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Hayden Pike is pacing in his living room, like a madman.
Shane Hollander almost wishes he hadn’t let Hayden into his apartment. Yet, before he could fully open the door, his best friend and former roommate had burst in like he still paid rent. Shane should have taken the bags underneath Hayden’s eyes or the bird's nest that was his usually neatly combed hair as a warning. Shane can’t help but glance remorsefully at the abandoned tablet where he had been reading an article about the ‘74 Summit Series. Hayden’s pacing stalls, and Shane follows his friend’s gaze as it drifts to the corner of the room, but he’s not too sure why Hayden is staring so intently at the fake plant he left behind when he moved out.
“Hayd,” Shane cautiously calls, thanking his years of hockey instinct for preventing him from flinching when Hayden’s gaze suddenly jumps to him. There’s a madness in his eyes that Shane hadn’t seen since an overtime game their sophomore year, when Shane took a hit that had Hayden ready to murder. Shane must have been making a concerned face because Hayden blinks and brings his hands up to rub his eyes.
“You’re not gonna like this,” his voice is rough, matching the exhaustion written across his face. Shane doesn’t say anything, waiting for Hayden to find the words to explain. “Okay, so hypothetically-”
“Hayden,” Shane warns, eyes narrowing at his friend’s guilty expression. Hayden backtracks.
“Right, literally. Very literally,” Hayden swallows, glances back to the wall behind Shane, before he makes eye contact with Shane. “So remember when Comeau kept pushing on Donovan during practice?” Shane nods, insides twisting at the memory.
McGill may be a progressive university, but the hockey locker room still had yet to catch up. One of the many reasons that Shane had no intention of telling anyone on the team, aside from Hayden, that he was gay. And that had been fine. At least it was until one of their first-year players had been honest about his sexuality. Ever since, both Shane and Hayden had found themselves providing a buffer between Donovan and Comeau before the latter could say or do something truly heinous. Donovan had yet to get used to university hockey locker room talk, but Shane learned quickly that it was safer to keep his head down.
So when earlier that week, during a scrimmage, Comeau had egged a few of the others, one being their goalie, Drapeau, into roughing up the first-year Shane couldn’t help but finally step up.
“Ah, so you’re like him then, Hollander?” Comeau asked with a knowing snarl. Hayden had been quick to come to Shane’s defense, pushing Comeau back once he skated too close to Shane’s personal space.
“Enough,” Shane had snapped, rage running through his veins. It wasn’t loud, yet the words cut clean through the rink. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Donovan shift, eyes looking down at the lines on the ice.
“Fuck off, Comeau,” Hayden added. Comeau rolled his eyes and skated back to the other side of the rink, but that hadn’t stopped the comments Shane would catch him whispering unashamedly.
Three days later, Hayden is staring at Shane in his living room, with a crazed desperation.
“Oh god, Hayden, what did you do?” Shane asks with a mix of exasperation and worry bleeding into his voice. Again, Hayden glances behind him. Shane follows his stare but is met with the wall. He looks back with narrowed eyes.
“It was Jackie’s idea,” Hayden explained quickly. “Comeau was being a dick, and he’s not going to stop, you know he’s not going to stop. I just wanted to get back at him, you know, scare him into not being such an ass,” Shane can feel his body reflexively tensing in anticipation, similar to how he would brace for a hit on the ice.
“Hayden,” Shane finally interrupts, patience waning. “Get to the point.”
“I summoned a demon,” Hayden breaks. Shane blinks.
“What?” Shane asks disbelief flooding his features.
“Okay, I know how it sounds, but I’m being serious. Jackie told me she once paid someone from Etsy to summon a demon to haunt a girl from high school, and I figured Comeau’s such a dick that it’s worth a shot.”
Shane blinks again, finally lowering his body to sit on the couch. Hayden continues explaining, taking Shane’s silence as permission to continue.
“Well, I’m not made of money, and it’s actually pretty expensive to pay someone to summon a demon, so I found a spell online and figured I’d just do it myself.”
