Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types, Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau/Hayden Pike

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Hayden Pike

Additional Tags:

Rivals to Lovers, Under-negotiated Kink, Unmarried Hayden Pike, POV Alternating, Toxic Masculinity, Internalized Homophobia, Hockey Players Are Cringe

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of dogfish pond

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-15 Words: 6,814 Chapters: 1/?

violent ends with friends that go

Summary

Whatever this thing with Marleau is, Hayden’s prepared to ignore it. It doesn’t mean anything. It can’t mean anything, because Hayden isn’t gay.

Notes

while this is technically the second work in a series, it can (and possibly should) be read as stand-alone. I'm trying something out, and have so far made this a little less introspective than usual and also in present tense so I'm guessing it probably doesn't read very well as a continuation of the last one. idk

Chapter 1

The first thing Hayden does after Cliff Marleau jerks him off in the swanky bathroom of a downtown nightclub in Boston is call a taxi back to the hotel, fall into bed, and promptly pass the fuck out.

He doesn’t panic, even when he wakes up the next morning with a killer headache and dried cum crusted disgustingly in his leg hair, because there’s nothing to panic about. Hayden isn’t gay.

He was drunk, Marleau was there—a hand is a hand, right? He puts it out of his mind, and when Shane asks him at breakfast the next morning, after having slinked nervously into their room at 6 am in yesterday’s clothes, like Hayden isn’t well aware he’d spent the night at Boston Lily’s, how the night out with the boys had gone, he says, “Fine,” and lets Shane pull out his iPad and go over game footage with him, hunkered over at the table and spearing sausage-links one-handed with his eyes glued to the screen, without once complaining that it’s too early for that shit.

The next stop on the road trip is New York, then Buffalo. In Pittsburgh, Hayden gets a text on his phone from an unknown number.

[8:05 am] Unknown: Hey
[8:05 am] Unknown: Saw that hit you took from O’Grady
[8:06 am] Unknown: Looks like it hurt

Hayden frowns down at the texts. He’s in the bathroom, hastily brushing his teeth before him and Shane head down to breakfast — they got in late last night, and aren’t set to play Pittsburgh until the afternoon. He spits, sticks his toothbrush back in his mouth, and texts back one-handed, Sorry, who is this?

He gets a reply a moment later and almost throws his phone into the sink in instinctual shock. It’s a photo, Marleau from the chest up, grinning shark-toothed at the camera. He’s not wearing a shirt. Hayden stares at it for a moment before shaking his head and texting back, how tf did you get my number??

[8:08 am] Unknown: What’ll you give me to tell you?

“What?” Hayden mutters aloud.

[8:08 am] Hayden: nvm dont care
[8:09 am] Hayden: what do u want

[8:09 am] Unknown: Come on babygirl don’t be like that

Hayden makes a face and types, k blocking u now. He’s really going to do it, too—but right that moment his phone starts to ring. Hayden stares at it a second, panicked, before hastily hitting decline.

[8:10 am] Unknown: 😢

[8:10 am] Hayden: shanes in the room dude
[8:10 am] Hayden: im not calling u
[8:11 am] Hayden: tf do u want

[8:11 am] Unknown: Told you
[8:11 am] Unknown: Saw that hit
[8:11 am] Unknown: Nasty stuff you got a bruise?

[8:12 am] Hayden: fuck off

Hayden turns his phone off, tossing it onto the counter. He finishes brushing his teeth, but the whole time his thoughts are churning strangely. He spits, rinses his toothbrush, and eyes himself in the mirror. His reflection stares accusingly back at him—big-eyed and tired. He hasn’t been sleeping well. After a moment, he lifts the side of his t-shirt and examines the mottled purple-black bruising painting the side of his hip. It was a good, clean hit, so he’s not sure why Marleau keeps asking about it. Usually Hayden’s pretty good at avoiding checks—he’s a slippery bastard, on the ice, nimble and quick on his skates; alright in a fight but bad at staying on his feet, the opposite of Shane, who takes hits like nobody else in the show but can’t throw a punch to save his life—but O’Grady had come out of nowhere.

Hayden turns his phone back on.

[8:12 am] Unknown: Where are you?
[8:13 am] Unknown: Your hotel?
[8:13 am] Unknown: You got icy hot?

[8:15 am] Hayden: why tf do u care

The reply is immediate.

[8:15 am] Unknown: I bet you liked it

Hayden’s heart leaps in his throat. He types hurriedly, a little panicked and unsure why.

