Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

Multi

Fandoms:

Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid, Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander & Hayden Pike, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau/Hayden Pike/Jackie Pike, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Hayden Pike, Jackie Pike, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Shane Hollander, Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J. J. Dagenais, Gilbert Comeau, Patrice Drapeau, Sorren Miitka, Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros Team Ensemble (Game Changers), Original Characters

Additional Tags:

AU-gust | August Writing Challenge 2026, Day Seventeen - Time Travel, Shane Hollander & Hayden Pike Friendship, Good Friend Hayden Pike, Ride or die Hayden Pike, Leak of Hayden Pike's FanMail, Outing, Internalized Homophobia, Internalized Biphobia, Shane Hollander Needs a Hug, Polyamory Negotiations, Strangers to Lovers, Hayden Pike Is Incapable of One Night Stands, ‘Casual’ Relationships, Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros Being Assholes (Game Changers), Challenge Response

Language:

English

Series:

Part 17 of AUgust 2026

Stats:

Published: 2026-08-17 Words: 9,374 Chapters: 1/1

Once More With Feeling

Summary

When Brad leaks the FanMail, Hayden Pike is pretty certain that this is something he’ll never be able to atone for, no matter how much he wishes he could. Of course, this was before he wakes up in the past - 2014, to be exact, after the Olympics when Shane is being ghosted by ‘Boston Lily’. Hayden knows that Boston Lily does not exist. Shane does not know that Hayden knows this. Hayden is determined that he will be a better ally this time around - and, in the name of this purpose, decides that he needs to try his hand at being the best openly bisexual hockey player that the world could ask for. With his wife fully supportive of this and Cliff Marlow also… there, Hayden sets out to achieve the best friend of the year award.

or - Hayden Pike queerbaits his way into true love and a reformation of locker room culture. Is there an easier way he could have done this? Yeah, probably. In his defence, he thinks it's more authentic this way.

Notes

This is written for Day Seventeen of AUgust 2026 - Time Travel Fix It! I might develop some of these into full fledged stories one day, but for now enjoy my responses to this challenge! Most are pre-written and I've been excited to share them for a while :)

CONTENT WARNINGS: Homophobia, outing, locker room culture, internalised homophobia/biphobia

When the video leaked, Hayden Pike knew that he was never going to be able to atone for what he had done to his best friend and - though he was loathe to feel pity for the Russian man - Ilya Rozanov. Brad’s video had gone viral on the hockey spheres of Twitter within hours of being posted; because of the contents of it, it had then gone viral everywhere else. And, just like that, the fact that Shane Hollander was head over heels in love with his greatest rival was everywhere - not, of course, that the FanMail conveyed any of the love. No one who watched it saw the inside jokes and the afternoons babysitting and the domestic little gestures that Hayden reluctantly had to admit were romantic as shit. All the FanMail showed was Shane and Rozanov making out sloppily in the background of Hayden’s awkward birthday message, with wandering hands and far too much tongue.

It was Shane’s worst nightmare - being outed like this, having all the accomplishments of his career called into question, losing the support of the locker room… and it was no longer a nightmare, because Hayden had watched as all of this had become a reality from one moment to the next. The fans turned nasty. The league made statements and overtures and threats. The Voyageurs made a separate group chat to disparage Shane’s sexual habits that Hayden had swiftly been removed from for calling Gilbert Comeau an insecure, dickless chucklefuck.

None of it - nothing that he tried to do now - would change anything though. It was out there and he was never going to be able to put it back in the box.

The worst part of it all was that neither Shane nor Rozanov blamed Hayden. They’d forgiven him far too quickly and he had done nothing - nothing - to deserve it. He’d been dismissive of their relationship, insulting to and about Rozanov, always questioning whether or not Shane was in the right frame of mind to be building a life with Rozanov, and now he’d burned it all down to the ground around him with his carelessness. And they’d forgive him. Just like that, they’d forgiven him.

Hayden didn’t think that he was ever going to be able to forgive himself that easily.

Curled up with Jackie pressed against his chest, Hayden almost wished that he wouldn’t wake up again - or, at least, that he would not wake up in this universe, where everything was so completely and utterly ruined. Absently, he ran his fingers through Jackie’s short, fine, blonde hair, letting it slip like sand from between them. She’d fallen asleep maybe an hour ago, though she had tried to stay awake and try and entice his thoughts out from the dark cloud that had descended in his head, but Hayden could not follow suit. He stared up at the ceiling and the shadows splayed across it. He held her close, taking comfort in the warmth and weight and realness of her.

He knew that she was disappointed in him - that she had been disappointed in him more and more with every idiotic comment he had made and every time that he had tried to ignore this new, integral part of Shane’s life instead of accepting it, and for not being more careful with the trust that Shane and Rozanov had put in them. She had told him over and over to be careful what he uploaded in his videos - if he was in the office, would he make sure he didn’t catch any important letters with personal information on? Or that the kids stayed out of the online eye as best he could manage? - but Hayden had been so flippant and dismissive. He would do anything to change it now - but he couldn’t. It was done.

And, fuck, that was a terrible thought to fall asleep to, wasn’t it?

Hayden woke up and remembering what had happened was liking discovering Brad’s Twitter post all over again - fear inducing, gut wrenching, soberingly terrible. Part of him had hoped that it had all been a dream, but the visceral, sickly dread and the vividness of it all told him that this was not the case. This was something that he was going to have to live with for the rest of his life, knowing that he had done this to the guy that he considered his brother and the man that his ‘brother’ loved more than anything.

Fuck.

He rolled over, burying his face in Jackie’s hair and -

- froze.

He squeezed his eyes tight shut, eyes squinching shut. He exhaled shakily. Reached out with one trembling hand, running his fingers through Jackie’s hair the way that he had when he had been struggling to fall asleep, following the swoop of the strands as they spread across the mattress, a shimmering halo about her head. A long shimmery halo about her head. Jackie had not had long hair in - fuck, four years? She’d chopped it all off to fall almost boyishly around her face, and then had grown it out to her shoulders, where it had remained ever since. Except that it was long, now; Hayden stretched it out, lifting it above her face. He opened his eyes to examine it closely.

