Work Text:
They’d managed to make it work for a little while after the twins were born. The apartment they shared in Fenway was a little smaller than was comfortable for four people, but the twins were small enough that they still took up the space of half of an adult person. Unfortunately, before they were even two years old, another broken condom meant Jackie was pregnant again—and if they had any chance of moving out of the two bedroom apartment they’d shared since graduation, Hayden needed another job, immediately.
September 1 would be right around the corner before they knew it, and he needed to figure something out now if he was going to start socking away extra money to afford a bigger apartment in a neighborhood where the average age wasn’t 22.
He’d heard about the job posting at Irina’s from Jackie’s friend Cassie, who was a bartender there. Irina’s occupied that liminal space between trendy hidden gem and absolute shit-hole dive. The drinks were cheaper than they probably should have been, the atmosphere was good, and for some reason they served a decently sized menu of—of all things— Eastern European comfort food. It was a bizarre little hole-in-the-wall, but extremely popular with the people who actually settled down to stay in that part of Brookline. It had somehow managed to fly under the radar for the student populations and didn’t tend to appear on the Best of Boston lists which meant, fortunately, that the place was quiet more nights than not and remained open based on the goodwill of a dedicated group of regulars.
Hayden had never met Svetlana—the general manager and one of the owners—before, but she was friendly with Cassie and had agreed to interview him before opening the interviews up to the masses. Not only that, but she’d been willing to interview Hayden in the evening when he got done with his first job instead of making him come in during the day before the bar opened.
The interview had been brief—apparently they really needed someone to start immediately—and she was essentially fine with hiring him as soon as she knew he could pull a pint, carry a tray of food, and safely roll a keg from the back of house to the front.
He wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth though, so he accepted the job offer when it came.
1.
Working at Irina’s was great—it really was! He learned the menu quickly, which was made easier by the fact that they didn’t have weekly rotating mixed drinks he had to remember and the food menu was small and only changed slightly every three months.
The regulars took to him quickly, and were patient with him as he learned who wanted to switch to “the good stuff” after ten o’clock and who was most likely to try to stumble outside without remembering to close out their tab. He’d even started hanging out with J.J. outside of the bar on the weekends and he found that he had more to chat with Cassie about during the rare nights that he interrupted girls’ night with Jackie and her friends.
But it was only a month or two after he started that there was suddenly another employee—one they hadn’t even known was starting. One random Wednesday, instead of Svetlana welcoming them in when they started, there was… Shane.
He introduced himself as the new manager—said he was filling in for Svetlana for a while as she dealt with some things back home in Russia. He said something about having been with Irina’s since it had opened and how he usually handled administrative, off-site business—Hayden hadn’t really been paying attention, but it sounded like he had experience working there even if no one really knew he had existed prior to Svetlana’s absence. Around the time Shane started, Hayden had taken a week to travel for his day job, and by the time he returned, he was shocked to find that Shane had already settled in well during his absence.
He was a great manager—quick, efficient, and unerringly focused on making sure that he ran the place like the navy without ever stepping on people’s toes or coming across as overbearing. He seemed to be able to predict what they’d need a week or two before it actually ran out, and the front and back of the house were always well stocked and organized with him on staff.
But sometimes, especially whenever the Raiders were playing, he seemed to check out entirely. He would go entirely blank, ignoring whatever was going on around him to stare transfixed at the solitary TV over the bar to watch the game. Hayden was pretty sure that the bar could be burning down around them and Shane wouldn’t have noticed or cared.
Hayden could remember the first time he and Shane had done inventory together during a lull in service, and he’d caught Shane’s eyes continually drifting to the TV.
When Hayden followed his gaze, he noticed that his attention was caught by a hockey game. One commentator on the game shouted something about a winger breaking through the neutral zone, and Hayden clocked Shane’s posture change as he leaned forward like he was pulled half out of his seat by some invisible tug.
Shane’s pen froze where he had been taking notes, and Hayden watched.
Five seconds passed, then ten. Shane didn’t blink, staring at the screen with his mouth slightly open.
“Do you want me to finish inventory so you can watch that?”
Shane startled, twisting in his chair and looking like he didn’t realize he’d ever turned. “No—no. Sorry.”
He looked down at his clipboard, gazing at the sheet there like he didn’t understand the words written on it. “How many bottles of Fernet do we have in overstock?”
Hayden opened his mouth to answer, but before he did, the men sitting at the bar erupted at something and Shane was immediately whipping around in his seat again.
“Oh come the fuck on, really?” he blurted, staring back at the screen. Hayden, curious, turned to look too—catching the slow motion replay as a puck bounced harmlessly off of the post.
