocalyptic scenario? Was this a pandemic apocalypse or a peak oil apocalypse? Food shortages? Zombies?”

“Plane crash. You were on a plane full of DVDs and you could only save one from the wreckage.”

“Why was I on a plane full of DVDs? What happened to the pilot? Did he make it?”

“Whoa, sexist!” Kowalski exclaims. “You assume the pilot was a man?”

“If I’m on a desert island with only one person,” Cooper says, “I sincerely hope it is a gay man. He made it, right?”

“Sure,” Kowalski allows. “That’s why you could only save one DVD. Because you were busy rescuing the pilot.”

“I mean, probably it’s whatever DVD was closest after I grabbed the DVD player.” He thinks about it. “Honestly, this scenario doesn’t sound like me at all. Can I be the one who got rescued?”

“Oh my god. Are lawyers always like this? Yeah, you can make the scenario anything you want. You were saved from the flaming wreckage by the extremely handsome and thoughtful pilot, who then went back for the DVD player, solar recharging batteries, and one movie. What movie do you ask for?”

“I’m so relieved we have alternatives to my genes for our cultural future.” Cooper eats another chip. “The Wild.”

Kowalski snorts. “That says nothing about you. You’re picking that for survival tips.”

“Excuse you!” Cooper pretends to be offended. “It says I understand that the pilot and I need survival tips, and it's going to be too intense for us to watch Deliverance.”

“Okay, fine. Your turn.”

Cooper smiles into the chip bag. “Where’d you get the hickey?”

“Vegas.”

“Come on, you know what I meant!”

“Eighth floor.” Kowalski says. “A room overlooking the Strip. You said you didn’t want to talk about hockey.”

“Fine,” Cooper says. “Your turn.”

“When did you realize you were gay?” Kowalski asks.

As a former head of the McGill QuILTBAG Student Association, Cooper recognizes a question that the interlocuter wishes to be asked. He wouldn’t mind asking, he decides. But only if he has to. “How does anyone figure out that they’re straight?”

Kowalski doesn’t squirm. “Right?! Why doesn’t every little straight kid have a story about watching Dirty Dancing and realizing they wanted to be those people?”

Cooper is out of potato chips, and the coffee is stone cold. He has nothing to hide behind. “Who did you want to be in Dirty Dancing?”

“Not a bunch of great choices for gay kids in there.” Kowalski taps the steering wheel. “I kind of had this fantasy about beating up Robbie the waiter.”

“Oh, I want to hear more about that!”

“For moral reasons.” Kowalski says.

“Oh, for moral reasons.” Cooper agrees. “Of course. Would he have been very repentant?”

“Probably not. He read The Fountainhead. And had notes in the margins.”

“Hmm. Totally unfuckable,” Cooper looks out the window.

“Wait. Did you have a copy of The Fountainhead with notes in the margins?”

“Kowalski!” Cooper exclaims. “What kind of guy do you think I am?”

“That’s not a ‘no.’” Kowalski points out.

“I had to read it for a class!”

Kowalski glowers, partly in his direction, partly at suburban traffic. “The notes?”

“They were highly critical of the text.” Cooper puts a hand on his heart. “I am not Robbie the waiter.”

“You shouldn’t drive straight back,” Cooper says. “Get a good night’s sleep first.”

Kowalski leans on his car. “I don’t want to impose.”

Cooper glares at him. “You drove me here.”

“Yeah, but like, it was a medication thing. You don’t owe me anything.”

Cooper nods. “Damn right I don’t.”

“Because I put myself here.”

“Interfering.” Cooper agrees.

“It’d be good to stretch my legs a little.”

Cooper moves a little closer. “I have a guest room. No pressure or anything.”

“Oh, no, I would never assume…”

“You’re welcome to it. Although I might enjoy not using the guest room. But only if you were into that.”

There is no way, Cooper thinks, that Kowalski would kiss him on the street, but there’s a look on his face that says he wants to.

“I would really like,” Kowalski says, “to at least come up and see the view.”

Chapter 5: Let's Have All The News

Chapter Summary

Cooper lifts his head off the pillow – an activity Kowalski wants to put an immediate stop to for orthopedic reasons. “I have to go to work tomorrow,” he says. Then he lets his head fall again.

Chapter Notes

Kowalski has Cooper lying in his lap, his legs stretched out, making occasional moaning noises while Kowalski rubs his shoulders. Cooper’s shoulders are so tense that it’s a surprise they haven’t warped his clavicle. Maybe they have. Kowalski’s not going to make much progress on them, probably couldn’t even if he was seriously trying. A truly effective approach would involve unpleasant amounts of pummeling by someone familiar with the relevant shoulder pathology.

Addressing the muscle knots is secondary to Kowalski’s goals, anyway. He nuzzles Cooper’s ear. “You really should get someone better than me to work on these.”

Cooper doesn’t open his eyes. “There is no one better than you.”

“True about many things,” Kowalski agrees, even though he’s wary of people who’ve known him 1.5 days (plus five minutes in a bathroom stall twelve months ago) making declarations like that. “But there are people who have studied shoulder anatomy who could probably figure out what you’ve got going on here.”

“Hmmm. Seems unlikely.” Cooper flexes one shoulder against Kowalski’s hands. Kowalski can tell he’s loving this.

“Completely true,” he says. “They go into physical therapy and then they reach a point in their training when they can specialize.”

Cooper opens one eye to look at him suspiciously. “In shoulders?”

If Cooper wasn’t seriously into this, he’d be arguing about the potential unlikely things Kowalski ignored. “Shoulders, hips, knees…” Kowalski says. “Whole bunch of parts.”

Cooper shuts his eyes again. “Not sure I could handle that. What you’re doing seems very personal.”

Kowalski crawls his fingers over Cooper’s collarbone. “I could get much more personal.”

Cooper twists around in his lap, kneeling across his legs. Kowalski gives up on his shoulders.

The only thing more nightmarish than Cooper’s shoulders is Cooper’s lower back. Kowalski does not have the TENS unit he’d need to change that, but he’s holding Cooper down by pressing his thumbs into the area, kissing his way up his spine. Cooper makes such satisfying noises, and Kowalski gets to do this so rarely. He’s so used to not touching people that he’s stopped noticing how much he wants to, but given the chance to touch Cooper, and let Cooper touch him (which is sort of the same thing), he never wants to stop.

