Work Text:
Scott lies sprawled next to Kip across dark blue sheets, watching as Kip’s chest heaves still, a red flush spread from his neck down, sweat clinging to his skin.
“Holy fuck,” Kip says, wiping a hand across his face.
Scott grins, reaches out to run a hand down Kip’s chest, feeling the thud of Kip’s heart beating fast and sure beneath his fingers.
“Good?” Scott asks.
“Oh, fuck yes,” Kip answers, rolling to face Scott across the pillows. He looks at Scott slyly. “You had a good night tonight.”
Scott had indeed had a good night, although he’s not sure which part of it Kip’s referring to. Two goals and one assist against Chicago, a home game where the roar of the crowd had pumped fire into his veins like he hadn’t felt in weeks. And then coming home to see Kip on the couch wearing Scott’s Admirals hoodie, warm and waiting and indelibly there. Coasting high on post-win dopamine, he’d picked Kip up, carried him to the bedroom, and fucked him with an athleticism he usually reserves for a 5-3 power play.
Kip looks pleased with himself as he hoists himself out of bed. He stretches, and Scott admires hard planes of muscle, yards of smooth skin. He can’t believe he gets to have this.
They shower, then eat: leftover pasta; baked chicken. Scott makes protein hot chocolate in the microwave, because it’s cosier than chugging the stuff cold. He offers some to Kip, who demurs.
“It really doesn’t taste anything like hot chocolate, you do know that?”
Scott shrugs, sips it anyway. He’s used to the graininess. It’s kind of nice, this little self-indulgence, this small moment of self care. He hasn’t exactly had a lot of hot chocolates lovingly made for him by other people in the last twenty years of his life.
He finishes his drink. They brush their teeth. They slip together beneath cool sheets, sheets that still smell softly of intimacy. Scott gathers Kip into his arms, pulls their bodies close together.
He runs a hand down Kip’s back, grazing over the swell of Kip’s buttocks. He stops, fits his hand to the curve of flesh and muscle, squeezes lightly. Kip sighs and kisses Scott’s neck.
He asks, out into the comfortable quiet of the room: “What’s it like?”
“Hmm? What’s what like?” Kip hums into the skin near Scott’s collarbone.
“What’s it like when I fuck you?”
“Mm. S’good. Really good.”
Scott wasn’t fishing for compliments. He tries again.
“What does it feel like?”
Kip props himself up in his elbow, looks down at Scott with kindness and an instant understanding.
“It’s intense. It feels like pressure, like really good pressure, like scratching the most satisfying itch. When the angles are right it feels overwhelming. It feels pretty powerful, too, to be honest. You’ve, uh…you’ve never tried it?”
Scott shakes his head. In the many years since he came to terms with the fact of his sexuality, he’s never been fucked. It’s felt too vulnerable, too much like a surrender. He’s never felt safe enough, his hookups furtive and secret. Other men have generally taken one look at his height, his frame, and have made assumptions about what he wants. And he’s never felt comfortable enough to correct them. To ask.
But Kip… Kip makes him want to ask for what he wants.
Kip looks at Scott, his face a picture of openness.
“Is it something you’d like to try?”
Scott feels his heart thud, his cheeks flush.
He nods. “Uh, yeah,” he says. “Yes, I would.”
Kip leans down and kisses him, softly and gently, soothing.
“Okay,” Kip says.
Scott huffs a laugh, somewhere between nervousness and relief. “Okay.”
It takes a few more days for them to get there. The next morning he leaves for a string of games on the road: LA, Edmonton, and then finally back to New York.
Kip is waiting for him at home when he gets in from his flight. He’s deliriously happy to see Kip, feels the stress and tension of the road slough off him like snakeskin. He desperately needs a shower, he’s bone tired, he’s spent the better part of a week tamping down the lid of his happiness, acting normal, trying not to smile and stare at his phone and scroll through his message history. The longer he keeps this up, the more he can feel it: tiny hammers chipping away at the walls he’s built around himself. It scares him, and he doesn’t think about it if he can help it.
Instead, he pulls Kip to the shower, strips their clothes from their bodies, and opens his arms beneath the water’s spray. He holds Kip close, kisses him like he still can’t quite believe he gets to have this, a shout of happiness and relief leaving his throat when he comes, Kip stroking their cocks together as he kisses Scott’s neck, licks around the shell of his ear.
It isn’t until the next afternoon, as they lounge on the sofa—no practice, no game tonight—that he brings it up again.
“I missed you,” he says. “On the road, I really, really wanted to be back here with you.”
Kip looks up from his book and sits up, swaying into Scott’s personal space.
“I missed you, too,” he says. “Although I did get a lot of work done for my grad school applications.”
“Oh yeah? Can I read them?”
