Chapter Text
Hasan hasn’t been ignoring it. He’s pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able even if he wanted to. Not with how the shape of his name’s practically become set into the sportscasters’, the colour commentators’, the pundits’ mouths.
He’s careful not to call it a slump. Even in his mind. It hasn’t even been a month yet. He’s not sure when he decided but awful play has got to last at least a month before anyone’s calling it a slump. Hasan knows how it seems, but he’s not ignoring it. He’s being careful not to psych himself out. The last time he psyched himself out, it ended in him being drafted a round lower than he was projected to be.
He tenses when Lambo’s shoes appear in his eyeline. So far, he’s been good about it. All vague encouragement and pats on the back. Lambo’s a piece of shit off the ice, but on it, he’s alright. Hasan knows it’s been affecting him. Lambo likes to be offensive, but he hasn’t gotten many points the last handful of games. Hasn’t had the chance, what with Hasan being unable to stay at home without a babysitter. Still, Hasan doesn’t want to hear another, “We’ll get the next one.” or “No point dwelling on it.” That’s exactly the kind of thing that psychs him out.
“Listen,” he starts. “Why don’t you come out with us tonight?”
They won tonight. Barely. Usually that wouldn’t be something to celebrate but it’s been a while since they’ve gone out, and Coach co-signed it, after eviscerating every last one of them, that is. Even Kenny, Coach’s favourite (Coach doesn’t mind being predictable, like so many of Hasan’s previous coaches: top ten pick and future franchise player - the favourite) hadn’t made it out the room unscathed.
Hasan looks up. He’d been feeling sorry for himself. Sitting solemnly at his stall instead of getting undressed like everybody else. “I am,” he says, standing. He can’t brood with Lambo’s jockstrap in his face.
“And stay for longer than half an hour.”
Hasan hesitates. Looks around. The room’s not quiet but it’s not loud either. “You know I can’t,” he says.
“Bullshit. Look, man.” Lambo’s always calling for people to engage their senses. It reminds Hasan of his mother. “I’ve kept quiet because I know religion is important.” He points to himself. “I’m a Christian. I understand that.”
“Yeah? What’s your denomination?” Stevie asks.
“A Christian’s a Christian,” Lambo says, without missing a beat. He turns back to Hasan. “You can’t focus on hockey if…” He pauses. “ Something else is taking up all of your attention.”
“It’s not-“
“You have to think before you enter the bathroom. Yes, it is.”
A couple weeks ago, Lambo caught Hasan muttering the dua to enter the bathroom under his breath. If it was that alone, Lambo probably wouldn’t have brought it up. But Hasan had been about to step in with his right foot and corrected himself with what he’d thought was a fairly conspicuous hop so that he entered with his left foot instead. Lambo hadn’t said anything at the time. Barely spared him a second glance as he dried his hands with too much tissue.
“I don’t have to,” Hasan says. Because it’s true. Entering the toilet with his left foot. Reciting a dua before he does. They’re acts that aren’t compulsory. He’s not sinning if he neglects them. It’s more like extra credit, but Hasan figures if anyone needs extra credit, it’s him.
“Exactly,” Lambo says. “You don’t have to. So loosen up. Stay out with us. Have a drink. See the difference it makes.”
“A couple of beers isn’t going to make me play better.”
“Then have more than a couple.”
Hasan stares at him.
“Listen,” Lambo says. “I’m not about to force you, but you need to unclench somehow. You’re all… jittery.”
“I’m not jittery.”
“You’re proving my point. The old Hasan would have been like, ‘You’re mom’s jittery’.”
Hasan would have never said that.
“And how is that better?”
“It’s less defensive.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is.” He slaps Stevie’s shoulder. “Tell him.”
“Definitely less defensive.”
Lambo slaps him again. “And?”
“Oh yeah,” Stevie says. “You’re jittery.”
“Did he tell you to say that?”
“On edge.”
If Hasan denies it, he’ll be proving the point. Apparently. He throws his hands up. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll stay out. But I’m not drinking.”
“I would never ask you to do that,” Lambo says, reaching out to bump his fist against Stevie’s. Twin triumphant smirks cling to their faces and Hasan wants to slap them off.
“Maybe Jacob and Kenny will stick around too,” Stevie says.
Hasan pauses on his buttons. “What do you mean?”
“They usually leave a while after you do.”
“What?” Hasan says. “To go where?”
“Fuck if I know,” Lambo says. “They don’t tell us. They just vanish.”
Hasan looks over at Jacob. Kenny’s hovering over him. Saying something Hasan can’t make out.
