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"Dude," Hayden said quietly to JJ. He tried to make sure no one in the locker room heard him other than the tall French Canadian next to him.
JJ looked at him quietly. JJ had never done anything quietly in his life, so Hayden knew he understood the need for discretion.
Hayden turned to face his locker and pretended to fix something on his jersey, fiddling with it just so that he didn't appear to be standing still.
"Did Lily break up with Shane?"
JJ turned quickly to look over at Shane. He was fixing his skates, nodding absently at something someone was saying to him without really looking like he was listening.
"I don't know," JJ said. He looked away before he could catch Shane's eye.
"He won't fucking talk to me," Hayden said into his locker, frustrated.
"He's never fucking talked about her," JJ argued, "It's no different."
"He won't talk to us at all," Hayden corrected. "About anything. And he won't text me back. He never even looks at his phone anymore. He was always smiling into his phone texting her, now he looks at his phone like it's dead to him. You can't have not noticed."
JJ was quiet for a moment, the chaos in the locker room going on around them even as their little corner felt quiet. No one else even noticed them, which was good because Hayden didn't want anyone to see him staring at his jersey with concern.
"Yeah, I noticed."
The corners of JJ's mouth tensed up and a crease appeared on his forehead. Hayden was glad he wasn't trying to pretend everything was okay when they both knew it wasn't.
"He came back to the hotel room in Boston gutted. I know he was with her. He even seemed happy to go, even if he was awkward about it like he always is. But then he came back miserable. I made a joke about how he'd bought a new shirt while he was out, like he spilled something on himself and had to find new clothes or something, and he didn't even acknowledge it. Didn't laugh or explain or tell me to fuck off or say a damn word in reply. Just dove into the bathroom to cry in the shower. And he hasn't smiled once since."
"He was crying in the shower?" JJ asked, wincing.
"I don't fucking know, but he was in there for 30 minutes. What am I supposed to think."
"Lily fucking broke up with him," JJ breathed. "God, that's been his Boston girl for years."
"No, his girl," Hayden corrected. "She lives in Boston yeah but nobody else made him smile like that. There aren't other girls he texts in other cities. She’s been it for him for a long time."
"Sure," JJ agreed. He kicked at the shoe he hadn’t put on. "I know. He thought he was so subtle texting her all the time but what fucking guy texts a girl constantly with a sappy lovesick expression when she's just a hookup?"
"I always assumed he'd tell us about her eventually," Hayden said, "and that they'd get married and I'd be his best man at their wedding."
"Fuck you, I'd be his best man," JJ argued. They both laughed, but it was a little sad. "Okay, he needs a rebound."
Hayden winced.
"He's never let anyone set him up before," Hayden said, "I've tried. So has Jackie."
"Yeah, me too," JJ said, "but that was before, when he had Lily." Hayden nodded. "We'll find him a date. A hot one. Someone who makes him forget all about Lily."
-
Hayden winced. The photos of Shane and Rose were everywhere. Shane took a lot of shit about it in the locker room, but everyone was really happy for him.
Except Shane wasn't happy. He would smile tensely at the jokes, but the smile wouldn't reach his eyes and then he'd turn to look at his locker and his face would fall and he'd look like a wounded puppy.
He missed Lily. The rebound hadn't been a good idea. He wasn't ready. He was with a seriously hot movie star and he was miserable, because she wasn’t Lily.
Hayden had leaned into it for the first couple of weeks, thinking eventually Shane would get over her, but he still hadn't.
Shane had gone out clubbing with Rose and her costars in Montreal last night - there were photos everywhere online - and it just wasn't Shane. It wasn’t what he wanted out of his life. He’d looked about ready to break down all through practice all day and on every break. Whatever he’d had going in his very private relationship with Lily was the opposite of going out clubbing, and it was what he wanted out of life.
He was playing like shit. He'd missed passes he'd never missed before in all the years Hayden had known him. He hadn't scored once in their scrimmage to end practice. He was too miserable to play hockey well.
That was one thing Hayden had always noticed. Shane played his best hockey in Boston or in the days after. Being in the city with his secret girlfriend always lit a fire under him. Hayden didn't know if he got off on impressing her or what, but Hayden had worried a couple of times that if Shane ever realized how much better he played in Boston, that he'd leave Montreal to go play there.