“Something in my hair?” murmured Jackie sleepily. Hayden had dropped it onto her face, numb fingers unable to keep a proper hold on the strands; clearly, the tickle of hair on her nose was enough to disturb her.

“Are you wearing a wig?” he asked aloud, reaching out for her hair again.

Jackie slapped his hand away.

Hayden frowned, continuing to reach out for. “No, seriously, are you wearing a wig? Or, like, extensions?”

She slapped his hand away again. “No,” she said irritably, “I’m not wearing wig - or extensions.”

“Your hair was short last night,” he informed her.

“It wasn’t. It hasn’t been short since I was seven and looked like a middle aged librarian.”

“It was,” he insisted, “it -”

Then he broke off, because Jackie had pushed herself up onto her elbows to look down at him, and the face that greeted him was certainly his wife - he would know her face anywhere, in dreams and not - but it was not his wife as he had known her only last night. She was younger, startlingly so - startlingly, because Hayden had never really noted how the passing years had changed her (she had remained, always, his Jackie) until they had now been removed. Some of the laugh lines around her eyes had been smoothed away, her face was a little narrower, and a dozen other changes that he catalogued in a second but could not process.

“Baby,” said Jackie, a frown of concern wrinkling her brow as she read whatever emotion was on his face, whatever calamitous expression had descended, “what is it?”

“What year is it?” Hayden blurted.

Her frown deepened. He could only imagine that she thought that he was going insane. “2014,” she said slowly. “24th February 2014.”

“The Olympics,” he said, and could not force another word out.

“Finished yesterday. Babe, are you feeling okay? Are you -”

Hayden answered her question by vaulting to his feet, rushing the the little ensuite bathroom that was connected with their bedroom, and promptly hurling his guts up in the toilet without further ado.

Hayden told Jackie everything. Of course he told her everything - he always told her everything, ever since he had met her that very first night and very embarrassingly (because he had been drunk and young and stupid) told the coolest woman that he had ever met that she was the sort of woman that he could imagine himself falling in love with. He’d apologised, of course, because it had been a lot to tell someone when you didn’t even know their last name, but he had never stopped telling Jackie every little thought that ran through his head. Especially when he had kept his promise and fallen in love with her, just like he had said that he would.

So, it was never a question of whether or not to tell Jackie that he had either travelled back seven years into the past or was having the strangest, messiest psychotic break of his life, inventing his best friend’s sexuality and decade long love affair and a veritable soap opera of hockey romance drama. It was just a case of how he told her it in a way that was calm, rendered, measured, and did not make Jackie wonder at whether her husband had finally succumbed to all the head injuries that he had sustained over the years.

Hayden was none of these things. He blurted it all out in a very long stream of bullshit. Jackie, to her credit, did not run screaming from the room.

“So,” she said, “let me get this straight -”

Hayden snorted and covered his face when she shot him an unimpressed glower. In his defence, nothing that he had said had been very straight.

“- Shane Hollander, your best friend, is gay for Ilya Rozanov, who you hate and who is the Boston Lily we have heard so little about. And you’re living in a future where we know this for certain, and you have just outed Shane to the whole entire world in a way that validates all his worst fears, because your teammates - who are currently still your friends - and the hockey world at large are homophobic asses. Correct?”

“Correct,” said Hayden. And then, “baby, I think I need to be bisexual.”

Jackie blinked. “And how did you arrive at that conclusion?”

“Shane’s gay, okay?” Hayden began to explain, and felt a small pang of discomfort as he realised that he had basically just outed his very closeted friend yet again - but it was Jackie. Did it count if it was Jackie? And if it was for a good cause? “And the guys will never accept him, which they think is fine ‘cause no one’s going to challenge them, and no one’s going to challenge them because this shit is so fucking normal and because this shit is normal, no one is going to come out. And then it stays normal, which is shitty and it’ll mean that Shane will never feel comfortable being, you know.”

“Gay,” supplied Jackie. “You can say it, you know. I just don’t understand where you having to be bisexual comes into it.”

“Someone has to be the first, you know, gay person.”

Hayden had considered asking Scott Hunter if he wanted to venture out of the closet a little early but supposed that would be considered bad form. After all, the whole problem with Shane and Rozanov was that they had not gotten to do it in their own time. It wouldn’t be fair to do the same to Scott Hunter, who had spoken very openly about the importance of his journey as a gay hockey player and as a gay man, and how he had gradually worked towards accepting himself - even if Hayden’s allegiance was firmly with Shane. So, no, Hayden could not ask that of Scott, but he was also of the opinion that you should never ask someone to do something that you would not be willing to do yourself; it was with that advice that Hayden’s own dad had raised him and that same advice that Hayden would raise his kids.

“Babe,” said Jackie, and she sounded as though she was despairing a little of him, “you know - please tell me that you know - that you don’t have to be gay to be an ally. Please, please, please tell me that.”

“Oh,” said Hayden, “you have another idea.” He paused. “You believe me?”

Jackie laughed. “No offence, but you are not imaginative enough to come up with something like this. And I know when you’re lying - you blink too much, it’s a total give away.”

Hayden tried not to take offence at that, and Jackie softened. “It’s because I know you.”

Pressing a kiss to her temple, Hayden let himself sink back down into the bed. “So, there’s a way to do this without, uh, queerbaiting -”

“Real people can’t queerbait,” Jackie corrected him. “But even if they could, would it really be queerbaiting?”

Hayden made a strangled noise in the back of his throat.

“I’m just saying,” continued Jackie, holding her hands aloft in a gesture of surrender, “that I’ve seen the way that you look at Scott Hunter sometimes, babe. There’s nothing wrong with it. He is a sexy, sexy man.”

Hayden felt like he was dying, a little bit. He sunk further into the mattress and prayed for the earth to swallow him whole. His face burned and he knew that he would be bright red.

