Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories:

Gen, M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Scott Hunter & Ilya Rozanov, Kip Grady & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

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

Additional Tags:

No Scott/Ilya Endgame, Hurt/Comfort, Caretaking, Platonic Relationships, Non-Sexual Intimacy, unlikely friendship, primarily a scott and ilya friendship piece, queerplatonic attraction ahead, slowburn friendship

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-19 Updated: 2026-01-21 Words: 8,455 Chapters: 3/?

Wired in Place

Summary

When Kip is injured in a hit-and-run, Scott Hunter arrives at the hospital to find Ilya Rozanov already there. The two form an unexpected connection after sharing a room, a long night, and dealing with the aftermath of something neither of them was prepared for.

Notes

I needed a friendship fic between Scott and Ilya and it is going to happen even if it kills me (and possibly Kip).

Chapter 1: Eleven Seconds

The elevator takes eleven seconds. Scott counts because counting is a thing his brain can do that isn’t playing the voicemail again, the one from the hospital, the one he can’t unhear.

—condition is critical. Come to hospital as soon as—

Six. Seven.

Scott drove here but can’t specifically remember the car, the roads, whether he stopped at lights or ran them.

Ten. Eleven.

The doors open onto a hallway lit the way all hospital hallways are lit, bright enough to work under, not bright enough to feel like daytime. Like time doesn’t exist here. Like it’s always three in the morning. Scott knows where to go because Ilya texted him the room number three hours ago, when Scott was still on a plane, when Kip was still—

Was still.

Is still.

The grammar of this is impossible.

Room 412 is at the end of the hall, past a nurses’ station where someone is laughing quietly at something on their phone. Scott walks past them, though a part of him wants to knock the phone out of their hands and step on it.

He doesn’t do this thing because his body has entered some kind of emergency conservation mode where everything nonessential has been shut down, and it turns out anger is nonessential.

It turns out most things are nonessential. Walking is essential. Breathing is essential, probably, though he’s not doing a great job of it.

The door at the end of the hall is open.

Ilya is sitting in a chair by the window. He’s wearing a hoodie that says HOCKEY DAD on it, which must be a joke Scott doesn’t know the context for, and joggers, like he rolled out of bed and came straight here. He probably did. Shane is in Montreal this week for a game. Scott knows this because he knows the Voyageurs’ schedule, because he knows everything about everyone in this league, because hockey has been his whole life for twenty years and now it means… now it’s just noise, now the only thing that matters is the bed in the center of the room and the person in it.

Scott makes himself look.

Kip is—

Kip is very still.

His skin is the color of old candle wax. There’s a tube taped to his mouth, pulling his lip to one side, and his face is so swollen and bruised that Scott’s first irrational thought is that’s not him, they have the wrong room, that’s not—

“Scott.”

Ilya.

Scott had almost forgotten he was there.

“Here’s chair.”

Scott doesn’t move.

“You want to faint? Hit your head? Be in bed next to him? Sit down.”

Scott sits in the chair Ilya has pulled up next to his own. 

“They did surgery,” Ilya says. “Internal bleeding. They stopped it. He’s stable now.”

Scott stares at Kip’s chest, watching it rise and fall. Rise and fall. The ventilator is doing most of the work. There’s a clip on Kip’s finger measuring his oxygen. There’s an IV dripping something into his arm. There’s a whole network of machinery keeping him here, keeping him stable, and Scott wants to ask what that even means because Kip doesn’t look stable.

“He’s going to wake up. They said probably tomorrow. Maybe the day after.”

“Probably?”

“Yes.”

Ilya is quiet for a moment. “Doctor will come talk to you. I don’t know much more than that.”

Scott nods, though he’s not sure what he’s agreeing to. The machines keep beeping. Kip’s chest keeps rising and falling, mechanical and steady and nothing like the way he breathes when he’s actually sleeping and makes those little snuffling sounds and kicks Scott in the shin at four in the morning.

“Why are you here?”

It comes out flat. Not accusatory, just confused. Because Ilya Rozanov is sitting in a hospital room in the middle of the night wearing a joke hoodie, and Shane is in Montreal, and Scott doesn’t understand why this is the configuration of people in this room.

Ilya leans back in the chair, stretching his legs out, crossing his ankles like they’re in a hotel lobby instead of this room. “Because I was at bar.”

Scott’s brain stops processing.

“Kip’s bar. Kingfisher? His shift end at one. I was leaving maybe same time. Not together. Just—” Ilya makes a vague gesture. “Same time.”

Scott looks at Ilya’s hands. There’s a scrape across his knuckles that Scott didn’t notice before.

“First time I go,” Ilya adds, and there’s something almost like a laugh in his voice, except it isn’t. “Didn’t even know what kingfisher was. Had to Google. Thought maybe was, I don’t know. Sex thing.”

Scott doesn’t laugh, but he recognizes what Ilya is doing—the deflection, the joke, the way you keep talking about small things so you don’t have to sit in the big thing.

“It’s a bird,” Scott says.

“Yes.” Ilya’s voice is steady, almost too steady, the way people sound when they’ve already told a story to the police, to the doctors, to themselves. “This truck,” Ilya says. “Run the light. Kip was in crosswalk.”

Scott’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out. He looks at the scrape on Ilya’s knuckles again, then at Kip’s face—swollen, wrong, held together by tape and tubes—and pictures it. A street corner in New York. A truck not stopping. The way a body moves when it’s hit by something that weighs several tons.

“I was half block behind. I saw—” Ilya stops. “I stay with him until ambulance come.”

The scrape on his knuckles. From the asphalt. From kneeling on a New York sidewalk at one in the morning with his hands inside the ruin of someone’s body, holding things together that weren’t meant to be touched. Scott doesn’t ask because he doesn’t want to map it onto Kip’s body. He doesn’t want to picture Ilya’s fingers pressed into the soft place below Kip’s ribs, or the wet sound of a wound that won’t stop, or the way blood looks black under streetlights. 

