The words between the worlds

the thoughts float across hayden’s mind like a wispy clouds. wow, imagine the vitriol scott has heard over the years. heartbreaking, hayden thinks. i wonder if other players knew about him, hayden thinks. shane had the room next to his at a few league events. i wonder if shane knew, hayden thinks. god that fight was so weird. hayden stops thinking.

shane hollander is not homophobic.

now the thoughts fell like petulant rain.

he didn’t go to pride because he’s well. shane’s never shared a diagnosis so it’s really not hayden’s place to speculate. besides the point. shane hollander literally has a gay friend. the figure skater. hayden googles furiously. the figure skater, taylor, is married to a woman. shane is tagged in their wedding photos. so shane hollander has a closeted gay friend in a fake marriage. god, that must be hard. shane is a terrible liar; it must be hard for him to support the union. maybe that’s what the fight was about, like scott knew taylor, like from the closet? wait. no. not a thing. where did hayden even hear taylor was gay from? did he just assume all figure skaters were gay? oh god. hayden’s homophobic. hayden and shane. two homophobic best friends. neither of whom had any intention of seeing moonlight.

mercifully, hayden’s thoughts were slowed by sudden applause. scott was done speaking, apparently.

he’s watched shane neurotically fixate on problems on the road and jackie surgically deconstruct them at home. in either case, hayden knows the first step is research. unfortunately, a lot of the resources on deprogramming homophobia are centered around religion. hayden considers talking to shane about how jesus was actually very cool with sinners but he cannot handle being called “culturally mormon” by shane again.

when he googles homophobia in hockey, there’s a million articles about scott hunter. after reading all of them, hayden thinks maybe being gay is another layer of scott hunter’s mirage of being compelling. the jury in hayden’s brain cannot decide if that’s a homophobic thought.

to add insult to injury, ilya rosanov had apparently been moonlighting as hockey’s own mother fucking theresa. first, the press had caught wind of his “very sportsman-like” visit to shane in the hospital, where the asshole had the gaul to look more than remorseful. then, cliff marleau mentioned in a pre-awards interview that roz ends each game by saying “i love you” to every player and frets over welcome gifts for the rooks, so maybe roz should be in the running for the lady byng. the final blow comes as hayden obsessively reads another article about scott hunter’s gay miracle on ice. scott hunter, asked if any NHL players had sent support his way, said “i don’t want to ruin the guy’s bad reputation, but ilya rozanov has been surprisingly supportive, in his own way.”

hayden technically could reach out to hunter. he has his number. he could do so under the guise of allyship and then ask “hey- congrats on the gay. speaking of, did my best friend hate crime you? if so, any advice on how to make him an ally?” but then, self-serving clandestine support would probably only worsen the original sin. god, hayden is so bad with trolley problems. why couldn’t he be the one tied to the tracks for once?

hayden’s train of thought must hear this wish, and dutifully bows him over with a traitorous epiphany. ilya rozanov would know what to do. rozanov had deconstructed the homophobia in hockey without ever asking jesus or google or scott hunter about it.

shane picks up quickly, and like a good friend and person, asks readily after jackie and amber. maybe hayden really had spiraled over nothing, picking up shane’s bad habits after a decade of roadies. on the other end of the phone, shane is talking.

“yeah and jackie’s good too? is it better than um—“

hayden cuts him off quickly, “can we talk about the hunter fight?”

he thinks the words tumbled out of his mouth too quickly for shane to really catch them, and braces for shane to ask hayden to repeat himself.