Cooper lifts his head off the pillow – an activity Kowalski wants to put an immediate stop to for orthopedic reasons. “I have to go to work tomorrow,” he says. Then he lets his head fall again.

 “Bound to happen eventually.” This is only a brief interruption in Kowalski’s upward progress, which doesn’t mean it’s failed to start wheels turning in Kowalski’s head. He’s compartmentalizing. Focusing on the moment. Ignoring some very large questions that they haven’t had enough spoken conversations for. Yet.

It’s thoroughly afterwards when they manage to talk. They’ve agreed that they don’t want to go out, because the humidity they can experience on Cooper’s tiny balcony is stultifying. Anyway, going out would involve behaving like civilized people, and neither of them is really up for that. Cooper fucks like someone who doesn’t get to do it very often. This is also Kowalski’s situation. They’re both making the most of the chance they have.

Kowalski went to Vegas thinking he wanted a date with this man. They’ve done a lot of things in two days, but not that. (Driving four hours to get a guy home to his anti-seizure meds is not a date, even given how the trip turned out.) Kowalski would still like a date. He has no idea what Cooper wants. Maybe he just wants to fuck. Maybe he’ll go to his office tomorrow and never think about Kowalski again. Maybe Kowalski should force a conversation, or maybe he should make the most of tonight, drive back to Detroit with some amazing memories, and let Cooper decide whether to ever text him.

Kowalski tosses this around mentally while he and Cooper scrounge through the fridge and the pantry, coming up with ingredients for omelets. He chops vegetables and washes some of the dishes they’ve been letting pile up in the sink. He’ll get the rest of them while Cooper’s at work tomorrow, either while he’s hanging around or before he starts the drive home. Whichever.

As awful as it feels to bring up the subject, they’re fast approaching a point at which it will be awkward to not have asked. Once they’re sitting at Cooper’s kitchen counter with cooked eggs (they’re both very bad at folding omelets) in front of them, Kowalski figures he has no choice but to attack the question.

“How do you want to handle it?” He asks. And then, because that doesn’t really sound clear, “Tomorrow.”

Cooper makes a noise that could be transcribed as “blech.”  He runs a hand through his hair.

“I don’t know what your work schedule is like,” Kowalski says. “I could stick around, or I could head back to Detroit…”

Cooper puts his fork down. “It’s not what I want,” he says. “My work schedule is evil. I have to be at a deposition at eight tomorrow, and I’m supposed to be going on an outing with summer associates tomorrow night.”

“I get it,” Kowalski tells him. “My schedule is awful during the season, and I guess there isn’t an off season for you.”

Cooper scratches nervously at his chest. “This is such a weird situation. I don’t want to mess up a good fling, and my job is really, really demanding, and maybe a fling is all you want, right? I don’t know.”

Kowalski puts his fork down, and talks carefully. “I would like more than a fling,” he says. “But we really don’t know each other all that well? We maybe skipped some preliminaries.”

Cooper shakes his head. “I’ve wasted enough time having drinks and going to museums with people I stopped wanting to hang out with because they sucked in bed.”

Kowalski raises his eyebrows. Cooper scratches his chest again. “You know what I mean.”

“I’m not really a museum guy,” he says. “But I’d like to see a show or something with you sometime.”

“You’re a theater gay.” Cooper says. It’s not a question.

“Only to watch,” Kowalski says. “Still recovering from Nicely Nicely.”

Cooper slides off his barstool. Kowalski turns on his so Cooper can stand between his knees. “You should go home tomorrow,” Cooper says, but he’s wrapping his arms around Kowalski while he says it. “You should text me when you get there.”

“Should I call sometimes?” Kowalski asks.

Cooper nods. “And you should let me know when you’re in Toronto. I travel a lot, but I want to try to be here when you are.”

Kowalski hugs him back. “I travel too,” he says.

Cooper is talking straight into his neck. “I spend a lot of time in New York.”

“We play there pretty often.” Kowalski’s neck is getting wet where Cooper is pressing his face into it. “It’s okay, handsome,” he says. “Lots of things to try.”

Cooper does a thing where he kind of sniffs and laughs at the same time. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m a mess.”

Kowalski puts two fingers under Cooper’s chin, because he read it in a book once and he’s always wanted to try it out. “You do alright.” The fingers under the chin thing tilts Cooper’s mouth towards his and makes Cooper look immensely kissable.

Cooper pulls back from the kiss reluctantly. “I. Um. It’s been amazing. You’re amazing. But I don’t think I can have more sex right now. Can we put on shirts, and go eat something besides overcooked eggs?”

Kowalski wakes up to the sound of someone puking. It takes him a moment to remember where he is and who he’s with. Toronto. Cooper. Why is Cooper puking? They had one glass of wine with dinner. He was fine. Food poisoning maybe? Stomach virus? If it’s either of those, Kowalski will probably come down with it any minute. Fuck. He gets out of bed and nearly walks into the wall before he turns the right way around to get to the bathroom.

Cooper is on his knees, exactly where Kowalski expected him to be, wiping vomit off his mouth with the t-shirt he wore to sleep. There are reddened scratch marks across his chest that Kowalski didn’t put there. Did one of them bring bedbugs home from a hotel? Kowalski kneels to hold Cooper’s hair back. “You okay?”

Cooper shakes his head. Kowalski feels ridiculous. Obviously, he’s not okay. Maybe it’s the light, or maybe his eyeballs are yellow. “Chest pain,” he croaks. His eyeballs are definitely yellow.

If Cooper isn’t talking in full sentences, Kowalski isn’t either. “Hospital.”

“Grab my phone,” Cooper says.

“I’ll grab you pants. If I find your phone, I’ll grab your phone.” Cooper just nods.

Kowalski finds sweats and phones for both of them, and a paper grocery bag in case Cooper barfs again. He reviews the last few days as he goes. Cooper seemed fine. He wasn’t drinking, he wasn’t using anything. Was he using anything? Are there any drugs that take down the liver really fast? What did he miss? Kowalski jams his feet into shoes, grabs his backpack, and herds Cooper to the elevator.

Cooper is quiet but coherent on the way to the hospital, clutching his paper bag. Kowalski catches him scratching his chest when he looks over, so he takes his hand. “You’ll draw blood.”

Cooper grimaces and picks up his phone. “I’m texting my mom. Answer the phone when she calls.”

“You’ll answer the phone when she calls.”

“If I can’t.”

Kowalski wishes he had any idea what was happening. “Okay.”