But Scott pictures it all anyway. 

How long did the ambulance take? Ten minutes? Twenty? That’s a long time to kneel on concrete with someone’s life pulsing out between your fingers. That’s a long time to feel the heat leaving a body, to not know if the stranger beneath your hands is going to die right there on the pavement while you watch.

Did Ilya talk to him? Did he even try?

Scott pictures that too—Ilya murmuring in Russian the way language can sometimes slip out when you forget to be the version of yourself other people expect, saying things Kip couldn’t possibly understand. Stay with me. Don’t go. Help is coming. All of it meaningless, all of it in the wrong language, but what else do you do with your hands inside someone’s wreckage?

“Was he—” Scott’s voice cracks. He doesn’t finish the question because he doesn’t know what question he’s asking. Was he conscious. Was he breathing. Was he scared. Did he say my name. Did he ask for me.

Ilya is quiet for a moment.

“No,” he says finally. “He was not awake.”

Scott doesn’t know if that’s better or worse. Better, maybe. Worse because Scott wasn’t there, because the last person to touch Kip before the ambulance arrived was Ilya Rozanov, of all people on concrete at one in the morning outside the Kingfisher in a city where Shane wasn’t.

Now Scott understands why Ilya is still here. Not because he and Kip are close. Because surely they’re not (right?). They’re just two people who exist in adjacent orbits. But because Ilya was there, because Ilya saw it happen, because Ilya has Kip’s blood dried in the creases of his knuckles, he’s here now. And you don’t just go back to your hotel after that. You don’t just order room service and watch TV and wait for your flight home.

You sit in a chair by a window in a hospital room wearing a joke hoodie, and you wait for someone else to arrive so you’re not the only one keeping watch.

Chapter 2: Last Call

Chapter Summary

Ilya and Kip meet.

Chapter Notes

Wasn't planning to drop this one so soon but I had it nearly ready. We're jumping back a few hours and the vibe is much different. But AO3 is going down for FIFTEEN HOURS on Wednesday, so. Posting now, and if work and appointments don't kill me this week (not looking promising, but one can hope), I'll have something ready to go once we're back online.

Five hours earlier—Greenwich Village, Manhattan

The bar is smaller than Ilya expected.

He’s not sure what he expected. Something louder, maybe. More obviously gay, whatever that means. Rainbow flags and dance music and men in mesh shirts. But the Kingfisher is just a bar. Exposed brick, warm lighting, a chalkboard menu behind the counter listing drinks with names like “The Penalty Box” and “Icing” and, yes, “The Scott Hunter.”

This is probably a terrible idea.

Ilya steps in anyway.

The place is half-full for a Thursday night. A couple in the corner booth, leaning into each other. A group of friends at a high-top, laughing at something on someone’s phone. Two men at the bar who look up when Ilya walks in, then look away when they don’t recognize him. Good. He’s wearing a cap pulled low and a jacket that cost more than most people’s rent, but in New York, that’s not unusual. In New York, you can be anyone.

Ilya sits at the end of the bar, closest to the wall, where he can see the door.

Shane is in Montreal, and Ilya is in New York for an upcoming game, and he’s been looking at the Kingfisher’s Instagram for six months without ever walking through the door.

It’s not even for Scott or Kip, really, though Kip is—

Kip is behind the bar.

Ilya watches him for a moment before Kip notices. He’s talking to one of the regulars, laughing at something, his whole face open and easy in a way that Ilya has never quite managed.

Kip is a person Ilya has thought about more than makes sense, given that they’ve never actually met.

Ilya remembers watching the Stanley Cup finals. The Admirals were up 3-1 in the series. Everyone knew it was over. Everyone knew Scott was finally going to get that Cup after fifteen years of being the best player to never win it.

What nobody knew—what Ilya certainly didn’t know—was that Scott Hunter was about to skate past his teammates, past the cameras, past the commissioner waiting with the trophy, and yell something at a man in the stands. A man who then climbed over the penalty box glass, dropped onto the ice in his sneakers while Scott waited below with his arms open while twenty thousand people watched him grab his face with both hands and kiss him like the world was ending. 

(Or maybe it was just beginning.)

Ilya remembers staring as Scott Hunter kissed Kip on live television, and feeling something crack open in his chest that he’d spent too many years denying. Shane had been blowing up his phone with texts until Ilya called him. 

“Holy shit, Ilya!” Shane’s voice was cracked open too, high and breathless. “Can you believe—”

Ilya had booked a flight to Montreal that night. Spent two weeks in Shane’s cottage, barely leaving the bedroom.

That’s why Ilya knows who Kip Grady is. 

Not because Kip is famous. Not because Kip matters to hockey. But because Kip is the man Scott Hunter loved enough to stop hiding for. Watching that happen had made Ilya want things he’d trained himself not to want.

And now Kip is behind the bar, and Ilya is here, and he’s still not entirely sure what he’s looking for.

Kip Grady is not a complicated person. This is not an insult. Ilya has spent his entire adult life being strategic, being three moves ahead, and sometimes he looks at people like Kip—people who just are, who don’t calculate every angle—and feels something that might be envy if he let it.

Kip looks up. Sees him. Does a visible double-take.

“Hi!” Kip says, and then laughs at himself. He makes his way down the bar with a towel over his shoulder. Casual. Like Ilya’s just another guy. “What can I get you?”

“What do you recommend?”

Kip’s mouth twitches. “Depends what you’re in the mood for. We’ve got a few house specials.” He nods toward the chalkboard. “The Scott Hunter’s popular.”

There’s a flicker of something in his eyes. Amusement, maybe, or a test. Do you know who I am. Do you know where you are.

Ilya looks at the chalkboard menu. “The Scott Hunter. I am curious. What is in it?”

“Vodka. Lemon. Simple syrup.” Kip pauses, and something soft crosses his face. “Blueberry juice.”