[8:16 am] Hayden: i was drunk.
[8:16 am] Hayden: dont read into it dude

[8:16 am] Unknown: LMAO
[8:17 am] Unknown: I mean the hit

[8:17 am] Hayden: why tf would i like the hit??
[8:17 am] Hayden: ogradys fucking huge ive got brusise on half my body
[8:17 am] Hayden: bruises

[8:18 am] Unknown: Fuck really
[8:18 am] Unknown: Send pics
[8:18 am] Unknown: I bet you loved it
[8:19 am] Unknown: Getting pushed around like that
[8:19 am] Unknown: Wish it’d been me

Hayden turns his phone off. Stares at himself in the mirror for a very long moment, thinking. Then he sticks his head out of the bathroom and in a very casual tone of voice tells Shane he’s going to take a shower, and so he should head down to breakfast without him. Waits for him to leave—then turns the water to near-scalding, steps inside the stall, and jacks himself off, half-angry and half-aroused, to the careful thought of nothing in particular. The bathroom has only just started to steam up when Hayden is struck by a brief, flashing memory of fingers in his mouth, and comes, gasping, hit by it almost out-of-the-blue.

He stands for another few moments under the spray, catching his breath and thinking, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck, before he makes himself get out of the shower and towel off. He’s careful when dabbing at his bruised flank, until, in a fit of insane pique, he finds himself pressing down hard on one of the dark splotches of burst blood vessels on his hip.

“Ow,” Hayden says aloud, “Fuck.” He hisses through his teeth and presses down harder. It hurts, a burning spark of bright pain that radiates through his obliques and down his thigh. His dick, softening between his legs, stays blessedly dormant. Relieved and not quite sure how to articulate why, he stops fucking with his side and quickly finishes drying off, avoiding eye contact with himself in the mirror.

Once he’s done, dressed once again, he picks his phone back up. Unlocks it. Taps on the little unknown number icon in the new chat, and creates a contact. He writes Cliff Marleau in the corresponding field, then stops, thinks What the fuck am I doing? and, shaking his head with a scoff, deletes the contact, blocks Marleau’s number, and leaves to go find Shane.

When they play Boston next, a home game in Montreal two weeks later, he spends the entire day leading up to it jumping at shadows, antsy and refusing to examine why. He fumbles passes, loses his edges and plays the whole first period with his head on a swivel, flinching each time Marleau so much as skates within five feet of him, until Shane grabs him by the helmet after a particularly rough play and shouts at him to “get his fucking head screwed on right, Jesus, Hayden,” shaking him hard enough to jostle him back into his body, at which point Hayden stops being terrible and locks in.

His anxiety turns out to be immaterial, anyways. Marleau plays the same as ever—chirps a little meaner than everyone else, hits a little harder, goes after anyone who dares to even look funny at Rozanov, all the while serving up filthy little passes from behind the net and annoying the shit out of JJ on defense. He doesn’t look twice at Hayden. Montreal wins in the shoot-out. Boston goes home.

Hayden thinks, Well. Guess that’s that, and chalks the whole thing up to a momentary lapse in sanity for the both of them.

It’s a surprise then, when the next time they’re in Boston Hayden steps outside the locker room and finds Marleau leaning against the stone-painted wall of the TD Garden hallway, scrolling boredly on his phone.

Hayden stops in his tracks. JJ, behind him, bumps nose-first into his back, swears, and says, annoyed, “Hayds, move your fat ass.”

Marleau looks up.

Hayden, avoiding eye contact, quickly starts walking again. From behind him, he hears, “Pike,” then JJ saying, “Oh, hey Marly, what’s up,” and the sound of them clapping hands.

Then, again— “Pike!”

Hayden stops walking. Turns around. “What?”

JJ gives him a weird look, while Marleau, as is usual, just continues to radiate a sort of low-level condescending amusement. “You got a sec?” He asks.

Hayden thinks about saying no—and then sighs, resigned. “Fine.” To JJ, he says, “I’ll meet you at the hotel, kay?”

JJ eyes him a moment, probably picking up on something, before he shrugs. “Sure. See ya around, Marly.”

Marleau nods goodbye, and they watch JJ disappear down the hall in silence. Then he turns to Hayden and says, “Walk with me.”

Hayden, though bristling a little at being told in such a frank tone what to do, does not really have any other choice. There are still some other players wandering around, equipment managers and rink staff cleaning up shit after the game, and Hayden is fairly certain this is not going to be a conversation he’ll want to risk being overheard. He walks.

Marleau leads him down the hallway, assured, at a quick enough clip that Hayden has to make a concerted effort to keep pace with the other man’s longer strides. “How’s it, Pike?”

“Fine,” Hayden says, tone curt. “What do you want?”

Marleau snorts. “Straight to the chase, huh? What happened to that good old-boy Canadian charm?”

