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Hayden liked to think he was a pretty thoughtful guy, generally speaking. He knew that JJ hated every color of Gatorade except blue, and everybody wanted blue, so he made sure to always save one, just in case. He could tell when Jackie was having an off day, when they texted while Hayden was out on a road trip, and would discreetly text her mom, so she wouldn’t have to be alone. Of all the fathers he played with on the Metros, he was one of the very few that could actually remember his kids’ birthdays. And he noticed early on that Shane could be, well, particular about certain things. He always had to have the window seat on the plane or the bus. He got a little anxious and on edge if he couldn’t brush his teeth before bed, or forgot to bring a pillow from home, or his gear wasn’t perfectly arranged in his locker. He had a specific order for putting on his shoes—left, then right—and a fucking religious skincare routine that he followed to the letter. Hayden thought he knew Shane pretty well, all things considered. Shane was his best friend. Hayden had spent a decade observing, honing his craft, perfecting himself into the best buddy the guy could ask for. And, sure, there were things Hayden didn’t know; secrets Shane refused to share, little lies scattered through late-night conversations about sex and girls and sex, absences that didn’t quite fit. Hayden loved puzzles, and Shane was the best and most frustrating kind of puzzle there was—one of those puzzles you pick up at a charity shop for cheap because the art on the box is beautiful, but when you to to fit the damn thing together half the fucking pieces are missing.
So, the piss thing was a surprise. Hayden really didn’t see that one in the cards. It really came out of nowhere.
_____
At the time, Hayden had been pretty confused. Coach called Shane off the ice in the middle of practice, spitting mad, and the two of them proceeded to have a conversation where Shane looked shamefaced and scared, and Coach’s face just turned redder and redder. It had ended with Coach yelling get the fuck out of here, Hollander, in French. And Shane had flinched and ran into the locker room, and he didn't come back.
It was notable. Coach never yelled at Shane—he didn’t need to. Shane was some sort of superhuman golden boy; always up for one more bag skate, one more set, another kilometer on the treadmill. And Shane was always yes, sir, Coach or no, sir, Coach. Polite to a fucking fault, even when Coach was, objectively speaking, an unmitigated asshole.
Hayden regretted staying for the rest of practice. He regretted it while he was watching Shane skitter off to the locker room. Sometimes, he wishes he’d been braver, or stronger, or a better friend, and followed Shane off the ice. But he’d figured that it was just a captain thing, you know? A misunderstanding over a play, or a bad drill, or something.
After practice, in the locker room, JJ had checked his phone with a strange look on his face. He stared at it so intensely, like he was trying to look at something very small. And then his eyes widened, and he shouted what the fuck so loud that everybody turned to look.
“Dude, what the fuck yourself,” Hayden laughed, and swiped JJ’s phone off the floor before anyone else could get it first. And he saw—well. At first, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. And then he saw Ilya fucking Rozanov pissing all over his best friend’s chest, and, well. What the fuck was he supposed to do with that?
_____
“It has to be fake,” Hayden said, after the video had played twice, and everyone had passed JJ’s phone around like they were looking at a meme, instead of looking at Ilya fucking Rozanov doing—doing that to Hayden’s best fucking friend. He tossed his gloves into his stall, and the violence in it made him feel just a tiny bit better about himself. “It’s like, a porn deepfake or something. There’s no way this is real.”
“I dunno,” Comeau said. He was tugging off his shin guards. “I always thought Hollander was kind of faggy.”
“You shut your bitch-ass mouth,” Hayden spat, and looked around the room, but nobody would meet his eye. “Shane isn’t fucking gay.” He was just shy, and quiet, and particular about a lot of things.
“Come on, Pike,” Drapeau said. “When was the last time you saw him with a girl?”
Hayden stared, incredulously, at the sea of faces surrounding him. Shocked, knowing, smug. Only a few look even the slightest bit ashamed, or guilty. “He dated Rose fucking Landry, you stupid sack of shit.”
“Yeah,” Drapeau fired back. “For two fucking months. How the fuck does any guy fumble Rose fucking Landry after two fucking months.”
And, well. Hayden didn’t really have a response. Even he’d thought it was, like, not quite weird, but not quite right, either. “Well,” Hayden says. “There’s that Boston girl. Lily.”
