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Kip likes Hunter’s teammates more than he expected to, which is to say not all that much.
Some of them are good—some of them are great—some of them are terrible, and a lot of them just have no idea how to talk to a queer person.
Some of the WAGs—fuck, he sort of hates that term too, mostly because it sounds like a child made it up, and also there's no room for him in Wives-and-Girlfriends—are better, but some of them are weird sorority-girl, social-status-is-tied-to-dating-a-professional-athlete, Christian-girl-autumn types, and that type very much does not want him mucking up their social climbing.
Kip is not very Christian-girl-autumn.
Normally it doesn't bother him that much, but here at the something-something-charity-extraviganza, which is full of donors paying top dollar to schmooze with the crème de la crème of hockey, it is very obvious the degree to which Kip does not have a place here.
Other than maybe as a waiter.
He's good at carrying those little trays of spinach puffs.
From across the room, where he's trapped by three white men in expensive suits, Scott shoots Kip an apologetic look. Kip mouths it's okay back even though it's not, really, because it's not Scott's fault.
“They'll let him go eventually,” a voice next to Kip says.
Kip startles, just barely not upending his drink all over himself. When he turns it's to see a man he sort of recognizes as a hockey player standing next to him, drinking what might be ginger ale. Kip does know what hockey players look like, but right now every face is mixing into one overwhelming massive cloud of Money.
“What?” Kip blurts out.
The man is extremely attractive. It is not fair.
Most hockey players look like their face has been smashed up a few times.
Thank god hockey players wear helmets so Scott doesn't spend more time than necessary looking at this man's face.
Kip thinks he is spending more time than is necessary looking at this man's face.
“Hunter,” the man says, gesturing with his chin towards where Scott is still trapped by the rich people. “They'll let him go eventually.”
“Yeah,” Kip says. Then, “Who are you?”
To his surprise, the man blushes. Switching his glass to his left hand, he stretches out his right hand, saying, “Sorry. Shane Hollander.”
Kip, shaking the man's cold hand with his own cold hand, blurts out, “I'm used to seeing you with a helmet on.”
To his surprise, Shane Hollander laughs at that. “Fair,” he says. He peers at Kip, but not in the person-in-a-zoo way a lot of the people here have. “You're a…grad student, right?”
“That's right,” Kip says, a little surprised.
Someone walks towards them with that wants-to-talk-to-the-freakshow look, and Kip sees Shane Hollander lift his head and make direct eye contact with the man, and the man immediately pick another direction to walk in.
Without missing a beat, Shane says, “I'm always impressed with people who manage in academia. Hockey's the only thing I know about, really.”
That's an objectively absurd way for Shane Hollander, best player in a generation, to talk about himself, but Kip doesn't know how to say that without sounding insane, so he just says, “Some people study hockey in college. Not in undergrad necessarily, at least not specifically, but in grad school, I'm sure there are people who focus on it. For history, or sports medicine, things like that.”
Reassuring Hollander that—that what, hockey matters too?—feels absurd, but instead of laughing at Kip his face lights up, and he says, “I’m reading a book about Sergei Pryakhin, the first Soviet player given permission to play in the NHL.”
He sounds Russian when he says the name, like he's practiced it to get it right.
“He played for the Krylya Sovetov Moscow, and he—” Between one second and the next, his face shuts down, all of that excitement tucked back away behind a look Kip recognizes from interviews. “You don't need the life story of a random hockey player.”
Oh, Kip knows that feeling. “You should hear me get going about history,” he says, because he’s not going to be one of those assholes. “One of my grad school friends carries around a rubber duck to talk to when there's nobody there to listen. So you're in good company.”
Hollander, glancing around the room with well-veiled hostility, mutters something that sounds like, “Some good company, at least.”
Kip holds in a laugh through sheer force of will.
Another person making a beeline for them catches Hollander’s eye and finds another place to go.
“You don't need to scare people away,” Kip says, amused and more grateful than he wants to admit to this virtual stranger.
Hollander flushed but says, “Some people are scared to be a dick around me, so if me being here stops them from walking over, it's because they were planning to be a dick.”
“It's because you're Captain Canada,” Kip says, delighted despite himself, and laughs when Hollander mutters, fuck off.
Kip takes a sip of his mostly-water.
Hollander takes a sip of his ginger ale.
From through the seething crowd, Scott emerges. He looks a little wide-eyed, walking at just too fast a clip to look natural, and when he wraps an arm around Kip’s waist his body is like a steel rod against Kip’s.
“Hollander,” Scott says, a little tersely.
“Hunter,” Hollander says, a lot less tersely. He glances over at the crowd, then asks, “Need me to throw myself at some investors so you two can escape?”
Scott blinks at him, and something eases in his body, like the fight is draining out of him. “Nah,” he says, “but thanks.” He glances down at Kip. “You okay?”
