Work Text:
Christopher’s writing his third please see the Chicago style formatting guide comment when he looks up to see his ex-husband standing outside his favourite coffee shop. The water droplets on the window between them obscure his vision enough that Christopher almost didn’t recognise the side profile on the other side of the glass. Almost.
But Scott looks the same, nearly – save the added gray to his beard. And he could have changed entirely; he could have gained or lost sixty pounds, or bleached his eyebrows, and Christopher would know that it was him, somehow. Scott hasn’t looked up yet. He’s staring at his phone with that furrow in his brow that means he’s working out how to say no to someone.
Christopher still knows that, apparently.
He thinks about hiding in the bathroom, or approaching the very nice young woman who served him and asking if he could just crouch behind the counter for a minute, very sorry my ex-husband is outside and if I look at him for any longer I might just walk into the Hudson. He doesn’t do that, because he’s almost a regular here and she really is very nice – and certainly not paid enough to deal with what may be the pinnacle of Christopher’s mid-life crisis.
Scott turns around then, just as Christopher has deemed himself old enough for such a crisis. The recognition passes over Scott’s face so very loudly, it’s almost cartoonish. He looks at the door to the coffee shop, back to Christopher, down at his phone – then repeats the triangle a couple more times before Christopher decides he can’t take it anymore.
He stands, tucks his laptop away, and steps outside. The rain’s stopped.
“Kip."
“Scott.”
Scott nods, like Christopher needs the confirmation.
“I thought you moved,” Christopher says, because it feels more polite than what are you doing here?
“I did,” Scott says, pausing long enough that it looks like he’s not going to elaborate. “I’m moving back. Maybe.”
“Oh.”
Scott rocks back on his feet and Christopher can see the sorry being held behind his teeth.
“Okay,” he says, because it is, obviously. He doesn’t own the city.
“I have some apartment viewings, today, so,” Scott adds.
Christopher doesn’t ask why he’s moving back. The likelihood of the answer being something he doesn’t want to hear feels far too high. So he looks into the street, tracks each car that passes, searches for something to comment on other than the weather, or this year’s new undergrads, or his dad’s health.
Elena might be right – he should get out more.
“There’s a diner on the way to my next viewing,” Scott says, breaking the silence that Christopher had yet to decide whether was awkward. “It looks quiet. I was going to stop in before meeting the estate agent.”
He waits for Scott to ask.
“No pressure, but if you would like–if you would be okay to join me. For coffee, I would like that.”
“I would,” he answers quietly. “I would like that, too.”
—
The diner is quiet, not empty enough to be uncomfortable but Christopher beelines for a table as tucked into the corner as possible anyway. Like it’s muscle memory, he finds the seats that keep Scott almost entirely out of the eyeline of the counter. Christopher’s never been great at breaking habits.
Scott sits down easily, legs loosely crossed under the table. They both order coffee when the waiter approaches them. It’s stilted when he leaves, neither of them knowing how to break the silence. There’s a vaguely 80s playlist running through the speakers, just that little too fuzzy to truly pick up on.
“So uh, how have you been?” Scott asks, after he’s thoroughly studied the menu he won’t order from.
The waiter brings their coffees before Christopher has put an answer together. He takes the extra time afforded to him, while the young man tries to parse where he’s seen Scott before, to think about what he can say. Scott has sugar in his coffee now, apparently. He tips a brown sachet into his mug and stirs. Christopher went down to half a packet three years ago – in a show of father-son solidarity.
“Busy,” he settles on.
Scott asks about work and Christopher answers perfunctorily. He doesn’t know how else. He doesn’t want to talk about work but he tells Scott enough to sound like he likes his job – because he does, genuinely. He doesn’t want to ask Scott about his but Scott tells him anyway as he leans back in the booth – a curated patchwork of commentating and advocacy and brand deals.
It sounds exhausting. The way Scott describes it, it sounds … lifeless, smaller than Scott’s world should ever be.
“How’s your dad doing?” Scott asks carefully.
Christopher can’t remember the last time that question wasn’t asked carefully. It’s almost refreshing knowing Scott’s being cautious for wholly different reasons from everyone else. He can hear the guilt still in Scott’s question, the more than ten-year-old memories underlying it. The paparazzi had hounded his dad within weeks of The Kiss–still capitalised in Christopher’s mind–and George’s safety had become a topic of eggshells and apologies far longer than it should have. Looking back, it was perhaps one of the first cracks in their relationship.