“Blueberry.”

“It’s an inside joke.”

“Tell me.”

Kip hesitates, like he’s deciding whether Ilya is making fun of him. Ilya keeps his face neutral, interested. He’s good at making people feel like he’s genuinely curious, like their stories matter. Sometimes it’s even true.

“When Scott and I met,” Kip says, “I was working at this smoothie place. Total shit job.” He starts pulling bottles, measuring with the ease of someone who’s made this drink a thousand times. “Scott came in before a game once and ordered a blueberry smoothie. And then he won. So he came back the next day and ordered another one.”

“Superstition.”

“Hockey players, right? And these smoothies, I thought—”

“This is very long story about smoothie.”

Kip stops. “I—sorry, am I boring you?”

“Little bit. You can skip to end. He came back for you, yes? Very romantic. I am moved.”

Kip huffs out a laugh and shakes the cocktail, ice rattling. “He kept coming back, yeah. Every game day. Same order. And I thought—” He drifts. “Took me way too long to figure out he was coming back for me.”

Ilya watches Kip pour the drink into a glass, the liquid a deep purple-blue. 

There’s a fondness in the way Kip tells the story, a warmth that Ilya recognizes. It’s the way Shane talks about him sometimes, when Shane forgets to be guarded.

“Blueberry for luck,” Ilya says.

“Blueberry for luck.” Kip slides the glass across the bar. “On the house.”

Ilya takes a sip.

It’s... fine. Sweet. The blueberry is doing a lot of work to mask vodka that isn’t worth masking. It tastes like the kind of thing sorority girls order when they want to get drunk without tasting alcohol. Scott Hunter in liquid form. All that golden-boy sweetness.

But Kip is watching him with that open, expectant expression, and Ilya is not a monster.

“Is very... blue,” he says.

Kip laughs. “Yeah, that’s the blueberry. It’s—” He stops, reads Ilya’s face more carefully. “You hate it.”

“I don’t hate it.”

“You’re a vodka-straight guy.”

“Yes.”

“Right.” Kip grins, not offended. “Should’ve guessed. You want me to pour you something that doesn’t taste like a popsicle?”

“No. I will suffer through your boyfriend.” Ilya takes another pointed sip.

Kip’s grin widens. “You’re not the first guy to choke on him.”

Ilya almost inhales the drink.

Kip winks. He grabs a towel and starts wiping down the bar. Ilya watches him move on to the next customer with the easy confidence of someone who knows exactly where he belongs.

Ilya sips the Scott Hunter.

There’s a joke in here somewhere. Something about swallowing, about having Scott Hunter in his mouth. Ilya sips again—sips Scott Hunter, his brain supplies, unhelpfully—and feels like he needs to walk into the East River.

He flags Kip down. “Vodka. Straight. Now. Please,” he adds.

Kip’s eyebrows rise, amused. “Not a fan of the Scott Hunter?”

“Is assault.” Ilya pushes the glass away from him like it’s committed a crime.

Kip laughs and reaches for a bottle on the top shelf. “Beluga okay?”

Kip pours him two fingers, neat, and slides it across the bar. “Reparations for the popsicle.”

Ilya takes a sip. It’s good. Clean, smooth, the way vodka is supposed to taste when it’s not being smothered by fruit juice and sentimentality.

The bar fills up as the night goes on. Ilya nurses his vodka.

Ilya has spent his whole career reading people. Figuring out what they want, what they’re afraid of, where the cracks are. It’s how he plays hockey. Find the weakness, exploit it, smile while you do it.

Kip doesn’t have cracks. Or if he does, they’re not the kind Ilya cares to use.

The bar gets busy again, and Kip moves away to take orders.

Ilya turns his attention to the television mounted in the corner. It’s an older model and outdated, the kind of TV that belongs in a basement. It’s showing an NBA game, Lakers versus someone. The sound is muted.

Ilya has never understood basketball. Oh, you scored 112 points? Exciting. The other team scored 110. Thrilling. Everyone is tall and the floor squeaks.

Hockey is earning every inch of ice. Basketball is… jogging. With occasional jumping.

A couple of guys at the other end of the bar are half-watching it, arguing lazily about a call. One of them keeps saying “that’s a foul, that’s clearly a foul,” and the other keeps saying “he flopped, dude, he flopped!” and Ilya wants to tell them both that none of this matters because in twenty seconds someone will score again and then someone else will score and then they’ll all jog back to the other end of the court and do it again.

One of the players on screen misses a free throw. The closed captions say [CROWD GROANS].

Ilya feels a distant kinship with the crowd.

Kip comes back during a lull, refilling Ilya’s glass without being asked.

“So,” Kip says, leaning against the bar. “You’re in town for the game Saturday?”

“Yes.”

“You gonna win?”

Ilya tilts his head, considering. Six months ago, he would have said yes without hesitation. Two years ago, the Admirals were a disaster. Bad defense, worse morale, Scott Hunter visibly going through the motions like a man who’d already mentally retired.

But something shifted last season.

“Maybe,” Ilya says.

Kip’s eyebrows rise. “Maybe? That’s not very confident.”

“Your boyfriend is playing good again.”

“I—” Kip blinks, clearly thrown. “Did you just say something nice about Scott?”

“I said he is playing good. This is fact, not nice.” Ilya swirls the vodka in his glass. “He was bad for two years. Lazy. Slow. Like he forgot why he was there. Now he remembers. Is different player.”

Kip is staring at him.

“What.”

“Nothing. Scott said you two hated each other.”

“We do.”

“That didn’t sound like hate.”

“I can hate someone and respect their game. These are not—” Ilya waves a hand. “Mutually exclusive. Scott Hunter is annoying. Boring. Has face like golden retriever who got hit by door.”

“I’m telling him you said that.”

“Tell him.”

Kip laughs, and it’s a good laugh.