They’re in a room at the hospital. It has a bed, and a chair that was maliciously designed to torture him. Kowalski thinks he might be taking the chair a little too personally. Probably it wasn’t designed to torture anyone who sat in it. He has time to think about this because Cooper is asleep, hooked up to three different monitors and a dilaudid drip. The nurse who brought them pre-warmed blankets told them a doctor would be in soon nearly an hour ago. If Cooper was going to die, Kowalski reasons, the numbers on the monitors would be getting a lot more medical attention than they are. Either that or there is no one outside the tiny patient room, and Cooper will die without attracting any attention at all.

There’s a knock on the door, the curtain rustles aside. “There’s someone to see him,” the nurse says. “A Ms Kingsley?”

Kowalski shakes Cooper’s shoulder. “Do you know a Ms Kingsley?” He asks.

Cooper looks relieved. “Yeah.” He nods at the nurse. “She can come in.”

It turns out Kowalski has seen Ms Kingsley before, usually on the other end of a microphone, which she doesn’t have now. Kowalski tries to remember who she writes for. She’s talking to a cell phone.

“One minute, Raj Uncle. In English, please. No. No, I tell you, the heart rate, it is 104, the temperature is 99. Blood oxygen is… Yes, Uncle. I will wait.” She turns the phone against her shoulder. “Your mother called me.” She hisses at Cooper. “She said you were having a heart attack, so I thought probably a cold, but then your sister called to ask if my Uncle Raj knows any surgeons who can handle live liver donation. She threatened to hack my Spotify.” She rolls her eyes and puts the phone back to her ear. “Have they done an ultrasound?” Cooper shakes his head. “Not yet, Uncle. Yes, he is very orange.” She gestures at her own chest as if scratching it. Cooper nods. “And the itching, yes. Alright. Mrs. Lee is very worried – you will call her? Thank you, Uncle. Laparoscopic, yes. I will ask them to page Dr. Patel. Okay. Okay Uncle. No, I will be only in Montreal this time. It is -  I do not think they want me to write about the cricket. Yes, it is too bad, Uncle. I will tell them. I think maybe the doctor is coming, Uncle, I must go. Okay. Love to Auntie.” She hangs up and tosses the phone on the bed, where it hits Cooper’s legs and bounces off. “Goddamn.” She rubs her temples. “Raj thinks you’re medically uninteresting,” she announces. “He says probably gall stones. Very dull.”

“Love a bored surgeon,” says Cooper.

Ms Kingsley sits on the wheeled stool Kowalski has always thought was reserved for doctors, and scoots it up to the edge of the bed. “Bored surgeons are awesome.” She agrees. “Hey, weird question, but why is the captain of Detroit’s MLH team in here?”

“He, ah, he drove me.” Kowalski is not sure how he would prefer to be described at this point in his nascent relationship with Cooper, but the driver is definitely not it. “Kavita,” Cooper says, “this is Kowalski. Kowalski, Kavita.”

“We’ve met.” Kavita doesn’t look away from Cooper. “I’m not working right now, by the way. Like, at all. I might forget everything that happens in here as soon as I leave the room. Is he why I didn’t see you in Vegas?”

“I wish,” Cooper says, “but no.”
“Bummer.”

“Picked him up on the way home.” Cooper and Kavita bump fists. Kowalski feels a little better about the driver thing.

“Good taste,” Kavita congratulates him. “You got the best ER ride in professional hockey.”

Cooper looks totally confused. Kowalski sighs, knowing what’s next.

“He had teammates with appendicitis at training camp three years in a row.” This is old tea, but Kavita spills enthusiastically. “For a minute there, I thought Kowalski’s Appendicitis was going to be a more durable tradition than coming out after the Cup.”

“They were not my appendicitis.” Kowalski protests. “The last one wasn’t even my team, they just shoved me in the truck because I’d done it before. I was a bystander.”

Cooper looks him over. “You are really shitty at being a bystander.”

“Do you understand the word?” Kavita chirps. “Bystanders. They don’t get involved. They stand.”

“How are you feeling?” Kowalski asks. “Should I get the nurse back in here? Do you need more pain meds?”

“He’s more of a dorm parent,” Kavita says.

“I’ve seen the inside of his backpack,” Cooper says. “I’m thinking scout leader.”

Kowalski tries to change the subject. “Can your sister really hack Spotify?”

Cooper says “define ‘hack’,” while Kavita says “no.”

“She worked out his password,” Kavita explains. “No hacking involved. Cooper uses a password manager now.”

It’s late when they get to the surgical waiting area, and the room is empty. They weren’t sure Cooper would even be able to have surgery today, but Kavita’s Uncle Raj appears to be able to make a surgical team materialize on demand. Kavita goes off on some loop of her own and comes back with two cups of coffee. She hands one to Kowalski.

“This is good,” he says after the first sip. He tried the hospital coffee about twelve hours ago. It did not taste like this.

“I get the drip things they make for hikers.”

“Good tip,” Kowalski says. “Thank you.”

“I don’t really get to unpack between awards and the draft,” she says. “Do you think they’re trying to poison the draft class with bad coffee?”

“Every draft class?” Kowalski doesn’t attempt sideye. It never works for him,

Kavita nods. “They’re very bad at it.”

“It would explain the training camp appendicitis.”

“It’s ‘training camp’ appendicitis now?” She asks.

“I’m not helping you make Kowalski’s Appendicitis happen.”

She laughs. “I don’t need help for that. Next time I need filler, I’ll toss it into a piece on weird hockey slang.”

“You do the funny pieces too?” He shakes his head. “You’re not dangerous enough on serious subjects?”

“I got into this on funny pieces.” She says. “I did a thing for the Wall Street Journal where I threw Stanley Cup facts into a slide show of kitten pictures.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Swear to god,” she says. “And then I got laid off from the WSJ, and the clip got me hired at Reputable Sports.”

Kowalski could set Kavita up on a date with any straight, single hockey player he knows with that fact. “That’s amazing.”

“My mother’s not over it,” she says, “but I don’t have to interview tech billionaires.”

“Unless they buy sports teams.”

“Hasn’t happened yet.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes.

“You think he’ll be alright?” Kowalski asks.

“Oh yeah.” Kavita sounds very certain. “They take gall bladders out almost as much as appendixes. He’ll be fine. Hell of a trip, though.”

“Hmmm.” Kowalski drinks his coffee. “You’ve known each other a long time.”

She nods. “Since college.”

“So, yesterday.”