Hayden’s from Thunder Bay. Marleau’s clearly playing with the wrong stereotypes. He says, “Stop bein’ a shit-heel, Marleau. The fuck do you want?”

“You haven’t been replying to my texts.”

“Yeah,” Hayden says. “I blocked your number, because you were pissing me off. What about it?”

“Huh,” Marleau says, thoughtful. “You didn’t seem all that pissed off when my hand was on your—“

Hayden opens a nearby door, shoves Marleau through, and slams it behind them. He pushes Marleau up against the nearest solid surface, which happens to be a row of shelves filled with cleaning supplies that rattles ominously with the force of the shove, and hisses, voice cracking slightly with the force of his panic, “Are you fucking insane?”

A nearby mop falls to the floor with a clatter. Marleau grins, and holds his arms up in innocent surrender. Hayden’s hands are twisted up in his open-collared shirt, pulling the fabric, revealing a stretch of collarbone below his neck and a patch of dark chest hair. Marleau catches him looking; his grin widens. “Woah,” he says, “you wanted to get me alone, baby, all you had to do was ask.”

Hayden releases him with a noise of disgust and steps back quickly. “I didn’t—” he starts, before cutting himself off with a scoff. “What the fuck is this, Marleau? Huh? The fuck is this?”

That seems to throw Marleau for a little bit of a loop. He licks his lips; glances away. For the first time, Hayden thinks he looks almost unsure. But as quickly as it’d dropped, the mask is back—Marleau cocks an eyebrow, grinning with all his teeth. “What do you think, Pike?”

Hayden crosses his arms over his chest. “I don’t know,” he says. “You—why’d you do that? In…” he drops his voice, unable to help it, glances around the little storage closet they’ve found themselves in a little nervously, like there’s at all a possibility that somebody’s going to pop up from behind a broom with a boom mic. “In the bathroom.”

“You mean when I jerked you off,” Marleau says, dry. Hayden flushes, arms tightening across his chest, but nods. “Why do you think I did it?”

Hayden is getting real fucking sick of that. “I don’t know,” he says, voice rising to a shouted sort of whisper in his agitation. “I literally have no fucking—I’m not gay.”

Marleau snorts. “No shit,” he says, “I’ve seen the way you dress, man.”

Not expecting it, Marleau’s reaction manages to take the wind out of his sails a bit. (Also, what the hell is wrong with the way he dresses? He dresses fine.) “Are you gay?”

“No.”

“Okay,” Hayden says, with a disbelieving scoff. “Well, it seemed pretty gay when you had your hands down my pants, man. But fine, sure.”

Marleau pushes himself off the wall, and takes two steps forwards. In the cramped space of the storage closet, it brings him practically chest to chest with Hayden—or chest to chin, whatever. Hayden forces himself to stand his ground. He’s not going to retreat this time. It’s not his fault Marleau’s freakishly gigantic.

“Who cares? It’s simple, Pike.” They’re close enough that his breath rustles against Hayden’s hair when he says, with careful, clipped enunciation, “I like to fuck. Don’t you?”

Somehow, the way he says it conveys at once that it would be gay if Hayden were to say no—who didn't like sex?. Sometimes someone being gay didn’t actually mean they were gay, as in homosexual—Hayden’s always sort of struggled with the finer parts of this kind of colloquialism.

Hayden says, “Yeah. Obviously,” and hopes Marleau doesn’t notice the way his voice wavers slightly with nerves.

Marleau takes another step forward, until the toe of his right sneaker is brushing Hayden’s left. When he speaks, his voice has dropped slightly lower in register. “Then I don’t see the problem.”

“I’m pretty sure the problem is we’re both guys?”

Marleau groans abruptly in irritation, the noise reverberating roughly in his chest, and tips his head back. “Fucking hell. Nobody’s gonna stick their dick in your ass, Pike, so you can stop clenching.”

Hayden feels an absurd rush of relief. As if that had been a possibility. Which—obviously it wasn’t.

Marleau continues. “You had fun the last time, didn’t you? All I’m suggesting is another good time. You tell me to get lost, yeah, and mean it?” He shrugs, easy. “Then I’ll go.”

Hayden swallows. This is it—this is Marleau giving him the out. This is where he should take it. This is where he should tell the fucker to get lost.

He doesn’t do that. Instead, Hayden says, “You don’t want to have a good time. You want to—hurt me.”

Marleau’s eyes darken. He shifts forward and skirts his palms along Hayden’s waist before tugging him closer by the belt loops, until their hips are practically flush. In a voice that’s almost a purr, he says, “Maybe that’s my idea of a good time.”

