Chapter Text
Shane should have known something was wrong the moment Hayden skipped practice and told him to come over immediately.
Hayden didn’t skip practice.
Not for a cold. Not for a pulled muscle. Not for the time he’d taken a puck straight to the thigh and skated the rest of the session with a limp and a smile that looked suspiciously like pain management through denial.
So when Shane climbed the stairs to Hayden’s apartment, gear bag heavy against his shoulder and the cold still clinging to his skin, something in the pit of his stomach had already started to tighten.
The door opened before he could knock.
Hayden stood there, meticulously dressed in dark trousers and a pale button-down shirt, sleeves unevenly rolled, hair tousled as if he’d been running his hands through it all morning, collar slightly crooked. He was trying to look composed, but the tension in his jaw and the sharpness in his eyes betrayed him. Shane knew he was bracing for impact.
“Hey,” Shane said cautiously.
“Come in.”
No smile. No comment about practice. No complaint about the snow Shane was dripping onto the hardwood. That confirmed it: this was serious.
He began pacing the moment the door clicked shut. Back and forth across the living room, sharp turns at the edge of the rug, one hand constantly raking through his hair as if rearranging it might rearrange the problem inside his head.
Shane stood there for a moment, snow melting into tiny puddles on the hardwood, his hockey bag still over one shoulder.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “Either you committed a crime… or your parents visited.”
Hayden froze. Turned to him.
“My parents visited.”
Shane nodded once.
“Right. So this is the worse option.”
Normally, that would earn a half-smirk. An eye roll. Some dry comment.
Hayden didn’t react.
Shane’s chest tightened. He dropped his bag near the door and lowered himself into the armchair with a long exhale. His shoulders were sore from practice, his ribs still aching faintly from a hit in drills and his hair damp from the fastest shower of his life. He watched Hayden pace again.
“Alright,” Shane said, softer now. “Tell me.”
Hayden dragged both hands down his face. Palms pressed briefly over his eyes, then fell limply to his sides.
“My parents set me up on a blind date.”
Shane blinked. Then leaned back in the chair.
“That’s it?” he said. “You look like someone died.”
“You don’t understand,” Hayden said quickly. “This isn’t just a date.”
He exhaled sharply, running a hand through his hair. “It’s marriage-serious.”
Shane sank a little deeper into the armchair and thought about Hayden’s parents. They were perfectly coiffed, impossibly exacting, treating Hayden like a project from birth, judging everything about anyone he cared about.
And of course their idea of support was evaluating potential partners by wealth, family name and social connections before even letting Hayden speak.
Hayden continued, voice tight. “I tried to tell them I was seeing someone. But before I could even get to the important parts… they wanted to know which family they come from.”
“And?” Shane asked, though the answer was obvious. Neither Jackie nor her parents were wealthy, and neither fit the circles Hayden’s family cared about.
“When I told them that their family isn’t part of the upper class, they didn’t want to hear anything else,” Hayden said, exasperated. “They told me to stop joking around and find someone ‘real.’”
“So what did you do?” Shane asked.
Hayden hesitated. “I told them I’m gay.”
Shane stared. “You what?”
“I panicked,” Hayden said quickly. “They wouldn’t stop talking about daughters and legacy and family expectations, and I just… I said I wasn’t interested in daughters. I thought maybe then they’d finally leave me alone and stop trying to find me a wife.”
Shane leaned back slowly. “And?”
“They said they support me.”
Shane blinked. “Well,” he said cautiously. “That’s unexpectedly nice.”
Hayden’s mouth twitched, almost a humorless smile.
“And then they said they’d like to introduce me to the son of one of their business partners.”
Shane closed his eyes briefly.
“Of course they did.”
“It’s still about connections,” Hayden said. “Still about status. They just adjusted the plan.”
Shane rubbed his jaw. “And this guy?”
“I don’t know him. Just that his family is wealthy. Very wealthy.”
Silence stretched. Shane frowned at Hayden’s hunched shoulders and restless hands. “This isn’t the whole problem, is it?”
Hayden exhaled. “Normally I would just go to the date, be as horrible as possible and forget about them afterward.”
“You could just tell your date the truth. That you’re seeing someone and this is only because your parents made you.”
“And risk that they tattletale? Definitely not.”
“Okay… then just go and be horrible. What’s the problem?”
Hayden’s voice tightened. “It’s tonight.”
Shane blinked. “Okay?”
Hayden exhaled. “I already have dinner tonight, with Jackie.”
Shane’s chest tightened. Hayden had talked about this day for months, how he had fought to get a reservation at the restaurant Noir, which had taken seven months of planning just to secure a single table.
Today wasn’t just any night. It marked two years since he and Jackie had officially been together.
“She thinks it’s just a nice dinner,” Hayden said softly. “But I wanted it to mean something.”
Shane understood without words. This wasn’t about avoiding a rich guy. It was about Jackie.
“So just reschedule the dinner your parents organized. That should be fine with them, right?” Shane said.
“I tried.”
“And?”
“My father said if I don’t show up tonight, it proves I’m not taking my future seriously.”
“And you don’t want to see what happens if they think that.”
Hayden met his eyes. “No.”
He stepped closer, his usual confidence replaced by something tighter, more urgent. His voice lowered. “I need you to go for me.”
Shane stared, his mouth half-open, disbelief written across his face. “No.”
“Shane.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“I am terrible at dates.”
“That’s why you’re perfect.”
“That sentence alone is a red flag,” Shane muttered, but Hayden didn’t flinch.
“You don’t have to impress him. Quite the opposite. Be awkward. Talk about hockey injuries in graphic detail. Order something completely ridiculous. Make him uncomfortable enough that he goes home and tells his family he’s not interested.”
Shane folded his arms. “And then what? What are you going to do when your parents set up another date after I ruin this one?”
Hayden hesitated. “I’ll think of something.”
Despite everything, Shane snorted.
“I just need tonight to belong to Jackie,” Hayden said softly.
The words landed heavier than the rest of it had.
Shane exhaled.
One dinner. One rich stranger. One job: make him unbearable enough to disappear.
Honestly, he had done that sort of thing unintentionally before.
“If I do this,” Shane said finally, “you owe me.”
“Anything.”
Shane narrowed his eyes. “Fine.”
The relief that crossed Hayden’s face was immediate, like something heavy had finally slid off his shoulders. His posture loosened. The tension left his jaw. For the first time since Shane had walked in, he looked like he could breathe.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
Shane grabbed his bag, the familiar smirk settling back into place as he slung it over his shoulder.
“How hard can it be to scare off a rich guy?”
Somewhere, fate probably laughed.