Comeau drops his shin guards and laughs. “Oh come on, Pike. Lily, Ilya. It’s the fucking punchline to a bad fucking joke.”
And that infiltrated Hayden’s knowledge of Shane, even though he didn’t want to think it was true. It slotted neatly into place, right between a puzzle piece labeled Shane never talks about girls and another labeled Shane doesn’t fuck. And Hayden didn’t want that little fact to fit as easily as it did—not because he wished it wasn’t true, but because he hated the source. He resented that he was so wrapped up in his own shit—his four kids and his beautiful wife and his absolutely charmed life in suburban Montreal—that a fucking homophobic dickbag like Comeau had to spell it out for him.
So maybe Shane was gay. So fucking what? The rest of it—the rest of the video—just didn’t fit. Shane hated Rozanov. He’d hated him for years. And Shane was more prudish than Hayden’s grandma. He wouldn’t be caught dead doing that with Ilya fucking Rozanov.
And it was cliché, and stupid, but Hayden looked around at all those people in that room, people he’d thought he knew, and he said “really? You’re all gonna let them say this shit?”
Nobody replied. It broke a part of Hayden that he’d never paid attention to—never even knew it was there to be broken. He turned to JJ, then. His last, shining hope in a sea of douchebags he used to call his friends.
“JJ, man, tell me you don’t believe this shit,” Hayden begged.
But JJ wouldn’t even fucking look at him. “If it’s fake,” JJ said, slowly, “then why did Coach kick him out of practice? Why was Coach yelling at him?”
And Hayden was angry. He was so fucking angry. Maybe the angriest he’d ever been in his entire goddamn life. And he’d really wanted to hit something, and JJ’s stupid asshole face was right there, and, so. Hayden punched him in the face, bare-knuckle. He felt JJ’s nose break under his fist. Then Drapeau was there, pulling him off of JJ, and Comeau was driving his fist into Hayden’s gut, and he lost himself in the flow of the fight. The pure fucking violence of it. And it felt so, so good, to do something simple while his head refused to wrap itself around something so ugly and complicated.
_____
The fight didn’t break up, no matter how loud Coach yelled, so he called the cops. Jackie came to pick him up the second she got the call. He was only in the drunk tank for maybe thirty minutes.
“You saw it, right?” He said, without preamble or explanation, the second he sat in the passenger seat of their minivan.
“I did,” Jackie said. She hadn’t said anything about Hayden’s bruised knuckles, or the hunched-over, slow walk to the parking lot.
“It’s a deepfake thing,” Hayden insisted. “It has to be. There’s no other explanation.”
“I don’t know,” Jackie said. “Have you called Shane?”
Hayden shook his head.
“I think,” Jackie said, carefully, “that you should probably call him.”
But Hayden’s phone was gone. It was on the locker room floor somewhere, shattered into dozens of stupid, useless pieces.
“You can use my phone,” Jackie said, and Hayden leaned over the center console and kissed her, because he loved her so much he could cry, and he didn’t care about the massive fucking bruise spreading over his ribs.
_____
But of course, Shane didn’t answer. Hayden called and called, over and over, but he just kept getting Shane’s stupid, posterboy-polite voicemail: This is Shane Hollander. I will call you back at my earliest convenience.
So, Hayden would have to talk to him in person. And if he was a betting man (which he wasn’t, not with four fucking kids and an expensive ass mortgage), he’d say that Shane wasn’t in his Montreal apartment, or at his parents’ house. He knew Shane pretty well, despite the, uh, the piss thing that was probably fake anyway, and he knew that Shane would probably want to be alone, which meant that Shane was probably at his cottage.
Hayden had been, once. He’d gotten the grand tour when the builders were finally done building it, and he’d helped Shane move some stuff in—boxes and boxes of trophies. It had made him feel a little inadequate at the time. Like, there he was, carrying boxes of trophies that he never had a chance at winning, into an enormous mansion with floor-to-ceiling windows and a ten-thousand-dollar gas range and a private fucking lake sitting perfect and picturesque out back.
But that wasn’t the point. The point was, Hayden knew the address. So, he drove there, in his minivan. The car seats were still strapped in, and the stroller was still in the trunk. He forgot, in his rush to get on the road. He forgot a change of clothes, and a charger for Jackie’s phone. Hell, he almost forgot his goddamn wallet.