Marleau smells freshly showered—generic rink soap and something a little minty, like aftershave. Hayden is a little freaked out to find that he likes it—worse, that the fact of their newfound proximity to one another’s pelvic areas seems to have awakened some idiotic muscle memory in his animal hind-brain, and this means heat slowly convalescing into a noticeable hardness in his pants.

Hayden swallows again, his throat clicking. His gaze, unbidden, drops to Marleau’s mouth—then flicks back up as he flushes, dizzy with confused embarrassment, and tries to surreptitiously angle his hips away. “Uh,” he says. “Can I—“ He cuts himself off with a cough. Tries again, slightly more assertively. “Then I get to hurt you too. Right?”

“Sure,” Marleau says, as his fingers tighten around Hayden’s waist. The tone of his voice is indulgent, and a little mean.“You can definitely try.”

They don’t actually end up taking their dicks out in a storage closet, thank god. That happens later, after Marleau drives them both to his house in his horrible red sports car. Hayden, who spent the whole ride with Marleau gripping his upper thigh, is mentally battling it out with the half-hard dick in his pants and his irritation over the relative niceness of Marleau’s house. Slightly less soulless than most hockey player’s places—a little more wood, a little less glass and marble.

Inside, Hayden lingers awkwardly in the foyer, surreptitiously glancing around the place, while Marleau pulls the jacket of his game day suit off and heads towards a small wet bar behind the couch. “You want a drink?”

Hayden, relieved, says, “Yeah.”

Pulling out a couple glasses, Marleau jerks his head at the couch. “Make yourself comfortable, man.”

Hayden sits. Then, on second thought, he stands and shrugs off his jacket, before tossing it over the arm of the couch and sitting again. He rubs slightly sweaty palms on the thighs of his dress pants, and digs his socked feet into the furry grey carpet under the couch. He’s still fully dressed in his game-day suit and tie, whereas Marleau’s got the top two buttons of his shirt popped open, and has the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

When Marleau rounds the couch to hand him his glass, Hayden’s gaze gets caught on the corded muscle of his forearms. They’re nice forearms—it’s not gay to think they’re nice forearms. He makes himself stop looking anyway, and follows the line of Marleau’s arms as he brings his glass to his mouth and drinks. He hasn’t sat down, stays standing instead over Hayden on the couch, almost looming. It’s weird.

Marleau doesn’t break eye contact as he swallows a mouthful of scotch from his glass. Hayden, itching with a weird sort of anxiety and unsure how he should be acting, follows suit. As he sips the drink, Marleau puts a hand around the back of his neck and squeezes at the nape—Hayden gulps down a little more liquor than he’d meant to and coughs, trying not to splutter. Marleau grins down at him, before carelessly downing the rest of his scotch and placing the empty glass on the coffee table. Hayden almost chokes again when Marleau proceeds then to climb atop his lap unprompted, swinging his legs over so that he’s at a straddle, knees on either side of Hayden’s hips and settled with his ass flush to Hayden’s crotch.

Hayden says, “Uh—”

Marleau plucks the glass from Hayden’s hand. With the other hand, he grasps Hayden by the chin. “Open,” he says, tapping a finger against the hinge of Hayden’s jaw.

Hayden stares up at him, eyes wide.

Marleau sighs, and lets go of Hayden’s face, before bringing the glass of scotch to his lips. “Open,” he says again, patient.

Hayden slowly opens his mouth. Marleau tips the glass, a trickle of scotch sliding onto Hayden’s tongue. He’s slightly worried at first that he won’t stop, that he’ll keep pouring and Hayden will be forced to gulp the scotch down or else let it overflow from his mouth, his throat tightening in anticipation, but Marleau lifts the glass away from Hayden’s lips before he gets there.

“Swallow.” The scotch burns going down. Marleau says, “Good, and presses a thumb to the slick corner of Hayden’s mouth. He licks the drop of scotch from his own skin, tongue darting out pink between the bright white of his teeth, which flash momentarily into a grin. Hayden’s dick begins to get with the program.

It’s possible that he should feel off-put by Marleau’s insistence on ordering him around, the proprietary, overly familiar commands — instead, Hayden finds himself strangely relieved by it. If left to his own devices, he wouldn’t know what to do. He feels somehow sure that he would stumble onto some unspoken threshold, would accidentally do something that crossed the line into what actually counts as gay, would cause the whole thing to unravel. Marleau, Hayden knows, is an infamous womanizer. That much can be trusted.

Marleau says, “Do you like it?” and it takes Hayden a moment to register what he’s asking about. The scotch. He nods — which is a lie, more or less, considering he hadn’t so much as tasted the liquor as panickedly swallowed it down as fast as he was able to without spewing it all over Marleau’s crisp white dress shirt. But it’s not like he particularly knows what good scotch is even supposed to taste like.

