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Hayden met Shane Hollander the first day of moving into dorms at McGill - or, more accurately, Shane Hollander had met him, because Shane had already been in their shared room when Hayden had rocked up with his two suitcases and a bag of hockey gear. This, Hayden later learned, was typical for Shane, who believed that being on time to something was the same as being late. It was a very different approach to Hayden’s more relaxed tactics - and by relaxed, he meant showing up whenever and hoping for the best.
Shane had been unpacked already, things organised with military precision and neatness, and he had been saying goodbye to his parents, a friendly looking couple who were fussing around him even as he tried to wave them off. Hayden had not bothered to unpack, sticking his bags in the corner of the room, and flopped back onto his unmade bed with a sigh. He had listened to his roommates’ goodbyes whilst contemplating the pockmarked ceiling above him. There was a spot right above his head that looked like the stain of cigarette smoke. Hayden remembered hoping that his new roommate wouldn’t smoke, and didn’t have any terrible habits, because he’d heard some real horror stories about assigned rooming - enough to turn the stomach.
Shane had been a godsend, really.
He did not smoke, which Hayden was grateful for, because he was an athlete - a hockey player as well! He did not listen to music loudly in the middle of the night without headphones, or actually listen to music at all. All his shit stayed on his side of the room, and (even better) never strayed from the places he had designated for them. If he ate at his desk, he cleared away the crumbs and any food waste. He chewed with his mouth closed. He did not eat strange and foul smelling things, though he did have somewhat strange eating habits. He did not blunder when Hayden was sleeping, clattering doors and causing a ruckus. He did not have loud sex on the bed beside Hayden’s with random women.
They got on. They set ground rules.
1: They had to ask before having people over. If Jackie was in town, Shane was really good about letting her stay, which was nice, because Hayden missed her all the time. Of course, sex was off the table, but just having Jackie near was enough for Hayden. It helped that she got on with Shane, who sometimes joined their movies nights or dinner plans. Jackie joked about their throuple. Hayden was not opposed - in a bro way, of course.
2: They kept the noise down between eleven at night and seven in the morning. Both of them liked sleep - Shane as part of his health kick, and Hayden because he thought that his bed was the comfiest and warmest place that he could live.
3: Headphones, for music or podcasts or television shows and movies, unless they were listening/watching together.
4: Hockey stayed out of the dorm room. This was harder for Shane, who lived and breathed hockey, but important for Hayden, who had a finite amount of focus he could grant hockey until the pressure made him jittery and skittish. Living with Shane, who was hockey Jesus or something, was sometimes not good for his blood pressure. Before this rule, Hayden had started dreaming of plays.
5: Phones were off limits. Hayden hadn’t really thought about looking at Shane’s phone, ever, but Shane had been insistent. Fair enough. He was pretty private guy. Hayden didn’t mind it, even if it sometimes felt a little paranoid.
But, rules in place, they got on. Hayden thought that they were probably - definitely - friends at this point. They hung out. They laughed. They even had inside jokes. Hayden had been worried about not making friends at university; he had friends at home but they weren’t friends, just guys that he twatted about with so he wasn’t alone. He had Jackie, but that was different because he was pretty sure that he was going to marry her. Now, he had Shane - this first, real and actual friend.
Then, the problems began. Or, rather the problems made themselves known, on a very ordinary Tuesday that had not, until that point, stuck out in Hayden’s mind as particularly significant but was, forever after, burned into his mind as they worst day of his whole entire life.
He got back to the dorm room and the door was not locked, which was strange because Hayden was pretty sure that Shane’s econ lecture was not over yet.
He pushed open the door.