He was just worried about Shane, is all. Shane was very particular, and he freaked out when he couldn’t control something. And if Shane was—if Shane was gay, and the video was real, Hayden was scared. Hayden was so fucking scared that he’d find Shane facedown in the lake, or crammed into the bathtub dripping blood from his wrists.
_____
When Hayden pulled up to the cottage, Shane’s car was parked up front, right by the door. He pulled off to the side of the driveway, the messiest parking job he’d ever done, and ran up to the door like a long-lost soldier finally home from war. He knocked, frantically, and jabbed at the doorbell over and over.
It took a long time for Shane to open the door. When he finally did, he looked like shit. He was still wearing his underthings from practice. His eyes were red, like he’d been crying. His nails were bitten so far down that there was a bit of blood spotting on a couple fingertips. And, what worried Hayden the most: red scratch marks running down his forearms and up the side of his neck.
“Hey,” Hayden said, and fuck, it sounded ridiculous. Hesitant and pathetic and stupid.
Shane swiped at his nose with the back of his hand, and peered at Hayden like he was standing very far away.
“What are you doing here?” Shane said. His voice was hoarse. “What the fuck do you want?”
“I came to see how you were,” Hayden said, still fucking ridiculous. Like he’s talking to a stray cat. “I was worried, man. You weren’t answering my calls.”
Shane turned and headed back inside without a word. He left the door wide open, though, so Hayden followed him. Cautiously. He wasn’t sure it was he’d walked into. “Come on, Hayden. I know why you’re really here. Fucking ask me already.”
“Shane—”
“Ask the fucking question!”
And Shane looked scared, and angry, and more fragile than Hayden had ever seen him, so, Hayden did. “Is the video real?”
Shane blinked. “What the fuck? Yes, Hayden, it’s fucking real, fucking christ.”
It hit Hayden like a slap to the face. It was real. Shane really was in that locker room. Shane really—oh god. He really knelt down, on the locker room floor, and begged Ilya fucking Rozanov to piss on him. Hayden sat on the nearest low-down thing—Shane’s loveseat—and his breath left him in a whooshing rush.
“Did he…” Hayden swallows. “Did he, you know.”
“Did he what.”
“You know. Make you.”
Shane buried his face in his hands and laughed. He sounded sick. He sounded fucking deranged. “No,” Shane said, soft. “I wanted to be there. He only did it because…” Shane swallowed, ran his fingers through his hair, and put his head between his knees, like he was going to be sick.
“Because…” Hayden ventures, oh so carefully.
Shane sighed, and sat up, and leaned back against the couch. He slid down, a little, and rested his head along the top of it. “Because he knew I fucking wanted it,” he said, after a long, long time. Hayden saw a new wet drop creep down the side of his face and disappear into his shirt.
“I don’t understand, man.” And Hayden didn’t. He really fucking didn’t. It was like the knowledge bounced off his skull. It just didn’t fit with the Shane he knew; Shane, who hated mess, and always remembered to tip twenty-five percent when they played in the States, and had a favorite brand of fabric softener, and studiously avoided any conversation about sex like he was a nun in a convent; Shane, who didn’t fuck; Shane, who’d told Hayden that he wanted to fucking destroy Rozanov just last week.
“I don’t care,” Shane said. And they sat there for a while, the two of them. Not looking at each other, not saying shit.
_____
People came, eventually. Shane’s parents flew through the door after god knows how long, looking desperate and scared.
“Shane,” Yuna cried, and held her arms out to him.
“Mom,” Shane cried, wobbly and wet. “Dad.” And the second Yuna touched him, he burst into tears. She pulled him in, then, her arms around his shoulders, her cheek on top of his head. She stroked Shane’s hair. David came around behind and wrapped his arms around them both. Fuck, she was crying too. Both of them were.
“It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay,” Yuna said, but even Hayden wasn’t convinced by it. Shane just cried harder, and clung to her like she was the last life raft on the Titanic. “Ilya’s been trying to call you,” she said, gentle, and patted the top of Shane’s head.