Shane scrubbed his face with his hands, leaning back in his chair.
“Jesus Christ.”
Hayden looked at Shane again, then the clipboard. “Do you… want me to answer that? Or do you want to just watch the game?”
Shane flushed, blinking at him. “No, I’m sorry. I’m being rude. Yeah, go ahead.”
“Three,” Hayden told him. “We have two bottles of Fernet Branca and one of Branca Menta.”
Shane nodded solemnly, scrawling something on the clipboard but still keeping an ear tilted in the direction of the TV.
“Don’t take it personally,” J.J. said as he walked past them, arms full of empty glasses. “Kid always gets like this whenever Rozanov is on the ice?”
“Rosanoff?” Hayden parroted, confused. Maybe he needed to take a break to run to the bathroom to Google some things if hockey knowledge was going to be the way to get Shane to open up more.
“Rozanov,” Shane corrected, pencil motionless on the clipboard.
J.J. paused, grinning widely. “The Russian. Number eighty-one—he’s the center and the captain of the Raiders. Mr. Manager here is a little obsessed with him.”
Shane’s ears pinked and he scrunched his nose, shooting the guy a look that wasn’t all that threatening. “I’m not obsessed, J.J.. I promise you there’s nothing inappropriate about my interest in him.”
“So,” Hayden asked, moving away from the distracted Shane to sidle up alongside Cassie and busying himself with wiping down the perennially sticky bar counter. “Is he a big hockey fan, or what?”
“No, not really,” she said. “He’s a Rozanov fan.”
“Seriously? Is he that good?”
Cassie shrugged, reaching for a couple of lemons and a cutting board. “No clue. But Shane is like… obsessed with the guy. Knows everything there is to know about him. His story, his stats, his diet, his recovery. He’s got like the biggest crush on him. It’s cute.”
Hayden startled slightly, looking back at Shane where he was still staring, mouth agape, at the play unfolding on the screen.
“Shane’s gay?”
Cassie nodded slowly, looking at him sideways. “Yeah…? He mentioned it the other night. Is that an issue?”
Hayden shook his head frantically, realizing how he sounded. “No, no. God, of course not. Definitely not an issue, I just didn’t know. That sucks though. Like aren’t professional athletes like famously homophobic? There’s tons of people he could be crushing on who aren’t like… absolute menaces.”
Cassie shrugged, slicing into the lemons. “Yeah, probably. But like—who doesn’t have a crush on a celebrity or two? It’s not like he’s hanging around TD Garden with his tits out or something. If he wants to watch the guy play, who am I to judge? I’ve bought tickets to almost every Celtics game in the hopes that Jalen Brown finally notices me, but it’s not like I think I’m going to take him home.”
Hayden nodded, pushing off the bar to go check on the tables on the back patio. “Yeah, good point. No harm, no foul.”
That night, after he’d gotten home, he dropped a message into the groupchat with the other servers and bartenders.
Pour Decisions
Hayden: Shane’s a little intense about hockey, right?
J.J.: only about his man Rozanov lmao
Cassie: i hope someone out there is as in love with me as shane is with ilya rozanov haha
Elena: im glad im not famous enough to have parasocial fans
J.J.: you’re not famous at all lmao
Elena: you know what I mean you 🫏
Hayden: I don’t even know that my wife looks at me the way that Shane watches those games
Cassie: bring that up in therapy next week
J.J.: yikes, dude
2.
Hayden and Shane were standing together, breaking down the bar and finishing their sidework before the bar closed. It had quieted down and there were only a couple of customers left nursing their drinks after last call. The TV was on and the ESPN talking heads were rambling softly about something that Hayden wasn’t really following. It wasn’t until Shane trailed off mid-sentence about the delivery of new kegs coming from Trillium that he looked over and realized Shane was absolutely enraptured by whatever was happening on the TV.
The channel was airing some sort of supercut of fights on the ice, and he watched it with Shane for just a moment before he realized that all of them were that Rozanov guy, aggressively slamming men into boards and throwing his gloves around.
The guy was an absolute tank on the ice, and it sort of blew his mind to imagine that this was what his mild-mannered manager was into. And yet… there was no doubt that it was doing something for him, based on his slack jaw and slightly glazed eyes.
“So this Rozanov guy is kind of an asshole on the ice.”
Shane shrugged, not looking away from the TV. “Only when the refs miss a cross-check.”
“How do you know that’s what it is?” Hayden asked, trying to decipher the movement in the video. It was all a blur to him, and he reminded himself again to start trying to figure out how the hell hockey worked.
“He complains about it all the time,” Shane said, still staring.