“He’s been working hard lately,” Kip says. “Like, really hard. Extra ice time, film time, all the recovery stuff his physio makes him do. Then there’s media obligations, team meetings, the charity stuff he can’t say no to…”

“This is what it takes.”

“Yeah.” Kip’s voice softens. “Miss him sometimes. When he’s locked in like that.”

Ilya doesn’t say anything. He knows what that’s like, being with someone whose life belongs to hockey first. Shane understands it because Shane lives it too. But Kip is different. Kip is outside the game, looking in, loving someone whose body and mind are always partly somewhere else.

“So, you and Shane.”

Ilya’s hand stills on his glass.

Kip’s leaning against the bar, casual, but there’s something careful in his eyes now. 

“The rivalry thing,” Kip clarifies, when Ilya doesn’t answer. “Scott talks about it sometimes. How you two have been going at each other since juniors. The draft, all of it.” He shrugs. “You guys played well together during the last All-Star Game.”

Ilya snorts. “All-Star Game is not real hockey. Is vacation with skating.”

“Sure. But you had, what, three assists off his goals? Four?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Uh-huh.”

Ilya takes a long sip of vodka. Kip keeps looking at him with that easy, open expression, like he’s got all night. Which, technically, he does. It’s his bar.

“Shane is good player,” Ilya says finally. “Best in the league, maybe. When you play with best player, you play well. Is not complicated.”

“Scott says the same thing about you. That you’re one of the best.” Kip tilts his head. “He also says you’re an asshole, but I think that’s a compliment coming from him.”

“From Scott Hunter, yes. This is high praise.”

Kip laughs. “He’s not so bad once you get past the—” He waves a hand vaguely.

“The golden boy thing.”

“Yeah. That.” Kip’s smile turns wry. “It’s a lot, being with someone everyone thinks they know. The Scott Hunter everyone sees on TV, in interviews, that’s real. But it’s not all of him. There’s a whole other person underneath who likes bad reality TV and burns toast every single time.”

“This is sabotage. You are giving me ammunition.”

“Please. Like you need more.” Kip grins. “I’m just saying. The public version of people isn’t the whole story. I think you know that better than most.”

Ilya goes very still.

Kip’s voice is light, casual. But there’s something underneath it. An invitation, maybe. A door left open.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Ilya keeps his voice neutral.

Kip’s expression softens into something almost sympathetic.

An old Fleetwood Mac song starts playing, something about landslides and seasons. Ilya watches Kip move down the bar to check on another customer, easy and unhurried, and thinks about masks. About the versions of yourself you build for survival. About how exhausting it is to wear them.

When Kip comes back, Ilya says, “The All-Star Game. Shane and I—” He stops. Starts again. “Is easy, playing with him. We don’t have to talk. I know where he’s going to be. He knows where I’m going to be.”

“You’ve been paying attention to each other for a long time.”

“Yes.”

“That makes sense. You’ve been rivals for what, seven years? Longer? You probably know his game better than anyone.”

“Yes,” Ilya says again, and the word feels heavier than it should.

Kip is quiet for a moment. Then he leans his elbows on the bar, bringing himself closer to Ilya’s level. His voice drops, not quite a whisper but something meant just for the two of them.

“Can I ask you something? You don’t have to answer.”

Ilya gestures with his glass: go ahead.

“Why did you really come in here tonight?”

Ilya turns the glass in his hand, watching the light catch the vodka. It’s a good question. He’s been asking himself the same thing since he walked through the door.

“I don’t know,” he says, and it comes out more honest than he intended.

Kip nods, like that’s a perfectly acceptable answer. Because it is. Sometimes people just end up places without a five-point plan for why. Ilya appreciates that Kip doesn’t push. Kip moves away to serve someone else, and Ilya watches him go.

Kip Grady is too good for Scott Hunter.

The thought arrives fully formed, certain. It’s not even a criticism of Scott, really. It’s that Kip is warm where Scott is polished. Scott Hunter has spent his entire career being exactly what everyone needed him to be. The face of the franchise. The golden boy. Captain fucking America. 

But Kip chose Scott anyway and Ilya thinks that says more about Kip than it does about Scott.

Kip could have anyone. Kip probably has had anyone. He’s got that energy, the kind of easy confidence that draws people in. But he picked the most famous closet case in professional sports and waited while Scott figured his shit out.

And then Scott kissed him on the ice in front of twenty thousand people and Kip just… let him. Caught him. Like he’d been ready the whole time.

Ilya doesn’t know if he could do that. Be that patient. That certain. Shane would say he’s not patient at all. And Shane would be right.

Kip comes back, sliding a bowl of mixed nuts down the bar. “You look like you’re thinking hard about something.”

“I am thinking your boyfriend does not deserve you.”

Kip blinks. Then laughs, startled. “Wow. Okay.”

“This is compliment. To you.”

Kip shakes his head, still smiling.

“I should remind him,” Kip says, and there’s a teasing warmth in it. “Keep him humble.”

“Good. He needs it.”

“He does.” Kip leans back against the counter behind him, arms crossed. The bar has thinned out a little. It’s getting late, the Thursday night crowd filtering toward the door. “I’m closing up in about twenty minutes. You’re welcome to hang out while I count the register, if you want.”

“You are inviting me to watch you do math.” Ilya raises an eyebrow. “This is your idea of good time. The Fleetwood Mac is not good enough?”

“You like Fleetwood Mac?”

“You are judging me. You, who create drink that tastes like children’s cough syrup?”

“So that’s a yes. You’ll stay?”

Ilya makes a show of considering it, like this is a serious decision requiring deliberation. “Free vodka?”

“One more. And only because you suffered through the Scott Hunter.”

“Two more. The suffering was significant.”

Kip pours him a double before moving off to start corralling the last few customers toward the door, and Ilya settles back against the bar. He’ll leave a good tip. 