“Fuck,” Shane wailed. “I forgot my phone. I didn’t—I didn’t—”
And Hayden pictured it. Shane’s phone, shoved deep inside his gym bag, which was still shoved deep inside his stall. He pictured it vibrating, over and over, some stupid picture of Rozanov lit up on the screen. It was kind of sad, somehow.
Shane cried for a couple more minutes, and then he just… stopped. Like he was one of Ruby’s wind-up toys, and he’d just run out. He pulled away from his parents and all but ran to his bedroom. He came back with a fucking burner phone—the kind where the screen slid sideways and revealed a whole goddamn keyboard. He had the charging cable, too, and plugged it into the wall, and sat beside it just breathing, in and out, shaking, while he waited for it to charge.
The second it turned on, Shane picked it up, still plugged in, and dialed a number by heart. Nobody in the room even bothered to pretend they weren’t listening.
Whoever was on the other end picked up on the first ring, and must’ve started talking shit right away, considering the look on Shane’s face. “What? No!” Shane yelled, actually yelled. Hayden could count on one fucking hand the number of times he’d heard Shane yell like that, and they played fucking hockey together. “You have to stay!” Shane continued. “You have to play the fucking game!” The other person—Rozanov, probably—was talking again, and christ, they sounded angry. “I need you to play the fucking game, Ilya. It’ll look bad if you leave.” Ah. Well. For once, Hayden couldn’t blame Rozanov for getting pissed. Shane sounded fucking insane. “You’re not listening! They fucking benched me, Ilya!”
Hayden inhaled, sharp, and nearly choked on his own spit. His first thought, selfishly, was for himself. How the fuck was he supposed to play without Shane there to lead him through it? He felt terrible immediately after he’d thought it. Shane’s whole life was hockey—Hayden didn’t know who Shane would even be without it.
“Yeah.” Shane said. “So you play that fucking game, asshole. ‘Cause—” Shane sniffed, then, and his voice wobbled. ”It might be the last game either of us ever get to play.” And he didn’t wait for Ilya to respond to that. He just hung up.
Shane looked up, and met Hayden’s eye for the first time since this he’d gotten here. “That’s what Coach was yelling about,” he said, dull. “In case you were wondering.” And Hayden had been wondering. It had been there in the back of his head, alongside lots of other questions, like are you gay, why Rozanov of all fucking people, who is he to you? And he still wondered about some of those things, but he was so, so worried about Shane. There was nothing behind his eyes. He looked practically dead.
“Hey, Shane, look at me,” Yuna said. “It’s not gonna be forever. We’ll get you back on the ice again.” And they all smiled, encouragingly, at Shane, but it was obvious that nobody fucking believed her.
“We can wait to figure it out,” David said. “We probably should, actually. It’ll be better if Ilya’s here.”
Hayden held back his frown, his scoff, his eye-roll, his disapproval. What the fuck could Ilya fucking Rozanov do to fix something like this? What the fuck could he do, when he was the one that broke it?
“Yes, good idea,” Yuna said. “We’ll wait for Ilya. I’ll go get some groceries. I don’t think any of us had the chance to eat dinner.”
And she did. She left Hayden in the living room with Shane and David, and all of them pointedly didn’t talk, and didn’t look at each other. But Hayden kept glancing, out of the corner of his eye. You watch him, she had whispered, fiercely, to Hayden, right before she walked out the door. And that was what scared the shit out of him, more than anything. She knew. She knew, and she’d clocked it, too; the way that Shane had looked around, dead-eyed, until his gaze settled on the knife block in the kitchen and stuck there for a very long time.
_____
Yuna came back, eventually. She made chicken and rice, because Shane never ate anything that didn’t fit his ridiculously strict diet. More people came, in and out. David drove off and came back, hours later, with Shane’s duffel, Shane’s gear bag, and Shane’s phone. Rose fucking Landry came and said Oh my god, Shane, what do you need? How can I help? And that was so fucking confusing that Hayden didn’t even bother trying to understand it.
Someone put on a movie nobody watched, and made popcorn nobody ate, and they all sat in the living room huddled under Shane’s soft plaid throw blankets. Occasionally, someone would throw out an update. Ilya’s at the airport. Ilya’s plane just took off. Ilya lands at two in the morning, so he won’t be here until four at the earliest. We should probably go to bed.
