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Scott feels, for lack of a better term, good. He has enough self-awareness to recognize that the beeping noises around him and uncomfortable bed underneath him mean that he’s in the hospital, so something bad must have happened, but he stashes that away with the rest of his worries. Usually that means stuffing the bad thoughts into a lockbox in the back of his mind so they can’t get out. Right now, though, he can blow them away like dandelion fluff and they won’t bother him again. Like he said, he feels good.
His peace is somewhat interrupted by a voice he recognizes as Vaughn’s, but he can’t bring himself to fully care. Not when the waves of mellow keep lapping at the shore of Scott.
The voice says something that for the life of him, he can’t understand.
“What?”
He opens his eyes. If two heads are better than one, surely two senses are better than one for listening. He sees Vaughn sitting in a chair next to his bed. His outline is a little glittery and blending into the general fuzziness behind him.
“I asked how you’re feeling, man.” Scott was right, with two senses on the case, he was able to solve the mystery of what Vaughn said.
He considers how he feels. “Floaty.”
Vaughn laughs, which makes Scott frown. He answered very seriously. Why was Vaughn laughing at him?
“Yeah, dude, I bet you are,” Vaughn says. “You’re on some pretty great drugs right now. The last time I was on that particular cocktail, I swore the clocks in my hospital room were sliding down the walls like I was in a fucking Picasso painting.”
“Melting clocks were Dali, not Picasso.” A voice Scott doesn’t recognize comes from the direction of the doorway.
With how floaty Scott feels, he’s having trouble coordinating any movement of his body, so he hopes the voice doesn’t think he’s rude for not turning towards it. The voice sounds nice, so hopefully whoever it belongs to will come closer so Scott can see them without having to move.
“Kip!” Vaughn exclaims. What the hell is a Kip? Scott wonders. “Sorry not all of us are art historians. Forgive my ignorance.”
The voice laughed. It had a good laugh, one that Scott wanted to keep hearing. The voice also sounded like it was moving closer. Like Scott had thought, it was a nice voice that wasn’t going to make him move.
Vaughn stood from the chair and moved to stand behind it. Was he leaving? As nice as the voice sounded, it still belonged to a stranger. Vaughn had to know that Scott - despite being able to fake it for captain duties like pressers and fundraisers - didn’t like talking to strangers. Surely he wouldn’t leave Scott alone with the new person, right?
Then the source of the voice took Vaughn’s place in the chair and Scott’s worries flew away. Some of that was due to the floating and his inability to hold a thought in place right now, but most of it was due to the stranger. He was the most beautiful man Scott had ever seen.
Where Vaughn had been fading into the background, the man stood out clearly. Scott was grateful for that because it meant he got a much better look. The man had dark curly hair that Scott would bet his salary was as soft to the touch as it was to look at. He had eyes that Scott wanted to stare at for days and the most perfect smile.
Where normally he was worried when interacting with strangers because he didn’t want to make a fool of himself, now he was nervous because he wanted to impress this stranger.
“Hi,” he said, slipping into his captain voice, hoping that would impress the man. “I’m Scott.”
“I know,” laughed the stranger.
Good news: Scott got to hear the stranger laugh again. Better news: now that the man was in front of him, he got to see the way that laugh lit up his face. Bad news: the stranger knew who he was, but Scott was no closer to figuring out who the stranger was.
With great difficulty, he tore his eyes from the stranger’s lovely face. Looking down, he saw the man was wearing an Admirals hoodie that looked faded from frequent wear. Was that how the man knew him? From being a fan? On the one hand, Scott could work with that, but on the other, that would mean he knew Scott, but Scott didn’t know him back, which seemed like a great injustice. At the moment, Scott still couldn’t really feel either of his hands, so it was a moot point.
“Are you an, uh, Admirals fan?” He asked, trying to nod to the man’s sweatshirt and likely miserably failing.
“Real smooth, man.” Vaughn’s voice drifted back into Scott’s awareness.
The stranger turned back to Vaughn who was holding his phone up - Scott briefly mourned the loss of sunshine as the man’s attention was no longer on him. “Are you really recording this?”
“Am I really recording Scott Hunter zooted out of his mind on painkillers? Absolutely. This is chirping material for years.”
“I am an Admirals fan,” the stranger said, turning back to Scott, who was feeling extremely satisfied now that he was the one holding the man’s attention again. “In fact, you could probably say I’m Scott Hunter’s biggest fan.”
A pit of jealousy began to rise in Scott’s stomach, until he realized that he was Scott Hunter. That meant the man was his biggest fan. He didn’t normally pursue anything romantic with Admirals fans - or anyone, really - but he couldn’t remember why. Whatever his reasoning was, it didn’t hold up while looking at this stranger. Something about the man made him want to challenge everything he thought he knew. Now he just needed something witty and cool to say to really solidify things with this guy.