“Stop,” Shane puts a hand up. “You found a spell online,” he repeats slowly, and Hayden nods. “On the internet,” Shane reiterates. Hayden’s hands find purchase in his hair, and he groans pathetically as he sinks to the opposite side of the couch.
“If I could go back and undo it, I would, I just didn’t think it’d actually work. I’d had a couple of drinks, and I was just annoyed and,”
“It worked? What do you mean, it worked?” Hayden shrinks under Shane’s gaze, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.
“I mean…it worked, dude.” He says again, like repeating it is what Shane needed to hear. “Like, the whole thing. The ritual, spell, whatever you want to call it.” Shane doesn’t respond, so Hayden keeps going. “I followed the instructions, and then the lights went out for just a second, and at first I thought nothing happened, it was just a coincidence, but then it was behind me.”
“It?” Shane asked, again watching Hayden’s eyes drift behind him. “Are you fucking with me?” Shane can’t help but ask.
“I wish I were,” Hayden sounds almost defeated. Enough that concern overtakes Shane.
“Hayds, are you okay? This uh, this demon, is he like threatening you or something?” Shane hasn’t seen many horror movies. The ones he has seen involved a lot of screaming, blood, and definitely not evil supernatural beings that stood quietly waiting for their turn.
“No, no, it’s not threatening me,” Hayden says quickly, then winces. “It’s not like that.” Shane frowns.
“Okay,” Shane speaks slowly, like approaching a stray animal so it doesn’t run away. “So there’s a demon that’s not threatening you,”
“There is,” Hayden interjects.
“And it’s not threatening you,” Shane continues, “and instead it’s just hanging around?”
“That’s, that’s not the problem,” Hayden says after a moment of hesitation. He flops back on the couch with a frustrated groan. “I summoned a demon, and he’s not even scary, no, he’s just so fucking annoying.”
Shane brings his hand up to rub his temple. There’s a moment where his brain tries to process that sentence and ultimately fails.
“Annoying,” he repeats.
“Like,” Hayden gestures vaguely to the air, “he won’t shut up about anything! He’s got something to say about my outfit, he won’t leave me alone when I’m trying to sleep, and he keeps asking if I’ll put on Real Housewives for him– Shane, I haven’t had sex with Jackie in days. I haven’t slept in days. If this demon doesn't go away soon, I don’t know what kind of person I’ll become.”
“Okay,” Shane raises his hands placatingly. “So you summoned a demon, and your problem isn’t that he’s violent or threatening or stealing your soul. He’s just…annoying.”
Hayden’s expression brightens, relieved to be understood. “Yes. Exactly. You get it.”
Shane exhales. “I don’t get it. At all,” he corrects. “I’m trying to make it make sense.” He leans forward slightly, elbows on his knees now, posture shifting into something more deliberate. “There is a supernatural entity following you.”
Hayden opens his mouth, and Shane lifts a finger to silence him.
“One that you summoned,” Hayden’s mouth closes, ”and instead of possessing you or throwing you through a wall or whatever demons do,”
“He’s just kind of there,” Hayden supplies with a shrug.
“...And he watches Real Housewives.”
“He has opinions,” Hayden groans, hands coming to cover his face.
“So, where is it now?” Shane asks, eyebrows raised in suspicion. Hayden opens his fingers slightly to peek at Shane. Meeting Shane’s stare, he quickly succumbs and points to the wall behind Shane.
Shane doesn’t turn immediately. He stares at Hayden with a slight desperation, waiting for him to take it back. When Hayden closes the gaps between his fingers and covers his eyes again to avoid Shane’s look, Shane finally turns.
The wall is just a wall. Pale paint, he and Hayden had picked out when they had moved in together. A faint scuff near the baseboard that was there before they moved in. Shane looks back to see Hayden peeking again.
“Hayden, I swear,” Hayden’s hands come up defensively.
“I’m not lying, I swear,” Hayden nearly pleads. Shane bites the inside of his cheek. He’s seen Hayden at his craziest. Back when he and Jackie broke up for a week, their freshman year, and Hayden stayed awake for three days trying to come up with a plan to get Jackie back before he ultimately ended up begging on his hands and knees.
“Okay,” Shane says, quieter now. “So then, what do we do?”
