Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Kip Grady/Scott Hunter

Characters:

Scott Hunter (Game Changers), Kip Grady, Carter Vaughn

Additional Tags:

Fix-It, Reconciliation, Breaking Up & Making Up, Canon Compliant, POV Scott Hunter, The Missing Three Years, Scott Hunter Gets a Therapist

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of a new name for everything

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-15 Words: 4,549 Chapters: 2/2

between past and present tense

Summary

The first time he saw Kip Grady, it was like a vague hum: the soft glow of initial, immediate attraction to a handsome man, letting himself test the water, a few brief words exchanged. Later, at his game, he’d been lacing his skates when the thought had occurred to him—what if Kip is watching? Attraction zeroed in on a singular focus.

---

Scott and Kip break up, get back together, or: how to change your life (gradually and then suddenly).

Chapter 1: i am so much better than i used to be

Chapter Notes

Oops I fell down and wrote Scott's POV for the opening chapter of if you come back, bring a new name for everything.

You don't have to have read that one first, but this is more of a character study than a sequel. For what comes next and everything after, see the first part!

Scott Hunter has given countless interviews where he’s said the bland platitude: hockey is a mental game. Innate skill is a small cog in a machine powered by discipline and regimen. He spent almost twenty years, from pre-adolescence onwards, succeeding because of routine. Careful diet, never skipping the conditioning or mobility no matter how tired, the same habits in the same cycle every year: the pressure of the hockey season, then two weeks of recovery at home, two weeks of hedonism somewhere beautiful, and two weeks of prep for the next hockey season. This commitment was why he was good, maybe one of the best. 

The routine of boarding school bore him through tragedy. People often tell him, 'I can’t imagine what you’ve been through.' And the truth is that he can neither imagine it nor remember it. There’s a blank from the age of 12 to 14, when he went from being a latchkey kid letting himself into his own home after practice to a charity case at a sports academy. He remembers the first time someone said an MLH scout was interested in him, and that if he worked hard and stayed focused, he had a shot. So he did that. Other kids were as talented as him, maybe even more, but the story he tells himself is that he wanted it more.  Wanting and discipline are what got him first-draft pick to one of the best teams in the league straight out of Juniors. 

To deserve something good, he earned it through hard, crushing work. Happiness can be taken away in a flash, but he can earn something nearly as good by winning. When he realized he was gay, right around the same age that coaches started singling him out, it was just another arena for discipline. 

For years, he believed that he was as good as he is because being different, having a secret, was another thing he could control. In the early years, it was easier—he has been playing in the MLH since before Google images, before smartphones. In his rookie years, he was still anonymous in smaller markets; he could go out to clubs, hook up with strangers without much risk. Brand deals, becoming the face of the Admirals, had shackled him to waiting for summer vacations. 

It’s not, as he has found himself explaining to his new therapist, that he thinks that there is anything wrong with him. Being gay is like his athleticism: a simple fact about himself, of no moral value. Other people have feelings about both gayness and athleticism. He has let one argument outweigh the other—he will be gay forever, but he’ll only be young and fit for so long. 

These have been the ruling facts of his life for nearly twenty years. Then he slipped up. He did a series of things he would never normally do. He flirted with someone at home. 

The first time he saw Kip Grady, it was like a vague hum: the soft glow of initial, immediate attraction to a handsome man, letting himself test the water, a few brief words exchanged. Later, at his game, he’d been lacing his skates when the thought had occurred to him—what if Kip is watching? Attraction zeroed in on a singular focus. Scott scored a hat trick, and it felt easy to be good at hockey again. He wasn’t thinking about Kip directly, but it was like the hum carried him right through the game, drowning everything out. So much of his life is definitive: where to show up, how to play, follow a plan. That hum of having a crush, the initial attraction and nothing definitive, just a beautiful maybe, brought him right back to the smoothie shop before the next game. And it meant he kept playing well. Frankly, better than he had in seasons. 

Running into Kip at a gala a few weeks later felt like he’d asked the universe for permission and it had said: Okay, go ahead. So he broke routine further and asked for Kip to stay, to come, to be with him. A brief, glorious window of what it looked like when the routine broke down. It was better in every way—everything felt better. Food tasted better, laughing was easier, even hockey, the thing that had always been easiest and most rewarding, even that was somehow better. 

But no amount of hard work was enough to keep Kip when the essential balance between secrecy and stability was on the line. He didn’t fight to keep him, because Kip has a whole life and Scott has most of one. 