“Um, yeah he’s okay. His health hasn’t been great, so-” he trails off.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Kip. That must be really difficult.”
He sees the twitch in Scott’s hand on the table, the comfort offered so automatically, aborted.
“It’s his heart,” he takes a deep breath, needing Scott to not press. “Yeah.”
Scott’s looking at him with that same fucking intensity as always, the newer lines around his eyes the only change. Christopher’s eyes sting. He should have asked the waiter for more napkins. He should have known that, like always, Scott would pull every emotion he has that much closer to the surface.
“I- shit,” he sniffs. He tells Scott the basics, the need to know facts. He tells Scott he’s okay, that it’s fine, ignores the deja vu that comes with that kind of reassurance.
He reaches for something a little more honest, a little less raw. “It’s just everything always felt–feels new when I talk to you. For better or for worse.”
“New?”
Christopher nods, doesn’t know how to expand on that. Not without telling Scott far more of the truth than he wants to: that there’s a fractions in every part of Christopher’s life that he just doesn’t have access to anymore. He could never feel the whole of a thing until he felt it with Scott, until Scott looks at him and sees the parts no one else sees because Scott just did that. And now, without anyone to see them, each of those parts had been rendered extinct. Or maybe dormant.
“Yeah,” he says. “New.”
He watches Scott take that in.
The bell at the door chimes and a rush of cold air enters with a young business man. The waiter says something predictable about the weather and Christopher tunes into their mindless small talk until Scott speaks again.
When he does, it’s something relievingly mundane. They stumble through ten minutes of baseball chat, rekindling Scott’s age-old Yankees vs Mets rivalry with George. Christopher shakes his head at Scott explaining baseball in hockey words, like he always did.
“All I’m saying is seven periods-”
“Innings,” Christopher corrects automatically.
“To score one goal-”
“Run.”
“Is embarrassing,” Scott finishes, rolling his eyes. “It’s stupid everyone uses different words for the same thing.”
Christopher laughs at him and when they get into a entirely tongue-in-cheek debate over the linguistics of sport, it’s easy, too easy–like pedalling a bike down a hill, no resistance where there should be.
The rain picks up again and Scott follows the rivulets down the window, charmingly riveted by them as he spins a teaspoon slowly between his fingers. Christopher circles a thought he’s had for nearly a decade, ever since he and Elena had caught sight of a particular tabloid headline–Scott Hunted–slapped over a photograph of Scott looking almost unwell. Everyone and their mother had enjoyed speculating about the future and mental wellbeing of the newly-divorced Admiral’s ex-captain but seeing the words in print, the glib commentary on his dark circles and downward career trajectory, had stayed with Christopher. He’s suddenly aching to exorcise it, selfish with the want to put it to rest.
“Elena thought–” he runs his tongue over his teeth. “Sorry, that’s a messed up thing to say.”
Scott pulls his gaze away from rain drops and tilts his head.
“Elena thought you might … um do something stupid?” He asks, hating himself for the euphemism, for using Elena as a shield for a thought they’d both had, wholly independently.
He says the last part like a whisper, the quiet keeping it hypothetical.
“Kill myself?” Scott says, as straight-forward as he ever was.
Scott’s not looking at him but Christopher nods anyway. Scott doesn’t say anything for a while which is answer enough, maybe already more than Christopher can handle.
“Yeah, I thought about it,” he says, the words sounding pulled out of him like a confession.
“Scott, I–” Christopher says with nothing to add because it isn’t what he wanted to hear but it isn’t surprising.
“What do you want me to say?” Scott says, asks. It’s hard to say how rhetorical it is. “Kip, you were it. I didn’t have–I don’t have anything else. It–it felt like an option.”
Scott stops then, takes his first sip of coffee. He plays with the edge of the menu, the sound as it pulls off the sticky tabletop overly loud in their corner of the diner. Christopher resists the urge to point out all the things Scott does have, because that’s not the point.
“I wouldn’t actually,” Scott continues, calmer. “Not after coming out, it was … doable–living without you when at least people knew what I’d lost. And I didn’t want that to be the story.”
“Did you talk to anyone about it?” Christopher asks, not letting himself dwell on a timeline where that was the story.
“There wasn’t any–well, there were some people.”
