Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories:

Gen, M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Scott Hunter & Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Kip Grady/Scott Hunter, Ilya Rozanov & Svetlana Vetrova

Characters:

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

Additional Tags:

Companion Piece, bonus chapters, Missing Scene, Episode: s01e03 Hunter (Heated Rivalry), Episode: s01e04 Rose (Heated Rivalry), Tuna Meltdown, Fix-It Fic (kinda), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Soul Bond, Platonic Soulmates, Hurt/Comfort, Ilya Rozanov Whump, Scott and Ilya are platonic soulmates, Professional rivalries, Hockey-related Injuries, roughly canon-compliant as it pertains to the romantic relationships, gratuitous textile metaphors, no beta we get whacked like Shane Hollander

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of Unpicked and Restitched (All Works)

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-05 Updated: 2026-03-25 Words: 5,633 Chapters: 2/?

Unpicked and Restitched (Unraveled)

Summary

Bonus Scenes from the Unpicked and Restitched timeline:
Chapter 1: Tuna Meltdown Aftermath (Ilya POV)
Chapter 2: The Puck Incident (Scott POV)

Chapter 1: Tuna Meltdown Aftermath (Ilya POV)

Chapter Summary

As I mentioned in the end note of the main fic, the narrative pivot to Shane’s arc and his soul bond with Rose precluded a digression into Ilya’s POV after Tuna Meltdown. But I know everyone was excited to see how having Scott and Kip changes things up for Ilya. I hope this bonus chapter scratches that itch for y’all.

Chapter Notes

October 19th, 2016 — Buffalo @ New Jersey (1-5)

Ilya sat rooted to the couch while Shane stammered through… whatever the hell it was. A fuck you? An “I need to think about this?” A goodb—

Ilya couldn’t think about that last possibility. Couldn’t think about much of anything but the panicky expression on Shane’s (Hollander, he’s just fucking Hollander) face, eyes wide and wet and nowhere near Ilya’s, hands putting wrinkles in his borrowed shirt. He hadn’t even put socks on before leaving. He’d hate that.

And Ilya was still sitting there. He couldn’t fucking move. Could barely hear anything but the sound of the door closing over and over and over, brain still catching up with the whiplash of the last few minutes. Didn’t register that his phone was ringing until after it stopped. Didn’t clock that half the emotional swirl he was feeling was directed at him.

Scott called again. Ilya picked up.

“Kid?” The tone of Scott’s voice was everything. Gave him markers, helped him card through the tangles and recognize which feelings were his and which were Scott’s. A blessing and a curse. Because now that his feelings could be recognized, they demanded to be felt.

“я обосрался.” {I fucked up.}

Shane had stayed. Rode his dick to oblivion, cuddled with Ilya on the couch, bent his diet just a little to eat a sandwich Ilya made for him. Drank the ginger ale he’d bought specifically for this.

It was supposed to be simple. A little…testing of the waters. Despite Ilya’s shitty behavior in 2014, he and Shane had moved on from it. Let each other in just a tiny bit more. Texted each other random social media links and stupid memes alongside their boilerplate combination of horny/competitive. More than once they’d had actual conversations in real time; mostly about hockey but sometimes digressing into movies or off-day plans or the fucking weather.

Shane had started to tell him things. Complaints when Yuna was more manager than mom. Some silly wordplay joke passed along from David that only made sense if you were good at English and a little French. Once a picture of Pike’s latest spawn all tucked into the fold of Shane’s arms and Ilya was so gobsmacked not even a follow up, Wrong chat, sorry. Please delete dimmed his wonder. He deleted it, obviously. But not before saving a copy in the locked album labeled “Boring” alongside those selfies from the Lady Byng bit.

Ilya had started telling him things, too. Food pics and reviews from various New York spots. Artfully vague comments about Scott and Kip being gross and in love. Stories about galleries and exhibits Kip dragged him and Scott out to see. Chirp-compliments about Marly and Carmichael and Sergechev followed up by actual chirps on Hayden Pike. It was…nice.

Shane would never be his boyfriend. Ilya knew this. But he thought maybe they could be… fuck, friends? If English had words for this Ilya didn’t know them. All he knew was that he wanted to know Shane (Hollander) a little better. Be more than just a perfunctory sexcapade, a mutually-assured secret. A safe place to land, maybe.

