Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Kip Grady/Scott Hunter

Characters:

Scott Hunter, Kip Grady

Additional Tags:

Background Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov - Freeform, Anxiety, being outed, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Panic Attacks

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-09 Words: 1,561 Chapters: 1/1

sympathy pains

Summary

He's had a nightmare about this. Several, in fact. Not so long ago, there were weeks on end when he had more nightmares than not about this exact thing, and now here he is frozen in his living room, watching it happen to somebody else.

-

Scott & Kip react to Hollanov being outed.

Notes

inspired by very vague, jumbled together and reimagined TLG spoilers I've absorbed through osmosis

Kip shakes his head, and lets out a melodramatic sigh, as he pulls the spinach-and-artichoke dip out of the fridge.

“I can't believe you've got me watching hockey with you,” he grumbles, “and it's not even your fucking game.”

“You love it.” Scott tips the corn chips into a bowl. He eats the last one, while Kip glares, and waggles his eyebrows. “Hot sweaty lumberjacks, throwing each other against stuff, remember? What's not to love?”

“Ew. I watch these things with my dad too, you know.”

“Come on. You didn't have to hide a boner in the showers after rugby practice or something?”

“I fucking wish!” Kip steps into Scott's space, serious and smoking hot all of a sudden, looking up at him with hooded eyes from so close they're all but pressed together as he takes the tray of snacks like it's the most erotic thing he's ever done. He leans up to Scott's ear and murmurs - “I was a theatre nerd. We had quick changes.”

Okay, Scott thinks. He definitely has to ask what the fuck a quick change is.

But then Kip breaks out in a grin and scampers away with the snacks, and Scott is hot on his heels as they tumble onto the couch – Kip barely has time to shove the food onto the coffee table before they're battling it out for the remote, kissing and shoving and he's never going to get used to how bubbly and free this feels. Kip has one hand in Scott's shirt and the other under it, and Scott's lips are buried in his neck thinking maybe he'll let him win, but for the fact that the next words out of his mouth are;

“Hey, is Rozanov playing tonight?”

Scott rolls his eyes, and grabs for a cushion to whack him with. But Kip is tense all of a sudden, and still. He's not winding him up. He's panicking.

“What?” Scott pulls back.

“No, look.” Kip nods his head at the television, so Scott turns. “Isn't that – fuck. Montreal. Hollander?”

Scott gets up, clambering for the remote that's fallen on the floor in the melee. He turns up the volume, dreading with every press what he might hear.

“... tense game for Montreal expected tonight after shock footage leaked earlier today, of the two team Captains sharing an intimate moment.”

Oh.

Fuck.

No.

He's had a nightmare about this. Several, in fact. Not so long ago, there were weeks on end when he had more nightmares than not about this exact thing, and now here he is frozen in his living room, watching it happen to somebody else.

The footage cuts to a hazy, dimly lit, black-and-orange night. Hollander at least has the wherewithal to be partially hidden behind a corner in plain clothes, but Rozanov has no such sense. No such fortune, Scott corrects himself, as his memory puts the shot into context.

“Isn't that-”

“The airport,” Kip confirms. “Vultures.”

And it's none of his business, but he can't look away. His eyes trace the way Hollander frets and cradles Rozanov's hands, like they might both be shaking. The two of them press their foreheads together, whispering something indiscernible, and then Rozanov wipes Hollander's cheek, kisses him – brief and gentle – and pulls him into a firm embrace. Hollander's hands find the small of Rozanov's back, Rozanov presses his cheek to Hollander's hair; they're entwined in each other and it's beautiful and painful and it should have been theirs. And yet it plays, and plays, and plays, for all the world.

“Holy shit,” Kip breathes.

Holy shit.

Scott stares blankly at the television. He should do something. Call them, maybe. But he doesn't know what he could possibly say, and they probably already know anyway – for what little good that might do. They've got a million-dollar publicist each, but it's not going to save them from the ever-hungry press; from tabloid speculation; from grainy footage taken by a telephoto lens, far away, in the dark, and all the more damning for it.