Christopher takes that as a no. He can’t ignore the thought that Scott has been alone, basically, for over twice as long as they were ever married. The isolation didn’t magically change after coming out, or it did for a short while, before settling back in–endless distance, zero displacement. He feels that familiar surge of protectiveness for a man who still very much looks like he could deadlift him without breaking a sweat, maybe more so than before. He can’t help but wish he’d been there, not him then, but him now. Stepping back in time to keep Scott safe. To keep them both safe.
“I’m sorry.” That you were alone, for not being there, for not checking.
“Not your fault,” Scott says gruffly.
The buzz of the overhead lights is a clashing pedal note against Uptown Girl and everything Christopher wants to say, and everything he doesn’t. Scott doesn’t provide any new conversation fodder this time. Christopher tries to find something to fill the silence.
“Are you in touch with Carter?” He asks.
“Not so much,” Scott says, moving on graciously. “He tried for a while, you know. I was too busy being miserable and he got too busy being … not miserable.”
Christopher almost smiles at that. He really can’t imagine Carter Vaughn being miserable. He says as much and Scott laughs, says he had his moments and tells Christopher none of them. Instead, he manages to find a Vaughny story he hadn’t already told – as with all of them, Christopher finds himself equally concerned, amused, and endeared to the man.
He doesn’t ask Scott if he misses Carter. Scott’s never met someone he doesn’t miss.
“I saw he had a kid, on instagram I think,” Christopher remembers. He never unfollowed Carter. The man was just too damn nice.
“Yeah, I uh–I met her once. Alexis. She must be starting school now,” Scott says, face glum and shoulders rounded. “He deserves to be happy.”
Christopher doesn’t say so do you because this isn’t a therapy session and there’s some belligerent part of him that doesn’t want to believe that. Because then he might have to unpack his own happiness, his own deserving, and well…
Scott fills in the pause easily, moving past the awkward, the media training seeping back into him now he’s back in New York. Christopher used to hate how much that was expected of Scott. He used to hate seeing the switch from his Scott to the media’s Scott. Hated it even more when the switch stopped happening, when media Scott came home and his Scott didn’t surface until they were in bed together, if at all.
“He tried to set me up with a few guys,” Scott says.
“Oh?” Christopher encourages, almost certain he knows where this is going.
“They were all nice, but–”
“Your only point of similarity was … being gay?”
Scott snorts, a tiny smile tugging one corner of his mouth.
“Yeah, they weren’t–” Scott shrugs, another sip of coffee. “Right for me.”
Someone in the diner pushes back their chair too fast, the high pitched screech reverberating in the space. Christopher winces at it.
“Kip–”
“No one’s called me Kip in a while,” he says, because he probably should mention that. And he doesn’t want to hear the words right for me ring around his head any longer. It had become the business of hockey pundits and media outlets alike just exactly what was right for Scott Hunter–and Kip Grady wasn’t it.
“Oh sorry, you should have said. Are you Christopher now?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I started using my full name at work, for publishing and things and eventually found it fitting me better now. Dad’s the only one that still uses Kip.”
“It was George who first called you that, wasn’t it?”
And Christopher had somehow forgotten that Scott knew that, knew all sorts of Grady history fed to him by various extended family members over multiple Christmases. He digs the heels of his hands into his thighs for a second, to push back the memories of Scott and his dad in the kitchen together, George teaching the secrets of his famous healing soup. Scott, always so trainable, had made it perfectly first time. And countless times again, anytime Christopher was sick. Christopher had tried not to get ill in that last year–he hadn’t been able to bear Scott going to the trouble.
“Yeah.”
And then he needs to change the subject again, a comment about the clashing colors of the diner that makes Christopher sound far more pretentious than he is and that Scott shakes his head at. But it’s nice to talk about nothing for a while. It’s nice to disagree with Scott about something that doesn’t matter.
“This is why I always let you make the interior design choices,” Scott says, light hearted and self-effacing.
It isn’t why, at least not entirely. That had just as much, if not more, to do with Scott’s unending need to make up for all the parts of their life he couldn’t change by giving free reign to Christopher anywhere he could.
He can feel himself frown.
“Elena thought–”
“Elena seems to think a lot.” It’s the first time Scott’s sounded upset in any way other than just sad.
“Sorry,” Christopher says, not even sure how he was going to finish that sentence.