“Have you ever sucked a dick?”

Hayden stares at him. After a second, he says, “I’m not gay.”

Marleau laughs a little, right in Hayden’s face. “I didn’t ask if you were gay, baby. I asked if you’d sucked a dick.”

Hayden frowns. He rolls baby around in his head, taking note of the way it sparks up his spine, then says, “No.”

“Hm.” Marleau has his hand back on Hayden’s chin, and he goes a little cross-eyed trying to keep it in view. Wary of how close the hand is to his mouth, of the memory of phantom fingers pressed to his tongue. Marleau says, “Do you want to?”

Hayden actually makes himself consider it for a moment. That seems pretty gay. But setting aside the gayness of it—does he want a dick in his mouth? The place piss comes from? Sort of involuntarily, he makes a face.

Marleau laughs again. “Fine,” he says, all gracious-like, as though he’s doing Hayden a favour. “Maybe next time.”

“Yeah, right,” Hayden says, letting out an embarrassing, nervous little giggle. Next time. A thought occurs to him, and he blurts out, “Have you?”

“Yeah,” Marleau says. “Ask nicely.”

Hayden scowls at him, and keeps his mouth firmly shut. He’s not gonna ask. He’s not thinking of Marleau on his knees, of Marleau chewing his mouthguard, of Marleau’s mouth, red-lipped and grinning—

Hayden leans forward and presses his mouth to Marleau’s. A moment later he wrenches back with a gasp, blinking rapidly, entirely unsure why he’d done that. Shit. Shit. That was pretty gay. He eyes the look on Marleau’s face, nervous, and says, “Um. Is that—okay?”

Smirking, Marleau says, “Jesus, Pike, relax,” and kisses him properly.

Okay, Hayden thinks, relieved. So kissing is fine. He lets himself relax into it, to let his body work on autopilot. He’s done this before—he knows how this works. It’s a little different, to be kissing a guy than a girl, but not all that much. The mechanics are the same. The main thing he can’t forget is Marleau still sitting on his lap, caging him in with his legs, 200 pounds and entirely more solid than any girl Hayden’s ever kissed.

His dick’s been hard for a while now, and when Marleau shifts his weight a little Hayden makes an involuntary noise in the back of his throat and ruts up against him. He breaks away from the kiss, says, embarrassed, “Ah—shit, sorry, sorry,” but Marleau just sits back a little and begins to unbuckle Hayden’s belt, saying, real casual, “Whoever comes first owes the other a blowjob, yeah?” So Hayden nods, “Yeah, yeah,” not really thinking about it, stupid with want, and helps him pull the both of their pants down, before Marleau spits in his palm and takes the both of them in hand.

Hayden grits his teeth and throws his head back against the feel of it, hot and rough and good.

Marleau says, “Hey, look at me,” and Hayden forces himself to make eye contact, dazed, as Marleau puts two fingers to his lips and says, “Open.”

Remembering this from last time, Hayden seals his mouth around the fingers and begins to suck, without looking away.

Under his breath, Marleau says, “Jesus, fuck, your mouth.”

Hayden, flush with arousal and a little proud, grins around the fingers.

“If you bite me again,” Marleau grunts, speeding up his hand, “I’ll slap the shit out of you.”

Hayden rolls his eyes—then groans, a low-punched out noise as Marleau does some crazy twisting motion with his hand.

“You gonna come?” Marleau demands.

“Fuck you,” Hayden says. With the fingers in his mouth, it comes out more like “Fuh-euh,” and Marleau laughs. “C’mon baby,” he says, pressing his lips to the side of Hayden’s neck, cajoling, voice low in a way that makes Hayden feel like squirming. "Give it up for me."

The guy just wants a blowjob. Hayden opens his mouth to complain at being rushed, but the only noise that comes out is a breathless, garbled moan.

Marleau mutters, “Fuck,” bucks his hips a couple times hard and hurried, and comes with a long, drawn-out groan, painting Hayden’s abs. As he does it, his teeth clamp down on the junction between Hayden’s neck and shoulder and a few things happen in quick succession. The first thing is that Hayden’s dick twitches outrageously—he panics a little, says, “Gah!” and pushes Marleau away from his neck. Then he reaches up and slaps him.

The both of them freeze.

Marleau leans back a little, and slowly pulls his fingers from Hayden’s mouth, still panting a little from his orgasm. There’s a look on his face Hayden recognizes.

Alarmed, Hayden says, very quickly, “You said—!”

Marleau grabs him by the throat, pins him against the back of the couch, and slaps him across the face.