“Like in post-game interviews?”
Shane shrugged, clearly not paying attention. “Yeah, then too. He hates when they miss those. It ruins his whole night.”
Hayden leaned his hip against the bar, watching the clips loop to another hit as Rozanov slammed a guy hard enough that the glass rattled. The commentators were yelling something he couldn’t really understand, and Hayden just watched as the other player crumpled and gloves and helmet went skidding across the ice.
“Jesus,” Hayden muttered, kind of shocked that this one guy did this enough that the video was going this long.
Shane’s mouth twitched slightly and he looked almost… proud?
The next clip showed Rozanov squaring up with someone at center ice as they slowly circled each other. Then—quick as a whip—he threw two quick punches into the other guy’s jaw and sent him dropping to his knees as the other players came rushing in.
Hayden chanced a glance sideways towards Shane and almost regretted it. He was staring at the TV like someone was playing a three hour long video about his favorite hyperfixation.
“You know…” Hayden said slowly. “If someone walked in here right now, and they could see your face, they would absolutely think you were watching porn.”
Shane blinked, startling out of his concentration to stare at Hayden in shock.
“What?”
“I’m just saying,” Hayden said, shrugging and gesturing toward the screen with the wet bar rag in his hand. “You look very invested in this.”
“I’m not invested,” Shane said quickly, turning toward the taps to start wiping them down. Another clip started playing, and Shane’s hand froze mid-wipe. Hayden snorted, tossing the towel at him.
“Oh my god, dude.”
“I’m working!” Shane insisted, cheeks red.
“You’re drooling,” Hayden said, watching as Rozanov hurled another guy away from a fight like he didn’t weigh any more than a wet kitten. “He looks like he could lift a car if you asked him nicely enough.”
Shane’s eyes flicked up to the screen, cheeks somehow reddening even further.
“He probably could,” Shane said absently.
Hayden just shook his head, grabbing an bar mat and dropping it in the sink to wash. “So that’s your type?”
Shane’s head turned toward him, clearly astonished. “My—what?”
Hayden gestured vaguely at the TV toward where Rozanov was yelling in Russian at a referee. “Violent, aggressive… probably emotionally unavailable.”
Shane frowned, brows knitting together. “That’s not—”
He cut himself off as the clip flipped to showing Rozanov rip his helmet off with a yell, his blond curls sticking out in every direction as he screamed something indecipherable from the bench.
“… Okay, maybe a little aggressive,” Shane admitted quietly, a soft smile on his face.
Hayden started laughing, just this side short of a cackle. “Unbelievable, dude. Didn’t take you for the type to be into a meathead jock. You’re so… serene.”
Shane turned away from him, shoulders hunched a bit. “He’s really smart, you know. He’s not a meathead. It’s just an act.”
“Oh yeah? Hayden said, still joking. “You two talk a lot?”
Shane froze for just a fraction of a second before sighing.
“… Not as much as I wish.”
Hayden raised an eyebrow.
On the TV, the segment ended and the hosts started arguing about suspensions and penalty minutes over the span of the season. Shane finally looked away from the screen, shaking his head like he was clearing it, and Hayden reached for the remote to click the TV off.
Hayden smirked.
“Yeah,” he said, grabbing the last of the clean glasses from the rack. “You’re definitely not obsessed.”
Pour Decisions
Hayden: Anyone know any meathead jocks we can set Shane up with that aren’t probably homophobic?
Hayden: The Rozanov Thing™️ is kind of a bummer to watch
J.J.: there’s a few guys at my gym who might work
Cassie: did he say he wanted a date?
Hayden: well no. But it can’t be sustainable to obsess over a celebrity like this, right?
Hayden: don’t get me wrong, I had a Vanessa Hudgens moment for a while there.
Hayden: but maybe if we find a Rozanov adjacent guy that doesn’t fold people’s clothes while they’re still in them, he’ll chill out a little
J.J.: he is a little high strung
Elena: a little? he’s wicked tense dude
Hayden: Wicked tense.
Hayden: He talks about him like he knows him personally
Cassie: tbf that’s just fan culture these days
Cassie: I know more about Jacob Elordi than is probably healthy
Hayden: And you have the nerve to tell *me* to talk to a therapist Cass?
J.J.: Wikipedia: Parasocial interaction (PSI) refers to a kind of psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performers in mass media, especially where viewers or listeners come to view media personalities as friends despite having no or limited interactions…
3.
They were all sitting at the bar, trying out the new pirozhki recipe when the restaurant phone started ringing incessantly.