Alone, six months post-Kip, he watches the Stanley Cup finals and makes a decision. He is watching Ilya fucking Rosanov hoist the Cup over his head, shouting in Russian. It is a harsh reality to consider that Rosanov is probably as good as Scott ever was— maybe he got lucky with a more cohesive team and better management—but he is not disciplined. Scott has gone to enough after-parties and All-Star games to know that Rosanov is an agent of chaos at the best of times. He is a good hockey player because he is fucking fast and relentless.

What’s more, the unambiguous fact is that Scott had played better hockey when he was in love. 

The next day, he gets a therapist. 

He comes to the first session armed with a whole explanation. He wants to work on his rigidity, and he knows he has a problem with a solution, but he has a list prepared of why that solution is not easy. In the very first session, the therapist cuts him off: “Scott, I am not a coach. I am not going to tell you what to do. I’m here to help you work through your feelings. You’ve said many times that Kip deserved better. Can we talk about what you mean by deserving?”

So. They spend a lot of time discussing those missing years, his impulse to replace one irreplaceable thing with another, his perfectionism, the works. 

A week after his first session, Kip texts. They have not spoken since Kip picked up his stuff from Scott’s apartment, when Kip was plainly angry with him, an emotion Scott had no idea how to deal with. People are angry with Scott all the time: he’s the Captain of an MLH team that hasn’t won in over 20 years. He’s always had ways to accept that anger and use it as motivation. But the anger of a harmed loved one is so foreign to Scott that it’s an impenetrable wall. He has wanted to hear from Kip for six months, and then, waiting for him after practice, a message: 

Thanks for the suit—I did actually need a nicer one 

And then a follow-up: I may have been slightly overdressed for a grad school awards ceremony in custom Hugo Boss 

Scott’s stomach flips. He takes it for what it is: the opening of a new conversation. 

Scott: Already winning awards! How’s grad school?

Kip: Really, really good. I’m so glad I started over, even a bit late. Not winning anything yet, but my advisor put me up for a first year award so we’ll see

Scott: Good luck, I’m sure this will be the first of many. 

Kip: Not quite an Olympic gold medal but thanks :) 

Scott doesn’t want to idolize Kip’s memory or put him on a pedestal. He wants to keep him as a friend. He has a plan: he’s got a few good seasons left, and then he’ll come out, and he can date someone properly. Whoever that is. 

He takes a first, tentative step that summer. He invites Carter Vaughn over to watch a mid-season episode of Vaughn’s girlfriend, Gloria’s, show together. Scott mutes it during the commercial, stands up to get them another round of beers, and says, from over Vaughn’s shoulder so he can avoid seeing his face: “Hey, so I have something to tell you.” 

He sits down on the couch, and continues looking at the moving, muted TV screen, says: “I’m gay.” Once he’s said it, once it is out there in the air, he turns to Vaughn, who is looking at him with wide eyes. 

“Wow, okay,” Vaughn says, takes a pause, and then smiles widely: “Thank you for telling me. I love you man, no matter what,” and then he pulls Scott into a hug.

There is, Scott notes, a distinct lack of surprise in his voice and a sense of delivering a practiced message.

“Did you… know already?” Scott asks. 

“Well, I didn’t know. But I guessed. Not like, because of anything. But it was more… there’s a difference between being private and keeping a secret, y’know? And also,” Vaughn pauses, chewing his lip like he’s trying to find the right words. “Gloria thought you were seeing someone earlier in the season. And I said you don’t have girlfriends, and she asked, What about boyfriends. And it kind of … made sense.” 

“I was seeing someone,” Scott admits. 

Vaughn rolls his eyes and sits back on the couch, “Ugh, man. I owe Gloria a hundred bucks.”

“You bet on this?” Scott says, unsure of how offended he should be, or relieved how lightly Vaughn is taking this. “This is a really big deal, man! I’m confessing my darkest secret to you!” 

“Hunter, your darkest secret is how you speak to the refs and get away with it. This doesn’t count.”

Scott smiles, accepting the offering for what it is. “Thanks. I, I haven’t told anyone else. At the team or the organization. I’m not ready yet. You can tell Gloria, since she already seems to know.”

“I wanted to set you up with her brother, but she didn’t think he was your type.”

Scott huffs a laugh, “Do I want to know what you think my type is?”

“I don’t know. You’re her brother’s favourite player. But she said your type is probably arty guys who don’t watch hockey.”

It’s Scott's turn to roll his eyes and sit back into the cushions, “My ex moved to Boston to get a Master's in Art History.”