“I love you,” he said plaintively.

“I know,” Jackie assured him. “And I love you - all of you. This part of you as well. And you don't have to do anything with it - I love you and our marriage and our life - but… maybe it would be exciting?”

“You think?”

“I always said we should try pegging.”

“I don’t think that’s the same thing.”

“No. But I want to see you get railed, babe. I think it would be hot. And we talked about threesomes when we got together,” she reminded him. “We never revisited it. Maybe we should.”

Hayden glanced over at her. She was looking at him with a burning intensity that he knew all too well; she waggled her eyebrows. He snorted.

“So, I fuck a guy, you fuck a guy, we all fuck a guy together, and then we help Shane get his man?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jackie said, settling her hand on Hayden’s bare chest. She smoothed her thumb over the sensitive skin around his nipple then flicked it sharply. Hayden flinched, the sensation travelling straight to his dick. “But first I want to fuck you. The twins are with my mom this morning and I have you all to myself.”

The thing was that Hayden didn’t really know how someone was supposed to set about being gay. It wasn’t something that he and Shane had really talked about - mostly because the main guy that Shane had pulled was Ilya Rozanov and the idea of thinking of Rozanov like that was honestly nausea inducing to Hayden. This meant that Hayden’s plan was foundering before it had really begun; he didn’t imagine that the lines that he had used before Jackie would work on guys, and he also didn’t know how you were supposed to tell if a guy was into it - into Hayden. A lot of guys were aggressively straight as well, with fists and slurs, whilst Hayden was - passively straight? Peacefully straight.

Jackie had more luck than him. There’d been two date nights since Hayden had proposed his plan to her when she had brought guys who were down for a fun time with a married couple over and they’d ended up going home with them. There’d been another time in a club bathroom which had not progressed beyond there. Hayden had learnt a lot more about sucking dick than he had ever thought that he would.

He decided that Boston would be the best place to try. They were all up a height after playing the Bears (they’d won, of course) and Hayden had energy to burn off and Jackie’s permission to find someone to take the edge off, so long as he related to her in painstaking detail what it was like. He also thought that Boston had worked so well for Shane, and so it was associated with gay hook ups in his mind in the same way that hockey superstitions become enshrined. He had, however, forgotten that this post-Olympic stretch of the season was one devoid of Boston Lily. Shane did not go haring off to ‘her’ side the way that he usually did, electing to sulk in the hotel room that he and Hayden were sharing. So, no hook ups in hotel rooms; Hayden supposed that he would have to find a bathroom or somewhere else private.

But that did not solve the problem of finding someone.

Hayden had maybe overestimated how much freedom he would have to pick up a guy with his teammates breathing down his neck. Of course, this whole thing was supposed to be about making the locker room more supportive for Shane, which meant at some point Hayden would have to be more open about what he’d been getting up to, but he pictured it as a little more structured, ordered, like you’d find in the pamphlets that kids are given to help them come out to their parents.

Mom, Dad, I’m gay but I’m still the same person.

This was much harder with the crawling over every inch of the bar that Hayden was in. He couldn’t move two feet without running into someone ruffling his hair or slinging an arm over his shoulders or shoving a drink into his hands. Then the Bears arrived, just as loud and as boisterous, managing to make drinking buddies with Hayden’s teammates in the most aggressively, antagonistic way possible. Mitty walloped Connor Connors in the face, which would be horseplay if Connors had not hit the deck with the force of a double decker bus.

Fuck this, Hayden decided. The night was a bust; he grabbed his coat from the back of the chair he had slung it over and made his way to the curb, pacing down it and searching for a taxi. He’d go back to the hotel and to Shane, and maybe he’d slipped in the fact that he and Jackie had fucked a guy like Steven last month, who lived alone except for his cats, which seemed sad except for the fact that they kept seeing him around the place and he seemed to know pretty much everyone in the city of Montreal. Shane would cry and they’d hug and then he’d tell Hayden that he was in love with Ilya fucking Rozanov and Hayden would be like that’s cool, buddy, and he’d make himself be genuine about it, because goddamit Hayden was going to do things right this time.

“You’re not going to find a cab at this time, here,” said Cliff Marlow, where he was leaning against the brick wall at the entrance of the alleyway that ran alongside the club. His collar was turned up to guard him against the chill bite of the wind, and he cradled a cigarette between his hands, the small light illuminating his face.

Hayden startled. “You smoke?”

Marlow grunted. “You fucking met Roz? Fucker got me addicted secondhand. This way’s easier.”

Cliff Marlow was Ilya Rozanov’s best friend. Hayden was supposed to be Rozanov’s friend, at some point. He moved closer, and found himself looking properly at Marlow. He didn’t think that they’d ever really spoken before, except for a few chirps and the time that Hayden had tried to break his face in return for breaking Shane’s head and maybe once at Shane’s back garden wedding ceremony to grouse about the lack of chairs. He looked at him now and thought that really, Marlow was quite handsome - broad and tall and strong enough that he could probably bench press Hayden if he wanted to, chuck him around a little, with a square face and a cleft chin and a wonky nose. His face was covered in a little bit of stubble, just enough to shadow the hard lines of his expression, and his eyes shone from underneath two thick eyebrows. His dark hair was slicked away from his face but there was one strand falling over his forehead that Hayden thought, senselessly, about pushing away.

“Can I bum a smoke?” said Hayden, leaning against the wall beside him.

“You smoke?” said Marlow, raising an eyebrow.

Hayden shrugged. “Used to. Management wrote it into my contract that I’m not allowed to, but what they know won’t hurt them, yeah?”

Mournfully, Marlow shook an empty Pall Mall carton. Then tilted his head consideringly. “You know, you do this thing with pot…” he murmured, and took a long heavy drag.

Before Hayden could think, before he could move, Marlow was leaning forward. His hand settled on Hayden’s chin, much larger than Hayden had realised, and he rested his thumb of Hayden bottom lip, so close that Hayden could have sucked it into his mouth. With it, Marlow moved Hayden mouth open, almost tenderly, and then leaned forward, mouth hovering over Hayden’s, to exhale a stream of cigarette smoke directly into it.