And it had worked. Shane stayed. Relaxed, even. No matter what happened next, Ilya would always treasure that he now knew the difference between a Shane Hollander who went liquid in his arms because of post-orgasm high and one who melted against him just because he could.

Just for a few hours, Ilya believed this could be their new normal. But then he pushed too hard. Crossed an unspoken boundary. And scared Shane off, maybe for good.

“It’s gonna be okay, kid. You’re gonna be okay. I’m here. Are you safe?”

“Yes, I am at home.” English was too hard right now. Might be that way a long time.

“I’ve got Kip next to me,” Scott continued. “What do you need right now?”

In the bond, Ilya felt Scott press closer, not smothering but right there on the edge, a weight to lean against. Ilya met him there, letting fear and concern and sorrow and sympathy bleed back and forth. But his soul still felt like it wanted to vibrate outside his body, fast heart and tingling nerves unmooring him. “I can’t, I need—”

Even Russian failed him then. He needed an anchor. So Ilya grabbed onto the memory of heavy blankets, a strong arm around his waist, hands pressed hard into the meat of his shoulders; and launched that wanting across the bond.

“Okay, yeah, we can do that.” Scott’s voice got quieter, like he’d backed away from the phone. “Kip I need you to uh, just squeeze the shit out of me. Right around here, yeah like that.”

Ilya caught the sensation of something warm and solid pressed against his back, then two hands snaking around his middle right at the waist and then a tight, heavy pressure crushing his spine straight and lighting up his vagus nerve and despite the squeeze against his diaphragm Ilya felt like he could breathe for the first time since Shane Hollander vacated his lap.

Kip held Scott like that for a full thirty seconds. Compressed the tangle of emotions smaller, more bearable, until the pressure released and the knot relaxed with it and then Ilya felt everything and couldn’t hold back from his own brain any longer.

“Yeah, that’s good, kid. Just let it happen, we have you.”

The interior space the bond created at the border of their souls was a strange sort of place. It didn’t exist, but things happened in it that their brains interpreted spatially. Right now, that space seemed to stretch wider, unfolding itself to accommodate the sheer bigness of Ilya’s feelings. A place made of him and Scott and the parts of them that were woven together, not quite one and not quite the other but a sacred third thing that could be identified but never categorized. It just… was.

Against that backdrop, wide as the sky and gentle as a baby’s first blanket, Scott helped Ilya unspool his emotions and stitch them into constellations. Connecting lines of confusion and yearning between bright spots of fear and despair and humiliation.

Oh, that was the worst fucking part. Bloated like red giants, splotchy and staining. The wound to his pride Shane Hollander could inflict so easily. A hurt that prompted anger, affected dismissiveness, threatened to put Ilya’s estimation of him over that wall he kept damn near everyone else behind.

A check of gentle admonishment brought Ilya back from the edge, accompanied by a lighter but still there pressure on his waist. He felt Kip’s warmth pressing all along his back and underneath his thighs and it struck Ilya that Kip was holding two hundred ten pounds of professional athlete in his lap just to comfort him and had no idea why. The guilt of that was a familiar fog.

Aaaaand there was another check nudging Ilya away from old patterns, of doubting someone’s willingness to care for him when they weren’t obligated to. They’d been working on that for almost a year now, after a hard conversation where Kip basically grabbed Ilya by the chin and told him very firmly he cared not just because Ilya was Scott’s soulmate but because he was Kip’s friend. It was a slow process.

But now that the worst of his feelings were running their course — and though neither man on the other side of the phone had asked — thinking about the differences in vulnerability between soulmates and regular friends made Ilya realize that feelings were only half of it. He still felt unsettled, confused, and just generally like he’d done something wrong. He needed to talk it out.

Finding English again, he said, “I think I may have messed things up with Sh— with Jane. For good.”

Scott’s sigh crackled over the phone speaker. Then Kip’s voice, “Do you want to walk us through what happened?”

Ilya took a deep, preparatory breath. “He was in town. Not long, just two days. And you know that we’ve been… friendlier? For a while now. So I thought, why not ask him to stay the night? So I… fuck, this is embarrassing.”

Scott didn’t do anything with the cramped feeling that saturated their bond. Just let it sit there, without expectation or judgement. Allowing it to exist. “Say it anyway.”