“Hollander was keeping the assholes away,” Kip says, leaning up to brush a kiss against Scott's lips. Scott leans down obligingly, smiling a little when they pull away like he can't help himself.
Kip is sure he's smiling too.
Fuck, he still can't believe this is real.
With a start, he realizes Hollander is still there, watching them—but with a look in his eyes that looks for just one second like longing before it all gets packed back away.
There are a lot of things that longing could be for, and Kip doesn't let himself think about them, because the easiest way to never out someone is to not know anything about them that could be outed.
“Thanks,” Scott says gruffly.
Hollander shrugs, taking a sip of his ginger ale. “I'm trying to keep my team from being a dick about it,” he says, a little out of left field. “I can't stop everything, but I'm doing my best.”
“I appreciate that,” Scott tells him. Kip can feel his fingers flexing against Kip’s side. “I—”
A man in a very expensive suit slings his arm around Hollander's suddenly-rigid shoulders, exclaiming a little drunkenly, “Shane Hollander, as I live and breathe. When are you going to do another shoot for us? Maybe get that girlfriend of yours to pose, too.”
Kip watches Hollander's eyes go very blank, and his voice is unnervingly friendly when he says, “I'm afraid I'm not familiar with my schedule for upcoming brand work right now, so I'd have to check my calendar for that. And I don't have a girlfriend.”
“Rose Landry, right?” The man squeezes Hollander's arm like they're buddies, apparently oblivious to the look on Hollander's face. “You dated her, right?”
Kip knows Hollander, as the best-paid and most accomplished hockey player in the country, can take care of himself, but right now he kind of wants to set a very hungry piranha on the man holding on to him like that.
He doesn't know why Hollander isn't pulling away, but the look on his face, underneath that media-perfect blankness, is. Not great.
“We're just friends,” Hollander says politely.
The man snorts, taking a swig from his glass of what looks like whiskey. “No red-blooded American is just friends with a woman like Rose Landry.” His eyes focus on Kip and Scott for the first time, and Kip isn't surprised when he says, “Though I guess hockey is just filling up with other sorts of men these days.”
Scott flinches, just a little.
Kip doesn’t, but mostly because he is braced for it, and he refuses to let this motherfucker see him flinch.
“Scott Hunter is one of the most accomplished hockey players I have ever had the honor of facing, and he has played longer than I have, so I'm not sure ‘filling up’ is particularly accurate at this stage in his career,” Hollander says mildly, and now is when he pulls away from the man. “Though if your comment reflects your company's official position on inclusion in the sport, I will unfortunately have to reconsider our partnership moving forward. I have my own brand image to maintain, as you know, and there is a reputational risk to being associated with bigotry. You understand, of course.”
“Of course,” the man says faintly. He mumbles, “If you'll excuse me,” and slinks off into the crowd.
Holy shit.
Under his breath, Hollander mutters, “Inclusion in the sport. Inclusion in hockey? What the fuck else sport would I be talking about? Inclusion in the sport.” He looks at them. “Does ‘inclusion in the sport’ or ‘inclusion in hockey' sound better?”
“What?” Kip says faintly. What the fuck just happened?
“If I have to give that spiel again,” Hollander clarifies, like that was the question, “do you think ‘inclusion in the sport’ or ‘inclusion in hockey’ sounds better?”
“What?” Kip says again, louder.
Hollander peers at him. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Yeah. I—”
Kip looks at Scott for help, because what the fuck just happened, and Scott says, voice a little weird, “You didn't need to do that.”
“I have a speech and everything,” Hollander says, like that's at issue here. “My mom and I workshopped it. She thought ‘reputational risk’ sounded better than ‘I don't want to work with assholes.’”
“You don't need to torpedo your brand deals for us,” Scott says.
Hollander snorts. “What, do you think Kevin van der Klein over there is going to show up at a meeting tomorrow and say, whoops, I lost Shane Hollander because I wanted to be homophobic in public?” He narrows his eyes and pulls out his phone, saying, “I don't like ‘in the sport.’ It sounds like I don't know what sport I play.” Something on his screen makes him smile, and he types out a quick one-handed response before saying, “I have to go. Nice to meet you, Kip. Good luck on your degree.”
And then, like a Canadian tornado, he's gone.
“Well,” Kip says, turning to look at Scott. He looks sort of like someone hit him in the head with something heavy. “That was unexpected.”
“He's always nice,” Scott says. Then, “Well, usually nice, except on the ice, when he's a fucking menace. But there's nice, and then there's….”
“Yeah,” Kip agrees.
“If Rozanov tries to talk to you, on the other hand—”
“I will run screaming.”
“Walk,” Scott says soberly, though his eyes are smiling. “Running will activate his predator instinct.”