"This isn't working," Hayden said as quietly as he could to JJ. After they'd finished practice and gotten changed, they had both lingered in the locker room. Hayden had nodded his head towards the door and they'd left together.
JJ knew what he meant immediately. He shook his head as they walked outside.
"I don't fucking know, okay?" He said. "She's Rose fucking Landry. If she can't make him get over his ex, who can?"
"They need to get back together," Hayden grumbled. "We need him on his A game."
"He did not have his shit together today," JJ agreed. He paused, but Hayden had nothing to say. He couldn't defend Shane's play.
"So what," JJ asked, "We tell him to get back together with his ex?"
"He has to," Hayden said, buoyed temporarily by the idea that they could help him fix this. "Only she broke up with him." His face fell. No pep talk would help him work it out with his ex when she was the problem. "We can't convince him to get back together with her, because there's no way he ever would have broken up with her."
"Yeah no shit," JJ said. Hayden could see his breath in the cold Montreal air. He looked at Hayden for a long moment. "Okay so how do we convince her to get back together with him?"
"How do we..." Hayden began, lost. "How do we what? We don't know her."
JJ smiled devilishly.
"We know someone with her phone number..." JJ said.
"Do we...." Hayden thought it through. “He won’t give it to us.”
JJ’s grin didn’t fade.
"Do we know his passcode?" Hayden asked.
JJ, the little chaos gremlin that he was, looked pleased with himself. "You've had the locker next to him every day for years and you don't know his passcode?" Hayden just stared at him blankly.
"It's been 1221 since 2011, buddy, you should try being a little more observant."
Hayden slapped a hand over his face.
"What's mine?" He asked, mouth tense.
"1027," JJ said "it's how I remember your wife's birthday."
"I'm changing it immediately," Hayden said.
"To what?" JJ asked, "One of your kids' birthdays?"
Hayden walked away, grumbling.
-
JJ and Hayden made eye contact in the locker room as Shane walked away from his locker towards the shower. His phone was on the shelf above his jersey and his jacket, sticking out ever so slightly past the end of the ledge.
Hayden, as casually as he could manage, reached up and grabbed the phone, typed in the correct passcode JJ had given him, and opened Lily's text thread. He only had a few precious seconds so he didn't have time to read their message history - and it would have felt like a violation, even though this whole thing was a violation - but it was open just long enough for him to see that Shane hadn't texted Lily since they'd discussed him coming over back in Boston. Not one word from either of them since he'd left her place. Poor Shane.
Hayden grabbed her phone number, killed the texting app, and shut the phone down and put it back where he'd found it.
His heart was racing like he'd just run sprints, but no one had seen him do it except JJ who gave him a thumbs up.
-
"Should we call her?" JJ asked. They were sitting in JJ's kitchen. They hadn't been able to figure out what to say in a crowded locker room and needed silence to think. Since there was never any of that at Hayden's, they'd met at JJ's.
They leaned over Hayden's phone, which had Lily's contact pulled up.
Hayden's finger hovered over the call button before he pulled back.
"Maybe we should just text her."
"She's gotta know who we are," JJ argued, "it's not like the fact that we’re his teammates is a secret."
"Texting is better," Hayden said, "I wouldn't want someone calling me out of the blue."
"True, I wouldn't even answer an unknown number," JJ agreed. "Okay, we'll text her."
Hayden hit the message button. It took them ten minutes and about a hundred drafts to get the message just right.
Hayden: Hey, we're Shane's friends. He misses you a lot. He's devastated that you broke up with him. I know he's dating Rose Landry but he's miserable without you and he'd break up with her in a heartbeat to get back together with you. Take him back.
There was a long pause where Hayden and JJ just stared at the phone before the typing bubbles appeared and disappeared a few times.
Lily: Who is this
Lily: You don't know what you’re talking about
Hayden: This is Hayden and JJ. We’re Shane’s friends on the Voyageurs. And we definitely know what we're talking about, Shane misses you.
Lily: Fuck off Pike
Lily: and Boiziau
Hayden: you've gotta take him back. He loves you. He's emotionally constipated so maybe he hasn't said that, but he does.
But the message never went through.
"Did she fucking block you?" JJ asked, mouth agape. "Should I try texting her?" He moved to pull out his own phone, but Hayden shook his head.