“Sorry guys, one second,” Shane said, frowning as he looked down at the caller ID. He stepped away to take the call, hissing into the line as he walked away. “What is it? You know I’m at the restaurant. If you need something, you don’t call me on the work phone, Jesus.”
“Okay,” J.J. said, talking quietly even though Shane had moved back into the kitchen to take the call. “I tried to put feelers out on some guys at my gym, since Hayden said he seems like he’d be into bigger, kind of aggressive guys. I don’t think any of them are gay, but now I’m getting weird looks and I think I need to switch gyms.”
“There’s a few guys I see running around the Fens each morning,” Hayden said. “Some of them have very short inseams, I don’t know if there’s any correlation there.”
Elena and Cassie shared a look and started laughing. “There is not a direct correlation between inseam length and sexuality Hayden, but why don’t you try hitting on some of them for us and let us know how that pans out.”
Hayden held his hands up defensively, shrugging. “Hey, I’m just saying. The data is inconclusive. I have no idea how to pick up another dude or try to figure out which ones someone would even try to pick up.”
Elena reached across the bar for her phone gasping when she picked it up.
“Problem with your roommate?” Cassie asked, shoving another bit of the pirozhki in her mouth.
“Uh… no,” Elena said, setting it back down on the bar. “That’s… that’s Shane’s phone, not mine.”
“Okay…?” J.J. said, dragging the word out.
She tapped the screen, lighting up it up. On the lock screen was a photo of a man they all recognized immediately. It wasn’t an official team photo—no jersey, no helmet, no stadium lighting.
Just a close up shot of Rozanov, leaning back in a chair with his legs spread, head tipped back as he stared at someone off camera. His hair was messy and his sleeves were pushed up to his elbows—expression loose and bright in a way that directly clashed with the image he presented on the ice.
The photo looked… candid. Intimate, even. Certainly not even close to in line with the persona that he showed on ice.
“Is that—”
“That’s him,” Cassie whispered.
“Dude, where do you even think he found a photo like that?” J.J. asked, scratching his chin.
“I don’t know, Pinterest maybe? The dude’s Instagram? Okay, maybe this is worse than we thought.”
They had their heads together, still whispering, when the kitchen door swung open and Shane walked back out, dropping the phone in the cradle and looking at them all quizzically.
“What happened?”
No one answered, and his eyes bounced from person to person as he tried to work it out.
Hayden tapped the phone again, re-waking the screen. “Your lock screen photo.”
Shane glanced down, shrugging slightly. “Yeah?”
Hayden just stared at him blankly, waiting for him to acknowledge how absurd it was as a fully grown adult to make a photograph of a celebrity athlete be his lock screen. Why not a sunset or a forest or something? He knew iPhones came with dozens of wonderfully generic landscapes he could have stuck with instead.
“That’s Rozanov.”
“Sure is,” Shane said like it explained everything. Which—for Shane—it probably did. Hayden watched helplessly as his other coworkers absolutely lost it—Cassie choked on a laugh, Elena turned away to hide her face, and J.J. just dragged a hand down his face.
“You have a candid photo of a professional hockey player as your lock screen,” Hayden said carefully, trying to impress on Shane how odd that was without explicitly calling him out.
“Well, it’s not candid candid. The team’s social media manager took it at a barbecue last summer.”
“That’s not the part I’m concerned about,” Hayden mumbled under his breath.
Shane snagged his phone, slipping it into his pocket like he’d said all that he was going to say on the issue, and walked back through the kitchen door. Hayden watched for a long moment after the door closed behind him before turning back to his coworkers.
“Okay. We have got to do something about this, right?”
4.
“Hey man, do you think you can cover my shift on Thursday?” Hayden asked, stopping J.J. next to the bussing station with a hand on his elbow.
“Shit,” J.J. said, scrubbing his hand down his face. “My girl and I bought tickets to see a show ages ago.”
“Fuck,” Hayden said, thinking through his options. Cassie was out of town, and Wyatt hadn’t shown up to one of his own shifts in weeks—Hayden was working most of his own and Wyatt’s shifts these days. “Jackie’s parents are going to be in town and she’ll be going absolutely crazy trying to manage them and the twins. Svetlana said she’d cover for me—but now she’s in Russia and I have no idea what I’m going to do.”
J.J. shrugged, gesturing towards Shane. “If he’s Svetlana now, then he’s Svetlana. Have you asked him if he can cover it?”
Hayden shook his head, looking at Shane consideringly. “I haven’t asked, but yeah, that’s a good point. Be right back.”
Hayden approached Shane where he sat at the end of the bar, his laptop open to the payroll software and his phone propped up against the screen. The Celtics were playing in LA so the TV in the bar was playing their game, and on the tiny screen of Shane’s phone he could make out the small forms of the Raiders playing against a team in blue.
