in MY canon, hayden is ex-mo. and tells no one.
not jackie, not shane, not anyone. he has completely cut himself off from his family and despite the church's many attempts to contact him (a common tactic of mormon churches if they have you in the records. evangelism and all), the moment he had enough money he had a lawyer send a cease and desist. he has not spoken to his family in years, and the sibling relationship he has with shane? it's sort of all he has. he never tells anyone about this. why? because he is so fucking scared. he grew up scared, he's only ever known fear, and when he finally got out, he literally couldn't even speak about growing up without being drowned by it. that fear. the fear that it's not over and he's not safe and actually everyone was right and he'll never be safe. myhayden suggests therapy to shane because he started therapy himself because he knew he needed to do something because every time one of the guys on the bench would mumble some kind of prayer he would nearly throw up.
He has one photo of his family. one single photo of him from the ages of 0-18 that he took with him. he's 14 in the photo, the family took a group picture before sending his older brother (he was the youngest of eight) on his mission. he can't look at it, but he has it. His family was exceptionally devout. it is so ingrained in his psyche that he doesn't pick up on his latent bisexual tendencies and when jackie makes a joke about it he laughs and then has to hide in the bathroom and weep while jackie, ilya, and shane sit on the couch in the living room drinking wine. he had never been able to put words to the suffocation. could never explain why he needed to leave.
it's myhaydens initial driving force behind his dislike of ilya. because ilya had only ever spoken negatively about him and it was chirping to ilya but it accidentally hit on every bruise left by the hands of the church. you are not good. you are not capable. you are not enough.
and they get past it, obviously, myhayden is a hollanov diehard. eventually, it's Ilya who notices how hayden flinches at mentions of religion. how he has no childhood photos. how he has never told a story that occurred before he was 18. he knows what jackie said, that hayden's relationship with his parents was pretty much nonexistent and he hated talking about it. so he wonders. and ilya likes knowing things. so he asks shane and shane says the same and he knows neither of them are lying but now he's starting to realize that they've sort of been lied to, or at least not told the whole truth, and he wants to know now more than ever.
it happens one night looking at baby photos. ilya and hayden were flipping through photo albums when jackie and shane had left to pick up the girls. and ilya, after seeing a thousand photos of the kids, turns and asks, "do you think they look more like you or like jackie as kids." and hayden looks at him and ilya's eyes have that knowing behind it and hayden caves. jackie and shane aren't pushers but ilya is and hayden is at a point where he thinks he can say at least something without bursting into flames. so he tells ilya. not the whole thing, but just that he doesn't remember what he looked like as a baby. and ilya, of course, asks about pictures. and hayden says he only has one. and hayden, shockingly (to both himself and ilya) walks to his room, pulls down a box from a high closet shelf, and pulls out a single photograph. and ilya looks down at all that hayden has lost and it kicks the air from his lungs.
there are fourteen people in the photo. hayden, clearly identifiable. then five older boys and two older girls. two sets of what he assumes are grandparents and then his parents. his brother is holding a book of some sort. and hayden is looking down at the picture with an emotion ilya cannot name but can recognize. hayden puts the photo away and ilya realizes he can't ask any more of him, not tonight at least. eventually, he'll get him to tell the story, or maybe he'll talk to shane and jackie and see if they should all ask him. for now all he can do is think about how hayden, and all seven of his siblings, have the same exact smile, and shockingly similar faces. He, in that moment, is greatful he only kind of looks like his mother. He can't imagine looking in the mirror every morning at the face of everything you've given up