There was a man in his bed. That man was (obviously) not Hayden. It was also not Shane, nor was it anyone else Hayden knew who might have somehow been able to scam their way into the room. Hayden did not recognise him at all, and this was the kind of man that Hayden was pretty sure he would remember if he had ever seen him before. Objectively, the man was hot - chiselled like some Greek statue if the Greeks had access to steroids, which Hayden could see because the man was not wear a shirt, exposing a truly impressive set of rockhard abs and muscles that Hayden aspired to but hadn’t really believed were actually achievable. His face was classical, his hair gold and curling, and his eyes were sharp and assessing when he looked up at Hayden - no, glared up at Hayden, like Hayden was the one trespassing.
He was also smoking. The smoke curled up, nestling around the stain Hayden had noticed on the very first day, which embraced it with more joy and relief than Hayden thought a discoloured spot on his ceiling ever could.
Hayden meant to say something like “who the fuck are you?” or “what the fuck are you doing here?” or “get the fuck out of my room!” but what he settled for instead was a high-pitched, strangled shriek.
Fuck.
The man would not leave, which was a problem because Hayden was pretty sure that he had picked the lock to get in, and also because he refused to tell Hayden who he was. Hayden had tried to ring campus security, but the man had shot him a look and, strangely, Hayden’s hands had put his phone back in his pocket before his brain had even decided that it was too much trouble.
Shane was going to flip out when he got back.
Hayden was still flipping out.
The door rattled. Shane, trying his key. On Hayden’s bed, the man sat up straighter and Hayden had the sudden, horrible realisation that he still didn’t know why the man was there. He hadn’t seemed to be doing anything except for being a creepy dick determined to stink up their room, but what if he knew Shane. Oh God, what if he stabbed Shane or something? Was Hayden about to watch his roommate/friend/definitely best friend die? Fuck. Fuck.
“Shane!” he hollered, but it was too late.
The door swung open and Shane stepped in, nose wrinkled at the smell of cigarette smoke. He paused and his eyes swept over the whole scene. Hayden, sat at Shane’s desk because it was the furthest away from the man. The grey curlicues of smoke that were steadily filling their dorm room, the open window not enough to properly ventilate. And the man.
Shane’s bag fell from his hands, clattering to the floor. There was a strange look f shock on his face - eyes wide and his mouth a perfect circle on his face.
Then, voice so quiet that Hayden had to strain to hear it, he said, “Ilya.”
Shane flew towards the man with a speed that Hayden only saw on the ice, and for a moment, Hayden thought that he was going to tackle the intruder the way that Hayden should have when he first registered that there was an intruder. Except the man - Ilya - was on his feet and caught Shane in a way that looked easy and natural and practiced. Shane gasped his name again, and his hands were on Ilya’s shoulders (pushing away?) and then - and then -
Fuck. Holy fucking shit. Was Shane kissing him? He was. He was making out with their creepy intruder and oh, God, was that tongue?
Hayden clapped his hands over his eyes. He was sensing, suddenly, that he had discovered something that he didn’t understand and really didn’t want to understand. If he could turn back time, he thought he probably would have avoided the dorm all together this day. He thought that there would be more peace of mind for him.
This was how Hayden was introduced to The ProblemTM as he called it.
The problem’s name was also Ilya Rozanov, and Ilya Rozanov was Shane’s boyfriend, which was a wild fucking thing to think about.
And it wasn’t that Hayden had a problem with Shane being gay - honestly, if he didn’t have Jackie, he thought that he would probably be gay for Shane Hollander, because he had eyes and he had seen the ass on that man - but he did have a problem with Ilya Rozanov, who - as far as Hayden could tell - was nothing at all like the kind of man that Hayden would have imagined Shane falling in love with.
In Hayden’s mind, Shane fell in love with a personal trainer or a yoga instructor or something. Some other health nut who understood the weird quirks of his habits and his exercise regime. Someone who was neat and organised and quiet.