“You wanna read my admissions essay?” Kip looks at him with incredulity.
“Yeah, I want to know what you’re working on. It’s different, it’s interesting. I mean, I don’t know anything about art at all, but...I mean, if you wrote it...”
He lets himself trail off. He worries sometimes that he comes across too intensely. Too earnest.
“Sure,” says Kip. And it’s so easy, easy to ask and be let in, easy to share this thing with another person, to learn them, to know them. Scott had forgotten. Or had never really known.
He clears his throat. “I, uh. I also wanted to talk about what we talked about last time. Before I went on the road.”
He bites his lip. He feels his skin prickle.
If he’s honest, he’ll say that he wants more than just to talk about it. That he’s spent the last few days in anonymous hotel rooms fantasizing about what it would be like, how it might feel, to have Kip inside him. He’d laid in impersonal beds and thought about it, stroking his own cock, just once reaching down to touch himself lower, fingertips trailing over his balls and further back, shocking himself with the intimacy of it. If he were honest, he’d say that it’s all he’s been able to think about for days, that that’s why they got trounced by the Oilers in a 4-0 blowout on Saturday: because his mind had been wandering, anticipating what it would be like to be held down and fucked.
“Remind me what that was again?” Kip asks, a smile teasing at the corners of his mouth.
Scott’s stomach clenches. He feels a rush of nerves. But then he looks at Kip, his trusting eyes, his gentle smile. He remembers, just short weeks ago, asking for what he wanted. Not denying himself, for the first time in a long time.
And so he asks again.
“I want you to fuck me. Can you...can we do that?”
Kip marks his place in his book, putting it down on the coffee table. He slips off his glasses, folds them and places them on top of the book. He reaches over, runs a thumb over Scott’s cheek, wraps fingers around the back of Scott’s neck, and then tugs him forward into a kiss that somehow manages to be gentle and fiery all at once.
“We can do that,” he says with a smile.
Scott lies back across the bed, surprised that Kip can’t see the way nervousness is making his stomach jump, his heart beat.
At the foot of the bed, Kip is sliding his underwear down and off.
“The important things to remember,” he says, crawling onto the bed to hover over Scott. “One: relax. I won’t hurt you. If it does hurt, we stop, or we slow down until you’re ready to try again. You’ve got to talk to me.”
Scott nods, his stomach swooping. “What else?”
“Two: it’s okay if you don’t like this. Not everyone does. There are other things we do together that we can do instead. I am extremely happy with the way we’ve done things so far, so if you don’t enjoy this, it’s fine. A lot of guys don’t like anal sex. It is perfectly okay.”
“Okay,” he agrees. He is pretty sure this won’t be a problem. This isn’t the first time he’s thought about it, about letting someone else take control, take the weight and responsibility from him for just a little while. Sometimes he thinks he might go crazy with how badly he wants it.
Kip reaches over to the nightstand and pulls out the bottle of lube. Then his hands find Scott’s face, thumbs tracing his cheekbones. He kisses Scott, softly but assuredly. Scott kisses him back, parting his lips, inviting the kiss to grow deeper, more urgent. He grabs Kip’s hand, laces their fingers together, slides his tongue into Kip’s mouth. The anticipation is starting to get to him. It trips over his skin like currents, small but leaving hairs raised in their wake.
He hears the click of the lube bottle cap, feels Kip’s hands gently grasping under his knees, pushing them up and parting his legs. Kip kisses him everywhere—his neck, his cheek, his chest—and then he feels Kip’s fingers trail over his perineum, down to drift softly and insistently against the core of him.
“Still okay?” Kip asks.
“Yeah—yes, please.”
The first slide of Kip’s finger inside him feels a little strange, different to the few times he’s tried it for himself, lonely and needy and aching with want.
Kip applies more lube, adds a second finger, sliding them deeper now, searching and then finding, a sinuous glide and then Scott is arching his back, flexing his feet as a rush of pure pleasure indulgently twists itself through his gut.
“How does that feel?” Kip asks, kissing Scott’s knee.
“Fucking incredible,” Scott says, then laughs, like he can’t believe he could have had this the whole time.
Kip flexes his hand again, pushes in, rubs his thumb over Scott’s perineum, and Scott is moaning, he wants this, he’s needed this.
“Do you want me to keep going?” Kip asks.
“Yeah, yeah,” Scott murmurs, glazed, cock hard and dripping precome already.
Kip kisses him, kisses his neck, squeezes his arms and his side, runs fingers over his chest, his nipples. Scott is in a daze, he feels his entire being go lax, let go, as Kip adds a third finger, more lube, the hint of his pinky pressing against Scott’s rim.