It’s the first time he has spoken about Kip to someone who isn’t his therapist. It’s the first time he has referred to Kip so casually, ‘my ex,’ out loud. Strangely, it feels good to say, the normalcy of it. The idea that he is just one ex, letting Scott move on. An ex, there will be more in the future. 

“That sucks, man. Moving to Raiders territory? Salt in the wound! ” Vaughn says. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Scott laughs. Easy, just an ordinary thing that happens when you date people and it doesn’t work out. 

“What are your summer vacation plans this year? Gloria and I are doing a boat trip in the Greek Islands—you should join us.”

Scott extends his usual solo trip to three weeks: he, Vaughn, and Gloria spend a week relaxing, barely speaking on a yacht. Gloria drags the two of them to a gay club in Mykonos, wing-womans for Scott and asks him laughing, follow-up questions when they meet up again three days later. It lightens the load to share this with people who know him but need nothing from him in response. After, he spends a week in Italy by himself and texts Kip, Going to Florence, anything I should see besides David? 

They have chatted on and off in the last few months, a couple of times a week. Kip responds to this last message with joking jealousy, telling him to buy a ticket to skip the line, to make sure to see the Birth of Venus. 

He doesn’t go all the way to Florence, one of the only places he knows Kip has been in Europe, as an excuse to text his ex-boyfriend. But he doesn’t not go to Florence as an excuse to text him. He thinks of Kip at the Uffizi, standing in front of all this history and beauty, and he wishes Kip were there, explaining it all to him. 

He goes back to New York lighter. He lets himself break some of his routine. There's a point mid-season when the demands of hockey travel turn the world into just a series of rooms that lead up to and follow from the ice. Hotel room, hallways, maybe a club or event space in between, even a flying airplane, they all just become rooms. In his usual routine, the world becomes a memory, winnowed down to rooms and the rink. He used to feel like this was good: narrower focus, easier control. This season, he makes a point to see a sliver, however brief, of whatever city he is in. To know what the weather is like in other climates. 

He tries new restaurants, not just whatever is at the hotel or within walking distance. When they play in Florida, he goes to the beach and swims in the ocean. In Colorado, he meets up with a former teammate, one he’d always liked. He takes Scott on an easy walk—no hikes on game day—and Scott comes out to him into the whipping mountain wind on an unexpectedly warm March morning. 

Scott plays well, but they are knocked out in the second round of the playoffs by Montreal, who go on to win the Cup. There is some consolation when they lose to the eventual winners. It’s better than getting knocked out by a team that gets demolished immediately. 

That summer, Gloria sets him up with an actor she knows in LA. They go on a few dates, it doesn’t go anywhere, but it’s nice to do something that feels slightly out of the ordinary. Scott travels from LA and spends two weeks in Mexico. 

Another season passes, a blur of rooms, rinks, the world at large. It’s surprising how quickly time passes when he’s busy with hockey and philanthropy, running an exhausted schedule so that his bed feels a little warmer when he goes home alone. 

This time, Scott is at Vaughn’s with teammates and friends, watching as Montreal wins the Cup again. If Iya Rozanov is as good as he is, the truth is that the Metros’ captain, Shane Hollander, might be better than him. Maybe Hollander is more disciplined, maybe he has more innate skill. Maybe it’s all luck. Scott has held onto definitive plans for so long. He has run down the clock. He has a year left on his contract, and, he decides, one year left in the closet. 

Chapter End Notes

Carter Vaughn search history: what to say when your friend comes out to you, scott hunter gay, nhl gay players, gay clubs in mykanos

Chapter 2: amateur cartography

Chapter Notes

Scott writes out a list of everyone who will need to know. His personal team: agent, lawyer, money guy. His teammates, probably. Coach, management. They can coordinate with team and league PR whenever that comes. Hopefully, he can minimize his involvement. And then—Kip? 

It’s been a few months since they last spoke, and over the years, it’s been sporadic, one or the other reaching out. Kip last messaged in April, two months ago now.  A brutal hit put Scott out for most of a game in medical, and Kip texted to ask if he was okay. The text was waiting for Scott when he got back to the locker room, meaning Kip is still watching games live, all these years later. 

Now it’s June and Scott checks Kip’s Instagram; the most recent post is from a few weeks ago, a photo of a painting, promoting a gallery in Boston. Kip is one of the only people who knows both Scott’s last name and that he’s gay. He’d want to know, even just by phone, before he sees it in the press. They loved each other once. 

