Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Kip Grady/Scott Hunter

Characters:

Scott Hunter, Kip Grady

Additional Tags:

Hurt/Comfort, Body Worship, Service Top Scott, Insecure Kip

Language:

English

Collections:

Sixty Six Days of Skip

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-22 Words: 1,588 Chapters: 1/1

i heard somebody whisper, please adore me

Summary

Very little could wipe the smile off his face in this moment, but the sight of Kip - here and not out, alone and not with his friends, nose buried in his tablet in bed on his birthday - is one of those things.

-

Kip is feeling down, and Scott takes it upon himself to help.

Notes

for @sixtysixdaysofskip - prompt "Blue". title from Blue Moon - Sha Na Na
based primarily in show!canon, with some extra insecure!kip flavour drawn from the book. Shout-out to the smoothie bar discord for helping me brainstorm!

Scott floats through the door on the high of a win, and the even higher high of very soon getting to share that win with Kip, and Kip's friends, at their bar on Kip's birthday. Very little could wipe the smile off his face in this moment -

But the sight of Kip - here and not out, alone and not with his friends, nose buried in his tablet in bed on his birthday - is one of those things.

“Hey.”

Kip looks up briefly, in a distracted daze.

“Hey,” he greets back half-heartedly, and invites Scott in for a kiss on the cheek that does little to quell the pit in his stomach.

“What are you doing here? I was just going to change and meet you...”

Kip shrugs. “I wasn't feeling up to it.”

“You okay?”

He moves to put his hand to Kip's forehead, but Kip pulls away.

“It's fine. I'm fine, I'm not sick, I'm just...”

He looks at Scott's face properly now, and maybe he can finally see the depth of his concern because he takes off his glasses and sets his tablet aside, and releases a heavy sigh.

“I'm just thirty. You know? I'm thirty fucking years old and I'm still basically a barista, I'm still basically living at my dad's, I'm still basically exactly where I was ten years ago. Except like, a hundred thousand fucking dollars in debt or something and I just keep doing it! Because it's what I want! But what I want is stupid! I mean, like, it's not. But it is. Because I'm thirty.”

Scott blinks. “You know none of that makes any goddamn sense, right?”

“Whatever.” Kip snorts. “Like I said, it's stupid.”

He reaches for his tablet again, but Scott picks it up first. He swipes to the open page, and his jaw goes slack.

“You're deferring?”

“I'm not doing anything, I was just looking.”

“Why?”

For one defiant moment, Kip challenges Scott's gaze. Then the set of his jaw unlocks and his eyes fall back to where his hands fold and unfold the arms of his glasses.

“Because,” he mumbles, “I was supposed to be doing something important by now.”

Scott's not even sure what that means. Maybe he will never understand, at least not in a way he can articulate, but it breaks his heart anyway.

“Kip. Baby. My love. That is the stupidest thing you've ever said.” He plucks the glasses from Kip's hands, sets them aside, and leans a knee onto the bed, so he can press their foreheads together. “You are thirty. You are not old. You are not wasting time or money or anything. And you are so, so important, okay? You're everything.”

Kip nods, hesitant and fragile, but at least he's making an effort to let it sink in. Scott presses a kiss to his lips, to double down.

“You're not just a barista. Which, first of all, you're an awesome barista and SoHo would fall apart without you. But you've also got a job in a museum now, talking to people about art and statues and stuff and that's so cool!”

“It's just three days a week, it's-”

“Three days more than ten years ago, isn't it?” Scott challenges. “And you're so passionate and interesting on those tours. It really makes a difference, I should know, I've been on a lot of them.”

“You have?”

“Of course. See, I have a crush on this really cute art history nerd.”

Scott waits, eyes sparkling, and as expected, Kip cracks a smile in spite of himself. Scott kisses the corner of it, then his jaw, and then his collarbone. His fingers ghost over the buttons of the crumpled shirt Kip had only half put on before collapsing in on himself, and Kip unfurls a little, offering up his chest.

“He works at a museum now,” Scott continues, unbuttoning his way down and caressing his way up as he continues to pepper kisses everywhere he can reach. “And he's currently writing the most mind-blowing paper of all time on postcolonialism, locational identity and the repatriation of the Elgin Marbles.”