Hayden coughed in his face.

“Fucking Pall Mall,” he said. “Buddy, that’s disgusting.”

Marlow looked vaguely amused. “Can I try and make it worth your time?” he suggested, and Hayden registered distantly that Marlow’s hand was still on his face, that Marlow had crowded Hayden back against the wall, and that Hayden was hypersensitive to every inch that existed between them and also that his rapidly hardening dick was looking to reduce that distance as it stood to dutiful attention.

“Sure,” Hayden said, breathless.

And Marlow kissed him, hard and fast and messy. Hayden’s back struck against the wall and he swore - he swore on everything that was good and holy - that it was only that which made his knees tremble as if they were going to give away beneath him, like he was going to dissolve into a melted puddled of grossness and get himself all over the soles of Marlow’s shoes. Hayden kissed him back, finding it novel how he had to lean up slightly to wrap himself around Marlow, to reach him with the force that he wanted to. He gave into his whims and pushed the strand of Marlow’s hair away, tucking it out of his face. Marlow snarled low and gravelly in the back of his throat.

Fucking check me against this wall and stomp on my dick, Hayden thought, a little nonsensically. Fuck.

Maybe it was that easy, to be gay in Boston. Maybe you just had to find a fucking Boston Bear and look at them funny. Maybe Hayden had been trying wrong all along and should have been imitate what little he did know about Shane and Rozanov’s relationship.

“My place?” Marlow asked huskily.

Hayden nodded, and pulled back as Marlow did, tamping down the urge to chase his lips. “Yeah. Fuck, yeah. Can I text my wife first?”

“Your fucking what?”

“Babe,” said Jackie, audibly stifling her laughter. “We rehearsed this - a whole explanation. What do you mean you didn’t tell him that you’re married?”

“I thought he would know,” Hayden said miserably, sliding further down into bed as if the mattress could swallow him up.

“The same way you know if he has a partner?”

Hayden ceded this point with a tilt of his head that Jackie, back in Montreal and over the phone, would not see.

“I ruined it,” he groaned, and slapped his hand over his face. “Cliff fucking Marlow, and I fucked it up.”

“Swear jar,” said Jackie, and then, a little more soothingly, “and who says you ruined it? He’s fit, you’ll see him often, I’m pretty sure you enjoyed getting to touch him…”

“And,” said Cliff Marlow, where he was leaning against the doorframe, “I made you breakfast. Omelette?”

“And he made you breakfast!” Jackie laughed. “Baby, you’re standards for a hook up are so high. A little misunderstanding doesn’t ruin anything.”

“You’ve spoiled him,” Cliff opined, voice warm as he addressed Hayden’s wife. Hayden obligingly held up the phone for him. “He’s never fought through the trenches of a one night stand.”

“How could I not?” Jackie cooed. “Have you seen how pretty my husband is?”

Cliff laughed and flopped onto the bed, head resting on Hayden’s stomach. Hayden sucked in a sharp breath and then stalled completely as Cliff’s hand moved to rest idly on the covers just above his crotch. It wasn’t even that suggestive, but heat pulled in the pit of his stomach nonetheless.

“I have,” said Cliff. “The two of you make a gorgeous couple. I’m almost jealous.”

Hayden’s fingers twitched. Don’t be, he almost said, but no following words made themselves known to him, and he swallowed it back down, quashing the urge.

“I’m jealous,” said Jackie, without much heat in her voice. “You’re a generous lover, Cliff, calling me so that I can hear all the pretty little noises you draw out of my husband, letting me picture him pinned underneath you. Did he take it well?”

“Very well,” Cliff replied, voice strangled. It was the effect that Jackie, forthright and bold and brilliant, had on people.

“I wish I could have seen it in person. I wish I could have touched you.”

“Maybe you could,” said Cliff. And then, “next time I’m in Montreal… could I see you both?”

He made it sound easy. Hayden, still sprawled across the bed, looked over at him and the way that the light from between the gap in the curtains was slanting across his handsome face, and thought, it can’t be this easy. Because Shane had suffered - suffered, in silence, for years whilst Hayden had remained oblivious to the whole thing. And here was Hayden, trying to make it better, stumbling around in the dark, still remembering how Cliff’s fingers had tangled in his hair and pulled. Shane hadn’t gotten to have this. How could it ever be fair that Hayden - who didn’t even really like guys any more than he liked women, which was, he thought, a normal amount for a guy, because it had been how he had always felt - got to have this and Shane didn’t?

“I’d like that,” Jackie said eventually, and Hayden was helpless to do anything but nod.

No, he thought. It couldn’t be that easy, ever.

It was that easy.

Hayden had half-thought that what ever this was, with him and Cliff and Jackie, would fizzle away the moment that he left the hotel room, never to be thought of again. But then, on the team bus, between one game and the next, his phone had buzzed in his pocket and he’d opened it to see that it was Cliff, sending a group message to both Jackie and Hayden that simply read, thinking of you. (And, because that was a little to classy for a hockey bro, he’d also sent several peach emojis and an eggplant underneath that.)

Hayden had looked at the message for a very long time, hardly believing that it actually existed. He saved Cliff, in his phone, as Charles, half-understanding the lengths that Shane had gone to hide Ilya from the world for so long. It would be a scandal of epic proportions if it cam out that Hayden was fucking Cliff Marlow, which was obviously the end game, considering that he was trying to normalise whatever the fuck was up with Shane and Ilya at this point in their convoluted relationship - but not before Hayden was ready, before he’d prepared everything for Shane. He also figured that people would be more willing to believes and Hayden and Charles were ‘bros’ in that very explicitly homoerotic way that guys got to get away with between each other, as opposed to saving Cliff’s under a woman’s name (Clara, meet Jane and Lily!), which would make Hayden look like a cheating scumbag if unearthed.

