Doppelgänger

“Dude, did you see the contest they ran at the Tampa game last night?” Hayden asked Shane as they changed out of their gear after winning their game. “I had no idea there were people who thought about that stuff.”

Shane looked over at him as he shimmied out of his hip padding. “I have literally no idea what you’re talking about, Hayd.” He wasn’t even sure which team Tampa had played last night, let alone what had happened at the game.

“Oh my god.” Hayden grinned and sat to strip off his wet socks, pitching them into the laundry bin carelessly. “So they had a look-alike content, right? And they did the top five players in the league, plus the captain and assistant captain for Tampa itself. And there were like, dozens of people competing, just from the people who were at the game! I had no idea so many people thought they looked like us. Well, you,” he amended with a scowl. “They didn’t do me.”

Shane felt his eyebrows go up as he contemplated this. He was one of the top-rated players in the league, so did that mean…? “Like, just people who happened to look like hockey players?” he asked. “There’s a market for that?”

“Oh my god, yes,” Hayden said with a groan as he wrapped a towel around his waist, then paused, waiting for Shane to catch up in his stripping. “I swear, sometimes I think you’ve never been outside the rink. There’s all sorts of famous-person look-alike contests. Dolly Parton, hockey players, famous actors…People find it fascinating, I guess, to see how much someone can look like someone else.”

Shane grabbed his towel and put it on. “Okay so they did hockey look-alikes. Did they…was I one of them?”

Hayden snorted. “I said the top five players, buddy. So clearly, yes. You, Rozanov, LeMaire, Billings, and Breaux, and then Montes and Devrieux from Tampa even though neither of them is top-five.” He grinned as they headed toward the showers. “Your doppelganger really did look like you. I’ll show you a picture when we’re back in our stalls.”

Now Shane was curious! He showered off quickly, then re-wrapped his towel and beat a hasty retreat to the stalls with Hayden trailing behind him, cackling knowingly. “Ok, fine, show me,” Shane demanded after roughly toweling off.

Hayden obligingly grabbed his phone and tapped the screen a few times. “Okay, so here’s you.” He tipped the phone in Shane’s direction.

He supposed his look-alike did look a bit like him: he was light-skinned, with black hair and slightly-tilted eyes that hinted at mixed Asian ancestry. He even had freckles, though not as many as Shane. “I guess I can see it,” he allowed to Hayden.

Hayden grinned and swiped on his phone. “And then here’s Billings.” Swipe. “Breaux.” Swipe. “LeMaire and Montes posing together.” Swipe. “Devrieux.” A final swipe. “And of course, your bro, Rozanov.” Hayden never turned down a chance to needle Shane about his relationship, even doing it subtly in circumstances where he couldn’t be open about it.

Shane leaned forward to study the Ilya doppelgänger, who had Ilya’s light-brown, curly hair and an insouciant smile. He really didn’t look much like him, though, Shane thought. “I guess I can see it,” he lied to Hayden with a shrug. “Montes’s look-alike is a dead ringer, though.”

“Isn’t he?” Hayden exclaimed. “I swear they were separated at birth. Okay but wait, it gets better. Hold on.” He started swiping again. “So you’ve heard of RPF, right?”

Shane had not. He blinked. “Uh, no?”

“Oh my god, have I got a treat for you.” Hayden sat to pull on his socks. “Ok so ‘RPF’ stands for ‘real-people fiction’, right. Like, you know fanfiction, where people write stories about fictional characters? Well, there’s also real-people fiction, where people write stories about famous, real people.”

“Oh…kay?” Shane said slowly, not following Hayden’s conversational leaps, which honestly wasn’t unusual.

“And there’s RPF about hockey players, among a shitload of other famous and semi-famous people. And people ship – wait, do you know shipping?”

Shane shook his head and pulled on his shirt.

Hayden chortled. “I can’t believe I’m gonna pop your shipping cherry, this is fucking awesome! Ok so in these stories, people like to pair up characters into relationships, or ‘ships’. So each couple is referred to as a ‘ship’, and people ‘ship’ certain relationships.”

“Right,” Shane drawled, giving very little of a shit about this at this point. He slipped on his shoes one by one.