“Hey man, do you have a second?” Hayden asked, leaning on the bar next to Shane. He pulled out one of his airpods, looking up at him questioningly.
“Uh, yeah. What’s up?”
“Are you busy on Thursday? I’m going to have family in town and I’d talked to Svetlana about coverage before she left, but she’s gone and no one else is going to be available to work.”
“I’m busy,” Shane said, eyes drifting back down to his phone. Hayden ignored him, pressing on. Shane never had plans and he was at the bar even more than Hayden was, which was really saying something these days.
“I really need a swap,” he said, tapping lightly on the bar top to get Shane’s attention again. “If you can take my shift, I’ll take yours on Saturday.”
“I get it. But I won’t be around on Thursday.”
On the phone, the play broke open, Rozanov cutting through center ice with that long and effortless stride that Hayden was starting to recognize even without being able to clearly read his jersey number at this size. Shane leaned forward just a bit, peering down at the screen with a squint that made him wonder if he needed to ask Jackie for the name of her optometrist to pass along to him.
“Why not?” Hayden asked, pushing. “Dude, you never have plans. And my in-laws are going to absolutely kill me if I can’t make it out to at least one dinner while they’re in town.”
For a moment, Shane didn’t speak and the darting of his eyes across the screen of his phone was the only sign that he hadn’t somehow turned into a statue while Hayden watched.
“My husband has a game,” Shane said distractedly. “I decided to go, so our old manager Harris is covering my shift. I’m pretty sure his boyfriend has some bartending experience, so I’ll see if he can cover your shift. But I won’t be here.”
“Your husband,” Hayden said flatly, watching the screen of Shane’s phone where Rozanov caught a pass and moved down the ice. He dimly heard Shane gasp softly as a defenseman cleared the space, nearing Rozanov.
“Jesus Christ,” Hayden muttered under his breath. “You’re that serious with that?”
Shane made a small, distracted noise, clearly no longer paying attention to Hayden at all.
“C’mon, c’mon…” Shane whispered. “Don’t—”
The shot went high, bouncing off the crossbar. Hayden looked at him for a moment longer before pushing himself off the bar. “You know, you can just say you don’t want to cover my shift. You don’t have to bring your…” he gestured vaguely towards Shane’s phone, “husband into it, or whatever.”
“I don’t want to cover your shift,” Shane said, parroting him.
Hayden snorted. “Yeah. Because your MLH husband has a game.”
“Got it in one, yeah.”
Shane didn’t look up, adjusting his phone like a change in angle would somehow improve the play.
“Can you let me know if your friend can cover?”
“Sure thing, yeah,” Shane mumbled. “I’ll text him as soon as intermission starts.”
Pour Decisions
Hayden: Ok quick update: shane will NOT cover Thursday
J.J.: ??? why not
Hayden: because his husband has a game
Cassie: i’m sorry his WHAT
J.J.: LMAOOOOOO
Hayden: and before you ask yes
Hayden: he meant rozanov
Elena: STOP
J.J.: No he didn’t 💀
Hayden: I literally said “you mean rozanov” and he goes “yes” like that’s a normal sentence
Elena: He is so quiet about everything else how is THIS the thing
J.J.: bro has one personality trait and it’s russian hockey player
Hayden: No because it gets worse
Hayden: He said he’s going to the game
Cassie: oh he’s deep in it
Hayden: like “our old manager is covering my shift so i can go see my husband” level
Elena: WE’RE WORKING WITH HARRIS AGAIN?? HELL YEAH
Cassie.: this is mental illness actually
J.J.: Did he at least admit it’s a bit
Hayden: No. Zero irony. Completely serious
Cassie: oh my god
J.J.: ok new theory: he thinks they’re spiritually married
Elena: parasocial soulmate bond 😌
Cassie: i’m obsessed with this actually
J.J.: they™️ need to study him in a lab
Hayden: I’m starting to think that he was created in a lab actually.
Elena: Forget sugar and spice and everything nice. He’s made of goals and shots and husband thoughts.
J.J.: HAS MODERN SCIENCE GONE TOO FAR??
5.
Hayden didn’t mean for it to become a whole thing. He really didn’t.
It had started as a throwaway comment—we have got to do something about it, right?—but apparently that had been enough to trigger something obsessive in the rest of them, because by the time they were halfway through prep work for their evening rush two days later, it had somehow evolved into a… plan.
A bad one. A deeply questionable one.
But a plan, nonetheless.
“I’m just saying,” J.J. said, stacking clean glasses with slightly more force than was probably necessary. “We all see it, right? This isn’t healthy.”