“So I pick up g—” fuck, he couldn’t say ginger ale, that was too identifying. Or mention the performance diet which led Ilya to deciding on tuna melts. Why did Hollander have to have such famous food habits?

“I pick up some things I know he likes and I tell the cleaners to be extra thorough and he says yes. And I think, okay great! We can be fucking normal, talk about hockey str—” Fuck, again? Scott knew the reason Ilya couldn’t identify Shane was because of industry connections, but no more. Talking about strategy could indicate he was a player. Ilya backed up, “Talk like we do over text and we are having great afternoon watching TV and having sex and then I start feeling… you know how I was feeling.”

“Yeah. You were feeling… pretty in love there, kid.”

In love. Was he in love with Shane Hollander? Kip had explained the difference to him, once. Between I love you and I’m in love with you. Ilya Rozanov didn’t love Shane Hollander. Not in that way, which implied commitment and certainty and a degree of emotional openness they just couldn’t give each other. But… he could. If things were different. If the right steps happened in the right order. Or wrong order, considering the trajectory of the relationship thus far.

And Ilya supposed that’s what in love meant.

“Yes.”

“What went wrong?”

“I… I don’t know. Not for sure. I think I tried to do too much.”

“What exactly do you think you did?” Kip asked.

I said his first name and he said mine and I let myself believe he was in love with me too.

But Ilya couldn’t say that. Athletes were famous for last name appellations. Admitting that he and Shane were on a last-name-only basis after six years was too close to the industry truth to be safe. It was obvious enough to anyone who bothered to check a game schedule against his hookup calendar that “Jane” was connected to the Metros organization. He couldn’t let Scott narrow it further to Metros player. So Ilya was stuck in limbo, desperate to speak about it but unable to say the words. The frustration mounted, spilling and sending in equal measure as he fought to make Scott understand.

“Fuck, I can’t say more,” Ilya groaned. “And I want to, but even if I am mad at him I cannot out him to either of you. I promised.”

“It’s okay,” was Scott’s immediate response, even if his mood over the bond indicated his own impotent frustration. “I understand.”

“I don’t know what the fuck to do about any of this.”

“I wish you could just tell me,” Scott admitted. “Even if I know why you can’t.”

“Me, too,” Ilya admitted.

“Stop me if this is a bad idea,” Kip interjected. “But… what about Svetlana?”

Scott asked, “What are you getting at, babe?”

“The issue is that Jane and Scott may know each other professionally, right? And it could affect work in a way Jane doesn’t want. But Svetlana has nothing to do with hockey, at least in a business sense, so she’s not affected by knowing in the same way as Scott. It sounds like you really need someone to talk to about this and I’m sorry it can’t be us. But I think Svetlana would be a good alternative.”

Ilya thought about it. Obviously they all trusted Svetlana. She’d kept his and Scott’s plethora of identity secrets under wraps for years now, and others besides. And Kip was right. Her work wouldn’t be affected by knowing Hollander is queer. She had no opportunities to accidentally let it slip to the wrong ears. Her gaydar was even better than his, she might already suspect.

And frankly, Ilya was sick of splitting his life this way. Before Scott, compartmentalizing kept him alive. Kept Sascha, Coach Barkov’s son and Sascha, the first dick I ever sucked on opposite corners of his teenage experience. Separated Alexei from before their mother’s death from Alexei after. His love for Zhenya from her parents’ misdeeds. Put a big, iron-gray curtain between Ilya from Boston and Ilya from Moscow.

The game as a joy from the game as a safety net. Even after, Svetlana and Scott had only met a handful of times, though that was more a function of incompatible scheduling than anything intentional. Ilya’s life was fractured into discrete pieces, touching along the edges but rarely ever meeting. Scott and Kip. His family in Russia. Svetlana. The Raiders. Shane.

And it worked. Ilya was able to slip from facet to facet, each version of himself something close to the real thing but with different parts at the forefront. Scott was the only person who got all of him at once.

And it was killing him. Scott would always be one of the most important people in Ilya’s heart. But he couldn’t be the only person anymore. Kip was close to it, and would probably get there eventually, but Ilya would not put him in conflict of interest with Scott. So that left… yeah, Svetlana. His best friend. Whom he probably shouldn’t be keeping this much from, anyway.