Ilya fucking Rozanov. Hayden didn’t understand where he fit, because here, he wasn’t Ilya fucking Rozanov, or fucking Rozanov, or even just Rozanov. Everybody called him Ilya, like they knew him, and knew who he was, and liked him well enough. And it didn’t fit with what Hayden knew about him—that Rozanov played better when the crowd booed, and had a massively oversized ego, and took particular delight in being as vicious a person as possible, both on and off the ice. Privately, Hayden had thought that Rozanov was just impossible to like. And yet, here they were, waiting on him like he mattered just as much as Shane did. And he didn’t know what to fucking make of it.
Everyone tried to stay awake until Rozanov showed up, but they drifted off, one by one. David called it quits first, then Yuna. Rose shuffled Shane off to bed when Shane started nodding off where he sat, and then Rose fell asleep on the loveseat, her face still pointed towards the door. Hayden settled in on the couch. It was a nice couch. Soft, comfortable. It was upholstered in leather. His bare skin stuck to it, and his clothes slipped and slid over the smooth surface like a soaped-up sponge slides over clean dishes. But he didn’t complain. He camped out there, for Shane, and kept an eye on the door. He kept waking up over and over, in half-hour intervals, just like when the twins were newborns.
And Hayden jolted awake, once, when it was so late that the cicadas had finally stopped singing. His ass was barely clinging to Shane’s stupid, slippery couch. His leg had already fallen to the floor. He stared up at the ceiling, wondering what woke him up, and he heard the quiet snick of a key in a lock, the turn of a doorknob, the quiet thump of a shoulder against Shane’s front door. He felt the cold wash over him, and he glared at the can light above his head with a hatred he knew was probably misplaced.
And then, there he was. Ilya fucking Rozanov. It was dark, but the light from the bathroom reached just far enough that he could see. And Rozanov looked like shit. He had two rolls of gauze stuffed up his nostrils, and there was something that could be a shadow or could be dried blood smeared over his lips. He was wearing a compression shirt and basketball shorts and fucking sandals. Two of his fingers were taped together. He was only carrying one thing; a ring of jangling keys.
And Hayden was curious. Sue him. He closed his eyes halfway, and watched Rozanov kick off his stupid sandals and lean down, slowly, to pick them up and put them on the shoe rack, next to Shane’s practical winter boots. He put the keys with Shane’s, in the little dish by the door. And he walked past, towards Shane’s room, like he knew where he was going. Mother fucker. He’d been in here before.
_____
In the morning, Hayden slid off Shane’s couch and went to take a piss. The bathroom was right next to Shane’s bedroom, and he didn’t mean to overhear, but overhear he did.
“Ilya,” Shane said. “Give me the phone back.”
“No.”
“Please. I need it.”
“You want phone back, you will take shower, you will go to kitchen, and you will eat something.”
“I fucking hate you.”
“I know, moya lyubov. I know.” A rustle, then. The sharp sound of flesh on flesh. “Come on, up.”
And Hayden had heard enough, after that. Whatever else they said was drowned out by the sound of the water when Hayden washed his hands.
_____
And then, in the kitchen that morning, Yuna took one look at Rozanov and pulled him into a long, careful hug. She told him it was gonna be okay. She rubbed his fucking back. And Rozanov, for his part, fucking collapsed into it, and when he pulled away his face was a little wet, and Yuna handed him a mug of coffee without asking how he took it. He sat with his foot hooked around the leg of Shane’s chair, too, which was so beyond the pale that Hayden scowled, privately, into his own coffee, which Yuna hadn’t known how he took, even though he and Shane had been friends for almost a decade.
And then Rozanov read out the fucking email from Coach—Shane benched for the season and the Metros looking to end his contract early—and it was like Shane just switched off entirely, or ran out of batteries, and Rozanov looked at Shane the way Hayden had probably looked at Jackie when one-year-old Arthur fell off a slide near the top and broke his arm. He watched as Rozanov bundled Shane up and carried him off to his room. And in that moment, Ilya fucking Rozanov became just Rozanov, because Hayden got it, he really did. He saw the shape of things, and he was sorry for both of them, but he still didn’t see a world where he could ever, ever be Rozanov’s friend.
_____
“What the fuck was that?” Hayden whispered into the silence Shane and Rozanov had left behind. Nobody bothered to reply.