"What happened between them?" He asked into the air, "She's hurt too."
JJ nodded.
"He wouldn't have broken up with her, so what the hell happened that they're both this upset."
-
Hayden didn't understand until two weeks later.
"Fuck off, Pike," Rozanov said as he slammed Hayden into the boards and went for the puck. Hayden was so surprised that as he saw his life flash before his eyes he gave up the puck easily and had to go chasing after the offending Boston forward.
Shane reached Rozanov sooner, elbowing him roughly for the puck. They shared a moment of charged eye contact that Hayden watched play out in slow motion before Shane successfully stole the puck and Hayden had to focus to get where he needed to be on the ice.
There was a hockey game to play. His brain was short-circuiting, but he would have to deal with that later.
-
"Give me your fucking phone," Hayden ordered JJ. He wasn't even subtle about it. They were in the locker room. No one was paying attention, but they could have been. Hayden wasn't sure he cared. He was way too mad to process emotions in a healthy way.
Hayden and JJ had already showered. Hayden had gotten changed, but JJ was still in a towel. Shane was nowhere to be seen. Hayden had no idea where he was, but it didn't matter as long as it wasn't here.
Montreal had lost, and Hayden was angry, so he'd lost all of the finesse he'd gone for when they'd texted "Lily."
He hit the call button.
Hayden didn't put the phone on speaker, but he turned the volume up just loud enough that they'd both be able to hear whose voice was on the voicemail message when the ringing ended.
But the voicemail didn't pick up. Someone answered. A decidedly Russian, male someone.
“Hello?”
"Is that..." JJ began just as Hayden said "You've got to be fucking kidding me."
The line went dead immediately.
They just stared at each other. Hayden wanted to scream, to rage, to...anything, but he didn't even know which part to rage about.
"That wasn't..." JJ began, looking shell shocked, but from his expression he knew. "It couldn't have been-" he tried again, "We called the wrong-" None of his sentences really ended.
Hayden didn't know what he would have said to Shane if Shane walked in, but mercifully he didn't.
"What the fuck was he thinking?" Hayden asked. "That's so... that's so.... it's..." But he couldn't manage to finish a sentence either.
"Fuck him," JJ said. "Fuck that." He shook his head forcefully like he was trying to shake the memory out. "So he's-" he lowered his voice to a whisper, "gay."
Hayden nodded.
The gay thing didn't bother him. But the fact that it was Ilya Rozanov. And the fact that it had been Ilya Rozanov since-
"Fuck, it's been years," he breathed out. His head was foggy. He was mad and slightly nauseated and grossed out, but a few clear thoughts made it through his thick skull. "He's been keeping that a secret for years."
"Yeah," JJ agreed solemnly.
There was a long pause.
"I guess it sucks to hide that you're gay for years," JJ said.
"No," Hayden said. "I mean yes, that too. But he's been with Lily for years. Since before I can remember."
"Maybe it's his sister?" JJ offered. "Maybe she's got a really hot-"
"’Fuck off, Pike,’" Hayden said in an abysmal attempt at a Russian accent that sounded somewhere between Texan and Australian. They both laughed at his attempt. It almost broke the tension. Almost.
"Fuck me." JJ said with a wince.
"I always wondered why it had to be such a big fucking secret," Hayden said, "I thought he was being overdramatic. But he was actually right."
"Jesus fucking Christ," JJ said.
"Okay, we take this to our graves. No one ever has to know we knew. And definitely not Shane."
JJ nodded. "It's over anyway. It's all in the past. We don't even have to play Boston again for six weeks. Plenty of time for Shane to get his fucking head on straight." Hayden frowned at him. "You know what I fucking mean," JJ said. "Not straight. We'll find him a better rebound this time. A fucking guy. I’m not homophobic. We find him a guy."
"He's still dating Rose," Hayden pointed out.
"Yeah, that’s right. That’s good. Maybe it'll get better."
-
It did not get better.
Shane did not get any happier.
He stopped seeing Rose eventually, but he didn't look any less miserable.
And the thing was, whether they wanted to or not, Hayden and JJ couldn't set him up with a nice guy, because Shane wasn't out to them.
So they just had to watch him be miserable.