This is how Ilya wins. You take the shots, you take the conversation, you take the peace when it comes. And then you leave enough money to make it clear you were never the kind of person who needed any of it for free.

Chapter End Notes

Self-beta'ing is so much fun.

My theme song for this entire story has been Billie Eilish's WILDFLOWER. I've listened to it about 50x writing up to this point. Truly not sure why as the messaging between that song and this story don't quite align, but the vibe... I vibe with it very much. So much I nearly titled this entire thing WILDFLOWER.

ALSO!

Constructive criticism is highly welcome! Any kind of criticism really if you wish. Feel free to say whatever you want in the comments section I will love it all.

Chapter 3: Take the Coffee

Chapter Summary

What happens when someone like Ilya stands next to someone like Scott in a moment where none of their usual armor works?

Chapter Notes

Minor edit was made in the first chapter near the end of Chapter 1 yesterday. Deleted the last few lines. I had Scott ask Ilya about Shane. But after crumpling enough drafts to get to this point, I decided to have Scott know nothing at all about Ilya and Shane’s relationship at this point. We’re going in a different direction. Scott knows no more than Kip does. And Kip can only speculate.

Ilya: I need Scott Hunter’s number.

Ilya sends the text before he can think better of it. His hands are still shaking. There’s blood on his $3000 jacket, on his jeans, drying tacky between his fingers. The ambulance left four minutes ago and he’s standing on a sidewalk in Greenwich Village.

His phone buzzes.

Jane: Why?

Then, immediately:

Jane: What’s wrong?

Ilya stares at the screen. He types, deletes, types again. His boyfriend was hit by car. I was there. He needs to know.

The three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.

Jane: Are you okay?

Ilya laughs, or tries to. What comes out is this brittle, fractured sound that doesn’t belong to him. He watches a woman give him a wide berth, watches her eyes skip from his face to the blood drying on his jacket, and thinks: fair enough.

Ilya: I’m fine. Number.

Jane: Ilya.

Ilya: Please.

The number comes through ten seconds later. 

Jane: Call me after.

Ilya doesn’t respond. He copies the number into his phone and stares at it for a long moment. His thumb hovers over the call button.

Scott Hunter. The man who stood in front of cameras and said yes, I’m gay, yes, I’m in love with him, yes, I’ll burn it all down if that’s what it costs.

Ilya has never respected him more than in this moment, and he has never wanted to make a phone call less.

He presses call.

It rings three times. Four. Then the click of voicemail.

“You’ve reached Scott Hunter. Leave a message.”

Ilya exhales. Of course. Scott is probably on a plane with his phone switched to airplane mode like the responsible fucking adult he is.

The beep sounds.

“Scott. It’s Ilya Rozanov.” He pauses. Realizes how insane that sounds with no context. Ilya Rozanov does not call Scott Hunter. That’s not a thing that happens in any universe. “There’s been an accident. Kip was…” The name feels strange in his mouth, too intimate for this conversation, but your boyfriend feels worse. “Condition is critical. Come to hospital as soon as—”

The voicemail cuts off.

Ilya stares at his phone.

Thirty seconds. Who the fuck still has thirty-second voicemail limits?

He calls back. Voicemail again.

“—as soon as you land. Mount Sinai, Manhattan.”

.𖥔 ݁ ˖⋆ ˚❆

Present time—Mount Sinai, Manhattan

Ilya wakes up with a crick in his neck and no idea where he is.

This happens sometimes. Hotels blur together, time zones stack up wrong, and there’s always that half-second of where before the world reassembles itself. But then he hears the beeping, steady and mechanical, and smells that particular hospital smell, and it all comes back. The crosswalk. The truck. The way Kip looked on the asphalt, wrong in ways Ilya’s brain still won’t fully render.

He keeps his eyes mostly closed. Old habit. You learn more when people think you’re not listening.

Scott is standing near the door, talking to some woman. His voice is low, controlled, the way it gets in post-game pressers when he’s swallowing something ugly.

Ilya’s hand is tucked into the pocket of his hoodie. The fabric is soft, worn in, too tight across the shoulders because Shane runs small and Ilya had stolen it anyway. 

HOCKEY DAD, it says across the chest in block letters. It’s a joke because either of them are fathers (and he doesn’t let himself think about it, what it might be like, the two of them and something more) and neither of them are out yet in any way that matters (it’s not possible now, not for them, not yet). But Shane had bought it from some charity auction and thought it was hilarious and Ilya had rolled his eyes and called it ridiculous and then worn it every night for a week until Shane noticed and got that so-pure look on his face, like he still couldn’t believe Ilya wanted to keep things that reminded him of them.

Ilya keeps his breathing even. The woman is saying something about swelling, about waiting, about how the next twenty-four hours will tell them more.

Scott asks a question Ilya doesn’t catch. The woman’s answer is longer, more technical. Something about intracranial pressure. Ilya knows that word. He’d learned it in Russian first, years ago, when Dmitry Mikhailov took a hit wrong in practice and never played again.

The woman leaves. Scott doesn’t move for a long moment. Ilya can feel him standing there, can feel the weight of his attention shifting between the bed and the chair by the window where Ilya is pretending to sleep.

Then Scott crosses the room. 

Not to Ilya. To Kip.

There’s a sound—Loss of breath? Choked sob?—that Scott Hunter would never make in front of cameras. Ilya keeps his eyes closed. Some things aren’t meant to be witnessed.

“Sorry it took so long to get here,” Scott says, so quiet Ilya almost doesn’t hear it. “I’m here now. I’m sorry I wasn’t…”

Ilya thinks about Shane. About the cottage in Montreal with the fantastic water pressure and the kitchen that’s too big and the way Shane looks in the morning before he’s fully awake, sleep-soft and radiant in a way no one should look after being as thoroughly debauched as he is by the time Ilya is through with him. But now, Ilya thinks about what it would feel like to stand in a hospital room and talk to Shane’s unconscious body, to not know if Shane would ever wake up and hear him.