“Really?” Nailed it.
“Really.” The man lifted one hand to scratch his face.
Something shimmered as he did, which was strange since he was more clearly defined and didn’t have the same glittery outline Vaughn had. The more Scott looked - and he could admit to himself that he was full on staring, but was pretty sure he was being subtle enough that no one else noticed - he noticed that it was only the man’s hand that was glittery. And only one of his fingers at that.
Shit. The man had a ring on his finger. He was married. Scott would never have a chance with him now. Not that he thought he had that much of a shot before this revelation, since the man was so clearly out of his league.
Scott frowned and caught the man’s hand as he brought it down from his face. He brought the hand closer to better investigate the situation. Upon the stranger’s ring finger was a plain gold band. Because Scott’s senses weren’t up to par at the moment, he had needed to bring the man’s hand very close to his own face to see the ring. With the man’s hand this close, he considers pressing a kiss to the back of it. Thankfully he still has a shred of impulse control that stops him. The man is married after all. No matter how much Scott wants to kiss his hand, the guy is married, it would be totally inappropriate.
“You’re married?” He asks instead.
“I am,” the man says with a soft laugh. Scott can also hear Vaughn laughing but ignores that because Vaughn is now part of the background and the background shouldn’t be able to laugh at him. The man is allowed to laugh at him because he’s beautiful and perfect and Scott would let him do anything he wants. “Do you want yours?”
“My what?” Isn’t Scott supposed to be kind of smart or something? Why is so so confused about everything today? It must be the beautiful man throwing him off his game.
“Your ring. You don’t wear it when you play because the feeling drives you crazy, so I have it here if you want.” Not only is this the most wonderful man Scott has ever seen, but he can also do magic, because he reaches down and pulls another ring out of thin air and puts it on Scott’s finger. Scott really likes the feeling of the man’s hand on his as he does.
If Scott has a ring too, does that mean? “I’m married?”
Great, now he had double the things to feel guilty to his spouse for. As if it wasn’t bad enough he forgot their wedding (and his partner’s entire existence) he was also sitting here drooling over another man. Although some of the drool might be because he doesn’t have full control of his facial muscles yet.
“You are.” The man is so patient that it almost lessens Scott’s guilt at being in love with him.
A thought is sneaking around the edges of Scott’s brain and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t figure out what it is. It seems important and like it will give him all the answers to this situation, but he just can’t catch it. He looks down at his hands, at the ring on his finger.
Wait, he’s got it! “These rings match.”
“Yeah, they do. That’s why we picked them.”
Scott is starting to put the pieces together. “If you’re married. And I’m married. And our rings match. And we picked them out together.”
The man had been nodding along as Scott went through his reasoning, encouraging him to keep going.
“Then… I don’t know what that means.” He hoped he wasn’t letting the man down by not being able to figure it out.
The man doesn’t seem mad when he speaks. Good. “It means we’re married to each other.”
He thinks the man - his husband! - is saying that to make him feel better, but he’s starting to panic. Not even the floating drugs can make him feel better. Sure, now he doesn’t have to be guilty for daydreaming over someone he’s not married to, but now he’s married to the man of his dreams and he doesn’t remember any of it.
“We can’t be married. I don’t even know your name.”
He expects his husband to frown, to be angry, to take the ring right back off his finger and walk out the door. Why wouldn’t he? Clearly Scott is a bad husband if he doesn’t even remember his name.
His husband doesn’t do any of those things. “My name is Kip,” he says instead.
Oh, Scott thinks. So that’s what a Kip is.
He has a husband. Not only that, he has a Kip. Sure he doesn’t remember him at the moment, but that’s a small problem. With Kip at his side, Scott thinks he can take on the world.
This might just be the best day of Scott Hunter’s life.
_____
This might just be the worst day of Scott Hunter’s life. That’s an exaggeration. His list of worst days is extensive and it would take a lot to knock any of the current contenders out of their spots. But he’s certainly had better days.
He had been discharged from the hospital two days ago with a shattered wrist from a nasty fall in the game against Detroit. The injury had ended his season and was going to end his sanity too if the skin under his cast didn’t stop its furious itching. At least he’d escaped without acquiring concussion number three (or four depending on who you asked).
He was steadfastly ignoring his phone, every condolence message from his teammates reminding him that he wouldn’t be able to join them on the ice for the next who knew how long. If by steadfastly ignoring, you meant reading every text that came through and feeling angsty about it but not responding. All this to say, he had no excuse to ignore the latest text to roll in.
Carter Vaughn: your husband is an angel.mp4
Carter Vaughn: Hope this makes you feel better, cap. And if it doesn’t make you feel better, it’ll at least cheer Kip up from having to deal with your grumpy ass.