But the message had kindled something small and warm in his chest. A ray of hope, he told himself, for the future that Shane was going to try to build with Ilya one day. And also because he liked Cliff Marlow - as a person, in some sort of strange way that he didn’t quite dare name just yet. He liked that Cliff was thinking of him, and also that Cliff was thinking of Jackie, who was seamlessly incorporated into it all.

It can’t be this easy, thought Hayden, as he shoved the phone back in his back, laughing off J.J.’s questioning waggle of his eyebrows with a, “Jack’s is wishing us luck for the road.”

It can’t be this easy, thought Hayden, as he watched Cliff making breakfast through a grainy videocall, laughing with Jackie, and brushed his own teeth, keeping an ear out for Shane returning from the gym.

It can’t be this easy, thought Hayden, as shoved his hand down his pants and stared at the photo of Cliff’s straining cock on his phone screen.

It can’t be this easy, thought Hayden, as he met Cliff’s burning gaze across the ice, and felt the warmth surge up to meet him.

It can’t be this easy, thought Hayden, as he slipped between Jackie and Cliff both, feeling nothing but the heat of their skin and the slick of their sweat and the rhythms of their pleasure, drumming into him until he couldn't tell where his sensation began and theirs ends.

It can’t be this easy, thought Hayden, as the months passed and passed, and Shane got no more comfortable with him, but Cliff was there whenever Hayden wanted it, and what was this about, if it was no longer entirely about Shane and Ilya?

It can’t be this easy, thought Hayden, and listened as Gilbert fucking Comeau spat out a slur in the locker room, face easy and laughing, as if he expected the sort of reception a comedian might get at the club.

Shane, sat on the bench beside Hayden as he pulled his socks up to his knees, cringed almost imperceptibly. Hayden saw the glint of humour in his eyes - which Shane tried so hard to keep whenever he was with the guys, as if doing so would make the rest of it easier - gutter and die, back to the distant coldness that Shane wielded like a shield between himself and the rest of the world. No one else noticed. The rest of the guys - even J.J., though he at least had the decency to turn his head to one side - laughed, tossing back their own chirps at Comeau, as if that tit-for-tat nature of the exchange, the giving it back to Comeau as he ‘deserved’, made it all better.

It wasn’t that easy, Hayden thought, because Hayden hadn’t forgotten his grand master plan but he had lt himself forget that he was, really, selfish. It was how he had failed being Shane’s friend the first time and it was how he was going to fail being Shane’s friend this time. Because he had set out to do this all for Shane, and then he had found Cliff, and that had been unexpected, and now - selfishly - he thought that he might like to keep Cliff for himself and Jackie, to keep it as this quiet, precious thing that existed only for them. But that wasn’t fair - wasn’t fair to Shane, who was so alone, and who Hayden did not know how to work.

It wasn’t easy. Hayden wondered if it would ever be easy. For Shane, he hoped so.

“Please,” Hayden scoffed, squaring his shoulders as he stared across the room at Comeau. It was fight to keep his voice from shaking, aware of the weight of all the eyes that were bearing down on him. “You’re saying that like it’s a bad thing.”

Comeau rolled his eyes. “Fucking chill, Pikesy. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’m just saying that Mitty should tidy up his saves, unless he wants people thinking that he’s good at letting other things slip in behind him as well. Keep that shit off the ice, you know, and we’ll play well.”

“What? Guys who fuck other guys can’t play hockey?”

“Not as well as guys who fuck normally. I’m not saying they’re bad, just that they’re - softer, than you need on the ice. Distracted.” Comeau laughed, flexing his arms. “Who wouldn’t be in locker rooms like these?”

There was a chorus of hoots and whistles that rose to meet him, and Comeau preened under the attention.

“It’s never stopped me from playing well,” Pike said.

Things… froze.

“You’re married,” Drapeau pointed out, brow furrowed, “to Jackie?”

“Jack is a pretty masculine name!” someone else called out.

“It’s called being bisexual,” Hayden said steadily, pressing his hands against his thighs to hide the way they shook, “and it means I can tell you honestly, Gil, that no gay man in any locker room wants to be any near you, let alone in you.”

“Fuck off,” Comeau snapped, instinctively.

Hayden raised an eyebrow. “You could asked nicely, if that really bums you out.”

“Fuck off,” Comeau said again, and then, “man, I feel sorry for Jackie, married to you with your wandering eyes and wandering hands. Fucking gross.”

“Fucking bigot,” Hayden spat.

He thought Shane, how small he’d made himself, curling up for a team that would never like him back. Was Hayden just proving him right? Except - He looked around the room, where the veterans nodded and grumbled their agreement with Comeau, and thought, resentfully, that he had been his friends for years now - longer than any of them actually knew. Hayden could live two lifetimes being friends with them, if he chose, which he thought was the textbook definition of loyalty. But he saw J.J., looking at Hayden as if he’d never seen him before, frowning as he watched the room with an expression of someone waking up from a very long slumber to find the world had changed around him. And he saw the rookies, the younger guys on the team, looking at Hayden like they didn’t know what to make of him - confused, worried, but he thought that maybe one or two of them looked hopeful. Hayden wondered if Shane would ever realise what he could mean to others what Scott had meant for him, and Hayden was trying to mean for him.

Hayden half-glanced towards where Shane was sat beside him, and could have wept at the look on Shane’s face. His eyes were shining as he looked up at Hayden. It kind of made Hayden want to grab him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him, tell him that Hayden wasn’t the example that he was looking for but instead a great big fraud. Except that this was what he was doing it for. He was doing it for Shane, and this was all he’d wanted. For Shane to know that he wasn’t alone.

“I’m the same guy I was on the ice an hour ago,” Hayden said coldly, “and I’ll be that guy tomorrow. I’ve been that guy as long as you’ll know me, Gil, and it’s not going to change. We’re all here to play hockey. Brilliant! On ice, we’re a team, no matter what. And off ice does effect that, ‘cause we gotta have each other’s backs no matter what, and we gotta trust that all these guys will have ours in return. I don’t fucking trust you, Gil.”