His chest hurts.

It’s just the chair. He slept wrong. That’s all.

Ilya shifts, trying to find a position that doesn’t make his spine feel like it’s staging a revolt, and his brain—helpful as always—decides this is the perfect moment to think about the jacket.

The jacket he’d been wearing when he knelt on that sidewalk. The jacket that cost three thousand dollars and change because Ilya has specific taste and the money to indulge it. Italian leather, butter-soft, the kind of thing you wear when you want to feel like the version of yourself who has everything figured out.

It’s ruined now. You don’t kneel in someone’s blood for ten minutes and expect dry cleaning to fix it.

He’d left it in the hotel room. Balled up in the corner of the bathroom where he didn’t have to look at it. He should throw it away. 

And the hoodie—Shane’s hoodie, the stupid HOCKEY DAD hoodie—he’d pulled that on because it was the first thing in his bag that wasn’t a suit.

Also, it smelled like Shane, and Ilya had needed something that smelled like home.

Then he came back.

Scott was on his way. The hospital had Kip’s emergency contacts. Ilya had done his part (had literally held him together) and no one would have blamed him for going back to his hotel and staying there.

But he came back.

Because I watched his blood pool on the asphalt.

Because I can’t stop seeing it. 

Because I held him together with my bare hands and now some part of me feels responsible for what happens next.

Scott is still talking, murmuring things Ilya can’t make out. Ilya changes his breathing, letting it go slower, rougher and into the pattern of someone surfacing from real sleep rather than whatever this is. 

He waits until Scott goes quiet.

Then opens his eyes.

Scott is standing by the bed, one hand wrapped around Kip’s fingers, careful to avoid the IV line. His face is wrecked in a way Ilya has never known. This is a side of Scott Hunter they never broadcast.

Ilya has spent years trying to make Scott look like this. Has thrown hits and talked shit and played his most vicious hockey with the express goal of cracking that golden-boy composure, of getting Scott Hunter to feel something ugly on camera for once in his life.

He has imagined how satisfying it would be for him to be the one to do that, how earned. Watching Scott’s thumb move in slow circles over Kip’s knuckles, Ilya decides seeing this side of him is much worse.

“Hey,” Ilya coughs. His voice comes out rough, sleep-thick. He coughs. His voice comes out wrecked, and he doesn’t bother to fix it.

Scott straightens like someone’s yanked a string at the base of his spine.

Well. So much for being considerate.

The transformation is instant. Shoulders back, jaw set, eyes clearing into something camera-ready. Ilya watches the mask slide into place and feels a familiar curl of irritation. There he is. Captain fucking America, reporting for duty.

“I didn’t realize you were awake.” Scott’s voice is steady now. 

“Just now,” Ilya lies.

Scott’s eyes narrow. He doesn’t believe it. That’s fine. Ilya wasn’t trying very hard.

Scott clears his throat. Adjusts Kip’s blanket. Fusses with something on the IV stand that doesn’t need fussing with.

Ilya waits.

“You should go back to your hotel. Get some real sleep.”

Hospitals are strange liminal spaces. Time gets strange. The waiting strips you down. At some point, you stop being Hollander’s rival and Hunter’s enemy and become two exhausted men who are both scared for someone they care about.

“I’m fine.”

“I wasn’t asking.”

Ilya feels his jaw tighten. There it is. That voice that expects compliance, expects everyone to fall in line because Scott Hunter asked nicely and said please and probably gave you that disappointed-dad look that makes rookies want to skate through a wall for him. Ilya does not skate through walls for anyone except Shane.

“I was here first,” Ilya says. It comes out more childish than he intended. 

Scott’s mouth thins.

“Look,” Scott starts, and his voice is different now, more tired than commanding, “I appreciate what you did. But you don’t need to—”

The door opens.

Ilya sees Scott’s whole body change. His hand drops from the bed rail and he takes a half-step back, putting distance between himself and Kip.

It’s a woman in her fifties, hair escaping from a messy bun, eyes red-rimmed and wild. Behind her, a man with Kip’s jaw and Kip’s broad shoulders, looking like he’s aged ten years in the last few hours.

Oh.

These must be Kip’s parents.

The woman—Mrs. Grady, Ilya assumes—doesn’t even look at him. Her eyes go straight to the bed, and the sound she makes is something Ilya never wants to hear again.

The man—Mr. Grady—follows, one hand on his wife’s back, the other gripping the bed rail like it’s the only thing keeping him upright.

Scott steps back further. Ilya watches him fold himself smaller, making room, becoming a guest in a space he’d been holding down for hours.

Ilya stands. He’s already moving toward the door, because all this raw grief of parents seeing their child broken isn’t his to witness. He catches Scott’s eye on the way out. Scott looks at him with something that might be gratitude before approaching Kip’s parents.

The hallway is bright and cold. Ilya walks until he finds a vending machine, then stands in front of it without buying anything.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket, thinks about texting Shane, puts the phone away again.

What would he even say? 

So, I watched someone almost die last night. I held his insides together with my hands. I am now in hospital wearing your stupid hoodie.

Shane would worry. Shane would want to fly to New York. Shane would do something stupid and kind, because that’s who Shane is, and then people would ask questions, and then—

Ilya puts the phone away.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖⋆ ˚❆

They’re alone.

Again.

Scott took Kip’s parents down to the cafeteria. Mrs. Grady hadn’t stopped shaking since she walked in, and Mr. Grady looked like he might pass out standing up. 

Scott had handled it. Made a suggestion about coffee and sitting down, a hand on Mrs. Grady’s elbow, something murmured to Mr. Grady that Ilya didn’t catch. The three of them left together and no one told Ilya to come with, so he didn’t.

Ilya looks at Kip’s face and says, very quietly, in Russian, “You should wake up. Your boyfriend is very annoying when he’s worried.”