Across the bond, Ilya checked in with Scott. Sent a wave of tangled emotions; undercurrents of apology, a swell of need, a light questioning scattered like foam over the top. A rolling wash that roared Please, I need this from someone who is not you.

Scott took the crash, steady as a cliffside. Then answered with love clear and bright as a ray of sunlight. Permission, understanding, and encouragement all rolled into one.

“Yes, I think that is good idea, Kip.”

October 21st, 2016 — New York @ Vancouver (TBA)

Ilya wished the cleaners hadn’t done such a thorough job. The evening after Shane’s departure was spent letting Kip and Scott distract him via hockey commentary and a tangent rant about the semiotics of team logos that was complicated-enough English it required Ilya’s full focus to follow.

Then the next day was game prep; light morning workout, pre-game pressers where reporters couldn’t help but bring up the stupid rivalry, (The world believing they hated each other was a good cover. But something in Ilya that was tired of secrets just wanted to scream that there was a difference between competitive and hostile; that they loved playing against each other because it was challenging, not to settle some score. But that didn’t fit the narrative and Ilya couldn’t stand the imagined expression on Shane’s face if he did anything that might raise questions.) strapping on his gear and pretending to his team that he hadn’t spent the night on sex-scented sheets while his soulmate transferred the feeling of little spooning so he could actually fall asleep. Playing half-distracted and losing for it.

Shane seemed fine. Ilya hated it.

But all that meant he was busy. So the morning of the 21st, he had a full day off and was entirely pissed about it. Morning workout was limited to an hour after a game, Svetlana wasn’t coming over until four, and no practice meant Ilya had to contend with six hours of a thoroughly preoccupied brain and an infuriatingly clean house. That didn’t stop him from trying. But changing sheets, washing dishes, and vacuuming up a couple crumbs from the TV room carpet only took half an hour.

Five and a half to go. He tried to review game tape from last night, but kept zoning out and having to rewind. He gave up after 20 minutes. Trashy daytime soaps were equally unengaging, as was the book on American serial killers Scott got him as a technically-gag-gift-but-I-also-really-wanna-talk-about-this-with-you.

And so time ticked on in a slow, stretchy fog. Scott helped where he could, but he had a long flight to Vancouver and had to focus on cat-wrangling his fellow Admirals. Just little check ins, bringing attention to the hunger in Ilya’s stomach or a quick text suggestion to go on a walk, which Ilya took if for no other reason than to move. He did get to pet a neighbor’s dog, so that was nice.

By the time Svetlana opened the door (no doorbell, she knew the code) Ilya was prepared to vibrate out of his skin. It must have shown on his face as she rounded the corner, taking in the sight of him casually-on-purpose leaning against his kitchen island, because her expression fell from a lighthearted smile to dead serious.

“What happened to you?”

He felt stripped naked under her accurate snap assessment. Ilya averted his gaze and scratched at his nose. “I need to tell you about something.”

Svetlana put her bag down and stepped close, soft hands on Ilya’s elbows. “Did something happen with Scott?”

It was sweet, the concern on her tongue. When he’d first confessed his soul bond to some straightlaced American he met overseas, Svetlana had been less than impressed. Concerned that this newcomer wouldn’t be able to understand Ilya the way she thought he deserved. Dismiss his culture or his language struggles or the complexities of his familial relationships. Try to push her out.

But she’d come around to Scott, especially after he asked her privately for Russian lessons in an attempt to surprise Ilya on his birthday. His accent was still shit even after a few years, but the extra context communicated through the bond made up the difference.

And now she was a trusted member of their little bubble. And Ilya was about to stretch that trust to its limits.

“No, Scott is fine. In fucking Vancouver, but fine. This is… this is about Jane.”

Svetlana’s eyes widened. She knew about “Jane.” Brought her up more than once to tease him before something in the set of his shoulders made her back off. No doubt harbored her suspicions but, in her typical way, kept them close to the chest.

“Okay,” she said. The softness of it damn near broke Ilya’s heart. She knew him so well. When to push and when to let him come to her. When to be mean and when to be gentle. And fuck, Ilya really needed gentle right now.

“I know you can keep a secret,” he said. “But I need to hear you say it.”

“Wow, must be very serious, then,” she replied. “I promise I can keep a secret.”