“You’re the one with the problem.” Comeau stepped forward, looking like he was considering whether or not to give Hayden a shove.

Hayden didn’t back down. “There’s no problem,” he said levelly, and found that his eyes met a rookie’s gaze across the way. Hayden hadn’t spoken much to the kid, but he was so familiar with the look on his face. “Not with me. The only problem is you. And that goes for all of you - ‘cause we got people from all over in this locker room and we’re a team. I’m same guy I was, and I have never once caused issues for this team for any reason. None of you have had an issue before. We do a job, we get the job done, and on ice, nothing matters but the hockey. So we put the fucking work in off ice, capisce?”

“Capisce,” one of the rookies called.

Grateful, Hayden nodded in their direction. None of the other rookies spoke up, but they thronged around the one who had, a gesture of unspoken support.

“Yeah,” Mitty said, shuffling his feet side to side. “We don’t have to worry about you trying to cop a feel though. You’re married.”

Mitty, at least, had the decency to look ashamed of the question even as he asked it. It didn’t make Hayden feel anymore endeared to him.

“Anyone trying to cop a feel, anywhere, is another problem,” Hayden said. “We all keep our fucking hands to ourselves if we want to keep our fucking eyes. But, you know, I’ve seen you lot at the bars with the women you try and pick up. I think you should be shutting the fuck up about that, actually.”

“Also,” one of the rookies said. Lovell, a defenceman on the first year of his ELC. “It’s not cool to assume that gay people are just, like, sexed up all the time. And locker rooms are fucking gross. Who wants to cop a feel in here? None of you bastards shower properly.”

“Exactly,” another rookie said. “Rank.”

Hayden pointed over at Lovell. “What he said.” Then, he turned back to Comeau. “I think, Gil, that we’ve had a friendly locker room for a little too long. Gotten a little comfortable. We can all be friends still, but you should fix your attitude first. It’s not the fucking twentieth century anymore, buddy. Your shit’s not cool anymore.”

“Preach,” J.J. called, hands cupped around his mouth. His cheeks mottled red when people turned to look at him, but he held firm, meeting Hayden’s eyes when Hayden turned to look at him. Not backing down, stepping up. Hayden had never been more grateful for this friend than he was in this very moment.

“Now,” Hayden declared, “I’m going to shower, ‘cause the rook’s right and we all stink.”

Hayden tried not to notice how the rookies made a point to follow him into the shower room, brazen in their attempt to show that they didn’t feel uncomfortable with the idea that Hayden might try and take a peek at their dicks or something. It was almost sweet, in a strange, mostly awkward sort of way. It was, however, progress.

He tried not to let it hurt that Shane waited until Hayden had left to go shower himself. Progress, he reminded himself, was not linear.

It was very clear that Shane was biting his tongue. Hayden recognised the look on his face from countless times that he ha seen in before - the blankness, the forced placidness, the I-am-hockey-Jesus-and-therefore-above-such-mortal-trivialities-but-also-I-actually-care-very-deeply-about-this. Mostly, it just made Shane look constipated and in pain but Jackie had told Hayden that this was unkind to tell his best friend, so Hayden also had his own facial expression for when he was biting his tongue with Shane, and it was mostly exasperation.

This time, though, it was easier to keep the exasperation at little softer - because this wasn't easy stuff for Hayden to help Shane with, like Shane asking if Hayden if he could bring his own food sometimes when he had dinner at Hayden's house, or Shane asking Hayden to explain some turn of phrase or joke that he hadn't wanted to admit that he was struggling with. This was bigger stuff - life-changing stuff - and the fix wasn't as easy as Hayden talking it through with Shane, or rooting around on the Internet for Shane-friendly meals. So, no, Hayden found it easier this time not to wonder why Shane still felt like he had to worry about asking Hayden for something, and if it was something that he was doing wrong, because he remembered the way that Shane - another lifetime ago, in the future - had spoken about the pressure he had felt in every aspect of his life, both publicly and as privately as he could keep the personal stuff.

So, Hayden said nothing when Shane knocked on his front door, at the time had been scheduled from the very beginning of their friendship, ignoring the face of stress, but offered Shane a smile like he did every morning, slinging his headphones around his neck. His one concession was that he didn't start playing his music from the outset like he usually did.

“Ready to run?” Hayden said, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Shane frowned at him. “Have you stretched?”

“You know I'm a professional athlete too, yeah? I have done this before.”

“Have you?”

Hayden paused. “Little bit,” he said, deciding to count the constant bending up and down to retrieve the spoons that the twins had taken to chucking to the floor all throughout breakfast. It was their new favourite game, and Hayden’s warm up for his work out. The warm up of life.

Clearly, this was not the answer that Shane had wanted, the scowl deepening as he looked Hayden judgementally up and down, but he let it drop as they set off down the block at a light pace, easing into it. After years of being running partners, they had this down to a fine tuned process. They were familiar with everything the other had to offer - how long it took for them to get in the swing of it, pacing, resting, how hard they could push and for how long, what forms cool down would take. They fell into step easily, and Hayden took comfort in the stretching of his limbs and the burn of his muscles, the weight of the pavement pressing up against the soles of his feet. This was where Hayden felt most at peace. Shane was a demon on ice, but Hayden had done track in high school and knew, instinctively, that he could outpace anyone around him - including Shane. It was, when he was stressed, the beginning of an escape plan, and - though he'd never use it - enough to settle him.

He and Shane made it a few blocks on their route when Shane half-turned to him. Hayden slowed, automatically, but kept running. Shane wouldn't want to have the conversation standing still; Hayden knew him well enough to know that.

“What you said the other day,” Shane said, and hesitated a moment. “Did you mean it?”

“‘Course I meant it,” Hayden said. “Strange thing to lie about.”

He thought of Cliff, and Cliff’s hands, and the way that Jackie moaned when Cliff got his fingers and -

He thought about how he was kind of lying, and how this was not his to keep, and how there was a part of him - Yeah, there was a part of him that wanted nothing more than to keep this.