“yeah i remember that, that was a tough time.”

he sounds annoyed? pained? hayden cannot parse the tone, nor the words. shane had responded with somewhat of a non-sequitir. oh god. shane doesn’t want to talk about the scott fight because maybe it was —

“sorry hayds my mom is on the other line, i’ll just get rid of her”

only. yuna hollander had called hayden earlier, to ask about jackie and the baby. she told him shane was on a silent retreat and not taking or making calls, and that’s when hayden had first pointedly avoided having the thought that shane hollander sometimes acted pretty gay for a homophobe, but then again don’t all homophobes? like lindsey graham or the bullies from glee. god, hayden’s stream of consciousness was rapidly devolving into floodwaters that would whisk jackie away from ever touching his dick again. not that he only cared about gay people because it got him laid, but it’s a part of the equation. maybe 10%? no. that’s way too high. 2% maximum. the other 98% is for sure empathy-driven human kindness.

“uh sorry man, my mom is so annoying sometimes.”

shane is definitely lying. hayden needs to pivot away from the hunter fight, it clearly made shane nervous. he just needs to ask about literally any gay person.

“sorry - you were saying?”

hayden is not a fix-it guy. he’s a follow directions guy. he can build an ikea shelf, no problem. what would the little cartoon guy in the billy bookcase packet tell him to do?

“mark came out to me.”

hayden, once again, allows the words to be said with no prior strategy developed. shane has met mark, and mark’s wife. mark is not gay, but he did study theatre. god, hayden really needs to check his internalized biases.

“and that’s her middle brother?” shane asks with impeccably bad timing for hayden’s brain, which is stuck on how he’s lucky he’s just okay enough at hockey to go completely unnoticed, because the press would eat him and his cancellable dearth of forethought alive.

“no, jackie’s brother-in-law,” hayden says. case in point.

like a rough scrap for the puck, the only way forward is through. hayden explains that mark, from thanksgiving, had told hayden he was gay. he’d be leaving his wife but the timing was okay because he was going to come stay and help with amber. he spins a rainbow yarn and worries about unspooling it later.

shane reacts…neutrally…? he sounds flustered, and he is both under and over reacting to every new insane thing hayden says. it does not come across as an enthusiastic ally’s reaction. maybe it was the concussion? but nope, shane assures him he’s fine, healed up, while a tide of rising panic comes through the phone line.

at least shane is besotted by his own bigotry. he feels bad enough to rush off the call, an audible anxiety attack taking place. hayden should not feel comforted by the thought of shane hollander, prostrate at the porcelain throne, vomiting his guilty guts out. but he does. shane’s not a bad dude, he is just having a teachable moment.

“shit,” hayden exhales, letting his dignity out with his breath, “okay. i’m going to level with you rozanov, just this once, and only because i am going, well, insane. i need to ask you something. it’s about scott hunter, sort of.”

a pause hangs on the phone; rozanov has forgotten his line. whispers from the wings and some shuffling remind him that’s his queue. hayden wonders who the hell is stage directing.

“i do not know how old he is. they do not let me near carbon dating machine. at least jurassic, maybe older.”

even with the stilted timing, rozanov chirps with enough gravitas that hayden lets a snort out against his better judgement. maybe shane was right, the asshole thing is just a well-performed act. rozanov would make a great nathan detroit.

“what the fuck. jurassic?” hayden said, opting that speaking was less humiliating than imagining rozanov performing sue me in a little pin-striped suit.

“is very famous movie, pike.”

“god, you are making this painfully hard,” this, for some reason, earns a snickered laugh, then a shush from stage right. hayden, bravely, presses on, “i need to ask you about. he said you’ve been good. i think. okay, i think shane fought hunter over the gay thing.”

“the gay thing?” rozanov repeats slow like hayden had placed a bomb on the stage.

“yeah like. i think shane might have fought him,” hayden drops his voice to a whisper, “homophobically.”

rapturous laughter replaces all dialogue. stage directions appear, ‘hayden pike longs for ritual disembowlment.’

“pike. you are so stupid. hollander is not homophobe. he is scared canadian kitten turned to real boy. barely hurts fly. afraid of tuna melts, not gay people. please. never call me again.”

before rozanov hangs up, hayden hears a half-second of a reprimanding voice, “you’re such an—“

for a third act twist, it’s weirdly predictable. hayden knows shane was going to say asshole.