“You remembered?”

Kip sounds so genuinely surprised that it almost hurts. Scott presses him back into the mattress, and hopes he looks as bafflingly awestruck by the man before him as Kip does.

“I remembered,” he promises, breathless. “I'm even pretty sure I know most of what those words mean, but I'd love for you to explain them to me again. Or change your thesis if you like the Velazquez one better. Or fuck it, drop out. Just make sure you're doing it because it's what you actually want to do, not because you're punishing yourself for not being a world famous hockey superstar by the time you could grow a half decent beard.”

That time, Kip even laughs a little.

“Speaking of which. You live at your dad's?” Scott glances over Kip's dishevelled clothes and spit-addled skin. Pretty sure we wouldn't be doing this at your dad's.

Kip blushes. Cringes.

“Not literally, obviously,” he protests. “I just mean, I haven't paid rent in a while, and I probably still couldn't if I had to.”

“But you don't have to.”

“Yeah, but only because a world famous hockey superstar made me his sugar baby as soon as I could grow a half decent beard.”

It's an old wound in their relationship, and it lands with a sting. Scott pulls back.

“You know I don't think of you like that, right?”

Kip puts a hand on Scott's hip and it feels like an anchor. He looks up with round, sorrowful eyes.

“Sorry. I know that,” he promises softly. “Of course I know that now. It's just... been a rough day. You know how it is.”

Scott does. Some days 'it' rattles around in his brain like a fork in a garbage disposal, so loud he can barely think. Some days, he forgets that Kip didn't grow up practising how to drown out the sound of it like he did – the sound of every man and his dog having an opinion about how you look, what you say, who you are. But he never forgets that the spotlight can be fickle and cruel and it shines down until it burns you and it doesn't care. And he never forgets how it felt when Kip took his hand and walked out into it with him.

So Scott leans down again, and kisses him, and it's quieter than that day, but no less full of love and joy and sweet release. He can only hope it's enough to silence the wheels whirring and grinding in Kip's head.

“I love you,” he says, like a vow, like he can brand it into Kip's skin. “I love you so fucking much. I mean it.”

“Scott.”

Maybe he has succeeded, because Kip's voice is deep and ragged, and Scott could drink that sound for the rest of his life. He needs more.

“C'mere.”

Kip moves with him easily, letting Scott pull him up long enough to strip his shirt and his tank and toss them aside and chase him back to the mattress. He redoubles kissing, touching, running light fingers over every inch of skin until he remembers to slow it down, and Kip shudders beneath him. He remembers, Kip used to have a piercing here. He has a scar, there. He'd thought about getting a tattoo somewhere, but could never decide what to get. Maybe Scott's tongue, maybe his teeth, scraping softly and resisting the urge to bite with I love you, I love you, I love you.

“You are so brilliant,” Scott breathes, taking his time with the buckle of Kip's belt. “You're smart, and funny, and kind. And you're so passionate. You care about so many things, so much, it makes me feel selfish sometimes.”

Slowly, delicately, and following his hands with his mouth, he peels Kip's silky smooth dress pants down his legs and continues -

“I mean, like, the state of the world and- and all that, but even... your barista job, you keep talking about it like it's this nothing thing you don't care about but you do. You show up, you work hard, even though you don't have to, because that's just who you are. You put your heart into everything. They don't deserve you.”

I don't deserve you.

Scott gets to the end of the bed and drops the fabric to the floor, and looks back up along the planes of Kip's body. Whoever decided to bless that man with a figure straight out of Michelangelo, he owes them his life. He takes a minute to drink it in: Kip's lean thighs, his rippling abdominals, his artist's hands grasping at the sheets with the restraint it takes to just lie back and let Scott love him. And when Scott takes too long for his touch to return, Kip looks up and meets his eyes, and - he can't possibly be surprised by how much Scott wants him? He knows that feeling himself, inside out, and it is a crime, it's a sin that Kip could ever feel that way. Scott throws himself at Kip's feet on the bed, and kisses his way up the inside of his ankle and his knee and his thigh like he's seeking absolution, until Kip digs a hand into his hair and Scott could live right there forever. But he has other plans tonight.

“Can I fuck you?”

The answering shiver sends a thrill down to his toes.

“Absolutely.”