It’s not a very hard hit, all told. Barely registers as a love-tap. Should hardly even hurt.

Hayden’s mind goes blank.

He goes boneless almost at once, useless body melting into the couch cushions as he stares up at Marleau, dazed, cheek stinging slightly. It feels somehow like Marleau has cracked open his skull, reached inside, and scrambled his fucking brains. Hayden feels concussed, or drugged, or fucking insane. Any coherent thought entirely replaced by static.

Marleau, gaze flicking rapidly back and forth across Hayden’s face, says, “You like that?” His fist has returned to Hayden’s cock, jerking him off, beginning slow and steadily quickening in pace. “Hey.” Marleau grabs Hayden by the chin with his other hand, forces himself to maintain eye contact. “You like it?”

Hayden’s brain is so fuzzy with pleasure he almost doesn’t understand the question. For a second he just stares—and then, belatedly, he nods once, shallow and jerky.

Under his breath, Marleau says, “Yeah, fuck,” and slaps him again, a little harder this time.

Hayden gasps, eyes rolling back in his head, and comes harder than he has in weeks.

“Ah, ah, stop,” he hisses after a bit, pushing Marleau’s hands away when he shows no signs of slowing down, even now that Hayden’s finished. “Fucking hell.”

He pushes at Marleau’s chest until the other man gets the hint and slides off his lap. They half-lay, half-sit side-by-side on the couch in silence, Hayden staring blankly at the ceiling and trying really hard not to freak out too visibly while he catches his breath, until Marleau eventually pats him on the hip and says, “You hungry?”

Hayden turns his head to look at him. Marleau’s a little flushed but mostly composed, the only evidence of what had transpired being his shirt untucked from his pants. Hayden blinks. “Uh. What?”

Marleau says, “I got two servings of post-game dinner from trainers tonight. You want one?”

Hayden stares at him a moment. Then he says, “Okay, I guess.”

He heads to the bathroom while Marleau heats the take-away containers of salmon and asparagus in his microwave. In the mirror, his reflection is flushed and a little glassy-eyed, like he’s drunk, despite only having drank a couple of fingers of whiskey. Hayden prods at the cheek Marleau had hit. It’s a little red, but it doesn’t hurt or anything. Probably it won’t even leave a mark.

He takes a deep breath, makes eye contact with himself in the mirror, and lets it out. Then he slaps himself hard across the face. It makes his ears ring a little, makes him blink startled at his reflection, eyes gone a bit dazed—but it also feels and looks ridiculous. Hayden shakes his head and finishes washing his hands, inwardly rolling his eyes at himself, before leaving the bathroom.

“You got come on my fucking shirt,” Hayden says, once he’s joined Marleau in the kitchen.

Rifling through the fridge, Marleau doesn’t bother to look over. “How d’you know it’s mine?”

Hayden frowns down at the damp spot across his front, where he’d disgustedly scrubbed at his shirt in the bathroom sink. Good point.

Marleau shuts the fridge and looks Hayden over. “You can borrow a shirt,” he says flippantly, before holding up the two Fairlife shakes in his hands. “Chocolate or vanilla?”

Wordless, Hayden points at the chocolate. Marleau tosses it to him, and says, “Be right back,” before disappearing up the stairs.

Feeling a little like he’s entered some sort of surreal alternate universe, Hayden cracks the seal on his protein shake and sits at the island in Marleau’s kitchen, taking absentminded sips from the bottle and pondering how insane it’d be if he set Marleau’s table for dinner.

The shirt Marleau emerges from his bedroom with is, thank god, a plain black tee. Hayden had half been expecting a Raiders shirsey.

He accepts the shirt and unbuttons his own still sat at the island, peering up through his bangs at Marleau’s back as the other man turns to retrieve the plates of food from the microwave. He seems entirely unconcerned by Hayden stripping in his kitchen—doesn’t even try to sneak a look. Hayden catches himself frowning and huffs quietly, irritated, before pulling on the t-shirt with quick, jerky movements. It’s not like he wants Marleau to look. That would be stupid. Not to mention totally gay.

They eat dinner mostly in silence, which Hayden is more than happy with. He tries not to stare at Marleau too much throughout it, but finds himself shooting quick, darting glances in the man’s direction without meaning to. He can admit, at least to himself, that Marleau’s not bad looking. Dark features, a sharp jawline—kind of severe looking. Hayden, cursed with an eternal baby-face and a constant smattering of acne where his helmet rubs at his temples, feels weirdly self-conscious at the idea that Marleau might be looking at him back, and makes himself eat as quickly as possible.

Once they’re done, Marleau tosses the plates in the sink, walks over to where Hayden’s leaning a little awkwardly against the counter, and says, “Give me your phone.”