"What the fuck happened anyway," Hayden grumbled into the phone on a video call with JJ eventually, after weeks kept going by without more than a few words here and there from Shane.
"What?" JJ asked.
"Why couldn't they just fucking continue as they were without anyone knowing about it?"
JJ scrunched up his face.
"You can't be suggesting-"
"I feel gross saying this, but we were fucking right, okay? He does love him and he is miserable without him and I can't fucking believe I'm saying it but he was so much fucking happier when they were together."
"I can't imagine why," JJ said.
"Trust me, me fucking neither."
They stared at each other over the phone for a long moment.
"What do you want to do-" JJ asked. He dropped his voice like he was somewhere in public. "Tell Ilya fucking Rozanov the same thing we told Lily? That'd go over so well." Hayden knew he was right. "And he blocked both of our numbers and our next game isn't for a month."
"Shane will see him next week for the all-star game," Hayden said.
JJ laughed a little bitterly. "Not like either one of us will be there."
Hayden sighed. "Yeah I know, but things can't go on like this. We need to talk to Shane."
-
"What the fuck are you doing?" Shane asked. He was sitting at his dining room table across from Hayden and JJ, who sat next to each other to try to be moral support in an impossible conversation. "You never come over unannounced." He looked back and forth between them. "What are you doing here?"
Hayden steeled himself to start gently, to coax them into the conversation to avoid spooking Shane; he could be a little skittish, and Hayden didn't want to start off on the wrong foot.
"This is an intervention," JJ said, unhelpfully.
Shane glared at him icily, then turned his gaze to Hayden.
"Fuck off, I don't need an intervention," he said, before he even had the slightest sense of what the intervention even was.
Hayden winced.
"What JJ means is-" he began.
"You need to get back together with 'Lily'" JJ interrupted. "We know who Lily is and we know you'll see 'her' next week." Shane jaw dropped open. So did Hayden's. They hadn't made a plan, but that had been dumb because this wasn't the way to do it and they should've had a strategy.
JJ continued, "I never ever want to have this conversation again. I'd rather light myself on fire than ever think about this moment again. I would much rather not know." Hayden just listened. Shane was listening too, too shocked to be hostile, and still as a statue which meant he wasn't running away. "But you're fucking miserable. You dated the hottest woman on earth for a month and didn't smile once. You're in love and it's gross and terrible and I never want to hear you mention his- I mean 'her' name ever again, like seriously do not even think about it, but you fucking miss him. I mean her. God this is terrible and I can't believe you're making me do this. Just get back together so that I can stop worrying about you. Or thinking about you at all. And I definitely never want to think about him again. If you don't get back together in four weeks I'll have to commit a ritual sacrifice and burn him at the stake the next time we play in Boston."
Shane still hadn't moved. He didn't look defensive. He didn't look emotional at all actually.
If fight, flight, and freeze were the panic reactions, he had gone with freeze.
JJ seemed to think it was enough. He stood up, nodded towards the door to Hayden, and walked away.
"We support you, buddy," Hayden said, trying to smile but mostly grimacing.
"As long as you never, ever talk about it," JJ said from the door. "C'mon Hayden, you're my ride."
Shane still had not said one single word, but JJ was right. Shane wasn't ready to talk about it and he didn't want to. He looked winded, but not upset. Maybe that would come later. But there were no accusations or denials or anything else.
Hayden gave him a smile and left.
-
When Shane came back from the all-star game, he looked lighter. Happier. More relaxed. He was back on his phone sometimes.
"I'm never going to talk to him about it ever again," JJ said to Hayden quietly one day, "but I'm happy for him that things got better."
"Me too," Hayden said. "But let's agree never to think about it again."
-
Hayden ignored the way Shane smiled in Boston and how much better he played there and looked away immediately when he saw Shane and Rozanov making some kind of intense competitive eye contact that made him blush.
It was so obvious now that he knew.
They had always glared at each other like that. Shane had always stared at him just a little too long and like he was the only thing in the room there was to focus on.
He had just thought it meant Shane hated Rozanov more than anyone else.
But now that he knew, he felt pretty dumb.
Of course Hayden had always known who in Boston Shane was obsessed with. He'd always known that. Maybe he should have picked it up sooner.
And now that he knew, he would work like hell to forget.