“You and Jackie are, like, happy, though?”

“No doubt,” Hayden assured him. “You know I’m crazy about her.”

“So you can feel like that about both?”

Oh shit.

Oh shit, Hayden thought again, with no less feeling. Did Shane not know he was gay?

“Some people do,” he said carefully. “Why?”

“No reason,” said Shane, sounding very much like there was a reason.

Hayden slowed to a stop. Shane stopped as well, shooting Hayden a startled look that seemed almost betrayed.

“Look,” said Hayden, reaching out to clap Shane on the shoulder, mostly thinking that Shane was liable to do a runner if Hayden didn’t keep him secured, “I don’t think it matters about who you can feel things for but who you do feel things for, yeah? I could fall in love with a dozen different people on the street - men, women, anyone. But I haven’t. I fell in love with Jackie, and Jackie happened to be a woman.  I can’t change that, or force those feelings for someone else - and why would I want to? It’s not the same.”

“But if Jackie was - was a man, and someone that the whole world told you not to like…” Shane trailed off, biting down on his lip.

“Fuck the world. It’s nothing to do with them.”

Shane nodded, and then persisted. “But it’s harder. It makes everything messy and complicated and difficult. So, if you could fall in love with someone that makes it easy, shouldn’t you try?”

“It’s only worth it if it’s real, buddy,” Hayden said gently.

“Yeah,” said Shane, mouth tight and eyes shining and face twitching as he struggled to rein in his expression. “If it’s real. And - and how do you know if it’s real?”

Jackie’s smile, her eyes, her laugh, the way she said Hayden’s name. The feeling of her hair sliding between his fingers. The curve of her shoulder blade. Jackie dancing around the kitchen. Jackie singing in the car. Jackie in his arms, pressed against him, pulling him close. Jackie on the couch, her feet in Hayden’s lap and her head in Cliff’s. Cliff making her laugh. Cliff looking over at Hayden. Cliff’s broad hands. Cliff in the kitchen, making breakfast. Cliff texting him in the morning. The swoop of his hair. Cliff spinning Jackie around and around and around. The three of them tangled together.

Hayden reached out, tapping Shane’s chest, right above where his heart was beating like th wings of some frightened, cornered creature. “You just know,” he said, and watched as Shane pressed his hand to the place where Hayden’s had been only moments before, like he would be able to comprehend the truth through touch alone.

“I could get used to this,” Jackie murmured, and slipped her arms around Cliff’s waist. “Hot man in the kitchen, making me breakfast.”

Cliff smiled, a little crooked and bashful, as if he was still not used to the idea of Jackie even all these months later. Which was fair, considering that Hayden - sat bare-chested and barefoot in only his boxers at the breakfast bar, hands curled around a warm mug of coffee - found it difficult to wrap his head around sometimes as well. He wondered if it said something about him, that he was pretty useless at keeping one night stands as one night stands, and decided that he liked whatever was up with that. If only because it had gotten him here, in the kitchen of his and Jackie’s Montreal home, with his wife - who he loved - and the man that they were seeing, who they both liked.

“How’d you want your eggs?” Cliff asked, leaning back briefly against Jackie. On her tiptoes, she was able to hook her chin over his shoulder, peering down into the pan.

“Scrambled please,” she requested.

“Same here,” said Hayden, and tried not to preen when Cliff shot him a wink and a “whatever you want, sweet cheeks.”

Jackie snorted. “Babe, how red can you go?” she asked, incredulously.

“So red,” Cliff said. “You should have seen him last night, when I had him against the boards -”

“You weren’t playing fair,” Hayden accused, pointing over at Cliff.

“All’s fair in love and war and sports,” said Cliff, as he expertly cracked several eggs into the pan. “Anyway, I think it’s cute.”

Jackie pecked Hayden on the cheek. “My husband’s the cutest.”

Hayden opened his mouth to rebut that, flustered at being called cute (he wasn’t cute - he was, you know, handsome and manly and macho and not cute), when he was interrupted by a knock on the door. Or, rather, the frantic sound of someone either trying to break it down r nail their very first drumming solo.

“Saved by the bell,” said Cliff.

Hayden waved him off. “I’m getting that, but once I get back…”

He trailed off threateningly. Oooh, Cliff jeered, merciless at Hayden’s back.

Hayden, unlatching the lock on the door, swung it wide open - and there, on his doorstep, was Shane Hollander. Hayden paused, looking his best friend up and down with slowly mounting panic. Shane looked back at him - but, unlike Hayden, was clearly already in the thick of his panic, breathless and sweaty and red, hands fluttering up and down compulsively, rocking back and forth on his heels a little. Hayden didn’t think he’d ever seen Shane like this - or he rarely had. When the Centaurs’ plane had gone down - yeah, that was how Shane had looked then.

“Shane,” he said.

Shane didn’t respond, already pushing past Hayden. His hands tugged at his hair. Hayden tried to grab at him, just to stop him for a moment, but Shane slipped through his grasp effortlessly, practically charging down the hall like he was on a mission. Down the hall, straight towards the kitchen.

Hayden hurried to try and catch up with him. “Shane!” he cried.

But he was too late. Shane burst into the kitchen and then froze, staring with a look of what Hayden could only describe as bafflement. It was the first emotion that Hayden had seen break through the miasma of his best friend’s panic, and he knew what Shane was seeing to cause such an expression even before he rounded the door frame himself. Cliff Marlow, shirtless and making breakfast at the stove, and Jackie in her lingerie on a barstool, hair mussed and red marks crawling up her bare neck, and all of them existing in a state of casual domesticity that was not at all related to any sort of professional hockey rivalry or even any connection between cordial-ish colleagues.

“The fuck is Cliff Marlow doing in your kitchen?” Shane demanded.

Cliff raised his hand to wave. “Hey, Hollzy, what’s up?”

“Hi, Shane,” Jackie said, also waving.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Hayden tried to say.

Shane scowled. “It looks like you’re fucking Cliff Marlow, and he’s making you breakfast.”