That night, Rozanov's plane had crash-landed, or as good as. No fucking wonder Hollander had rushed over and Rozanov had bee-lined to him, paparazzi be damned. The panic and relief had got the best of them, of course it had, and Scott kind of hates that his first instinct was to pick them apart for being reckless.

More than that, though, he hates that he still can't tear himself away, even as every fear that's ever shaken through his veins turns him cold all over again, and he's naked in front of the crowd and the whole world is clamouring to see him. They play old clips of Hollander being interviewed, and clips of that fight, and he recognises the tense set of the kid's jaw, like he'd rather peel off his own skin than be looked at because there's no way they don't all know he's a freak and he doesn't belong here.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

“Scott.”

And meanwhile the commentators are talking about it like it's some illicit affair, some torrid, sexy secret, because it has to be, right? Because it's two men, it can't be sweet, it can't be relief, it can't be love. It can't be serious. It's so, so serious - even if the relationship itself is not, which it is, because they're both crazy if it's not. Do these people know that they're potentially destroying these kids' careers right now? Their whole lives? Do they even care?

“Scott. Hey.”

Kip takes the remote from his hand, turns off the TV, pulls his numb body into a hug. His heart is pounding too, and Scott feels guilty, and lucky, and a whole jumble of other things he can't name. At least it helps to stop him shaking. Maybe if he takes enough deep breaths of the warm familiarity of Kip, he'll come back to his body.

“That could have been us,” he rasps.

“It's not,” Kip reminds him, softly.

He shakes his head, crushing his nose into Kip's collarbone. “They're just kids.”

“No, they're not.” Which is true. They're twenty-seven, twenty-eight, something like that, but at their age, Scott would have rather driven himself off a cliff than face whatever this is about to become. And that was without being the greatest talent in a generation or whatever, without parents to disappoint, without Russia – Oh. God. Russia. He never thought he'd feel bad for Rozanov, but he knows what it feels like to have home ripped out from under him and -

And then his phone rings. Kip leans only just far enough away from him to check the screen.

“It's Lana.”

Scott frowns. What could his publicist want to talk about at a time like this?

What else could his publicist want to talk about at a time like this?

“I'll just tell her no comment,” Kip offers.

“N- No, I should say something.”

“Not today,” Kip insists. “Not right now.”

He has a point. Scott can barely string a sentence together, his chest is tight, and the world is spinning. Whatever he says now, it won't be right. So he nods, and Kip sends the message, and then turns his attention back to Scott. He cups Scott's cheeks, and presses a kiss to his lips, tense and protective.

“Babe. Take a breath. You are just a person, who needs a minute, not some like, Gay Hockey Messiah, alright?”

“I kind of am though, aren't I?”

“Not today,” Kip repeats. “Not right now.”

Promise me, his eyes say, and Scott obeys.

With every passing second, as the enquiries start to fly in, he's ever more grateful for Kip. He has his rough nights with all this, but he hasn't felt it this strongly in a long time - maybe not even since right after the ice, where the high of kissing Kip in front of a million strangers had been swiftly, forcibly tempered by the prospect of looking a couple dozen people he actually knew directly in the face. It was a potent cocktail of sheer fucking euphoria and bone-deep anxiety, and that's part of what he's feeling right now too. Maybe selfishly, but he feels it all the same.

He's not alone.

Then his phone rings again, and Kip stares at the screen for a second.

“Babe.”

Scott shakes his head. Not right now. He promised.

“Scott,” Kip presses. “It's them.”

Scott looks up. The name HOLLANDER blazes across his screen.

“I- I don't-” He meets Kip's eyes. He doesn't feel ready. He's not sure how the hell he does feel, or what right he has to feel it when it's not even happening to him. But Kip holds the phone out anyway, and Scott takes it anyway. He can't not. Hollander's always been more of the suffer-in-silence type, more of the everything-in-silence type really, so he must be really fucking desperate to hear something only Scott could possibly say. Like what? Fuck. He really is just some guy. But he has to try.

“Hey, kid,” he greets. “I saw. You okay?”

The voice that answers isn't Hollander. It's a clipped and panicked Russian who would rather eat glass than ask for help, especially from him. Scott supposes, he too has to try.

“Shane is due on the ice in twenty minutes,” Rozanov says. “Scott Hunter. What do we do?”