“Sure,” she agrees. “But not the same as your yesterday.”

“Is this the part where you tell me you’ll do horrible things to me if I hurt your friend?” He asks.

“No. I don’t do that.” She looks up at him. It’s hard to tell from the opposite side of a microphone, but she’s pretty short. “You and Cooper will do your thing, whatever that is, and one of you will let me know if there’s anything you want me to know.”

“I thought you were friends,” Kowalski says.

“Cooper’s my best friend, but professionally we have to take very different approaches to sharing information,” she explains. “Even if I was inclined to pin you down and make you tell me everything, in your specific case, I wouldn’t.”

“Because you’d have to out me.” He says.

“No! I’m not outing anyone. I mean, if you wanted me to, that would be different, but it looks like the league has a consigliere for that. Unofficially.”

Kowalski started this, but he’s very uncomfortable with the conversation. He slumps in his chair, which is related to the torture device from the ER. “Sorry,” he says.

She pats his hand. “It’s okay. It’s been a long day and you’re still here.”

“He’s a good guy,” Kowalski says. “He should have people here.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. You’ve known him, what, three days?”

“You can learn a lot in three days!” Kowalski protests. “He…”

She cuts him off. “When I said I wasn’t going to make you tell me everything, I didn’t mean you should volunteer!”

“If you want to know…” Kowalski offers.

“I do not want to know! It’s been three days! You’ve probably been…” she sputters, “…canoodling this whole time! It’s gross! And boring!”

Kowalski holds up a hand in surrender. “Okay. If there’s anything you need to know, one of us will tell you.”

“I only need to know things if you want me to do something about them.”

“Noted.”

They sit for another few minutes.

“What do you think of this draft class?” She asks the question like they haven’t just had a very weird argument. “I was supposed to be reviewing their stats today, but stuff happened.”

Chapter End Notes

I have been stacking up medical issues for Cooper. So far, I have given him a genetic seizure disorder (well controlled by medication) and gall bladder disease. I would say I'm sorry, but instead, I will say that I promise the guys a HEA, and I will try very very hard to come up with a different way to yank them around next time.

The WSJ Kitten/Stanley Cup slideshow actually exists, and was published on wsj.com in 2013 or 2014. I do not know who put it together. If anyone knows, please let me know - that person deserves credit, even though I have stolen their masterpiece and given it to Kavita.

Thanks again to icopythefax for letting me put these characters in a cardboard box and shake them.

Chapter 6: Daisies in May

Chapter Summary

Cooper considers that he maybe – maybe! - finds Kowalski not fussing just a teeny bit unsatisfying.

Chapter Notes

Cooper is a little bit glad that Kavita is gone. Maybe more than a little bit. Having her and Kowalski both fuss over him was too much. They only left him alone when Kowalski drove Kavita to the airport. The fussing has been much more bearable from only Kowalski. In fact, aside from bringing him extra pillows, bringing him water, putting the pain meds on the end table next to the water, ordering groceries delivered, asking Cooper if he wants a snack, shoving the footstool to a place where Cooper can put his feet up if he wants, moving the footstool so Cooper can get off the couch without climbing over it, gently rubbing his shoulders every time he walks past, and what looks like half a chain bookstore’s Beach Reads! display laid out on the coffee table, Kowalski isn’t fussing.

(Most of the other half of the Beach Reads! display is on Cooper’s nightstand, but two books have been placed on the back of the toilet. Kowalski no doubt understands why they are there. If Cooper was feeling more coherent, he’d have asked about them by now.)

Cooper considers that he maybe – maybe! - finds Kowalski not fussing just a teeny bit unsatisfying. A slightly larger than tiny bit. A little. There he is, reading quietly on the other end of the couch, wearing a shirt that covers a very aesthetically appreciable set of chest muscles. Cooper kept feeling moved to touch those chest muscles before his gall bladder called it quits, and facts in evidence support the conclusion that Kowalski was moved to encourage him, and also, mysteriously, moved to spend significant time touching Cooper’s completely unimpressive torso. Many things about Kowalski do not make sense to Cooper, but some, like the books in the bathroom, seem more rewarding to investigate than others, like the fact that a man who could pose for heroic sculpture is at all interested in sex with Cooper.

Under other circumstances, Cooper would be starting to recover from their pre-crisis activities and think about interesting things to do to and with Kowalski, but he’s a little put off by how often he’s been falling asleep. Also, the surgeon was emphatic about him not being cleared for strenuous activities like fucking.

“I really think I could go back to work tomorrow.” Cooper says it just to see what happens.

Kowalski looks up from his Beach Read. “Medical leave is legally protected,” he says. “Falling apart on client shit because you should have still been on medical leave isn’t.”

Cooper knows he shouldn’t argue. Besides, Ilya Rozanov is on vacation. “Did Kavita tell you to say that?”

“For the entire trip to the airport.” Kowalski puts his book down, moves to the footstool and starts rubbing one of Cooper’s feet.

“Did she give you her version of the shovel talk?” Cooper asks.

“The one where she tells me sex is gross and she’ll disembowel anyone who tries to tell her anything about it?”

 “Kavita would never threaten to disembowel anyone.” Cooper informs him. “She hates the word ‘bowel’. She prefers ‘eviscerate’.”

Kowalski has found a spot in Cooper’s arch that Cooper didn’t realize he wanted someone to touch. “I got that talk while you were in surgery. Are you hungry?”

This is much better than Kowalski not fussing. “A little. But I like what you’re doing to my foot.”

Kowalski gently pulls his little toe. “I can keep doing it.”

“Are you okay?” Cooper asks. “With Kavita. Some people think she’s a lot.”

“Kavita’s awesome,” Kowalski looks him dead in the eye when he says this. “It’s great that there’s a lot of her.”

“I’m hearing there were many threats.”

Kowalski closes his eyes. “So many. Not about you, though. Just if I made her hear things about bodies. Then she told me she’d try and find out which draftees still have all their vestigial organs while she’s in Montreal.”

Cooper smirks. “She does that cause she likes you.”

Kowalski leans over to kiss him. “What do you want to eat?”

Cooper holds on to Kowalski’s head, since it’s in reach. “Not soup,” The last few days have had too much soup. “Or eggs.”

“We know we’re bad at those,” Kowalski agrees. “Stir fry?”

Cooper considers the possibility of stir fry. “Is that going to mean you stop rubbing my feet for a long time?”