Scott shakes his head.
“I’m sorry,” he sighs. “I guess I must be on her shit list?”
“Not really, I don’t think she blames you, not anymore than anything else,” Christopher says, and then. “She liked you.”
“Just took a while to warm up,” Scott says, almost fond.
“No,” he disagrees, firmly. “She liked you from the start, she was just worried. And, I’m not sure she ever stopped worrying.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Christopher hadn’t really known that either. Being with Scott had made him an expert at compartmentalising other peoples’ concerns and Elena’s had been neatly boxed away along with half of New York’s. It was easier to give no weight to anyone’s opinion than risk the colorful thoughts of an outraged fan on the Subway taking root in his brain.
“I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to feel–” he huffs. “It wasn’t your fault it was just–”
“Don’t say it wasn’t me. It was.”
“It wasn’t,” he stresses, resisting the urge to bang the table, or shake Scott by the shoulders. Scott had always taken blame like he took pucks to the chest–like that was just what he was made for. “It was just … everything else. But you–you were–”
“Worth it?” Scott asks, and his voice is a little hoarse, as if he’s been screaming for hours.
“Yeah,” Christopher agrees, leaving the unsaid but hanging.
“Until I wasn’t,” Scott finishes for him.
Christopher presses his lips together, hard, and looks up at the diner ceiling. There’s a coffee stain on the tile above him. He can’t work out the physics of how it got there.
“Yeah.”
It’s maybe the worst thing he’s ever said. Looking back at Scott only confirms that. There’s no surprise there on his face, just the shining eyes of a kicked puppy who was expecting the hit.
“I’m sorry,” he offers, because he is. “I wasn’t prepared for my life not being my own. It–I was so scared, all of the time. And I know you were too and I couldn’t fix it, Scott. We couldn’t fix it.”
He said this at the time, and more. He doesn’t need to beat the dead horse any longer.
“I know,” Scott says.
The man behind the counter has been wiping entirely clean tables, looking over to their corner in increasingly more frequent glances. It’s hard to say whether he’s recognising The Scott Hunter, or just the notable level of emotional turmoil happening at table 19.
Christopher ignores him.
He plays spot the difference. The physical changes are clear, observed and noted within five minutes of seeing Scott, and to be turned over later. He has to think about the other ones. Scott takes up space now, the placement of each limb not perfectly thought through and angled, the curve in his shoulders more slumped than hunched. He takes sugar in his coffee. His fingers tap at half the speed they used to.
Christopher wonders how each change happened, when. He wonders if anyone else has noticed.
And with a horrible lurch, he realises he wants to be there to see what changes next. It’s not a welcome thought.
Scott disrupts it, chuckling out of nowhere with a hand over his mouth. Christopher leans forward, makes the universal gesture for share it with the class.
“Sorry I was just- remember how much we infuriated that lawyer?” Scott asks, lowering his voice and throwing Christopher a guilty grin. The memory is a peace offering, a treat held out like Christopher’s a skittish dog.
He takes the offer, shows Scott his belly.
“I still think about the look he gave us–what was his name? Brad? When you asked if you could give me more of your money,” Christopher says, remembering the brief comradery they’d shared over hating that guy–common enemy and all that.
“Oh my god,” Scott says, rolling his eyes. “I’ve never seen another human being look so perplexed, and I’ve explained the concept of felching to a room full of jocks.”
“Sorry, you what?”
And Scott, the ridiculous man that he is, is laughing then, and it’s a little choked and his eyes aren’t dry, but it sounds just like it did ten years ago. Christopher lets himself join in–when he can be sure the lump in his throat won’t come undone.
“I’m not even going to ask how that went,” Christopher says, wiping the corner of his eyes.
“Yeah, don’t.”
The diner’s almost empty again, the drip drip of the filter coffee the main background noise to the last quiet peels of laughter. The tinny speakers gave up twenty minutes ago.
Christopher rewinds to when they sat down, finds more to say about work than he could before, something he knows Scott will find just as annoying as he did. It turns into Scott complaining about the latest events organiser he’d worked with for “liking him too much”. It’s such a quintessentially Scott complaint that Christopher aches a bit with how little some things have changed.
He watches Scott finish his coffee and braces himself to leave, for the fast approaching end to whatever this has been.
“I never stopped loving you,” Scott says, matter-of-fact as he puts the empty mug down, perfectly perpendicular to the table edge.