It seems like all Jacob does is hide stuff from Hasan these days.
“Hey, guys.”
“Yeah?” Stevie says.
“I feel a headache coming.”
“Dude,” Lambo says. Hasan has never seen him look more unimpressed. “It hasn’t even been a minute since you agreed.”
“I swear,” Hasan says. He pushes his hands out in a placating gesture. “I’ll come out with you guys next time.“
“Right,” Stevie says.
“I mean it,” Hasan assures them. “I won’t be any fun tonight.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and sifts through his messages to get to the team group chat. Cap’s already confirmed where they’re going. “I’ll catch you guys later.”
Hasan tries not to think about how weird he’s being. Fails, mostly. This is the closest he’s ever come to stalking someone. Which, in a way, is comforting. He’s unsure how often his parents worry about the kind of man he is. Namely, how safe the women around him are. If he had to garner a guess, he would say rarely. And not because they have implicit faith in their son, although Hasan would like to believe they do, but because he doubts they think about the safety of hypothetical women in the first place. If they were the kind of parents that did, Hasan knows they would be relieved to know that the only stalking their son will ever partake in is of someone he already knows well.
When he thinks about it, he’s really no worse than the people who stalk their spouses to catch them cheating. No one views that as disturbing behaviour. And what’s the difference between Hasan and an insecure spouse in this situation (aside from the insecure part: Hasan’s not insecure)? They’re both trying to catch someone out in a lie. They’re both the justified party in their respective situations.
Hasan’s never had so much time to think. He’s been waiting behind these bushes for over half an hour. No phone to keep him occupied. Or, well, he has it, but he can’t use it. He can’t keep his eyes on the doors and play Solitaire.
They should be out now. Fuck. If they decided to stay after all, no Hasan needed, then he’ll be stuck out here all night. No. That’s stupid. Hasan’s not that desperate to know what Jacob and Kenny do when no one’s watching. If they’re not out in the next thirty minutes, he can leave. There’s no rule that says he can’t. He doesn’t have to stay standing here, in the freezing cold, slowly becoming as stiff as the leaves underneath his nose.
It’s another forty minutes until they’re out. Hasan almost misses it because he cracked and pulled out his phone. He should have more faith in himself though. Turns out he can keep his eyes on the doors and play Solitaire at the same time.
From then, it’s a mad dash to get to his car round the corner and bring it over in time to follow Kenny’s. It’s difficult, so much more than Hasan anticipated, to keep sight of Kenny’s car. Hasan loses it at several points, and every time he finds it again, he promises himself he’ll stop making fun of the greeness of Kenny’s car. He gets it now.
It’s not a long drive, barely twenty minutes, but Hasan doesn’t recognise where they are. He parks on a backroad to the main strip. A different one from Kenny and Jacob. He worries about losing them at first, but figures that’s preferable to being recognised. There are probably three other black Honda Civics on this road alone, but Hasan isn’t taking any chances.
He waits by a corner store. Tries not to look shady as people walk by. He thinks there must be a gay bar nearby. Too many men in tight clothing for there not to be.
When he spots Kenny and Jacob, he doesn’t follow them right away. He watches until he loses sight of them, then begins moving. They stop where the throngs of scantily clad men are thickest, and Hasan thinks his jaw actually drops as he watches them enter what is obviously the gay bar, club, whatever you call it, Hasan had prophesied the existence of.
Fuck. What does he do? He can’t go in there. Can he? Hasan goes to regular clubs. Albeit reluctantly and in the name of team building. Either way, they’re both breeding grounds for debauchery. Both places that, had Hasan ever mentioned that he’d stepped foot to any of his various Quran teachers over the years, they’d immediately begin to pray for his soul.
It’s different though. Hasan knows even as he tries to rationalise it. He would never tell any of his Quran teachers that he’d been to a gay bar. His mouth wouldn’t even be able to form the words. Yeah, clubs of any sort are strict no go zones. But attending one kind is vastly more forgivable than attending another.
“Are you okay?” Someone asks him. Hasan wonders if they’re gay. Must be, if they’re here. But then again, Hasan’s here, and he’s not gay. What if he’s not gay, and doesn’t want Hasan wrongly assuming he is.
His movements are solid. His haircut is useless, so generic, Hasan can’t categorise it as straight or gay. There’s something about the way his mouth moves, though. Definitely gay. No. Mouth movements don’t make a person gay. If Hasan’s mouth moved like that he wouldn’t be gay. He would just have a more expressive, sinewy mouth than most.
“Fine,” Hasan replies. He turns around. “Fuck it.”