“No.” Cooper worries that Kowalski is treating the question with inadequate seriousness. He can picture Kowalski cooking terrible food while ruining what has, so far, been an excellent foot rub. Kowalski goes on, though. “I made it while you were napping yesterday. Two minutes to microwave.”

“Stir fry sounds good.”

They are in bed together. Cooper is clutching a pillow to prevent anything untoward from happening to his belly. “Do you think we’re moving too fast?”

Kowalski reaches out to pet his arm. “Do you think we’re moving too fast? I can slow down.”

“No,” Cooper assures him. “I’ve just never made a long-term relationship work, so I don’t know. Maybe I’m doing it wrong.”

Kowalski takes Cooper in his arms. Belly be damned, apparently. Cooper wiggles his hips in appreciation. “There’s a lot of whirlwind romance in professional sports,” Kowalski says. “We listened to some guys get engaged in a bathroom, I don’t think there’s one right way.”

“I worry,” Cooper picks at the sheets. “This was a fun whim, and then I had a medical emergency.”

“If I tell you how long I considered the whim, will that worry you more?”

“Probably.”

“I won’t tell you, then.”

Cooper reconsiders. “I would worry, but I’d also be flattered.”

“It was a flattering amount of time,” Kowalski says. “However much consideration is flattering without worrying you, it was the exact percentage away from that much that you would find comfortingly imprecise.”

“How much do you think that is?”

Kowalski refuses the bait.  “Go to sleep, handsome.”

The sheets in the vicinity of Kowalski’s crotch might be moving a little. “This started out sexy, and now it’s very not sexy,” Cooper says. “Could be uncomfortable.”

Kowalski shrugs. “I can jerk off in your shower like a gentleman.”

Cooper inches closer, throwing one leg over Kowalski’s. Definite sheet movement. Kowalski says, “you’re doing that on purpose.”

“I like being flattered.”

“Do you want me back here after I shower, or should I take my damp hair to the guest room?”

Cooper smiles. “Here.

“Anything I should bring with me when I come back?”

“I’m good. Take your time. I want imaginary Cooper to have fun.”

“Have you had long-term relationships?” Kowalski asks. He’s cooking while Cooper watches from the other side of the kitchen island.

This isn’t Cooper’s favorite bit of history, but he did bring it up. Two days ago. He’s impressed by Kowalski’s self-control. If their positions were reversed, and Kowalski was the one walking around stoned enough on pain meds to not be confused by the plot holes in his beach reading, Cooper would have begun the interrogation immediately.

“Only one, really.”

Kowalski looks up from the peppers he’s chopping. “What happened?”

“He got a job in Chicago.” Cooper says. “I was going to go too, got admitted to the bar in Illinois, started job hunting, but then he dumped me.”

“Shit. That sucks.”

Cooper steals a slice of bell pepper. “Five grand on exam prep for nothing.”

Kowalski tries to hide a smile. He’s not good at it. “The monster.”

“You don’t have to cook, you know,” Cooper says. “I can feed myself.”

Kowalski shoots him a fake glower, which he is also not good at. “I saw your fridge when I got here.”

“Maybe I cleaned it because I was going out of town.”

“It wasn’t clean. It was just empty.”

“I was in a hurry.”

“Your ketchup was expired.”

Kowalski doesn’t lack curiosity, then, he’s just more investigative than interrogative. “So, you’re making me a batch of chili that will also expire.”

“I’m freezing most of it. Those are single serving containers.” He gestures to the stack of plastic he ordered on instacart.

“Would you ever think about moving for someone?” Cooper asks. “Hypothetically.”

Kowalski scrapes ingredients off the counter into the slow cooker. “Hypothetically,” he agrees. “Trades happen. And my contract is up after this season.”

“Would you consider Toronto? It is another country.”

“Eh. The league has handled visas before. The city is great. I think I’d be pretty miserable on the team though.”

Cooper thinks of some of the things he’s learned working with Hunter and Rozanov. “Does the league know you’re…?”

“Maybe.” Kowalski shrugs. “I haven’t said anything to management, but it can’t be that hard to figure out. Rozanov did it.”

“How did Rozanov clock you?”

 “You’ll laugh,” Kowalski says. “He came onto me in a bathroom.”

While he is laughing, Cooper makes a mental note to talk to Rozanov about bathrooms. Not in relation to Kowalski. Just sort of in general.

Chapter End Notes

This chapter is completely self-indulgent. The merest soupçon of plot arrives in the next one, which is the last one I have planned for now. Much of Cooper and Kowalski's story rests on the conclusion of events they can't talk to each other about right now. In the meantime, I know where they're going, but not how they get there.

Chapter 7: A Wave Upon The Sand

Chapter Summary

Kowalski misses the smell of Cooper’s armpits.

Chapter Notes

Kowalski misses the smell of Cooper’s armpits. Kowalski is not usually a fan of either sweat or antiperspirants, so it’s definitely a Cooper thing. The smell reminds Kowalski of salt, even though he’s never particularly noticed salt having a smell. Cooper almost makes deodorant labels make sense. Kowalski imagines that he smells like something labeled “Shelter”, or “Canyon,” something that could be a paint color or a countertop. (This does not do justice to Cooper’s personality – if the smell was named for Cooper’s personality, it would be called “Debate,” or “Instigation,” which could also be paint colors, but probably not countertops.)

Dating Cooper requires a lot of logistics. It’s been six months of Cooper finding excuses to be in cities when Kowalski happens to be in them, and Kowalski spending every spare minute he can arrange in Toronto, or wherever Cooper is. Kowalski’s carry-on situation has gotten leaner and more personal. He can get by for at least three days out of that one bag, and the rookies on his team have to buy their own condoms now.

Cooper and Kowalski text so much that Kowalski is doing PT for the tendons in his thumbs. They have lopsided conversations, depending on which of them is on a plane and which of them has fucked up their thumb tendons too horribly.

Before last summer, Kowalski was open-minded about where he ended up once his contract ended. Not Detroit, where management will never sit still long enough to let a team develop. Not Buffalo, their key trading partner. Not Toronto, because Dallas Kent is stinking up that joint. Before last summer, he thought he could be okay anywhere except those three places. Now? Oh, now it is a whole different picture. Detroit is bad. Buffalo is closer to Toronto as the crow flies, but the land-based commute available to Kowalski is worse than the one from Detroit. Toronto is the only genuinely acceptable option. He’s been working with his agent on getting them to want him, despite the concern that even with Kent gone, and Barrett traded to Ottawa, they might still all be assholes. Toronto, so far, hasn’t made him feel any better about that. They’re making vague noises about character, and how after all the scandal the team has been through, they want someone family friendly, but his chief competition seems to be Cliff Marleau. It’s a testament to his feelings for Cooper that he hasn’t told them to suck his dick. He hasn’t said anything to Cooper about it yet. It’s a long shot, at best, and he doesn’t know if he could really do it.