“We need to figure out what we’re going to do,” Yuna said, distant and small. She stared off into the distance, into some place none of the rest of them could see, and thought for a very long time.
“We can’t get ahead of this thing,” she continued, much later, as Rozanov trudged back down the hall and sat on the same barstool he’d sat in before. “But we’ve still got time to control the spin, turn it into something less damaging.” Hayden winced. Rozanov started crying, then, but it was maybe the weirdest way he’d ever seen someone cry. His face didn’t move; he didn’t make a sound. His eyes just started welling up and spilling over, and Rozanov took a sip of his cold-ass coffee like he wasn’t crying at all, and his hands weren’t shaking, and he wasn’t dripping tears and snot and god knew what else into his mug. It was, perhaps, the most unsettling thing Hayden had ever seen.
“We’ll have to draft a statement to release to the press,” Yuna continued. She hadn’t noticed Rozanov’s quiet breakdown—she was still staring off into the distance, like some sort of shell-shocked soldier freshly back from world war fucking two. “The Metros already denied everything—” Rozanov’s eyes slipped closed, at that—“and it’ll probably be easiest if we follow their lead—”
“Please stop,” Rozanov whispered. He set his coffee down on the kitchen island, and rested his elbows on the counter, and buried his face in his hands. “Get out. Go home.”
Yuna blinked. “Ilya—”
“Get out!” Rozanov cried. “Please, please get the fuck out!”
Yuna opened her mouth, like she was going to fucking argue, and Hayden couldn’t fucking do it anymore. “Okay,” he interrupted. “We’ll go. We’re going.” And he started herding everyone out of the kitchen before they could start to argue.
On his way out, he put a careful hand on Rozanov’s back. “We’ll call,” he said. “Check in. Come visit when the two of you are up for it. You’re not alone, man.” And Rozanov didn’t acknowledge him, but that didn’t matter. Hayden knew he heard, even if Rozanov acted like hadn’t.
_____
And the thing was, Hayden remembered the worst fucking day of his life. He’d never, ever forget it. It was, ironically enough, the night he and Shane had won their first cup together. Jackie was pregnant with the twins and due any day, and Hayden was so, so scared. Those were his first babies, about to be born, and he wasn’t gonna be there.
He remembered he got the call that Jackie was in labor early that morning, before the last game of the season, and he’d told Jackie that he’d be there in the hospital in a few hours, cup be damned. And Jackie had hollered down the phone, in the middle of a contraction, and told him that if he left that fucking game she’d leave him, and Hayden had gone to practice in a frantic, restless daze.
Shane had noticed. Shane stuck close by him during practice, and then stuck close to him throughout the game, and wished him good luck when Hayden skipped the celebrations to go to the hospital, to be with Jackie. And a couple hours later, when Hayden called him, blubbering, and said that Jackie was being taken back for an emergency c-section, the doctors are saying something went wrong, Shane must’ve left right before Hayden even hung up, because it wasn’t long before he showed up with sandwiches and Gatorade and awkwardly rubbed his back while Hayden tried and failed to breathe. And when Hayden had his own moment, when Shane said she’s gonna be okay for the sixth fucking time and Hayden screamed something like fuck off or you don’t know that or you don’t understand shit, Shane had just stood, and told Hayden he was going to get them some water, and he left Hayden to cry his fucking eyes out while there was no one around to see. He came back, an hour later, with two water bottles and a snickers bar and a bag of ketchup-flavored chips, and he sat by Hayden, and he didn’t say shit. That was, incidentally, the night Hayden realized that Shane might be the best friend he’d ever fucking had.
And Hayden also remembered the first game they’d played against Boston, after it was announced that Rozanov’s dad had died. He’s not so bad, Shane had said. It’s mostly a front.
Hayden had been willing to believe it for all of five minutes. Right after that, in the first couple minutes of the game, Rozanov slammed him up against the boards so hard Hayden’s ears rang, and said some stupid chirp, like oops, didn’t see you there, so sorry. He’d sounded so happy about it, like playing the part of grieving son was unnatural, and he was glad to be back where he belonged: on the ice, an absolute asshole.
In hindsight, they were both fronts. Of course they were. Rozanov was like that shrek movie Ruby was obsessed with—he had so many layers of fake it was almost impossible to see the real thing that lived underneath.