“Okay,” Hayden said, “it’s a little bit what it looks like.”

“Does Rozanov know where you are?” Shane snapped at Cliff.

Seeming genuinely confused, Cliff paused and then said, “why would Roz need to know where I am? I doubt that fucker is even at our hotel. He’ll be with his Montreal girl.”

“He’s not,” said Shane immediately.

Cliff narrowed his eyes. “How do you know?”

Shane’s mouth gaped open and closed like a fish. Colour slowly began to mottle his cheeks, neck, and even his ears, to the point that he looked almost like he was about to spontaneously combust.

“I need to talk to Hayden, please,” he said, as politely and calmly as he could manage.

Taking pity on his best friend as he looked at the thinly veiled terror and discomfort on Shane’s face, who was looking increasing as though he wanted to bolt, Hayden said, “we can talk in the other room.”

Flashing a weak smile at Cliff and Jackie, Hayden led Shane into the living room, trying not to obsessively run through every potential disaster scenario that had sprouted up in his mind the moment that he had seen Shane’s distress. Was this anything to do with Hayden’s plan? Had Shane been to see Boston Lily? Hayden couldn’t remember Shane getting into such a state over Boston Lily at this point the first time around, but maybe something had changed. Was it possible that Hayden could have ruined something?

Shane made a beeline to perch on the very edge of the couch, elbows planted on his knees. Uncertain whether he could trust Shane to keep it together for the whole conversation, Hayden elected to sit on the coffee table in front of him, trying to seem as steady as he could manage, hoping that it might soothe Shane in some way.

“You were right,” Shane blurted.

Hayden frowned. “About what?”

“About it only being worth it if it’s real.” Shane dragged his hands through his hair, shaking his head a little. “Fuck,” he gasped, “fuck, Hayd, I’m so fucking scared.”

“Hey, hey,” said Hayden. He reached out for Shane, resting on hand on his knee and squeezing. “It’s gonna be okay, whatever it is.”

“You think so?”

“You’re Shane-fucking-Hollander, of course it’s going to be okay. And, whatever it is, we can fix it together.”

Shane took a deep breath.

“I’ve been fucking Ilya Rozanov since we were rookies, and I think that means I’m maybe actually gay because I’ve never felt the same way about anyone as I do about him, and also I’m maybe in love with him and I told him last night and I think he hates me.”

Shane took another deep breath. He looked slightly nauseous. Hayden felt nauseous himself.

He blinked. “Wow, just - wow. That was a lot.”

Shane nodded miserably.

“So, first, you’re in love with Rozanov.”

“Think I’m in love with him,” Shane stressed. “Or I care about him enough that I want to be his friend or something - not just a guy who hates him and then sneaks around with him behind everyone’s back.”

“And you told him this and you think he hates you.”

“He left,” Shane confirmed, and fuck, he sounded heartbroken. Hayden wondered how Shane had been able to hide all of this so well when it was clear that he was always wearing his heart on his sleeve when it came o Ilya Rozanov. “He said we couldn’t ever be anything. I think it’s because of Russia. I don’t think he likes it there.”

“But it’s his home.”

“That doesn’t mean he has to like it,” Shane snapped.

“Yeah, but it’s still his home. It gets complicated, doesn’t it?”

“I guess.” At that, Shane looked a little conflicted, as if these were things that he’d never really had to think about before that were only just dawning on him.

“You need to talk to him,” Hayden said, wondering what the world had come to. Why was he trying to get Shane Hollander to communicate better with Ilya fucking Rozanov? Once, that had been his idea of Hell. “Shane, talk to him. I think - I think that maybe this is a very lonely secret to have. And I think that it’s one thing that both you and Rozanov share. And if it’s worth it -”

“It’s worth it.” Shane paused. “But I don’t know where he is.”

“Ask Cliff,” Hayden suggested.

Shane looked outraged at that. “I can’t.”

“Buddy, Cliff’s in the last position to be selling your sordid affairs to the press.”

“So, you guys are…” Shane made an obscure, obscene gesture with his hands.

Hayden stared at them in horror. “Jesus, Shane, no wonder Rozanov’s scared if that’s what you think sex entails. What the fuck.”

“Shut up,” Shane said irritably. “Are you -”

“Yeah,” said Hayden. “We are, and I think we’re happy.”

Shane’s face scrunched up a little. “I’m glad. I’m happy for you, being happy. Even if it’s, um -”

“A mindfuck,” Hayden filled in for him. “Think how I feel.”

Shane laughed, a little breathlessly. “Yeah, man. What a pair we are.

“So,” Cliff said. “Quick recap - Roz and Hollzy are like totally fucking aren’t they?”

Cliff was still staring at the door through which Shane had beat his hasty retreat, armed with his newly acquired knowledge of where Ilya was (Cliff had his Life360) and some romcom notion of a grand gesture to try and convince him that they were worth trying to be something. There was a very strange look on his face - the oddly paternal one that he always got when he was talking about Ilya, mingled with a little bit of pride.

“I can’t answer that,” Hayden replied promptly, reclaiming his seat by Jackie. She laced her fingers through his, and he caught, from the corner of his eye, the soft slant of her smile.

It wasn’t much of a denial - Cliff would take it as confirmation whatever Hayden said - but Hayden had a good feeling about it all. A really, really good feeling. He thought that it was maybe going to work out this time around - all of it, Shane and Ilya, fucking Brad and that stupid FanMail, Jackie and the kids, Jackie and Cliff and Hayden.

Hayden watched as Cliff slid two plates of eggs across the counter, one for Hayden and one for Jackie, before he carried the third around to his own seat on the other side of Hayden’s wife. He looked like he belonged there. Hayden reached out, fingers brushing over Cliff’s shoulder, and smiled when the other man turned an inquisitive look on him.

“Will you stay?” he asked, willing Cliff to understand what he meant.

Something spasmed across Cliff’s face. His voice was strangely thick when he replied, “yeah, babe, I’ll stay.”