Sometimes, dating Cooper hurts. Mostly, it’s metaphorical pain. (Sometimes it’s very literal. Cooper is not the most coordinated guy.) Kowalski used to think that metaphorical pain was imaginary, but this pain is not. Missing Cooper is an ache in his jaw, a twinge in his chest, sore hands. Kowalski kind of likes it. There is a certain satisfaction in poking at the metaphorical tooth socket of having someone who he notices isn’t around.

Right now, the pain of dating Cooper is not an accidental slam of skull against skull, or the tenderness of maybe, possibly being in love, it is just irritation.

They made plans for Miami, and then a recording suggested that the MLH commissioner might be implicated in some plane trouble. (Kowalski thinks that’s unlikely, because everything seems to have happened too fast - how quickly can you get a mechanic on the ground to fuck with a chartered plane? Kowalski would guess that Rozanov could do it pretty quickly, but he doesn’t think Crowell is quite that impressive.) Cooper and Kowalski have identified some conversational boundaries that are necessary in order to avoid accidental revelations of confidential information, but it was not a surprise when, after that news item broke, Cooper had to cancel. Dallas Kent getting arrested is probably not related, but probably not reducing Cooper’s workload. They are still both in Miami, but for all the time they’ll be able to spend together, Kowalski might as well have stayed in Detroit. He would have done exactly that, but he’s contractually obligated. Kowalski walks off his flight with his phone in one hand, texting his boyfriend that he landed. (“Just hit the humidity. Miss you.”)  Kavita Kingsley is waiting for him.

“How did you get here?” He asks her.

“I just got in from Vancouver.” She waves a hand. “Two gates down. Cooper told me your flight number.”

“Well, hey.” He considers giving her a hug, but he doesn’t think Kavita hugs. “Nice to see you.”

Kavita grabs her suitcase and walks along beside him. “I wanted to tell you it wasn’t me.”

Kowalski looks down at her. He considers her statement, trying to work out how to respond. Then he gives up. “What?”

“I didn’t write it.” This would probably make sense if Kowalski had any idea what she was talking about. “The new kid on staff pitched a piece on off-beat statistics, and the good news is probably no one noticed because it’s been a big week…”

“Kavita,” Kowalski stops her. “Are you telling me someone else made the appendicitis a thing?”

She shrugs one shoulder and then the other and makes a face indicating doubt. “Probably not, because the timing sucked. But it’s out there.”

Kowalski takes the handle of her suitcase. “My agent called me about it yesterday.” He admits. “She likes the marketing potential.”

Kavita still has a hand on her suitcase, so they’re standing still in the middle of the concourse. “If this is a good time for your agent to go public about your failures in bystanding, I take back the apology.” She releases her suitcase, and they walk on.

“What apology?” Kowalski asks.

“I didn’t screw up your marketing!” She crows. “You should take me out to dinner.”

“I should?”

“Come on. You’d just be hanging around the hotel missing your boyfriend.”

This is true, but – “I’m in a bitch of a mood about that.”

Kavita shrugs, without expressing doubt this time. “Come out and be bitchy at me, then. We’ll eat things Cooper can’t eat and you can tell me what a pain in the ass it is to have a long-distance relationship.”

Kowalski almost gives her back his suitcase. “I’m not letting you pump me for weird bits of privileged info.”

“Okay, now I really am sorry,” Kavita says. “No. Never. I mean, maybe not never, but not without warning you. I’m not above trying, but I am above being subtle about it.”

“Really?” Kowalski doesn’t believe her.

“Okay, I’m not,” she admits. “But between publicly available information and my own sources, I’ve got everything I need.”

“So why do you want to have dinner?” He asks.

“Kowalski, I am in Miami,” she says. “I don’t want to stay in and eat room service, and you don’t want to either. Come out with me. I won’t even ask what your agent is trying to sell you to. Please?”

The only reason Kavita wouldn’t ask what his agent is doing is that she already knows, and the remains of Kowalski’s evening plans were very much to stay in, eat room service, and sulk. Other gay hockey players will get in tomorrow and he won’t be able to get any good sulking in once they start knocking on his door and blowing up his phone. On the other hand, sulking is self-pitying and self-indulgent and it would probably be healthier, wiser, and more moral to do something else.

“What kinds of things that Cooper can’t eat?” He asks.

“Do you want the cheesecake kind or the spicy kind?”

Kowalski does not think he can keep up with Kavita in the spice department. “Cheesecake.”

“I just want one musical that isn’t swamped with children, or basically about getting laid.” Kavita takes a decisive bite of her sandwich.

“There’s totally musicals like that!” Kowalski protests.

“Really?” She extracts a napkin from under his beer. “Name one.”

Kowalski re-anchors the napkins – they decided to embrace Miami and have Cubanos by the beach - “Chorus Line.”

Kavita sputters. "Are you shitting me? Chorus Line is about Fosse. That is the definition of about getting laid. Try again."

He thinks for a minute. "Lion King."

Kavita slaps the table with her free hand, shrieking with laughter. “One, animals. Two, children. Finally, still kind of about getting laid.”

Her grammar is a great contrast with the mustard on her cheek. Kowalski hands her another napkin. “Is anything not about getting laid?”

She takes a deep breath to stop laughing and arranges her face into a pantomime of deep thought. “Some abstract art. Maybe. A few extremely modern novels.”

“I call bullshit on the novels.”

“Hang on,” Kavita pulls out another napkin. “You have something on your chin.”

He waits while she swipes at his face. “What do a plucky reporter and a retired choirboy do next on an evening out in Miami?”

She crumples her sandwich wrapper. “Following the established leitmotif of things Cooper can’t eat,” Kowalski can practically hear her use a colon at this point in the sentence, “ice cream.”

They take a walk with their ice cream and wind up outside a sports bar, watching a soccer game with a group of enthusiastic Brazilians. They teach Kavita, and, by extension, Kowalski, Portuguese insults to yell at the refs. After a cop comes by to hint that the bunch of them should disperse, Kavita starts talking enthusiastically about clubs she knows. Kavita is like one of those energy drinks that come in an extra-small bottle because they are highly concentrated and too much would give you heart palpitations. Kowalski isn’t drinking, but he still suspects he’s going to feel this in the morning.