“Well, that’s what I need your help for,” Hadyen starts. “I asked him to leave, but you can imagine how that went.” Shane stares at Hayden blankly. “I know, I know, okay. So I thought after a while he’d get bored and leave, but he says he can’t.” Shane’s expression doesn’t change.
“Is it that he can’t, or that you can’t get him to?” Shane has to stop himself from rolling his eyes at Hayden’s pursed lips.
“This is going to sound weird, but he said that for him to go back, his contract has to be fulfilled,” Hayden explains.
Shane stares at him for a long moment.
“…His contract,” he repeats slowly.
Hayden nods quickly, like agreeing faster will make it less insane. “Yeah. I don’t know. That’s just what he said.”
“Okay, so wouldn’t that have something to do with the reason you summoned him in the first place?”
“See, that’s what I thought. But he explained to me that the ritual I got online wasn’t for endless haunting like I thought. So to get him to go away, I need someone else to perform a ritual on me to remove his tether to me.”
Shane is silent for a long moment. Contemplating what Hayden said.
“…Say that again,” he says finally.
Hayden blinks. “Which part?”
Shane’s eyes narrow slightly. “The part where you said you need someone else.”
Hayden hesitates.
“…To perform a ritual,” he says more carefully now, like he can hear where this is going and is actively trying not to arrive there first. “On me. To remove the tether.”
Shane doesn’t move. For a few long moments, the silence stretches between them. Then, Shane exhales slowly through his nose, eyes closing in a moment of exasperation.
“No,” he says.
“No, what?” Hayden frowns at him.
“That’s not how that works,” Shane says flatly, looking back up at Hayden. “Hayden, I am not a qualified participant in whatever Etsy-based supernatural loophole you’ve created.”
Hayden’s expression falls a little. “He said it has to be someone else. He didn’t say who.”
Shane pauses again. Part of him, the impatient part that wants this whole conversation to be over with, wants to just go with what Hayden’s saying, perform whatever ritual he needs, because the likelihood of it working is slim to none. But that’s also what Hayden was thinking when he performed the ritual in the first place. It’s not like the situation could get any worse, though.
“What do we need to do?” Shane finally gives in, watching as relief floods Hayden’s features.
With renewed energy, Hayden stands up, clapping his hands together. He moves to stand in front of Shane and puts his hand out expectantly.
“Okay, so he said that all you have to do is hold my hand and say ‘Leave Hayden Pike, remove yourself from this tether,’ and then he won’t be stuck to me anymore!”
“That seems too easy,” Shane starts, but stops at Hayden's look.
“Dude, come on, please help me. I need to be able to spend quality time with Jackie without a demon making kissy faces at me from across the room.”
“Fine,” Shane grabs Hayden’s hand and recites, “Demon, leave Hayden Pike, remove yourself from this tether.”
Once Shane finishes speaking, Hayden lets out a breath, but nothing happens. It’s almost anticlimactic, Shane wants to remark when a few moments of silence have gone by, and he almost asks Hayden if he’s sure the demon wasn’t lying when suddenly the lights flicker. Both men blink at each other before Hayden spins around the room, urgently looking around.
“He’s gone,” Hayden says excitedly. Before Shane has the chance to say anything, Hayden is grabbing his shoulders and shaking him. “Oh, thank god, he’s finally gone. I’ve got to tell Jackie!” And without any more fanfare, Hayden is running out of the apartment building faster than he ran into it.
Shane sighs, sinking back down onto the couch. He rubs his face with his hands before shaking his head. He reaches forward to grab his tablet from the coffee table, whether to resume his article or to deepdive into research about demons, he still hasn’t decided. Just as Shane is about to unlock the screen, he hears a chuckle from behind him.
Shane turns quickly, eyes wide. Golden skin catches the light in a way that doesn’t quite match the apartment’s dull ceiling fixture. His posture is relaxed, curly light brown hair falls slightly loose around his face. His hazel eyes settle on Shane with an interest that feels deliberate.
“Ah,” the demon smiles down at Shane with a lopsided grin. “Shane Hollander, is nice to finally talk to you.”