“I know,” Christopher says without thinking, entirely unprepared for that to be acknowledged out loud.
“I wish that had been enough.”
“I know.”
And then, because he has to give Scott something more than that. Because yeah, he’s still angry ten years on and will probably harbor a deep seated loathing for the NHL until the day he dies, but that’s not Scott’s fault. It wasn’t Scott’s fault at forty and it still isn’t at nearly fifty. Christopher owes him more, so he says, “Me too.”
“To what?” Scott asks, so hopeful it almost kills the honesty on Christopher’s tongue.
“Both. All of it.”
He looks away from Scott then. The tendrils of what if are starting to latch themselves into Christopher’s brain now and he can't make eye contact while he follows them through, each hypothetical fork in the road, each ending. Maybe he’s less of an optimist than he once was because not one of them winds up in happy ever after.
“I can’t do that again, I can’t have a third separation,” he says the worst case scenario aloud, skipping straight to the part where one of them leaves again.
He's falling far too easily back into trusting Scott to piece together his train of thought. He can’t be sure that Scott knows of the one (failed) long term attempt Christopher had made at a relationship in the time between, but in the least egotistical way possible, he has a feeling he will.
Scott purses his lips, the way he does when he’s trying not to make a joke.
“Do not make a fucking Friends reference.”
“You loved my Friends references,” Scott says, cheerfully indignant.
“No I did not.”
Scott just smiles, and the fearful hope in his eyes means he’s followed Christopher just fine.
“But I- I don’t like the idea of leaving today and this being …” Christopher searches for something that sums it up. “It?”
“Then don’t,” Scott says, seemingly without meaning to.
“Please, Kip–Christopher,” he pauses. “I haven’t been myself in ten years, I know that’s not healthy. I know but I can’t help it. I’m not asking for you to jump back into my life immediately but can we talk? Again?”
Christopher doesn’t have a response to that. This Scott may be miles more self aware than the Scott he was married to but awareness doesn’t fix the desperation simmering just under his skin at all times. Perhaps not a thing to fix, not by Christopher, not here, maybe not ever. And besides, he can’t pretend that he’s never felt the same way.
“I’m not a big name anymore, not really,” Scott adds, pulling Christopher back to the table.
He was right. Scott had faded away, just like he always thought he would, and Christopher had been grateful, because he’s an asshole. Because seeing Scott’s face and his stupid abs on subway adverts and page six of the tabloids had gotten old, fast. There’s the pride events, and charity galas he knows Scott still gets unboxed for every now and then. But other than that…
“What, so no one would notice if you took your ex-husband back?”
Scott opens his mouth, and Christopher realises Scott doesn’t know the version of him that says what he means, straight out the gate.
“Yeah, I’ve been testing that out,” he says dryly, well aware that this had been a problem. “Saying the thoughts in my head out loud.”
“How’s that going?”
“Mixed results.”
“Well,” Scott smiles ruefully. “I guess some folks might have something to say.”
It’s quiet for a while then. Christopher looks down at the coffee he ordered with no plans of drinking–the last thing he needs is more caffeine.
“But maybe I don’t care,” Scott goes on, breaking the silence.
“Scott.”
“I’m serious. I don’t, not anymore.”
Thirty-year-old Kip had thought coming out, doing the respectable wedding thing, would let Scott hold his hand in public. And it had. Kind of. But suddenly it had felt like performing, putting on the show of the perfect gay couple. He could hold Scott’s hand and he could peck him on the cheek but god forbid a kiss last longer than half a second anywhere other than the sanctity of their bedroom. God forbid one of the less tolerant Admirals or WAGs catch Christopher doing anything even the slightest bit fruity.
And Scott had cared. So much. The paranoia had only shifted laterally and Christopher couldn’t play the perfectly palatable queer any more than he could shove himself back in the closet.
“You said that before,” he says, as gentle as he can make it. “Hell, I did too and it wasn’t true, not for either of us.”
“And now?” Scott asks, face a beautiful failure of neutrality.
Christopher imagines for a second what Elena might say if (when) he tells her about this chance meeting. He pictures George’s face finding out they were rekindling things, always supportive, definitely concerned.
He can’t pretend he’s anymore ready for an onslaught than he was fifteen years ago. He also can’t be anything close to sure it would be less this time around. Whatever this time around is.
