Chapter Text
The call comes at 8:32 am on a Sunday. At first, Hayden thinks the unknown number might be one of his teammates calling from a hookup’s phone after their post-preseason celebrations the night before, or Jackie from one of her girl friends’ phones. Wine and Cheese Night has a way of getting away from them, and it isn’t unusual for Jackie’s phone to die or go missing in her best friend’s apartment.
Instead, it’s Montreal’s GM calling to inform him that he’s been traded, that he's expected in Boston that afternoon, and that his agent will answer any questions he has. Then, the line goes dead.
Traded.
Hayden knew it was a possibility. A no-trade clause hadn’t even been on his mind when he signed his first full contract after his rookie deal expired, but he’d assumed that his spot on the team was safe. Final. He and Shane Hollander are an unstoppable force on the ice, and breaking up the first line a day before the regular season starts is never good for team morale.
Not that management cares about team morale. At the end of the day, Hayden is nothing more than a set of dollar signs and statistics that make up a drop in the bucket of one man’s net worth. Like all assets, loyal and hardworking or not, nothing in hockey is permanent. One day, Hayden will retire, and it won’t be with Montreal like he’d imagined.
In fact, nothing in his life will go the way he imagined. Hayden hadn’t bought a ring or anything, but marrying Jackie had been on the table, waiting for him to man up and settle down. For three years, she’s been his constant, cheering him on at every home game and making him laugh. With Jackie, he can forget the things about himself that are wrong. In Montreal, he has a system – a thoroughly contrived, air-tight routine that allows him to move through life with as few issues as possible.
His phone buzzes in his hand, and Hayden doesn’t bother getting out of bed while his agent tells him that his flight has already been booked and he’s expected at the airport in an hour and a half. Boston has an afternoon practice, and his cubby will be prepped and ready by the time he gets there. Some rookie named Johannsen’s nameplate and jersey will be swapped out for his, faster than the equipment intern can blink.
Traded for a kid who’s played six total minutes on professional ice. It stings.
Boston’s team doctor calls while his agent is still talking about things like hotels, real estate agents, and moving companies. Hayden debates not answering, but his next heat is due in a few weeks, and the team will need to compensate for him while he’s… indisposed. Plus, he needs to make sure this one understands.
“This stays between management, the coaching staff, and us,” Hayden stresses after switching the call over. “No one can know.”
Like Montreal’s team doctor, this one tells him that’s the worst idea they’ve ever heard. Hayden isn’t the only omega in the league. Hell, his best friend is one of them, and few people mention it when they talk about him these days. But Shane is one of, if not the, best. It’s difficult to call him inferior when he’s led the team to a Cup, and everyone knows he’ll be going for his second. All without an alpha holding him back.
For Hayden, the outcome would be very, very different.
“Your doctor sent us over your prescriptions, and covering them won’t be an issue,” the doctor continues. “Do I need to remind you about the risks of prolonged–”
“No.”
No, Hayden doesn’t need to be reminded of anything.
“Stop by my office after practice this afternoon,” the doctor says. “We’ll have to discuss plans for your heats until you find a permanent residence in Boston.”
He doesn’t include and an alpha to help with them, which Hayden is thankful for. That’s one part of his future that will never change.
With that phone call over with, Hayden drags himself out of bed and into the bathroom, where he rushes through a shower and barely dries off before donning a pair of sweats and a Montreal hoodie. He stares at himself in the mirror as he takes his suppressants, committing the sight of himself in vibrant blue, red, and white to memory. It’ll be the last time he can wear them in public without people commenting about team loyalty, and the realization has him calling Shane while digging a suitcase out of his closet.
“I was just about to call you,” Shane says the moment the call connects. “Is it true?”
“The car will be picking me up for the airport,” Hayden checks his watch. “In forty-seven minutes.”
“Fuck,” Shane sighs. At least he sounds somewhat distraught; it makes Hayden feel the slightest bit better about leaving. Someone will miss him. “Where?”
It’s impossible to keep the frustration out of his voice as he starts grabbing shirts on hangers and shoving them into his suitcase.
“Boston.” Moments tick by as Shane says nothing. Hayden opens his dresser, grabs three pairs of jeans and a pair of pajama pants, and drops them beside the shirts.
“I know,” Hayden groans. “I’m being banished to Hell.”
Being traded in and of itself isn’t ideal, but if it’d been to any other team, Hayden might take the news better. The worst part about this entire situation is that his new captain, Ilya Rozanov, is a complete asshole and has had it out for Shane since their rookie season. Seriously, the guy goes out of his way to pick fights with people, Shane more than most.
“No,” Shane says eventually, making Hayden freeze with a hand wrapped around a pair of socks. “I mean, it could be worse. You could be going to Buffalo.”
“Am I hearing this right now?” Hayden stares down at Shane’s contact picture, frowning. “I’m telling you I’m being sent to Boston, and you aren’t telling me to just retire?”
Shane sighs, and Hayden can picture him rubbing at the crease between his eyebrows with his thumb. He’s going to miss that. Seven years as teammates means that, despite the secrets that Hayden has never quite been able to divulge, they know each other better than most. Who will save him from himself now?
“Boston has a chance at the Cup this year,” Shane tries. “A solid one, especially if you end up on the first–”
“I’m not playing on a line with him,” Hayden shakes his head and sticks the socks in between the shirts and pants. “I’ll ride out my contract on second and pray someone else wants me in two years.”
Montreal has played enough games against Boston for Hayden to know that ending up on a line with Rozanov is a joke. Their styles are completely different: Hayden is here to play hockey, and Rozanov is here to see his picture on the jumbo screens above the ice. And the rest of the team doesn’t seem much better, but Hayden can’t judge them on their captain. Not if he plans to make it out of this trade alive and in one piece.
Shane tries a few more times to convince Hayden that his life isn’t over before saying he has to go, and when they hang up, Hayden has twenty-three minutes to pack what he knows he’ll need in Boston for at least the next week. At first, he’s disappointed that everything on that list fits inside a suitcase and a backpack. But that’s when he realizes he still has to call Jackie, and that doing it from Boston Logan International is probably a dick thing to do.
In a way, this is probably for the best. If Hayden had proposed to Jackie, he would have had to tell her that he doesn’t have an autoimmune disease that conveniently flares every three months like clockwork, and that there’s no cure for it, only coping. Coping and pretending that he hasn’t spent much of his life trying not to think about what it might feel like to be truly satisfied at the end of his heat. And, if he’d stayed in Montreal, he would have eventually had to tell Shane, who’d no doubt be pissed at him for not saying anything sooner.
Maybe Shane is right, Hayden thinks to himself as he sits down on his unmade bed and pulls up Jackie’s contact on his phone. All things considered, this trade could have been more disastrous than mildly infuriating. In Boston, he can start over and not let himself imagine settling down. It’ll make it that much easier to leave without the guilt of unspoken words and half-realized plans while his best friend sighs and his girlfriend says she understands through what sounds a lot like tears.