Scott feels his cock twitch, arousal now at a rolling boil in his gut. He groans loudly, a laugh slipping from him in a delirious trill.
“Kip, please. Please, I need more. I need more, I need you to fuck me.”
Kip leans over him, kisses him, gives a shaky exhale. And it’s only then that Scott notices the restraint etched around Kip’s eyes, how hard Kip is just from doing this to him.
“You’re sure?” Kip asks, and Scott knows he could call it all off, return to regular scheduled programming if he needed to—but he doesn’t. There’s no part of him now shying from this. There’s no shame that’s drawing him back, no fear to stop him.
“I’m so sure. Please.”
He’s wild with it, the desire clouding his head, churning in this limbs. He needs Kip to fuck him, to take him apart. He’s not above begging.
He doesn’t have to. Kip pulls his fingers free, slicks his own cock, and kneels below Scott on the bed. Scott can feel the blunt head of Kip’s cock pressing against him, thick and unyielding. Kip guides Scott’s legs apart, picks one thigh up and slings it over his shoulder. It’s more of a turn-on that Scott had thought it would be, letting himself be manhandled. But by letting Kip manoeuvre him, position his limbs just so, wrap his hand around Scott’s knee, turn to kiss his calf where it rests on Kip’s shoulder—each moment releases him. Releases him from tension he has carried for a dozen years or more, since he first constructed the idea of what he was as a gay man. Of what he could be. The weight of the hair shirt, woven from doubt and secrecy, is lifted. It is stripped from him as Kip thrusts forward, slowly and gently, and he feels—really feels—what it means to be claimed.
Kip has one hand placed low on Scott’s abdomen, holding him steady. The other rubs soothingly over Scott’s knee, reassuring. The thick weight of his cock as it glides slowly in and out is grounding, but also makes Scott feel like he’s about to blow to smithereens, a thousand million pieces of his former self shattering out into the room.
“Is this okay?” Kip asks, breath sharp and voice scraped.
“Yeah, yes, god,” Scott manages, higher faculties checking out. “I need it, Kip, I need it, please.”
Kip smiles, warmth and sunshine, and leans forward to kiss Scott on the mouth. The change in angle causes Scott to moan deeply, loudly, as the pressure inside him swells, an orchestral crescendo, a cresting wave.
Kip holds the angle, and begins to move. His thrusts are sure, steady, not punitive but not gentle either. Scott feels wild beneath him, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, his toes curling, his own cock slapping wetly against his stomach. He reaches down, wrapping his fingers around himself.
“Fuck, yes,” Kip hisses. “Do you love it?”
Scott should feel ashamed by his answer but he doesn’t; the answer batters down doors and demands to be let out.
“I love it,” he gasps. “Oh, fuck, I love it.”
His words release something within him, and then he’s coming, coming so hard he’s seeing stars, feeling like it goes on forever, suddenly too much. He’s vaguely aware of Kip pulling out, stroking his own cock, looking down at Scott with something like awe as he comes, marking his own stomach. Scott had a fleeting moment of disappointment, wishing Kip had stayed, had come inside him, had marked him like this: open, on his back, wanting.
They stop moving, their heavy breaths filling the room. And then Kip fetches a washer from the ensuite, cleaning them both. He tucks the sheets around their legs, settling to lie beside Scott, their heads sharing a pillow.
Scott rolls onto his side to face Kip, and winces slightly at the movement.
“You okay?” Kip asks, concern painting his features.
“Yeah, I am. I’m better than okay. I feel incredible. You—you were incredible.”
Kip smiles, leans in to kiss Scott’s mouth.
“I was going to say the same about you,” he says.
Scott looks at Kip, regards him closely. This is a man, he thinks, who sees him. Whose smiling eyes clock him, see what he wants, who he is, and rises to meet it. This is a man, he thinks, who he could love.
Outside the window, darkness is beginning to creep its way across the city. Lights flood out of buildings across the city, staining the cityscape with pinpricks of yellow-white.
Inside he similarly illuminates. Light—and a lightness—emanate through him, from him.
He reaches over, grasps Kip behing his head, and pulls him in for a searing kiss. Then another, and another, soothing him, calming the racing of his heart.
Tomorrow, the world waits. But in here, now, tonight, he can be something different. He’s sure of it.
They lie entwined, letting darkness settle outside. Scott reaches over, clasps Kip’s hand in his own.
“Let’s order in,” he says. “Thai?”
In the lamplight he swears Kip’s face shutters minutely, just for a second, before bouncing back. Then Kip smiles at Scott, kisses Scott’s shoulder, and lies back against the pillows.
The window mirrors them back to themselves, echoes against the cityscape and the world outside.
“Absolutely,” Kip says. Scott smiles. In here, within these walls, he can have this.
He can have this.