RASHYCOCK + DICK COMA + PENIS + Roz group chat

Melnyk: WTF, Kowalski?! BRB, finding an acronym for people who *brick themselves into the closet*

Marcello: No one who gets draped with party beads on a Thursday night is all that straight.

Hunter: Hey, I got that reference!

Bennett: I liked the pics of him holding his date’s bag and his date’s ice cream while she yells at a soccer game.

Baldwin: Yeah, that’s not a straight look.

Baldwin: What reference?

Fredericks: It IS possible for men and women to be friends.

Haas: It’s no one’s business when or if anyone else comes out. If Kowalski needs to have his Rose Landry moment, let him.

Beltran: “Rose Landry moment”? WTH does that even mean?

Beltran: Wait, no, I got it.

Marcello: You guys are lucky Roz is busy right now. I know some guys from that era on the Raiders and they can tell stories…

Kowalski shuts the chat. The party beads are on the nightstand. He’s still wearing his trousers from last night. He’s in his hotel room, which probably means his shoes are here somewhere.

Mom: Imelda sent me your video! You sound amazing for those acoustics. Watch the vibrato! Love you!

Kowalski can’t remember who Imelda is, but if his mom is talking about vibrato, it can’t be too terrible.

Kavita: How’s the retired choirboy this morning?

Kowalski: I just woke up and it sounds like we’re all over page 6. What did I do last night?

Kavita: You were a perfect gentleman. I took you to karaoke. No songs were harmed.

Kowalski: what did YOU do last night?

Kavita: Your agent should love it. I gave you a leg up on Cliff Marleau.

Kowalski: I don’t want a leg up on Cliff Marleau. I’m very happy with my boyfriend.

Kavita: EW. Go be allosexual at someone else.

Sara: So, it turns out that Kavita making you sing Barett’s Privateers in a bar is kind of right on the line in terms of whether it’s an FCPA violation in these circumstances.

Stella: Did you have to look that up?

Sara: Right on the line for Kavita, and you should talk to a lawyer before you answer any questions. Miss you.

Stella: I am talking to a lawyer. Miss you too, handsome.

Sara: I’m yours, and I’m a lawyer, but…

Sara: I know your contract’s almost up, but I could put out feelers to couple of firms in Detroit.

Stella: Don’t jump yet, handsome. It could go any which way.

Stella: ...I hear I have a leg up on Cliff Marleau.

Sara: Don’t you have a boyfriend?

Chapter End Notes

Kowalski and Cooper have followed Rozanov's advice about saving your boyfriend's number under a girl's name. I looked for a place to put in the explanation for their choices, but it was always clunky, so I didn't.

Given the things I have done to Cooper, I want to go on record here that Kowalski is NOT sick. He would sing a hell of a gender-swapped "If I Was A Bell," and he is in the pink of health.

Huge thank you to MonkeysNPlaybills for the updated TCASTF spreadsheet, which I have relied on extensively here.

Chapter 8: Fly-By-Night, Broadway Romance

Chapter Summary

Mechanics have a pretty sweet deal. The pay is good. They don’t have to keep tabs on how likely their clients are to be arraigned, or, if arraigned, convicted. Cooper is not mechanically inclined, but he is academically masochist and he was, for many years, uninspired by the concept of work-life balance, so he is a lawyer. He is an unmarried, childless lawyer, and his sisters are diabolical.

Cooper stares at the heap of bicycle parts and questions his life choices. If he was mechanically inclined, he’d probably have done something with that, like become a mechanic. Mechanics have a pretty sweet deal. The pay is good. They don’t have to keep tabs on how likely their clients are to be arraigned, or, if arraigned, convicted. Cooper is not mechanically inclined, but he is academically masochist and he was, for many years, uninspired by the concept of work-life balance, so he is a lawyer. He is an unmarried, childless lawyer, and his sisters are diabolical. On top of being required to give a damn about arraignments and convictions, he let himself get talked in to dealing with the bicycle situation. Fortunately, he thinks to himself, Kowalski.

Right now, Kowalski is prying a box apart. It was fastened shut with industrial staples. Kowalski is saying things – partly he is telling Cooper where to stand, and partly he is talking about Christmas pageants. Cooper is a little distracted. “By the stairs,” overlaps with “…and some poor sod with a dish towel on his head trips over a sheep.”

Cooper goes and stands by the stairs. “Do you also cry at Christmas pageants?”

“I don’t always cry at shows. Les Miz is a special case.”

“You cried at Hadestown,” Cooper points out. “And Hamilton.”

“I was fine in Hamilton!”

“The show, not the city.”

“Oh. Fair.” Kowalski turns an object that looks like an aluminum fish over in his hand. “Is there a real socket wrench around here somewhere?”

Cooper has only a vague idea what a socket wrench is. “Maybe?”

Kowalski puts the aluminum fish down – maybe it’s a sort of bicycle assembly tool, like the Allen wrenches that come with flatpack furniture – and starts opening drawers.

“Dad really hates it when people mess with his tools,” Cooper warns.

 “Then your dad should have stayed to help.” Kowalski shoots Cooper a smile. It’s probably supposed to be reassuring. It misses by being sexy, which is nice, although it does nothing for Cooper’s jitters. “I’ll try to put everything back where I found it. I’m also looking for screwdrivers. Are those screws flat or Phillips?”

Flat vs Phillips is the one mechanical thing Cooper is sure he knows. He rips the little bag of screws open, and has to chase a few of them in different directions across the floor. “Both.”

Kowalski ambles back, two screwdrivers in his hand and other tools – probably wrenches, he mentioned wrenches – in his pockets. He kneels on the floor and extracts a sheet of paper from the wreckage of the box the bicycle parts came from. “I think these were translated from something.”

Kowalski hands the sheet to Cooper. It says “Instructions” at the top, in English. All the other words on the sheet are also English. Cooper got kind of excited when Kowalski said “translated” – he might be able to use a skill he actually has – but this is clearly not going to work out. “I think I could have made more sense of this before it was translated,” Cooper admits.

“Do you think any of the other ones have better instructions?”

“They all have the same logo,” Cooper points out. “So, it’s not the way I’d bet.”