Scott puts his list in order, checking the schedule for Kip’s master's program, and puts him at the end of the list. 

He puts away his list and then wastes no time with the first name on it. He calls his agent, putting him on speaker phone and pacing the apartment, so he can just power through it. His agent starts talking about some contract details, and Scott cuts him off: “Todd, I actually called to tell you something and get your help to come up with a plan around it.”

There’s a pause. Todd has been Scott’s agent since his rookie year; he knows him well. “Okay, Scotty, go ahead.” 

“I’m gay. And I want to come out. Publicly. At the end of next season, regardless of how it goes.”

Usually, when he speaks to Todd, there’s near continuous sound in the background: Todd clicking a pen, tapping on his desk, the sounds of an antsy man who only allows himself to smoke two cigarettes a day. Scott hears total silence now.

“You know, that’s about the last thing I thought you were going to say.” The pause lengthens, and then the clicking in the background starts up, “Good to know. That explains some things. Have you always been gay? Wait. Don’t answer that, kid. Let’s think. Is the plan to retire? What else should I know?”

Scott is unsurprised that Todd’s first thought is next steps, no emotions. “No, I don’t know, I haven’t decided that yet. think I’ve got a couple of seasons left. We can take that question off the table until contracts next year. And yes, I’ve always been gay,” Scott adds the last part with a laugh. 

They talk for an hour: Todd making a much more extensive list of next steps, contractual obligations, PR moves. The closest they get to feelings if when Todd asks if Scott is doing this of his own volition. Scott reassures him there’s no blackmail, no skeletons.

“Once this gets cleared up,” Todd says finally, “I think this’ll be good for you, Scotty.”

“Yeah, I think so too,” is all Scott can say. 

Scott agrees to the plans. He makes it clear he doesn’t have any plans to become a mascot or an ambassador, he doesn’t want to create new brand deals, he still wants to be private. He has no message to convey other than the simple fact of not wanting to hide anymore, not needing to hide anymore. Whatever legacy he’s built, that is enough foundation to build the next phase of his life on, whether in the MLH or outside of it; he can’t follow either path with this secret around his neck anymore. 

Step one, which he agrees to reluctantly, is to work with a PR agent, to “test the waters” of his public perception. This involves non-hockey media, photo shoots, interviews to craft a relatable image of an affable, harmless man. 

He’s convinced to do a photoshoot for People magazine (“Win over the wives first!” his agent says) for a section on athletes in their Sexiest Man of the Year feature. Scott feels silly throughout the whole afternoon photoshoot, and he feels exposed by the photo they chose. In it, he’s halfway turned, looking over his shoulder, an open-mouthed, half smile (“It shows personality!” his agent’s PR consultant says). But he approved it anyway: another lesson in letting go. 

He is immediately aware when it goes live because he gets a flurry of texts from his teammates, current and former, about it. Largely harmless, jokes about their wives seeing it, jokes about the gun show. A copy of the photo is tapped to his locker when he comes in for practice, and he leaves it, doesn’t even address it. He’ll probably keep regretting it further, but that same day—Kip texts. Scott is at home, on his phone, when Kip sends a screenshot of the article with the text: glad people finally got the memo. There is something unmissably flirty about it, an open invitation. 

Before he can think about how eager it makes him seem, he responds to the text immediately, asks to talk. What if I just tell him now? he thinks, and then his phone lights up with Kip’s name and the three-year-old contact photo Scott took on the very couch he’s lying on.

His words tumble out in a rush: his plan to come out, the steps of it, his readiness to do so. He can’t tell how Kip feels that Scott is ready to do this now, the thing Kip never asked explicitly but always needed. Scott himself can’t even put into words why now and why not then. He let himself be changed over the last three years: a seed planted with love by the man on the other side of this phone, now coming into flower. 

Hearing Kip’s voice distorts time. Scott is mostly, at least halfway, over him; the clench of his heart is fondness and appreciation—a flutter of the same maybe he felt standing in the smoothie shop. He chases it: the Kip of his memory is dependable, easy, and good, and willing to believe in something more out of his life and others. Who is he now? So, Scott asks. 

He has had a general idea from their texts, but hearing about Kip’s new life in Kip’s voice, his jokes, fills Scott with second-hand pride to hear that he has flourished just like Scott always wanted for him. Scott expects to feel a pang that he missed it all, but instead, that fondness just grows into an object, a goal: come back to me, he wants to say. 

Somehow, he blunders into it, asking if Kip is single (he is) and before he can even ask him out, Kip makes it clear: it can’t be like last time. An answer that isn’t a no, but a request, one that Scott already wants. He has tried to change too much to go back to how things were. 