Assurances made, a little bit of the squeeze around Ilya’s heart lessened. But it didn’t go away entirely. What he was about to confess would change their relationship for good. Recontextualize years of interactions between them. Alter every interaction going forward. The fear threatened to garotte Ilya where he stood.

From across the continent, Scott sent a wash of reassurance and resolve. He could do this. She was his friend. He needed her.

With a heavy sigh that turned into a tumbled rush, Ilya admitted, “I’ve been fucking Shane Hollander since summer before rookie season. And I think I fell in love with him, and I think he might hate me for it.”

Svetlana’s eyes popped wide, fingers tightening on his skin. “Hollander? Your rival? Shane Hollander? For how long? But you’ve always…”

Ilya curled inward, the anticipation of judgement heavy in his throat. But then Svetlana huffed out a harsh breath and softened, one hand coming up to cradle his cheek.

“Oh, Illyusha,” she whispered, a tiny glitter of wetness in the corner of her eye.

Ilya hadn’t cried. Not the day of, not yesterday, not all of today. But under the weight of Svetlana’s brown eyes, eyes that understood what it meant for him to fall in love with a man, to want things you just can’t have, to measure one’s love for their home against all the ways it hurt them; Ilya felt the first tear slip out. Then another. And he was crying and Svetlana was holding him in body while Scott stretched across the bond to hold him in soul. And Ilya let himself grieve.

When the tears ran their course, Svetlana guided him onto the couch. “For the record, I am upset you kept this big a secret for so long, but we can handle me later. Right now I must admit, I had my suspicions.”

Ilya side-eyed her in the middle of scrubbing tear tracks away.

“That Jane was a man,” Svetlana clarified. “You would not be so cagey about it otherwise. But Hollander… is a surprise, but not that much? Easy to see in retrospect.”

Ilya’s gaze didn’t waver, and was joined by a raised eyebrow.

Svetlana scoffed and tilted her head. “You like contrast, and you like competition. Is why you and Scott get along. Same thing with Hollander, it seems.”

“Please don’t talk about my soulmate and my long-term hookup like they’re the same type,” Ilya groaned.

“I will not lie about what is in front of my face, you know this. Even a hedgehog can see you are attracted to boring men.”

“Sascha wasn’t boring,” Ilya defended.

“And you can barely stand Sascha,” she retorted. “Anyway… why do you think Hollander hates you now?”

Once Ilya has permission to speak, it’s like he can’t stop. The whole sordid affair comes out in strings of softened consonants and phonemic stress patterns. Easy in a way English would never be, a root dug deep into him that couldn’t be excised. Svetlana listens, sometimes interjects, but keeps it light. Except when she invokes best friend privileges to point out instances of him being an idiot and/or asshole.

“And then he just… walked out and now I’ve ruined everything.”

Svetlana didn’t speak for a long time. Ilya, whose eyes had been pinned to some random spot on the wall, risked a glance to her. She looked… furious.

“May a dick grow on his forehead.”

“Sveta!”

“You, too!” she followed.

Ilya was so shocked he couldn’t speak. The one thing Svetlana hadn’t done is speak poorly of Hollander. Called him an idiot and an asshole just as much as she did Ilya, but was never openly hostile. Until now.

“No, you fucking listen to me. I’d act shocked but I would be lying. Of course you fall for someone just as scared of their own heart as you are. How else could it get this fucking bad?”

“I’m not scared!” Ilya insisted.

“Do not lie to me, or yourself. You want him so bad but you are scared of what it means to have him. You look for half measures even when you know they will hurt you.”

A hot flash of anger ripped through Ilya’s chest, twisted against the bones of his face.

“And that it okay,” Svetlana continued. “You have very good reasons.”

Just as fast as it appeared, the anger was gone. “What are you trying to say?”

Svetlana closed her eyes and took a long breath. “Let me start over. Does he make you happy?”

The question hit him like a puck to the ribs. He was fully prepared to be read the riot act, dressed down for being so stupid as to fall in love with the one person he could never have. Admonished for risking his freedoms over some slow Canadian boy with beautiful freckles. He had to take a moment to consider the question. He didn’t like the answer.

“What does it matter?”

“It matters to me,” she answered simply. “And to what I will say next.”

Ilya felt Scott leaning closer, responding to the quick shifts in his emotional landscape. A reminder to be honest with himself.