Elena snorted, retying her apron around her waist and tossing a bar towel over her shoulder. “You don’t know that. People have celebrity crushes all the time. Hayden had Vanessa Hudgens, Cassie has Jacob Elordi…”
“Not like this we don’t,” Hayden said, tilting his pile of sliced lemons into a Gastronorm. “He talks about him like they’re in a long-distance relationship.”
“They are,” Cassie said solemnly. “Emotionally. And through the screen of Shane’s TV.”
Hayden pressed his lips together. “That’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny,” Elena cooed.
“It’s not!” Hayden insisted, even as the corner of his mouth twitched. “He told me Rozanov tells him things.”
J.J. froze, mid-reach for a pint glass. “He said that?”
“Yeah. Like he said that half the shit Rozanov says in pressers is directly aimed at him.”
Cassie’s eyebrows shot up, no longer laughing. “Okay. Okay, that’s—”
“Really fucking concerning. I know.”
Elena leaned forward onto the bar, lowering her voice like Shane might somehow hear her from his spot in the back office. “Okay, so what are we doing about it?”
Hayden hesitated, not sure. Because that was the thing—he hadn’t actually thought that they would do anything about it. But now, all of his coworkers were staring back at him like he was in charge of doing something about whatever the hell this was.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just—he needs to like… meet someone. A real person.”
J.J. snapped his fingers, tapping them on the bar top. “Yes, exactly. That’s what I said in the chat ages ago.”
Cassie looked between them, rolling her eyes. “Okay, but you two can’t just assign him a boyfriend. It’s not like the cat distribution system where a boyfriend finds you when it’s your time.”
Elena nudged her in the side with an elbow. “I know you’ve been locked up with Zane for a while, but that’s exactly what happens these days.”
“Yeah, why not?” J.J. asked. “People do it all the time.”
“No, they don’t!”
“They do in theory,” Elena said. “And I think this is a situation where we need to turn theory into practice.”
Hayden scrubbed his hand down his face, immediately regretting ever opening his mouth. “We aren’t assigning him a boyfriend. We can just… introduce him to some options.”
“That’s literally assigning him a boyfriend,” Cassie said.
“Building a roster,” Elena added, nodding.
“Options,” Hayden repeated more firmly.
J.J. leaned in too, dropping his voice conspiratorially. “I heard back from that guy at the gym. Turns out I just shocked him, didn’t scare him. We could try that? He’s big. Like—bulky. Not… I’m not weird in the showers, I don’t know if he’s big. But he lifts a lot. Sounds like he plays in some rec league. Hockey, maybe?”
Elena perked up. “Hockey? Could be his type then.”
“Isn’t the goal to find someone less intense that Rozanov?” Hayden asked.
Cassie waved a hand at him dismissively. “No one’s as intense as Rozanov. And plus, won’t we have better luck if we pick someone who potentially fits his type a little better?”
“You three are insane, actually,” Hayden said, immediately feeling like things had gotten out of hand very quickly.
“We’re helping,” J.J. said firmly.
“Best way to get over a man is to get another one.”
Elena nodded, grinning widely. “And I’ve always said that.”
Before Hayden could argue further, the swinging door to the back opened and Shane stepped out, already halfway through tugging an AirPod out of his ear.
“Did the beer delivery get pushed to tomorrow?” he asked, clearly surprised to see them clustered around the bar.
All four of them froze. Then, slowly and almost in unison, the other three turned to looked at Hayden. He swallowed.
“Uh, yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Widowmaker called. Something about a delay due to a new delivery guy getting Storrowed. Should be here tomorrow.”
Shane nodded, already turning toward the taps and checking the lines. “Okay, not a problem. That’s fine—we’re stocked enough to get through tonight, especially if we run a drink special involving vodka.”
There was a slight pause, and Hayden could feel it. The moment where they either dropped it or they needed to commit. And apparently he was the ringleader of this fucking circus.
“Hey, Shane?”
Shane glanced over his shoulder, looking up from his spot squatted behind the bar. Hayden tried to keep his tone casual and normal, like he wasn’t about to absolutely derail everyone’s night.
“Have you ever thought about, like… dating someone?”
Shane turned fully this time, brows knitting together. “It’s been years since I dated anyone. And I’m not really the sort to start carrying on an affair.”
J.J. made a small choking noise behind him, but Hayden tried to power through.
“No, I mean, like, someone here. A real person.”
Shane blinked back at him, clearly still confused. “He is a real person?”
Cassie turned away, pressing her lips together. Elena stared at the ceiling. Hayden felt something crack inside him just a little.