Ilya Rozanov was none of these things. He ate McGriddles at Shane’s desk or at Hayden’s desk or in Hayden’s bed, and chewed with his mouth open or spoke whilst he was eating, and sprayed crumbs everywhere but only bothered to clean them away if they were on Shane’s side of the room. He listened to Russian death metal music loud enough to make Hayden’s ears bleed. He was loud in general - he chirped nonstop, about everything. Mostly at Hayden, but also at Shane - he was boring, he was slow, he had a weak backhand, and tonnes of other shit in Russian that Hayden had no doubt was derogatory - so much that Hayden was pretty sure that there was coming a point where he would have to make sure that Shane was, like, happy and secure in his relationship.
But Shane showed no signs of it being otherwise. And Rozanov did not go away.
To Shane’s credit, he asked Hayden if his boyfriend could stay. Rozanov was from Moscow and he had come all the way to Canada to visit Shane for the month. He would be going back to Russia soon, and Shane wanted to make the most of seeing him before he had to go away because he never knew when they would get to see each other again. Rozanov was hoping to transfer university to somewhere in North America, to be closer to Shane, but he was tied down with family at the moment. The rest of what Russia meant for Shane and Rozanov was a no go topic that Hayden knew not to touch after the first time Shane had been uncharacteristically sharp with him.
Hayden said yes to Rozanov staying.
He wasn’t a monster. Shane had never brought anyone back (Hayden knew why) and he was good with Jackie and he never asked for anything. It felt, really, like the least that Hayden could do, and the grin that had taken over Shane’s face - full of more joy than Hayden had ever seen from him before - had almost been worth it.
Except for the fact that Ilya did not understand the rules.
He smoked, though he obligingly stuck his head out the window, crouched on the window sill like Hayden’s very own sleep paralysis demon, when Shane asked. He played his Russian death metal. He spoke about hockey in the room, because it was some sick foreplay he and Shane shared. He was seemingly nocturnal, coming and going at all times of night, and not sleeping. He seemed to treat Shane’s phone like it was his as well, fiddling in photos and texts and whatever else. He did not leave. He made Hayden his unwilling… sex victim or whatever, a bystander in the parts of Shane’s relationship that he did not want to know about whatsoever.
Shane had shot it down the first time, citing the rules of the room. His voice had been hushed because they were all in bed (Hayden in his, and Shane and Ilya in Shane’s) and he had thought that Hayden was sleeping.
“He will not hear us in bathroom,” Rozanov suggested, voice at a normal level.
Hayden screwed his eyes tighter shut. He waited for Shane to shut it down. But Shane didn’t. Shane hesitated.
“I don’t know,” he whispered.
Rozanov groaned, a sound so wanton that Hayden’s toes curled with a mixture of disgust and curiosity (he was just a man). “Come on, moy solnyshko. I want to feel your pretty lips around my cock. Want to make you squirm. Want to make you feel good.”
“Fuck,” said Shane, and he sounded like he was out of breath. “Fuck, okay. Fuck.”
They had both retreated to the tiny toilet that was connected to their dorm room and locked the door behind them. Hayden had heard the fan whir into life as the light was switched on. And it was very clear, very quickly, that Shane and Rozanov had underestimated how much noise they made. Because Hayden certainly did hear them. He did not think that he would be able to scour the sound of his best friend orgasming from his mind, ever, and certainly he would not be able to forget the way that Rozanov had yelled some Russian swear as he had come, voice rough and hoarse.
So, yeah, Hayden was in Hell, and Ilya Rozanov was the king of it.
Rozanov began inserting himself into other aspects of Shane’s life as well, like they couldn’t bear to be apart for even one moment. He walked him to lectures and sometimes sat in on them. They were always pressed against each other’s sides in the dining hall. At last, he found his way into hockey as well, arriving at the practice rink McGill used for their hockey team and lingering by the side as he waited to pick Shane up, escort him home like he was a gentleman and they were courting.
“Who is that?” J.J. asked, skating to Hayden’s side. He was eyeing Rozanov up with interest.
“Shane’s boyfriend,” Hayden replied, sour. He had not gotten much sleep last night at all.