“Yes, he made me happy.”

Svetlana nodded. Then said, “You are not wrong for wanting to be happy. So please stop acting like it.”

As soon as she said it, the pieces clicked into place. Since Shane vacated his house and possibly his life, Ilya had been beating himself up over his actions, for trying to push their relationship even just that tiny little bit forward. For wanting more out of Shane. It hit him with a thud to the chest, like he was an old dusty rug being aired out. Why had he done that to himself?

“And he is not wrong for being scared. Just stupid. Like you. But… his actions are his, Ilya. You are not responsible for what he does.”

Ilya tried to believe her. Let those words curl up inside him, sit next to the fear and the despair and the humiliation, next to the guilt that was hiding underneath. Scott’s presence was warm behind his sternum, not yet understanding the particulars but backing him up regardless.

Svetlana was right. He could acknowledge that, in his head. But it would take time for his heart to catch up. Ilya still did not feel good. Better, only a little. There was too much tangled together in his brain: Shane, Scott, Russia, hockey; all the snarls and snags where they intersected in scratchy, uncomfortable ways. But he could be okay with being not okay, at least for a little while.

Svetlana stayed the night. Ilya kept pushing forward. Playing hard, winning games, pushing Boston to a comfortable standing lead they could coast all the way to the playoffs. Got his heart broken all over again by a goddamn E-News article. Vented to Svetlana about it, and wow was Ilya getting Kip the nicest Elizabeth Olds artbook he could find for his birthday; because nothing could compare to the gift he’d given Ilya by pushing him to disclose.

Had his ups, and plenty of downs. Leaned on Scott more than he wanted to but gave himself grace. Gave Shane the space he so publicly requested. Tried to…move on.

But he wasn’t perfect. Hadn’t lost his impulsive nature. Scott had forced Ilya to delete Instagram for a while when the doomscrolling started becoming a problem. That didn’t prevent Ilya from knowing that was a new dress draped over Rose Landry’s curves. Or stop him from wishing he was the one under Shane’s hands instead.

Or find a measure of grim, empty satisfaction in the way Hollander looked at him before bolting out the door with his perfect, public girlfriend in tow.

Chapter End Notes

Green card out from Russian passport + actual emotional support system = an Ilya who is much more in tune with his emotions and I get to make him suffer even worse for it.

Chapter 2: The Puck Incident (Scott POV)

Chapter Notes

Fun fact, this was actually my first attempt at Chapter 2 of the main fic, before I got my arc structure locked down and switched to Shane’s take on Ilya’s injury transfer. But the decisions I made here informed how I handled Scott’s character going forward.

Monday, December 2nd, 2013 — Boston @ Montreal (2-3), Brooklyn @ New York (TBA)

It was nice — like, actually, really, surprisingly nice — to have someone in the stands watching Scott’s games. For years those seats went empty, unless the arena commandeered them for a sold-out showing or Scott donated the tickets to some charity raffle or another. But now that he had Kip there to cheer him on, wearing that adorable red-and-white beanie over soft black curls, Scott never wanted those seats to go empty again.

He hadn’t realized how motivating it was to have someone there just for him. Scott wasn’t like Ilya, gleeful at the prospect of sitting down a top-tier team, perhaps relishing that the other guys lost more than the fact that he won. Or even like his rival Shane Hollander, who liked to mind-game his way through matches and saw every goal as a puzzle to solve.

But Scott? Turns out Scott was at his best when he had someone to fight for. And not just during the match, either. In finding subtle ways to acknowledge Kip’s presence during warmups, he worked the entire crowd. Singling out fans with waves and smiles, raising the energy ahead of the first puck drop to a fever pitch. Taking more risks with his skates and stick, smiling at the chance to swing the momentum of the game with daring displays of speed and skill. Finding that long-buried reserve of willpower to keep fighting even when the tide was against them.

His team rose to this new example. This is what it meant to play good hockey. Maybe the best damn hockey of Scott Hunter’s life. And he had Kip to thank for it.