“Good news,” Kowalski says, “I have assembled children’s bicycles before. It’s been a minute, but some of it’s bound to come back.”  

Kowalski takes the wrenches out of his pockets and lines them up neatly on the floor, and then begins lining up bicycle parts as well.

“I feel like we should have visited your parents,” Cooper said. “I’m so sorry we got stuck with this.”

Kowalski smiles at him. It’s still much more sexy than reassuring. “We’d be driving my mom around. Two Christmas pageants, a midnight carol service that starts at ten, and another midnight carol service at actually midnight.”

Cooper’s stomach settles a tiny bit. He examines the instructions some more to see if there’s any logic to Kowalski’s lineup that he could maybe apply to the next bicycle. “We could really use Ikea instructions here. The little line drawings, with the guy? Don’t use hammers, bring a friend?”

Kowalski seems to be able to tell what he’s thinking. “Don’t open another one. I don’t want to get the pieces mixed up. Your nephew will get three handlebars and one of your nieces will have no pedals at all.”

“Does the line up do anything?” Cooper asks, “or does it just look nicer like that?”

“Bit of both,” Kowalski frowns at him. “You should get your wrist brace. And your coat.”

Cooper had been rubbing his arms, but he stops. “I’m okay. It’s not that cold.”

Kowalski doesn’t seem to find Cooper’s performance of not being cold convincing. “Go get the wrist brace, at least. I want you to be able to text me next week.” Cooper rolls his eyes, but heads up the stairs. “Can you also grab my coat?”

It’s not that Cooper is sorry to go upstairs. It’s definitely warmer. He keeps thinking of things he could do. He starts a pot of coffee. He gets both of their coats. He runs upstairs to check the post-it on the back of the router for the wi-fi password. He’s not punking out, he tells himself. It’s just that bicycle assembly might go faster without him.

When he gets back to the basement, two coats draped over his arm and his bad wrist in a compression wrap, no process appears to have been made on bicycles. Kowalski is frowning at the instructions. “Does your dad only have metric socket wrenches?”

Cooper stands on the stairs and blinks. “I can’t even pretend I understand that question.”

One of the lovely things about Kowalski is that he can recognize when it’s useless to explain. “I think we’re stuck using these,” he says, waving the aluminum fish. “I’ll do the nuts and you do the screws?”

Cooper gives him his coat and says what immutable forces of the universe require him to say: “I am happy to do the screwing.”

Kowalski gives the snort that the immutable forces require in response to that joke while standing up to put his coat on. Cooper doesn’t think he’ll get a better moment, so he goes down on one knee.

“Shit,” Kowalski says. “Are you okay? Did I kick you?”

“You didn’t kick me.” Kowalski’s hands are battered. He’s sprained or broken half his fingers. He lost half a thumbnail a few weeks ago. Cooper gathers them in his own hands. “Stanley Kowalski—" he says.

“Is this a speech?” Kowalski interrupts, lip quivering.

“Shut up,” Cooper tells him. “Yes, it’s a speech. Stanley Kowalski—”

Kowalski sinks to his own knees to wrap his arms around Cooper. “I don’t want to be far away for a whole speech.”

“I feel like you’re killing the suspense here.”

“Handsome, the only suspense in this room is about bicycle assembly.”

“It’s supposed to be romantic,” Cooper protests.

“It’s more romantic close up. Go ahead. Speech.”

“Are you going to interrupt again?”

Kowalski shakes his head. “No. The floor is yours.”

“Good.” Cooper takes a breath. “Stanley Kowalski.” The dangerous moment after the name passes without Kowalski saying anything or lightning striking either of them. “The best thing that has ever happened to me is that you found me in an airport. Every good thing that’s happened since comes from that, and there have more of them than I could count. You are so generous, and so caring. You bring me joy every single day that you’re with me, even when you’re with me and far away. I love you.” He pulls the ring box out of his pocket. “Will you marry me?”

“Oh wow.” Kowalski takes one hand back and dabs carefully at his eyes. “I was not expecting this. Thanks for bringing my coat.” Kowalski reaches into an inner pocket and brings out a small velvet box. “Cooper Lee—”

“What?” Cooper shouts.

“Shut up, it’s my turn. Cooper Lee—”

“You have a speech?”

“I’m proposing to a guy who makes speeches,” Kowalski says. “Of course I have a speech.”

Cooper’s vision is turning watery. “You hate speeches,” he says. “You came up with a speech?”

“I love you, and you love a speech,” Kowalski’s eyes are so lovely, so shining, so patient. “Are we at interruption parity? Can I…?”

“Yes,” Cooper almost succeeds in not squeaking.

“Cooper Lee,” Kowalski says, “the year and a half since I told you my name has been more amazing than I can say. I didn’t think I was suffering before that, but now that I have spent some time with you, going without you would be suffering. I started by enjoying the twisty way you think, and admiring the way you throw yourself into things you care about, and the next thing I knew, I was in love with you. I am so in love with you. I want nothing as much as I want to love you for the rest of our lives. Cooper Lee, will you marry me?”

Cooper knows he should be talking. He should be telling Kowalski that he loves him and will marry him, but instead of either of them answering any questions, they are holding each other, crying. Cooper figures he can give this a minute before insisting on answers being given in words, but when he starts to think it’s time to switch to talking, Kowalski switches to kissing, sweeping Cooper off his knees. Kowalski is really good at kissing. It’s a few minutes before Cooper can bring himself to stop. He’s a little surprised to learn he’s on the floor.

Kowalski is beside him, with one hand under the back of Cooper’s shirt and sawdust in his hair. “Will you?” he asks.

 Cooper’s face hurts. He’s at risk of splitting his lower lip. “I will if you will.”

They sit up. They kiss again. This one ends with their foreheads pressed together.

“We have to finish here,” Kowalski gestures to the assorted metal things they have miraculously managed not to roll over on.

“I know.” Cooper pants in his direction. “I’m so sorry we didn’t go see your folks. We could have made out in church parking lots.”

“We’d freeze.”

“But not be required to assemble anything.”

“Bold of you to assume there aren’t opportunists patrolling the parking lot.” Kowalski considers the proto-bicycle situation. “How can we do this fast? Because I really want to get you back to the hotel.”

“Likewise.” Cooper pulls out his phone. “There’s got to be something on YouTube for this. Here.” He texts Kowalski the picture of the wi-fi password. “I’m doing  the last letter as a, you try e. Whoever doesn’t connect can destroy the next box and unearth another aluminum fish thing.”