Hasan is a man on a mission. It’a surprisingly easy to keep his eyes from accidentally falling on areas of risqué and homosexual goings on. Mostly he keeps his gaze above the heads of everyone. Not hard to do when you’ve got five inches on the average guy.
Of course, it makes the main objective of his mission near impossible to achieve. He’s been walking through people with his head angled up for the past ten minutes. How’s he supposed to find anyone like that. He should switch to looking down at the floor. Same effect and he looks like less of an idiot.
It’s like something out of a horror movie. The way Jacob appears in front of him as he pulls his eyes from the ceiling. Standing stock still and staring straight ahead as figures weave around him. Hasan chokes on his spit.
“What are you doing?” Jacob says. He doesn’t wait for Hasan to stop coughing until he asks again. “What are you doing, Hasan?”
“Are you the police?”
“I’m not joking.”
Hasan swallows. There are bubbles in his throat. Bubbles that won’t release. “I wanted to know where you and Kenny went wandering off to without me.”
“So you followed us?”
“Who said that?”
“Hasan.”
“My turn,” Hasan says. “What do you two want with a gay club? Is Kenny gay? That would explain a lot.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing.” Hasan laughs. “Relax. It just matches his personality.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is liking men a personality trait, Hasan.”
“Why do you keep saying my name like that?”
“Does it complement other personality traits? Is it like how being shy goes with being self conscious? Or like how being funny goes with being friendly?”
Hasan laughs again, but this time it’s defensive. Jacob’s hostility is throwing him off. Not only because that’s not how Jacob usually operates - even in arguments he’s always been the peacemaker - but because Hasan can guarantee he’s said much worse. “You ever heard of a gaydar?”
At that, some of the wind goes out of Jacob’s sails. He switches gears. “You need to leave.”
“What? But I just got here.”
Jacob raises an eyebrow. “And the view of the ceiling is just too good?”
“Why can’t I stay? Is it a secret?”
“Is what a secret?”
“Kenny.”
“What?” And then before Hasan has a chance to elaborate. “Kenny’s not gay.”
“Really?” Hasan says. “Then why are you here?”
“We’re immersing ourselves in queer culture.”
“Queer,” Hasan says, a note of disbelief in his tone.
“Yes.”
Hasan shakes his head. “But Stevie says you’ve been ducking out every time.”
“Yeah,” Jacob says. “Last week, we went to a workshop on sadomasochism.”
Hasan barks out a laugh. “You’re lying.”
“We’ll stop at nothing to become cultured human beings.”
“I don’t believe you,” Hasan says. “Where is Kenny, anyway?”
“In the bathroom.”
Hasan widens his eyes. He doesn’t let the repulsion show. He can be cool about this. “Oh.”
“Not like that,” Jacob says, like a man fed up. “He’s taking a dump.”
“Right.”
“Are you going to leave?”
Hasan shrugs. “Maybe I shouldn’t. Lambo and Stevie say I’m jittery. That I’ll play better if I let loose. And, I mean, I did play better before. So maybe they have a point.”
“They said that?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the single dumbest thing I’ve heard today. And I’ve been with Kenny the whole night.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. You’ll just end up feeling bad about two things. Double the distraction. Probably make shit worse.”
“Worse than it already is?”
Jacob clasps Hasan’s shoulder. “Stop. Go home. Get an early night.” He grins. “Open a box.”
Jacob didn’t adequately prepare him for how shit some of the presents would be. He’s only opened two. In the first box, there’d been a liquorice gumdrop wrapped in clingfilm. Hasan knew he wouldn’t like it, but the last time he’d tried liquorice, he couldn’t even read fluently, and one of the things they always say comes with age is a refined palate, so he ate it. He managed not to spit it out. Just barely.
The second box had been empty.
“Aw,” Jacob said, when Hasan told him. “I think there was a note in that one. Must have fell out.”
“And if there’s nothing in the next box, too?” Hasan asks now.
“It’s rude to constantly complain about a gift I painstakingly put together for you.”
“Were you not taught to start off with a bang? You gave me liquorice and air and expect excitement.”
“Really rude.”
“What’s rude?” Kenny follows Jacob’s gaze. “Oh my God, Hasan. What are you doing here?”
Definitely gay.
“You have fun in the bathroom?”
“Not really?”
“Hasan,” Jacob says. “We’re going home.”
“What?” Hasan says. “No. Stay. Become cultured or whatever. I’ll go.”
“Thank you,” Jacob says, and as though afraid of Hasan changing his mind, dives into the crowd, Kenny positively prancing after him.
Hasan’s not sure, but he thinks that’s a mission accomplished.