“Right…” he said carefully, feeling like he was navigating a minefield blindfolded. “Right. But, like—someone you can actually, you know… go out with. Talk to. Spend time with. In person. Not a celebrity who doesn’t know you exist.”
Shane’s expression shifted, confusion deepening. “I mean, yeah—hockey takes a lot of his time, but like… they get summers off.”
J.J. very audibly coughed and Hayden refused to look at him.
“Okay,” he tried again, voice tight. “But—you know what I mean.”
“I really don’t,” Shane said, sounding honest and a little apologetic as he shrugged.
J.J., apparently deciding that Hayden’s attempts at subtlety were no longer enough, stepped in.
“We know a guy,” he said.
Shane turned to look at him, still looking confused. “… You know a guy?”
“Yeah,” J.J. said, gaining confidence—or at least momentum. “He’s—I think he’s your type.”
Shane just blinked back at him, looking slightly dazed. “My type,” he repeated.
J.J. gestured vaguely, continuing. “Big. Athletic. Into sports.”
“Hockey, even,” Elena added, like that helped.
Shane’s eyes flicked between them, something unreadable passing over his face.
“What do you think my type is?”
Hayden opened his mouth, and then closed it immediately. Because—now that Shane was actually asking—he realized that they had absolutely no idea how to answer that without sounding insane. J.J., unfortunately, did not seem to have that same problem.
“Like him,” he said, jerking a thumb towards the TV that wasn’t even turned on. Clearly, they all knew what he meant by it.
Shane looked at J.J., then at Hayden, then at Cassie and Elena where they were pretending to be cool about all of this.
“… I’m not looking,” Shane said finally. “I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got going on right now, to be honest.”
Hayden felt his shoulders sink slightly. “Okay, that’s—that’s fine.”
Shane nodded once, like that settled all of it, and turned back to the taps, picking up where he’d left off like the conversation had never occurred.
Hayden wished that it hadn’t.
Pour Decisions
Hayden: Well. We tried.
Cassie: Define ‘tried’
Hayden: Fuck you, you weren’t saying anything
J.J.: ‘he is a real person’
J.J.: 😭
Elena: so we’re past parasocial
Cassie: this is advanced
Elena: oh we need to call someone
J.J.: who do you even call for that
Cassie: not us apparently
Hayden: I’m serious. Feels like we should not be enabling this
J.J.: we’re not enabling we’re observing
Cassie: for science
Elena: Goals and shots and husband thoughts
Hayden: STOP 😭
+1
Hayden didn’t notice it at first.
It was busy—busier than it usually was on a Tuesday—and he was three drinks deep into a ticket that seemed to grow every single time he looked away from it. Cassie was shouting something almost indecipherable about running out of coupe glasses, and J.J. was arguing with someone at the end of the bar about whether or not he’d already closed out. Elena was weaving through the floor with a tray balanced over her shoulder like she’d been born to do it.
It was as normal as the chaos of a rush could be—which is why it took him a second too long to realize that Shane was absolutely frozen. Not just slowing down, but stopped. Mid-reach, hand hovering over the well, eyes fixed somewhere past Hayden’s shoulder. He followed the gaze automatically.
The front door had just swung shut behind someone, and at first there wasn’t anything remarkable about it. Just another guy stepping in from the cold—tall, broad-shouldered, moving with an easy confidence that usually meant either athlete or Masshole. Sometimes both.
The guy shrugged out of his jacket as he stepped in, glancing around the bar like he was orienting himself—probably searching for an empty seat. Blond hair—a little bit too long—curling slightly at the ends where it had probably been trapped under a ballcap for most of the day.
Hayden frowned.
There was something—
He’d seen that face before.
Not here, not at Irina’s. Somewhere else.
The guy looked up, and his gaze slid right past Hayden, past the bar and the crowd, and landed on Shane. And the empty seat right in front of him. His expression changed immediately, like he’d found exactly what he was looking for.
Hayden’s stomach didn’t drop, it absolutely plummeted.
No fucking way.
Behind him, J.J. went very, very still.
“…wait,” Elena said under her breath, somewhere to Hayden’s left.
The guy started walking toward the bar, smile widening, as he ambled over like he had all the time in the world.
Hayden’s brain was trying—desperately—to catch up. To place the face, to make it make sense. But it wasn’t until the guy got close enough that the overhead light caught the sharp line of his jaw and the familiar set of his mouth—
Oh.
Oh no.
And there went his stomach, plummeted straight down through the floor.
That’s—
He stopped at the bar, right in front of Shane. For a moment, neither of them said anything at all. Then Shane—who had been completely frozen for at least thirty seconds—blinked like he was snapping back into his own body.