They agree to meet in Boston in a week, when Scott has an away game with no obligations before. He flies in early, checks into his hotel room and changes his shirt twice. He has no idea what to expect from the evening, from Kip, from himself. He said he wanted to talk in person, and he does. 

The restaurant has a large circular bar ringing the middle of the space. Scott gets there 10 minutes early, and chooses the most visible seat he can, a bar seat facing the door. Partially, he has no idea what he’ll do when he sees Kip, and partially he wants the first time they go to a restaurant together to not be a secret. He told Kip it would be different, if they went out again, and he intends to show it. 

When Kip walks in, Scott stands without even thinking about it. Because, there he is: handsome, mostly unchanged, his hair is a little longer, wearing plastic-framed glasses. Seeing him, not as a photo but the living thing, sends a flame straight through him, a scorch from his feet to his scalp. Kip’s smile lights up his face and that warm feeling radiates out as Scott pulls him into a chaste and quick hug. 

“It’s so good to see you,” he starts, putting every ounce of feeling he can into it. 

“It’s good to see you too. I like your hair like this,” Kip says, the compliment easy. 

“I like the glasses. I always thought you should wear them out,” Scott returns. 

There’s a pause, as they both stare at each other. 

“Thank you for coming,” Scott says into the silence. 

Kip laughs, “Is this a business meeting?”

Scott shakes his head, “I’m sorry, I’m being weird. But maybe it could be, I’ve got some investment opportunities coming up?”

“Oh yeah,” Kip plays along, “Like what?”

“I don’t know, I hear there might be a run on Scott Hunter jerseys in June, so it might be a good time to invest in other players’ merch.”

Kip’s mouth twists, “Do you really think that’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know,” says Scott. “But it matters less now—the team is in a good place. I’ve made people money. This season is going to be good, and then I’ll be free.” 

Kip looks at him fondly and says, “Oh yeah? Tell me about it.”

They spend two hours talking about his plans, what he’s been up to, the future, they joke lightly about it. Kip tells him about school, about Boston, how much he misses New York but loves his research and program. There’s so much Scott wants to say: let me in, I’m right here. Being with Kip again makes him feel like a vampire on the other side of a threshold, hungry and eager for an invitation. He is not used to this desperate feeling. In small ways that stack up over the course of a life, he is mostly used to getting what he wants once he wants it enough. He chose a life where he uses half-truths to pay for the enormity of what has been offered to so few—money, fame, comfort, the life of a king. The other, bigger wants were for other people. And then it was with Kip that the cost were suddenly too high, Kip who recontextualized his solitude into loneliness, his routines into control, without judgement or demands but with kindness and ease. 

Here Kip is again, new. The conversation has been light, just on the edge of flirtatious. They split the bill, and standing outside Scott is trying to see if he can smoothly suggest a drink, a walk, to extend the evening, when Kip says: “Want to see my apartment?”

They barely speak after that. They have sex in Kip’s new bachelor apartment filled with things that feel like Kip in ways he wouldn’t have been able to name before: an art print leaned against the wall on top of a stack of books, an IKEA dresser that hangs open. It smells like him, familiar and foreign at once. His body is the same: he is stronger, less lean than Scott remembers, but still, under his hands, over Scott and holding him down, his body is familiar from memory and three years of fantasies, so much better in the flesh. 

From the moment they break that unspoken boundary from the platonic to the physical, Scott gives in. The moment that they are close enough that the heat of Kip’s body radiates into him, Scott gives up on whatever remnants of cool he has been clutching. He lets his desperation be obvious, noisy; kissing and stumbling into bed without letting go. Sometimes sex is a playful competition, but tonight Scott wants to surrender. He asks Kip to take him, fuck him, and Kip does. Slowly at first and then hard enough to remember the next day. 

When Scott wakes up the next morning, Kip is there, sleeping with his mouth open, his expression open and peaceful. Scott feels calm, his desperation sated.

Last time they were together, he had felt, embarrassingly, like Prince Charming who had found his Cinderella, he had wanted to sweep Kip off his feet, reward him for being so good. But all the doors had closed behind them and it had turned into Rapunzel, and not a version where he was the hero. The aftermath broke down his routines, changed him. 

This time, he thinks, they’ll meet in the middle and build something new.  

Chapter End Notes

i'm still on tumblr as @fringe-problems as well.
for the rest of the story: if you come back, bring a new name for everything.