Wary, Hayden places his hand over the pocket holding his phone, like he thinks maybe Marleau might lunge for it. “Why?”

Marleau rolls his eyes. “To post a photo of my dick on your instagram. Why do you think?”

Hayden scowls, but relents, reluctantly holding it out. “You have to promise not to be weird again.”

“Oh, come on, Pike,” Marleau says, almost pitying in his amusement. “We both know that isn’t what you want.”

When he hands it back, Hayden wrinkles his nose at the new contact, Marly 🔥👅, but doesn’t say anything about it, just pockets his phone and says, “I, uh, should probably go.”

Marleau just looks at him for a minute, appraising. Then he says, “Alright.”

He’s still just standing in front of Hayden, a few too many steps close to be inauspicious. Hayden gets the sudden, crazy thought that Marleau might kiss him, and holds his breath.

But the guy just steps back and says, “I’ll call you an uber.”

And Hayden very carefully feels nothing about it at all.

Not even two hours after the game, Hayden is back in the Metro’s hotel in downtown Boston. He swipes himself into his and Shane’s shared room, which is predictably empty, before showering and changing into clean boxers, then hangs his suit up and balls the rest of his dirty laundry into a sack in the corner of his open suitcase—except for the shirt he’d borrowed from Marleau, which he folds and places with the rest of his clean stuff. He had, after all, barely worn it. There was no reason to waste a perfectly fine shirt, even if it was a size or two too large.

He shoots a text off to Shane, letting him know that he’s turning in for the night, just in case he decides to come back to the room, and then falls into bed to scroll mindlessly on his phone while some random HGTV show plays at low-volume on the tv in the background.

Eggers, who Hayden played with back in the OHL, has posted a photo of him with the new dog he apparently just bought for his girlfriend, a tiny little golden retriever puppy in a Raiders bandana. Hayden mumbles, “Aw,” under his breath and likes it, ponders commenting, then notices the top five comments on the post are all by Ilya Rozanov.

@ilyarozanov: 😍
@ilyarozanov: 😍
@ilyarozanov: You bring this to practice ))) or else off the team
ilyarozanov: Noo need for big dog @c.marly46 no more you are replaced
> c.marly46: woof

Hayden chews on his lip, and after a second of thought, clicks on Marleau’s instagram. It’s mostly the usual sponcon shit, a couple of the pro-shots from games, some workout videos from the summer. There’s a post of Marleau and Rozanov rolling up to the last Winter Classic in a garish yellow sports car, smoking cigars and dressed up like pimps, in ridiculous white suits and gaudy sunglasses. Hayden stares at this picture for a long time, reckoning with the knowledge that this man has touched his dick—more than once, even. Marleau has captioned the post: Call it winter the way we stay icy 🥶❄️🤑

Hayden turns his phone off and tosses it a couple feet away on the mattress, then turns over and mashes his face into the pillow. With his nose smushed up as it is, breathing in makes a ridiculous whistling nose through one nostril.

One time can be chalked up to a mistake. An embarrassing, baffling mistake—one Hayden can cringe at, laughing, before he inevitably banishes it with much relief into the recesses of his memory—but a mistake nonetheless. Twice, though? Twice is dangerously close to becoming a pattern. Twice means Hayden knowing what Marleau tastes like. Twice means Marleau’s come staining his shirt. Twice means the impossible task of not wondering when it’ll happen again.

Hayden groans and smushes his face further into the pillow. Maybe if he uses enough force he’ll manage to sort-of-by-accident smother himself to death, and then he’ll no longer have to deal with any of this. That would be nice.

Whatever. There’s little point in agonizing over it. They’ve already established Hayden isn’t gay, and neither is Marleau. (Apparently.) So it’s nothing—just fucking. Simple.

Hayden rolls onto his other side so he can breathe again, sets an alarm for the next morning, and falls asleep.

Boston is their last stop on the road trip, so it’s back to Montreal the next day. On the plane, Hayden takes a seat next to Shane and waits for a couple minutes after take-off to pull his headphones off and say, very casually, “You have a lot of sex, right?”

Shane, who’d been staring out the window, turns to look at him. He never listens to music on flights, on account of being a total weirdo with a seeming inability to get bored and a total disinterest in any music, so it’s probably not for lack of having heard the question that has him saying, baffled, “What?”

Hayden patiently repeats himself.

Shane says, “Uh.”

Helpfully, Hayden adds, “Like with Lily.”