“Hey,” he said, shockingly casual and easy like the object of all of his fantasies hadn’t somehow materialized in this bar on a random night.
He huffed out a quiet laugh, shaking his head as he leaned his forearms on the bar. “So… you come here often?”
His voice was lower than Hayden had expected, edged with something that sounded like travel and exhaustion.
“I’m working,” Shane said, like it explained everything.
He just stared back at Shane for a moment before snorting softly, like he’d expected that answer.
“Of course you are,” he said softly. Then, without asking, he reached across the bar—across the bar—and picked up the glass Shane had been in the middle of pouring, taking a sip like it belonged to him.
Shane didn’t even flinch.
“Hey. That’s not yours, asshole,” he said, voice shockingly mild. If his brain wasn’t melting out of his ears, Hayden probably would’ve been impressed with Shane’s ability to play it cool.
“You’ll make another.”
“You make it,” Shane said, rolling his eyes.
“My roadie just ended, it’s my night off,” he said, setting the glass down and sliding it an inch closer to Shane like he was going to try to return it. “What’s a guy to do with a night or three off in Boston?”
Hayden could hear his own heartbeat thudding in his ears. Behind him, someone—probably J.J.—dropped a glass. It shattered loudly against the floor. For once, no one broke the silence to yell about job openings at the sound.
“I caught an earlier flight without the team,” he went on, like he and Shane were the only two in the room. “We landed an hour ago.”
Shane’s expression shifted, just slightly.
“What, so you decided to come over here?”
“You were working,” he said, smiling at him over the bar.
“I’m always working,” Shane said. “I’ve got a lot of quiet nights to fill.”
“I can think of a few ways I can make you get a little loud tonight instead…?”
“You are such a fucking asshole,” Shane shot back—but notably there was absolutely no heat in it. None.
The guy smiled, quick and crooked.
“Fuck, I missed you.”
Something in Hayden’s brain short-circuited.
Because—
Because—
He’d—
My husband has a game.
He complains about it all the time.
He is a real person.
Hayden felt a slow, creeping horror crawl up the back of his neck.
No.
No, that—
That couldn’t—
Shane glanced to the side, like he was suddenly aware of the room again—or of the fact that every single one of his coworkers was staring at them.
“…what?” he asked.
Not one of them answered.
Hayden realized, vaguely, that he was still holding a bottle of vodka mid-pour. It was overflowing the jigger and dripping down his hand. He couldn’t feel it.
“Why is everyone looking at me like that?” Shane asked. The guy followed his gaze, finally seeming to register that the two of them weren’t the only two people in the bar. He let his gaze drift over them, one eyebrow lifting slightly.
“Your coworkers?”
“Yeah,” Shane said.
Like something clicked into place for him, the guy straightened slightly and offered a small, polite nod.
“Ilya,” he said.
Hayden stared at him.
Ilya.
Rozanov.
Number Eighty-One.
Captain of the Raiders.
Hayden’s mouth went absolutely dry.
“… Hayden,” he managed, distantly aware that he sounded like he’d just been hit over the head with something heavy.
Ilya’s gaze flicked back over to Shane. “You didn’t tell them?”
Shane frowned, brows knitting together. “Tell them what?”
Ilya’s expression did something complicated, something between amusement and confusion and just a hint of disbelief.
“They do not know that we are married? That they are working in our bar?”
Silence. Absolute, deafening silence. Somewhere in the back, the ice machine clunked loudly as it dumped a fresh batch into the bin in perfect time to Hayden’s entire sense of reality tilt sideways.
Because—
Because--
“Oh,” he said. It came out small. Weak. “Oh.”
Next to him, J.J. made a strangled noise and Cassie clamped both of her hands over her mouth. Elena looked like she might actually pass out.
Shane looked between them, then back at Ilya as his brows stayed furrowed.
“No, I actually bring it up all the time. I thought it was obvious.”
Pour Decisions
Hayden: We need to delete everything in this chat.
Cassie: EVERYTHING
J.J.: i am never emotionally recovering from this
Elena: he said it was obvious
Elena: HE SAID IT WAS OBVIOUS
Cassie: we tried to set him up with a guy from jj’s gym
J.J.: DO NOT BRING THAT UP
J.J.: THAT MAN CAN FIGHT
Hayden: He said he talks to him
Hayden: HE DOES TALK TO HIM
Elena: GOALS AND SHOTS AND HUSBAND THOUGHTS
Cassie: NOT NOW ELENA
J.J.: NO KEEP IT GOING I DESERVE THIS
Hayden: oh my god
Hayden: oh my god we are the problem