But the cost-benefit analysis has shifted now that he has more data. He knows life without Scott now, truly without him. It’s hard to think of a larger cost than losing him again.
“I don’t know,” he says, entirely honestly.
Scott nods, gaze drifting somewhere above Christopher’s head, going some place far away. When the diner door opens again, he refocuses with a start and checks his watch, sighing at the time. He looks at Christopher with the contained anguish of a man trying to condense years’ worth of thoughts into a single sentence.
“You need to go?” Christopher asks.
“Yes, yeah,” Scott huffs.
They stand up at the same time and Christopher stacks their cups. Scott pays at the counter on their way out, his tipping habits appearing to have only gotten more extravagant.
“My number’s the same,” Scott says as he holds the door open for the both of them.
“I changed mine," Christopher says, leaving the and deleted yours silent. "With all the reporters it was easier.”
“Right, of course,” Scott nods, hand still propping the door open as Christopher watches him mentally reroute the conversation.
Christopher takes pity on him.
“Here, give me your phone. I’ll put it in.”
He types it in quickly, leaves the name empty for Scott to fill in. He doesn’t want to decide that.
“Thanks.”
“You should get to your viewing.”
Scott looks at his watch again. “Yeah,” he says flatly.
Christopher isn’t imagining the hesitation, or even projecting it. Though there is plenty to project.
He’s remembering their final goodbye. He’d been holding a cardboard box to his chest, a fragile piece of armour full of now dormant parts, and Scott had stood just the other side of it. They hadn’t touched.
Now, Scott shifts from foot to foot, standing a little too close for a friend. Christopher wonders if he’s remembering the same thing.
“Can I hug you?” Scott asks, oh so softly.
“Here?” And after all these years, he can’t help but look around, check for the shine of a lens pointed their way, the openly eavesdropping group of friends just around the corner.
“Yes. I really don’t care,” Scott promises, waving his hands at the empty air around him.
He might be proving a point but Christopher is okay with that. So he leans forward, once again into the orbit of Scott Hunter, and waits to be encircled. His head still fits under Scott’s chin when he leans into his chest, the crook of Scott’s neck still feeling like the safest place he could be. Despite it all.
He steps away while he still can, says see you later and turns in the opposite direction that he needs to so as not to spend two blocks awkwardly walking by Scott’s side.
—
There’s a text when he gets home. He doesn’t look at it immediately, just notes the quiet ding in his pocket as he sets down his keys. They clang in the metal bowl on the corner shelf, echoing into the small apartment as always.
He takes a swig of orange juice, straight from the cartoon with the fridge door open–who’s going to stop him–before checking the message. He puts the almost empty container back and makes a mental note, one that he will inevitably forget, to buy more.
Reluctantly done with putting it off, he pulls out his phone.
Unknown Number: So you have my number too.
Unknown Number: It’s Scott.
He navigates to New Contact, types in Scott Hunter, frowns at the formality of it and starts backspacing.
A new message pops in as he slumps over the arm of his sofa, back stretching as he shifts to lie down.
Scott H: Thank you.
Christopher drops his phone to his chest, lets it sit there while he looks up at the ceiling. There’s a trapezium of sunlight above him, golden in the early evening, edges softened. It’s sort of nothing but it was the main draw when Christopher bought the apartment. Nearing the end of divorce proceedings, early November when the world was looking exceedingly gray, the way the light had fallen captured his attention in a way that felt good.
He follows the shadow of a branch in it and pretends to consider whether he’ll reply. He lifts his phone back up and stares at it until the words blur into light blue smudges.
Christopher: Thank you for the coffee.
Christopher: I hope your viewing went well.
It’s not what he wants to say, not really, not at all.
The future suddenly has about ten times the number of unknowns than it did two hours ago. That might have been exciting at 26–it was exciting at 26–but now it’s mostly terrifying. He has all the bits of his life that were locked away, within reach again, and he doesn’t know what to do with that. He just wants to do something, he wants to keep them. He wants to keep the Christopher that laughs until he cries over shitty coffee, and the Christopher that can feel scared about his dad without half a mind on fixing it, the Christopher that feels like his mind is being read and understood far better than he could ever hope to put into words, by a man who likes to pretend he’s just some dumb jock.
Fuck.
He might just want to keep Scott.
Christopher: Let me know when you’re next in town