The ventilator hisses.

“Also,” Ilya adds, “you owe me a new jacket.”

Nothing. Of course nothing. Kip can’t hear him. And even if he could, he wouldn’t understand.

Ilya sits back in the chair and really does figure he should leave. He has a game tomorrow and he’s playing against the Admirals.

He should text his coach. Should probably have done that hours ago. Sorry, can’t make morning skate, was busy holding man’s organs inside his body. Somehow he doesn’t think that excuse is in the approved list.

“Blyad,” Ilya curses and he calls Shane up right there in the room. It’s not like Kip’s going to complain.

The phone rings twice before Shane picks up.

“Ilya?” Shane’s voice is sleep-rough, confused. “What’s wrong?”

There’s rustling. Shane sitting up. Ilya can picture it. The sleep-soft hair, the squinting, the whole display, and he hates how much he wants to be there instead of here.

“I wanted to hear your voice,” Ilya says, and immediately wants to punch himself in the face.

Shane goes quiet. “Where are you?”

“New York. You know this.”

“Where in New York. Right now.”

Ilya looks at the hospital bed. The machines. Kip.

“Hospital.”

“What?” Full panic. Ilya can practically hear Shane throwing off the covers. “Are you hurt? What happened—”

“Not me. Hunter’s boyfriend. Accident. I was there.” Ilya’s jaw tightens. “I have practice in four hours.”

“Okay, but—wait, Kip? Is he—”

“Critical.”

“Jesus. Ilya.”

“This is word paramedic on scene used. Doctors here are more...” He searches for the word. “Optimistic. Or better liars.”

“Are you okay?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me this? I am not one who was hit by truck.”

“You—” Shane stops. Starts again. “You helped him. Didn’t you.”

“I held pressure. That’s all. Anyone would.”

“Not anyone.” Shane’s voice is quiet. “You.”

“Don’t make it into thing. Make me into—” Ilya’s English fails him. He switches to Russian without thinking. “Don’t make me into something I’m not.”

Down the hall, Ilya can hear footsteps. Voices. Scott and the Gradys, probably, coming back from the cafeteria.

“I have to go.”

“Ilya.”

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

The door opens. Scott walks in first, holding two paper cups of coffee. He stops when he sees Ilya sitting. Scott looks at him for a long moment. Then holds out one of the cups.

Ilya stares at it.

“It’s coffee,” Scott says.

Ilya hasn’t hung up the call yet. Shane hasn’t either. But they’ve both gone very quiet.

Scott blinks.

Ilya brings the phone back to his ear. “I have to go,” he says again, quieter this time.

“Yeah.” Shane’s voice is careful now. Guarded. He heard the change too. “Call me later?”

“Da.”

He hangs up and takes the coffee.

“Thanks.”

Ilya wraps his fingers around the paper cup and feels the heat seep into his palms, grounding him in a way he didn’t realize he needed. “Thanks,” he says, and the words come out strange. A bit too sincere, so he covers it by taking a sip and grimacing. “Could go outside right now. Lick the street. Would be improvement.”

Scott’s hand tightens around his own cup and for a second he almost laughs. “Then don’t drink it,” he says, and his voice comes out flat, scraped raw from the hours of holding himself together on the plane, in the cab, in front of the doctors, in front of Kip’s parents.

Ilya takes another sip anyway, holding Scott’s gaze the whole time. “His parents?” Ilya asks, jerking his chin toward the door. “They okay?”

It’s a stupid question. Of course they’re not okay. But it’s the kind of stupid question you ask when the real questions are too big and the silence is worse.

Scott glances back at the door, then at Kip. Always at Kip. Like his eyes can’t help returning there, like looking away too long might change something. “His mom needed a minute,” he says. “They’re in the chapel.” 

“Chapel? In hospital?”

Scott shrugs, the movement tired and mechanical. “It’s a thing, I guess.” He takes a sip of his own terrible coffee and doesn’t grimace, which says more about his current state than anything else. “They wanted to pray.”

Ilya’s hand moves without thinking, fingers brushing the chain at his throat where the cross hangs beneath Shane’s hoodie. “Is not stupid,” he says, quieter than he means to. “To pray.”

Scott’s eyes drop to the movement, catch on the chain, then flick back up to Ilya’s face. “I didn’t say it was,” he says, and there’s no edge to it.

Ilya shrugs. “You were thinking it.” He takes another sip of the awful coffee, watching Scott over the rim. “Is okay. I know what you think of me.”

“Right now I’m not thinking much of anything.”

Ilya snorts. “Liar. You are always thinking.”

Scott’s jaw tightens and he looks away, back to the bed, back to Kip’s slack face and the tube in his mouth and the steady beep of machines keeping him alive. “Yeah, well. Maybe I don’t want to be.”

Ilya leans back in the chair, stretching his legs out in front of him. “So, tomorrow. You think Admirals have chance, or should I tell my goalie to take nap during first period?”

Scott’s head snaps toward him, and for a second there’s real heat in his eyes. “Are you seriously talking about the game right now?”

Ilya meets his gaze without flinching. “What else you want to talk about, Hunter?” He gestures at the bed, at Kip, at all of it. “This?”

Scott’s mouth opens, then closes. His hand flexes around the coffee cup hard enough that Ilya hears the cardboard creak. “No,” he says finally, the word dragged out of him like it costs something. “No, I don’t want to talk about this.”

Ilya nods once, like that settles something. “Then we talk about hockey.” He takes another sip of the terrible coffee. “Your power play is shit, by the way. Watched film last week. Entry is predictable. Always left side, always the same setup.”

Scott stares at him for a long moment, something unreadable moving behind his eyes. “You’re such an asshole,” he says, but there’s no venom in it.

“Yes,” Ilya agrees, and drains the rest of his coffee. “This is not news.”