And it was so fucking weird, now that this whole situation had torn the careful construction that was Ilya fucking Rozanov apart. Never in his fucking life had Hayden expected to look at Rozanov—at Ilya—and see something familiar.
_____
And, so. Hayden went to visit Shane, just the once He sat next to him, on the couch, as Shane carefully avoided looking at anyone, or talking when he was spoken to, and studiously flipped through housing listings on his tablet. And Hayden could hardly stand it. He sat there with a fucking beer in hand and wondered how the fuck Rozanov was doing this, day in, day out. It always drove Hayden insane that he couldn’t help Jackie when she was delivering their babies, but at least Jackie could fucking talk to him about it.
Rozanov always cried weird, Hayden learned. He was so fucking quiet about it. The tears just kind of leaked out of him. Hayden wasn’t even sure if he knew he was doing it. And Hayden didn’t know how to make it better for him, and didn’t even know if Rozanov wanted him to. It wasn’t like they were friends.
So. He left. He brought Rozanov a pizza and a bottle of vodka. He got Shane a twelve-pack of ginger ale. He rang the doorbell when he came back, like a delivery driver instead of a fucking friend, and handed it off at the door.
“Thank you for vodka, Pike. And food.” Rozanov hesitated and braced himself like he was about to do something he’d regret. “You want to stay longer?”
“No, uh, that’s okay. I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Okay,” Rozanov said. And then, “You are a good friend.”
Hayden laughed, but it was more like a humorless exhale than anything else. “Am I?”
“You come here, you bring food. Is what a good friend does, yes?”
“I dunno. He didn’t trust me with, you know.” Hayden gestures vaguely towards Rozanov, standing in the door wearing sweatpants that had seen better days and one of Shane’s too-small shirts. “So how good a friend could I have been, really? I could’ve done a lot better.”
Rozanov closes his eyes again. He sighs, expansively. “Okay. You know Scott Hunter?” Hayden nodded. “You know he is gay, yes? You think MHL welcomed him back with open arms this season?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it,” Hayden says honestly. And he hadn’t. He saw Hunter kissing his boyfriend on the ice after winning the cup, thought good for him to himself, and never bothered to wonder what would happen to Scott after he’d done it. God, he was such an idiot. No wonder Shane never told him shit.
“He is out for season. Fucked up shoulder. Do you know why?” Rozanov shook his head. “Don’t answer that, I will tell you. Last season, only some people foul against Hunter. This season, everybody foul against Hunter. I know. Shane and I keep track. What changed, do you think?” Rozanov bent down and put the pizza box on the floor, then unscrewed the cap off his bottle of vodka and took a swig. “We did math,” he continues, “same math Hunter did. Hunter is closer to the end of his career than the start. He won the cup. Admirals probably would not trade him for being gay after that. And if people call him fag or cocksucker behind his back, or foul him more than before, is okay. In five years, he will retire. Maybe less, now that he has fucked up shoulder. But this is fine, because he already has the money and awards he wanted. Shane and I? We had many years of hockey to play. Many, many years.” Rozanov takes another swig, and sways, slightly, on his feet. “The secret we keep has high stakes, yes? So we keep it for a long time. And when you keep a secret for a long time, the keeping becomes a habit.”
Rozanov laid a heavy hand on Hayden’s shoulder, then. “It was not about you, Pike.” He patted Hayden’s cheek, twice, but he was sloppy drunk, so it felt more like getting slapped. And he shut the door in Hayden’s face, but Hayden didn’t mind. It meant that Rozanov didn’t see the feeling welling up inside him, and Hayden didn’t have to figure out what to do with it.
_____
After, Hayden went home and fell into Jackie’s arms and just—breathed. “I don’t know what to do,” he whispered. “Jackie, I don’t know what to do.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Jackie said. “We always do.”
“I don’t think I can play for the Metros anymore,” he confessed into the scant space between them. “I can’t even bring myself to go to practice.”
“So call your agent in the morning,” she replied, like it was easy, like they hadn’t already planned out the rest of their lives with the Montreal fucking Metros at the center of it. And god, Hayden loved her. He really, really did.