Bringing up Boston Lily is a little bit of a toss-up. Shane, despite knowing that Hayden is well aware he’s got a girl in the city, is incredibly tight-lipped about her. Any attempts to weasel information out of him is met with a nervous, impenetrable refusal to entertain inquiry. (Hayden has a lot of theories about this. The most likely one is that Lily is married. Possibly, she’s a Boston WAG. Hayden can never figure out if this would be awesome or terrible. It would probably be pretty hilarious, to be honest, but it’s also wildly out-of-character for Shane, and a little morally iffy.)

As expected, Shane proceeds to look incredibly suspicious at the mention of his secret lady lover. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says cagily.

Hayden resists the urge to roll his eyes, and decides to tweak his strategy. He leans in, and says, “Has a girl ever asked you to slap her?”

Shane looks at him. Then he looks around, as though searching for cameras, or maybe some help. Then he looks back to Hayden and says, “What.”

Hayden scooches closer, motioning for Shane to angle his head in so they have some privacy, and dropping his voice low. “So I was with this girl, right?”

“Hold up,” Shane says. “You were with a girl?”

Hayden pulls back to scowl at him properly. Shane’s half-smiling, a little incredulous, eyebrows raised in surprise. “Oh, fuck you,” Hayden says.

Shane chuckles, holding up his hands. “Okay, okay, sorry. You were with this girl…”

Hayden eyes him a half-second longer, suspicious, but Shane seems genuine, waiting expectantly for him to continue. So he relents, leaning his head back in, and says, “Okay, so I was with this girl. And it was, like, going great, right? Super hot. But then she tells me to slap her, and I’m like, ‘uh’…”

Shane’s eyes are kind of wide, and his voice is hushed. “Did you?”

Hayden lets out a nervous little giggle and shrugs. “I mean, yeah? Like, she told me to, right? Or—asked, I mean. Asked me to. And she seemed to be really into it, so…” He clears his throat. “But, like, is that weird? Has that ever happened to you?”

Shane is silent for a long moment. Hayden holds his breath and sneaks a couple glances at the guy’s face, but can’t really interpret his expression. Finally, Shane says, “Yeah.”

Hayden blinks rapidly, leaning back a little in surprise. “Really?”

Shane shrugs. “Yeah. Couple’a times. I think it’s pretty normal. For girls, at least.”

Hayden’s stomach drops. For girls. “That’s weird,” he says, with another stupid nervous laugh, high in the back of his throat. “Chicks, man. Who’d wanna be slapped during sex?”

Shane shifts in his seat a little, and clears his throat. “Yeah. I dunno.”

The guy hates to talk about sex. Seriously hates it. Hayden usually doesn’t mind so much, because it’s not like he really partakes himself when the boys are all chatting about it, finds it kind of vulgar and uncomfortable, but for the first time he takes a moment to kind of resent him for it. Shane was his best friend. He should be able to talk to him about this kind of stuff. He should be able to tell him about last night without so heavily distorting the reality of it.

He feels guilty for the resentment almost immediately, though. It’s not Shane’s fault he’s like this. Sometimes Hayden thinks it’s really obvious he just never got the chance to grow up. Never learned to care about anything other than hockey, and so successfully that nobody ever thought to ask him to. Maybe if Hayden had a mother who cared that hard to manage his whole entire life, he’d be the exact same. Or maybe not. There’s no one else quite like Shane Hollander.

“Hey,” Hayden says, “you got a video of last night’s third? I wanna know what I did wrong in that play with Gainer.”

Shane brightens, “Yeah,” and whips his iPad out. “So I was watching it last night and the main problem was trying to make the pass instead of pushing into the defence…“

Hayden lets Shane monologue at him about the game, listing off the stats of players he doesn’t even know the names of, nodding along at appropriate moments and making occasional comments. Shane doesn’t ask anything more about Hayden’s sexual escapades, and he doesn’t offer it. But when they’re buckling back in for landing, Shane having stowed away his iPad, he says, out of the blue, “Maybe you should talk to JJ about your…girl thing. Probably he would be better for it. Sorry.”

He’s not looking at Hayden, gaze once again fixed out the window, at the foggy, river-streaked landscape of rural Quebec far below. Hayden nudges his knee with his own and waits until Shane glances over to say, “It’s fine, man. Really.”

Shane holds eye contact for another moment before nodding and going back to staring out the window. Hayden watches him as the plane descends, wondering at the sort of wistful, hangdog expression on his face. He might be thinking about Boston Lily, who Hayden now knows may or may not enjoy being slapped during sex, left far behind. He might be thinking, as Hayden himself so often does, that he likes Shane more than Shane likes him—that getting Shane to admit anything about his life is like pulling teeth, painful and incredibly difficult. Or, more likely, he’s thinking about hockey, and hockey, and nothing else at all.