Gilbert Comeau (average player, idiot off the ice, only at university for - it seemed - the drinking and the women he tried and mostly failed to pick up) overheard. He laughed. “Saint Hollzy has a girl?”
“Boyfriend,” Hayden corrected.
Patrice Drapeau said, “as if Hollzy’s wearing the pants in that relationship.”
Hayden turned, determined to say something, though he didn’t know what, but J.J. interrupted. “I’m going to invite him out for drinks,” he said, staring intently at Rozanov. Shane had skated over to him, and Rozanov was watching the other man with a surprising look of tenderness as he spoke. “I want to know who has bagged our capitane.”
Having heard the shit that Comeau and Drapeau were spewing, Hayden did not think that was a bright idea. He went to tell J.J. as much but Comeau beat him to the punch.
“Hell yeah, brother!” he said, bumping fists with J.J. “Let’s get to the bottom of this.”
Shane did not often go out with the team. He did not drink, really, though he sometimes was amenable to having a singular beer, which he sipped over the course of a few hours. Mostly, he stuck to his ginger ale and was happy enough with that. As Alternate, Hayden took over most of the social responsibilities of captain - he was happy to do it, and it spared Shane the ordeal of putting himself in situations he wasn’t comfortable with.
Hayden’s last hope that been that Shane’s anti-socialness would save the day and he would turn down drinks.
Shane didn’t. He’d looked hesitant at first, but then quietly hopeful when J.J. had made it clear that the invitation was extended to Rozanov as well, and that had struck an arrow of sympathy straight through Hayden’s chest. Shane had confessed that he did not have many friends in high school, like Hayden, but Hayden had never really considered until this moment if Shane had felt as lonely as Hayden had as a kid. He was pretty sure he had just received his answer.
“Are you sure you want to go?” he asked, careful not to give anything away. They were in the door and about to leave. He knew that he wasn’t going to change Shane’s mind, but he had to try anyway. “We can stay in, order takeout, watch something.”
Shane paused. “If you aren’t feeling it, I can let the guys know.”
“No,” said Hayden, desperately trying to get Shane to understand without saying it. He didn’t want to have to say it - to be the one to break to Shane that this olive branch of friendship was maybe not as genuine as Shane was imagining it to be. “No. Just, you know, checking in.”
Rozanov was watching Hayden with dark, inscrutable eyes. Hayden knew that he knew something was off. His arm tightened protectively where it was resting around Shane’s waist.
Maybe, Hayden tried to convince himself, it wouldn’t be as bad as he had thought it would be. Maybe he had misread something. Maybe the fact that Shane was happy would be enough for the guys to leave it alone once they saw him.
At the bar, J.J. greeted them enthusiastically and genuinely enough that Hayden could almost pretend that this was true. He engulfed them all in a hug, a mixture of enthusiastic French and English spilling from his lips. Hayden liked J.J., and he knew that Shane did too. He wasn’t a bad guy. Probably, he had extended the invitation in good faith, because he did want to get to know the guy who had bagged Shane Hollander. It was not his fault that the invitation had not been accepted in good faith. Hayden blamed him for it a little bit anyway - or at least blamed him for not seeing why his invitation had been accepted, hearing what the guys were saying, and doing something about it.
But the rest of the team…
The microaggressions started as soon as they sat down… Before, really, when Gagnon announced the arrival of Mister and Missus Hollander, everyone!
Something shuttered in Shane’s expression. He sat down. Hayden could see the tension building in him, the way that he was already closing himself off. Hayden sat himself between Shane and the team. Rozanov sat on Shane’s other side and pulled his chair closer, turning himself towards Shane with one leg stretched out behind Shane’s chair.
“Rozanov,” he introduced himself curtly, when asked. It did not set the tone, because the tone had already been set, but it certainly drew the line.
And with the line in sight, the guys took it as an invitation to toe right up to it, confident in the fact that - if they didn’t cross what they felt was the line - they would be safe behind it on their side.