“Anyway,” Hayden went on easily, “people ship players together. And one of the popular ships is you and Rozanov.”

Shane froze. “What?” he said with what he hoped was studied neutrality.

“There’s also a lot of Montes and Devrieux,” Hayden said, then waved his own words away. “But that’s not important. Anyway. So people ship you and Rozanov, right? And apparently the guys who won the look-alike contest for you and him are aware of this, because when they posed for a post-contest photo op they got all up close and personal.” He presented his phone again, showing Shane a picture of not-Ilya with his arm wrapped around not-Shane.

“And then!” Hayden went on without giving Shane time to respond, which was good, because Shane had no idea how to respond. “Then! They got really into giving the people what they wanted when people started cheering and catcalling, right? And so they kissed.” He flashed a photo of the kiss.

It was, honestly, a little disconcerting, seeing people with his and Ilya’s haircuts and builds lip-locked in public. Shane bit his lip. “Uh…that’s interesting,” he managed to say. “And…how did the crowd take that?”

“They got put up on the Jumbotron,” Hayden replied swiftly. “And the crowd went absolutely bananas. So, like…” He leaned in and lowered his volume to a confidental tone. “I feel like that’s a good sign, right?”

Hayden had known about Shane and Ilya – had figured it out for himself, surprisingly – for about six months at this point, and he never turned down a chance to remind Shane about his bad taste. At the same time, he was still Shane’s best friend, and every now and then he’d pop out with something unexpectedly supportive. Today was apparently one of those times.

“Sign?” Shane asked, swallowing.

Hayden wiggled his eyebrows meaningfully and kept his voice low. “I mean, if they supported the look-alikes kissing…”

“That’s different,” Shane hissed. “You know it would be totally different if it were…you know.”

“Ehhh.” Hayden sounded like he disagreed. But Hayden wasn’t the one whose career would be torpedoed if the news got out, so Hayden didn’t get a say in this as far as Shane was concerned. “Anyway, it was a pretty hot kiss, people loved it. They gave an interview afterward and apparently the Rozanov guy asked out the Hollander guy. So they may even turn into an actual thing!”

Shane shook his head. “This is insane.” Finished tying his shoes, he got to his feet and looked down at his best friend. “I mean, good for them or whatever, but the whole thing is fucking weird.” He was pretty sure he was not a fan of his body double going out with Ilya’s body double when the two real people were still locked in the closet.

It sucked, to be completely honest. It sucked, it wasn’t fair, and Shane was not a fan. Fuck those guys.

“I still think it’s a good sign,” Hayden grumbled, standing up next to Shane. “But whatever. I just thought you’d get a kick out of it.”

Shane’s phone buzzed then, and he grabbed it out of the top of his stall to check the notification. On his screen was a new text message:

Lily: What the fuck? Why Pike is sending me messages with kissing men?

Shane read the message, blinked, then slow-panned to Hayden. “Hayd?”

“Yeah?” Hayden asked without looking up from tying his left shoe.

“You messaged…” He looked around at the now-mostly-empty locker room. “Lily about this?”

“Oh, yeah. Are you kidding? There was no way I was passing up a chance at nailing, uh, her with that!” Hayden stood up and clapped Shane on the shoulder. “You’re welcome. It’s gotta be like porn for you guys, right?”

Shane hissed in a breath at the word guys and looked around again to make sure no one had heard. “Hayden!”

“What?” Hayden whined. “It’s, like, a collective pronoun or whatever you call it. It doesn’t mean literally ‘guys’.”

“Ugh, I hate you.” Shane poked him, hard, in the arm. “No more messaging Lily, okay?”

Hayden just laughed at that. “No promises, dude. Okay, I gotta get going, Jackie and the kids are meeting me outside the player area and we’re going to a late dinner.”

“With all twenty of the kids?” Shane teased. “Good luck with that.”

“You love my kids,” Hayden shot back, and Shane couldn’t disagree with that.

“I do. But there’s still a shitload of them.”

His phone buzzed again and he checked it.

Lily: THEY ARE US

Lily: WHAT THE FUCK HOLLANDER

Hoo, boy. This was going to be an interesting conversation. Shane waved Hayden off and started typing.

Jane: I’ll be home in half an hour. We’ll talk then.