Of course, there was someone else he would adore to see seated next to Kip. Not that George Grady wasn’t also welcome at any game he wanted to attend. The guy was nice enough to clap for the Admirals even as they faced his favored Brooklyn Scouts. But the one person Scott really wanted to see next to Kip couldn’t be there without a media feeding frenzy. Too many cameras swinging around and lingering on any public figures in attendance, too many commentators desperate to fill airtime with only-vaguely-grounded speculations. Ilya Rozanov taking time out of his own busy season to attend an Admirals game? Unless Shane Hollander suddenly announced his retirement, that’d be the only thing anyone talked about on MHL Network for a week.

They hadn’t seen each other again since Thanksgiving. Scott had made true on his promise to have Kip back home for family lunch, giving him the Cliffnotes of that week in Lisbon. With some of the more… painful details left out, of course. Kip was a fantastic listener, but he didn’t need to get dumped with two deeply closeted athletes’ dirty rainbow laundry on the first date. Morning after? Whatever.

He wondered what it would be like to try and explain those early days of their soul bond. How they’d spent hours completely entranced by the newfound feelings, exploring the edge where one soul wove into another. Learning the delicate back and forth of sharing feelings, sensing the ghosts of their own soft touches on each other’s skin. It had all been so overwhelming then, every sound and touch reverberating back and forth, the two of them unpracticed at distinguishing their own emotions from the other’s.

What words could he use to describe the look in Ilya’s eyes as that soul-deep loneliness overtook him, a wretched mirror of his own youth? The all-consuming need he’d felt to prevent that symmetry from becoming a parallel, to cut across the silence that kept them locked inside their own hearts, to make sure Ilya knew into the depths of his bones that yes the world is cruel but its people can be kind. Scott chose kindness that night. The closest thing to God he still believed in.

To see and to be seen in return. There wasn’t enough gratitude in the world to express his thanks for what he’d been given that night.

Yeah, not many ways to communicate the enormity of his experience without scaring the shit out of Kip. Perhaps his reputation for being intense would make that less weird. Or more. Scott wasn’t ready to find out yet.

Anyway, after Kip left, Thanksgiving proceeded along its usual track. Watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, a staple from Scott’s childhood that Ilya spent half the time snarking at even though the warm feeling in Scott’s chest made it obvious he enjoyed every second, picking up a ridiculous amount of Chinese food from the family joint down the block, and locking down their shared list of charities to receive anonymous donations for the Christmas season.

Before Ilya, Scott’s charity work was more hands on during Thanksgiving. It’s not like he had family to visit or close friends that invited him over, so volunteering at soup kitchens serving turkey dinners to New York’s most vulnerable was the obvious alternative. He still made time for volunteer work during the off-season, but Thanksgiving had become an non-negotiable Scott-and-Ilya day. Without it, they wouldn’t see each other in person from pre-season to Christmas break.

Scott wondered what Kip was doing for Christmas. He’d have to ask after the game.

Once said game finally started, the Admirals’ newfound home ice energy kicked into high gear. The Scouts were no slouches on the puck, though, and trailed by only one point going into the third period. It was still anybody’s game. They wound down the clock with no scores on either side, and it was looking like their defense would pull them through to victory. Until Brisebois caught a penalty for interference and left them a man down with six minutes left on the clock.

The Scouts pushed their man advantage for all it was worth, keeping the action in the Admirals’ zone and giving poor Bennett the workout of his life. Taking control of the puck after one such save, Scott shot it towards the other side of the rink. It almost crossed the blue line, but a defenseman picked it up and fired it back before any of them could blink.

Scott didn’t think. He just moved. When he looks back on it later, he comes up with a lot of reasons. Bennett was tired, there was too much pressure in their zone. Getting another overtime loss point would put the Scouts above New Jersey in the Metropolitan standings. Kip was in the audience. But the real reason — made of all those big and small things tangling together into an ice-hot burn — was that Scott Hunter really, really didn’t want to lose.

He hadn’t wanted to win this badly in years.

Throwing his body in the path of the puck, he caught the screaming rubber somewhere under his floating rib. At first, there was only the force of the twin impacts: the puck into his flesh, his side onto the ice. Then, the vice grip clench of not being able to breathe before the pain exploded.

His first coherent thought, as his body curled into a fetal hug while his lungs screamed for the scant air he could pull, was that Ilya and Kip were going to be so fucking mad at him.

Chapter End Notes

You’ll notice some paragraphs from here migrated in altered form into the main fic’s prose. This is why you never delete your darlings entirely! Never know when a piece of it will come in handy later.