The comments disguised as chirps didn’t stop.
J.J. bought Hayden a drink, and his grip tightened on it with every passing moment until he was white knuckled and shaking. J.J. himself was beginning to look uncomfortable, but was still, Hayden noted, chuckling along, as if the problem was simply that he didn’t understand the joke rather than the joke itself not being funny. Shane looked like he wanted to die, or flee, or something; he had gone very rapidly pale and silent, which was taken as encouragement. Rozanov looked incandescent with rage.
Then Comeau opened his mouth. Hayden didn’t even want to think about what he said. Fuck, he hadn’t known that people could come up with things so disgusting on the fly, but Comeau seemed determined to prove the existence of the scum of the earth. He brought Shane’s race into it, his sexual preferences, and tied it all up with stereotypes so racist, homophobic and misogynistic that Hayden was certain that someone was going to realise they had gone too far and call him out on it.
They didn’t. Comeau laughed and was greeted by a mixture of laughter, hoots and cheers.
Fine, Hayden thought, grimly. He would do it himself.
What Hayden thought about, in times like these, was his dad’s lesson to him about never solving his problems with violence. Hayden had been a scrappy kid, which had been expected of him by most adults around him on the account of his not having a mom and the assumptions that they therefore felt were fair game to make. He had not had any incentive to prove them wrong, and so he had not.
He’d mellowed a little, growing up, but hockey was a violent sport. He was expected to fight. But Jackie didn’t like it when he fought (she didn’t like the idea of him, senselessly, tossing away the few brain cells hockey hadn’t already taken from him) so he saved it for the occasions when it meant something, because Jackie thought he was hot when he was righteous and was often willing to tell him so.
Hayden was feeling pretty damn hot when he stood up, grabbed Comeau’s shirt from over the table to haul him to his feet, and slammed his fist straight into Comeau’s crooked-ass, smirking mouth.
From somewhere in the bar, there was a scream.
There was another scream when Ilya shoved his chair back from the table, sending it clattering down behind him, and vaulted across the surface with what sounded like a Russian war cry to head but Gagnon in the nose. There a pop. Blood. Gagnon cried out for his mom, as if he expected her to spawn in and save him from the righteous fury of Rozanov, who was also looking pretty damn hot.
By the time the bouncers managed to separate them and get them out of the bar, Hayden had what would be an epic bruise forming around his eye and split knuckles that oozed blood through the towel that J.J. had stolen from behind the bar from him. The other guys were certainly, however, in a worse state. Gagnon’s nose was definitely broken, at the very least. All in all, Hayden thought that it was a successful night.
Outside the bar, Rozanov, leaning against Shane for support as he swayed under the glow of a streetlight, began to laugh. “You,” he said, pointing at Hayden - or, close enough, somewhere just to the left of Hayden. “You I like. You are not so boring, Pike. We should do this sooner.”
He had a lisp. He had chipped his front tooth at some point.
“Yeah, man,” Hayden cheered. He was a little high on the adrenaline of it all. “Fuck, that was epic. Fuck, did you see the look on Drapeu’s face? Goooooood. That was… ugh, we need to do it again.”
“Absolutely not,” said Shane firmly.
Hayden paused. The enjoyment he had felt ebbed a little. He looked at Shane and could not work out the expression on his face.
Clearly, Rozanov couldn’t either, squinting at Shane as he asked, “moy pomidor, are you upset with us?”
Shane’s lips twitched. “The look on his face was pretty funny,” he allowed, and Hayden watched the small, vindictive smirk spread over his face.
Rozanov, jubilant, tried to grab him by the face and kiss him. He missed. He fell. He kissed the pavement instead.
Really, Hayden supposed that he wasn’t that bad at all. He did not help him up though. Neither did Shane, who was too busy laughing like he as about to pop a stitch. No, this wasn’t bad at all.