_____
Hayden started skipping practice. It was easier, now that Jackie had all but given him permission, and these days, he didn’t really care about what Coach had to say. He could threaten to have Hayden riding the bench for the rest of the season all he wanted. Frankly, Hayden wished he’d fucking do it. Any good feelings he had about hockey were just gone, and Hayden didn’t know if they’d ever come back.
So, he was home hiding in the bathroom and taking a forty-minute shit, instead of on the ice, when he got a phone call at three p.m.
“Hey,” Shane said, and Hayden nearly dropped his phone in the fucking toilet.
“Holy shit,” Hayden yelled. “Oh my god. You’re uh, feeling better then?”
“Yeah,” Shane replied. He sounded a little hoarse. Fuck, he sounded happy.
“I’m getting married tomorrow,” Shane said into the silence. Hayden blinked. He blinked again. He shook his head, like he had water stuck in his ears. He was quiet for a very long time.
“Hayden,” Shane said, a little scared. “Please say something.”
“Sorry. I think you broke my fucking brain.” Hayden stood, and flushed, and didn’t bother to wash his hands. “Buddy, I’ve gotta ask. You sure this is what you want? You’re not just doing it because of the—the fucking—”
“The piss video currently trending on the internet?” Shane said, wry. My god, he was making jokes. What the hell did Rozanov do to him? “No. It moved up the timetable,” Shane continued. “but I was always gonna marry him. It was just a matter of time.”
“Jesus fucking christ,” Hayden swore. “I’m sorry, it’s just—” Hayden sighed explosively. He bit at his bottom lip. “How did I miss this? I’m supposed to be your best friend, and I didn’t even know you were that serious about anyone. I feel like I never really knew you at all.”
“Hayden, please. You gotta know that isn’t true. You’re—” Shane inhaled. It sounded a little wet. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. Last season, you rewatched the same hockey game with me fifty-one times. You know all the restrictions for my diet. You even remember my parents’ birthdays. You were the first person in the entire world that cared about me like that, besides my parents.” Shane was properly choked up now, Hayden could hear it. “I’m still the same person you knew, Hayden. I just, um.” Shane sniffed. He sniffed again. “There were just a couple things I didn’t mention.”
“Fuck you, asshole,” Hayden whispered. “You’re gonna make me cry.”
“Well,” Shane said. “I’m already crying, so.”
Hayden put Shane on speaker, and rubbed his face on the very nice, very soft hand towel Jackie hung near the sink.
“I um. I had something I wanted to ask you,” Shane said, after a long and wobbly silence.
“Hit me, dude,” Hayden replied.
“Will you be my best man?”
“What kind of fucking question is that?” Hayden asked, faux-incensed. “Of fucking course I’ll be your best man.” And then he cried, and Shane cried, and Jackie cried too, when Hayden got out of the bathroom and told her the news. It was, he realized, the first time he’d cried since this whole thing started.
_____
If, eight years ago, you’d asked Hayden what Shane Hollander’s wedding would look like, he would’ve said it would be an event for the ages. Some massive, intimidating thing at Auberge Saint-Gabriel, with gold leaf in the catering and a guest list a mile long, because Shane’s mother wouldn’t let him miss the opportunity to make nice with MHL officials and big-name retirees and current competitors and younger up-and-comers. It would be a PR stunt; more about hockey than the actual wedding.
If you’d asked him later, after he really got to know Shane, he would’ve said a backyard wedding with a ceremony that lasted less than fifteen minutes.
Shane’s actual wedding is a beautiful thing. The officiant rattles off by-the-books vows like she’s said them so many times she doesn’t actually care about the words, and filing their paperwork takes forever because Ilya forgot to bring his birth certificate, and Hayden misspells his own middle name when it’s his turn to sign as a witness.
Outside, he stands next to Jackie and watches Ilya dip Shane into a ridiculous, excessive kiss. It lasts so long Hayden worries that Shane will get dizzy from all the blood stuck in his head. There is a truly disgusting amount of tongue.
Jackie leans into him, and puts her head on his shoulder. “I think they’re gonna be okay,” she says, smiling. “I think we all are.”
And sure, Hayden has nothing figured out. He doesn’t know if Shane will play hockey ever again, or where he’ll end up if he does. Hell, Hayden’s not sure where he’s gonna end up after this season. But that’s okay. They’ve got time. They’ll figure it out together.