Scott sinks into the chair on the other side of Kip’s bed and scrubs a hand over his face. “Left side entry is a decoy,” he says, muffled through his fingers. “We’re setting up for the cross-ice pass.”

Ilya raises an eyebrow. “You know I am playing against you tomorrow, yes? You are just... giving me this?”

Scott drops his hand and looks at Ilya, and there’s something almost like a challenge flickering to life in his exhausted face. “By the time you hit the ice, we’ll have three new looks you’ve never seen.”

Ilya tilts his head. “You are not going to be on ice tomorrow,” he says, not unkind.

Scott’s jaw works, and for a moment Ilya thinks he’s going to argue. That stubborn golden-boy refusal to admit weakness, to step back, to let anyone see him as less than perfectly capable. But then Scott’s eyes drift to Kip again, to the ventilator breathing for him, and something in his shoulders gives.

Ilya is quiet for a moment, turning the empty coffee cup in his hands.

Scott looks at him sharply, searching for the angle, the mockery, the trap. Ilya watches him do it—watches Scott Hunter try to figure out what game Ilya Rozanov is playing now.

“Last year,” Ilya says, still turning the cup, “when you kissed him on the ice.”

Scott goes very still. “What about it.”

Ilya shrugs, casual, like they’re discussing the weather. “Was thinking you could have done better. Very sloppy technique. Too much teeth, probably. Poor angle.” He tosses the empty cup toward the trash can in the corner and misses. “If you are going to ruin career with dramatic gesture, at least make it look good.”

Scott blinks at him. “I wasn’t really thinking about technique at the time.”

“How’s it been? Since.” Ilya gestures vaguely—everything, all of it, you know.

Scott is quiet for long enough that Ilya thinks he’s not going to answer. Then he exhales, slow and heavy, and leans back in the chair. “Weird,” he says. “Good weird, mostly. Some bad weird.” He looks at Kip’s hand in his, at the IV line, at the monitors. “Worth it.”

“Which parts is bad weird?”

Scott’s thumb traces a slow circle over Kip’s knuckles. “The letters,” he says. “Some of them.” He doesn’t elaborate, but he doesn’t need to. Ilya knows what kind of letters those are. “Had a sponsor drop me.. The team’s been good though. Better than I expected. But the rest of it... you learn who people really are.”

“Which sponsor?”

“Does it matter?” Scott’s voice is flat. “They had concerns about brand alignment.”

“Because I have game in Ottawa next month. And in Boston. And in Chicago. Is good to know which company executives need to have accident. In parking lot. Very icy this time of year.”

“You’re not serious.”

Ilya meets his eyes and doesn’t smile. “I am always serious about ice.”

Scott stares at him for a long moment, something shifting behind his eyes. Then he huffs out a breath that’s almost a laugh. “Northcrest Auto Group.”

Ilya laughs, loud and sharp. “Northcrest Auto Group? The ones with the commercials where man drives truck through cornfield to prove he has big dick?” He shakes his head. “Tell them to fuck off. You are better without them.”

Scott’s mouth twitches, the first thing close to a smile Ilya’s seen from him all night. “My agent said the same thing. Minus the dick part.”

“Your agent is smart.” Ilya stretches, joints popping, and glances at the window where gray light is starting to seep through the blinds. “I will make sure to mention Northcrest in next interview. How their trucks are very small. Compensating for something.”

“You don’t have to do that.” Scott’s voice is quiet, careful, like he’s not sure what to do with the offer.

“Is not for you,” he says. “Is because I hate bad commercials.”

Scott shakes his head, but the almost-smile stays. “Right.”

The room settles into something quieter.

Outside, the city is waking up, and somewhere across town Ilya’s team is probably wondering where the hell he is.

Ilya pulls out his phone and stares at the screen. Missed call from his coach. Two from the team’s PR manager. A string of texts from teammates ranging from “where are you” to “bro???” to one from their goalie that’s just a series of increasingly confused emojis.

“Go handle your stuff,” Scott says, and this time it doesn’t sound like a dismissal. “I’ve got this.”

Ilya looks at him, then at Kip, then back at Scott. “You will call me,” he says, and it’s not a question. “When he wakes up.”

Scott’s eyebrows rise. “You want me to call you.”

“We have each other’s numbers now,” Ilya says, standing and pocketing his phone. “Seems waste not to use them.”

Scott looks at him for a long moment, like he’s trying to solve a puzzle that doesn’t quite fit together. “Yeah,” he says finally. “Okay. I’ll call.”

Ilya nods once, sharp. He’s halfway to the door when he stops, turns back. Scott is watching him with that same tired, wary expression, like he’s still waiting for the punchline.Ilya crosses back to the bed. Not to Scott’s side—to Kip’s. He looks down at the bruised face, the tubes running through him.

“You wake up,” Ilya says, quiet, in English so Scott can hear. “You have bar to run. Terrible drinks to make. Boyfriend who cannot function without you.”

Scott chuffs. Ilya ignores him.

“Also,” Ilya adds, switching to Russian because some things are easier in his mother tongue, even if no one understands. “I want to hear the rest of the story about the smoothie.”

He doesn’t look at Scott as he straightens up and pulls Shane’s hoodie tighter around himself. Before he can leave, Scott stops him.

“Rozanov.”

Ilya pauses at the door.

“Good luck Saturday.”

Ilya’s hand tightens on the door frame. He should say something dismissive. Something that puts the walls back up, that reminds them both who they are to each other. Instead, he says, “Luck is for people with bad power plays. So, yes. Good luck to you, too.”

Scott huffs out something that’s almost a laugh, tired and raw, and the sound settles somewhere warm in Ilya’s chest.

Ilya lets go of the door frame. When he steps into the hallway, he feels lighter than he has in hours, and he doesn’t let himself think about why. 

Besides, he has a game to win. And he’s going to be fucking spectacular.

Chapter End Notes

And so, through the power of trauma and truly terrible coffee, I will make these two men friends.