Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov & Svetlana Vetrova

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Svetlana Vetrova

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Cup Wish, Isekai and Transmigration, kind of?, I don't know if it counts if it is another version of your life, anyway, Alternate Universe - No Homophobia, women do all of the emotional labor in the universe it's ridiculous, Anal Sex, Rimming, Happy Ending, POV Ilya Rozanov, Angst

Language:

English

Series:

Part 5 of Hollanov fics

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-22 Words: 5,450 Chapters: 1/1

A True Thing

Summary

At first Ilya thinks it’s a dream. What else could it be?

-or-

Ilya wishes on the cup and wakes up with Shane in his bed

Notes

Yesterday I was randomly reading some old Hockey RPF fics as you do and I remembered the existence of the Cup Wish trope where winners make a wish on the cup and then it comes true and I thought 'what would Ilya wish for' and this fic just spilled out of me like projectile vomit. (Instead of my writing, for example, my MDZS exchange fic (whoops))

Warning! It starts out with some pretty heavy smut but then that's it for the smut, if you're just here for the smut you can stop when they take the shower. If you want to avoid the smut you can start reading at "Captain!" and I don't think you'll miss any plot, really.

At first Ilya thinks it’s a dream. What else could it be? Shane’s warm, big body curled up against his, Shane fuzzy and affectionate with sleep, kissing every bit of Ilya he can reach without moving, cock rubbing lazily against Ilya’s thigh.

“I’ve got a hangover from last night,” Shane mumbles against Ilya’s skin. When Ilya looks down at him he’s squinting in the light coming through the window. Ilya must have been wasted when he fell into bed. It’s all fuzzy, the way it should be after a cup win.

Except this is a dream, because Shane is here. Do you get hangovers in dreams? Ilya has one, a dull pounding at the back of his head. He squirms up out of Shane’s grasp a little, enough that he can grab the Powerade on the nightstand and swig it.

“That’s so gross,” Shane says with half a laugh, voice raspy, like maybe he went too hard on Ilya’s cock the night before, maybe he drank too much. Except this is a dream, so it couldn’t have been any of those things.

It’s a dream, so Ilya leans over and kisses him, Shane protesting at the flavor of the Powerade and then giving in, more sloppy and relaxed than it’s ever been when they’ve kissed, lazy and languid like they have all the time in the world.

Shane hums and Ilya runs his hands down his body, brushing his thumbs across Shane’s nipples to see him jolt, measuring the span of his hands on Shane’s abdomen, his thighs, rubbing his cock against Shane's thigh while he sucks and bites at Shane’s nipple, the underside of his pec, Shane gasping and laughing when something Ilya does tickles, more loose and carefree than Ilya’s ever seen him. Of course he is— this is a dream, Ilya’s dream.

Ilya’s dream but the scent of Shane’s musk is so real, bitter from the alcohol Shane’d drunk, salty with sweat from partying, heady with the scent of sex. Shane trembles beneath him, jerks his hips a little, begging with his body for Ilya’s mouth and Ilya gives it to him, loves the taste of Shane’s cock, even in a dream, the thickness of it, the way he fills his mouth, the way Shane is tense beneath him, trying not to thrust up.

He pulls off and tongues the frenulum, mouths down the shaft, cups Shane’s balls in his hand and then licks back along his perineum to where Shane is already soft and stretched— because, of course, this is a dream.

He pushes Shane’s legs up, takes in the thick scent of the hair behind Shane’s balls— Shane whimpers— gets his mouth on Shane’s hole.

Shane tastes like cum, like Ilya’d come in him the night before. Ilya sucks on his rim and then licks inside, squeezes a finger in beside his tongue and Shane is writhing and gasping and trying not to fuck himself on Ilya’s face, his fingers.

He’s so warm and so soft and so ready for it, gasping and ready, and Ilya’s ready for it too, rubbing himself against the mattress so hard he’s afraid his dick might chafe, so he pulls up and gets his knees under Shane’s ass, Shane bent in half and staring at him with his big brown eyes, half a plea and half a dare and what can Ilya do but thrust in, grabbing his own balls at the last minute to keep himself from nutting because he’s never fucked Shane raw before, fuck, has there ever been a more perfect feeling than Shane’s ass around Ilya’s dick, so soft, so tight, so hot, and Shane meeting him halfway, “Ilya, Ilya, Ilya, yes, fuck, there, oh!” and oh, god, has there ever been a more perfect moment, Shane’s ass squeezing so fucking tight on Ilya’s cock, his body jerking, cum squirting up onto his chest and Ilya helpless to do anything but follow behind.

They’ve only been recovering for a minute, maybe, Shane laughing and reaching over to touch Ilya’s lip where it’s raw, saying “you need to stop biting that, it’s never going to heal,” when there’s a pounding at the door that jolts them both.

“Captain!” the voice calls. It’s Connors. “Stop fucking Hollzy and get out here.”

“Fuck off, Consy!” Shane shouts back, completely unabashed.

“The Governor’s coming, there’s supposed to be a fancy lunch!” Connors yells through the door.

“Fuck, the Governor?” Shane says, and begins to peel himself out of bed.

“No!” Ilya exclaims, grabbing his wrists, but Shane easily twists himself out of Ilya’s grip, then leans back in to kiss Ilya long and deep.

“We can continue this later,” he says, voice low and promising, and then he’s crossing the room, unselfconscious of the cum dripping down his thighs, heading into the bathroom.

(It’s the same bathroom Ilya threw up in the night before, alone.)

Ilya’s certainty that this is a dream begins to wane. But it has to be a dream. How else would Shane be here, in Boston? Untroubled by the fact that Connors knows they’re fucking? Soft and shameless and saying Ilya’s name so sweet?

“Are you coming?” Shane calls from the bathroom and Ilya gets up and follows him in, fools around with him in the shower until Shane slaps his hand away and says ‘not now,’ even as he tugs at Ilya’s balls. There’s products in the shower Ilya doesn’t recognize, a label written in an unfamiliar Asian script, something that smells like seaweed and tea, that Shane massages into his hair, something else he carefully washes his skin with. He sticks his fingers between his legs without any hint of embarrassment to clean his ass and thighs and winks at Ilya when he sees him watching.

Shane slathers himself with moisturizer when he gets out of the shower. Ilya works hair gel into his wet hair, ignoring Shane when he says he wishes Ilya would just let it lie naturally, then they’re both rummaging through their luggage, looking for something appropriate to wear to meet the Governor.

Their suits are trashed, and all Shane has is casual and athletic wear, and he sighs that they probably don’t have time to go home.

Go home? Ilya thinks, wildly. Did they live together in this bizarre dream?

“But we just won the cup,” Shane says. “I mean he’s not going to care, right?” he settles on jeans and a Bears t-shirt— Shane wearing a Bears t-shirt sends such a hot flash through Ilya that he thinks maybe he could get it up again— and then raises his eyebrows at Ilya. “Are you getting dressed?”

Right, Ilya thinks, although it’s not a very good dream if he and Shane are getting dressed. He pulls on some jeans and a button down with tigers printed on it. Shane makes a face but doesn’t say anything, only tosses Ilya his phone, wallet and keys, and heads out.

.

There’s a stand-up ovation when they get to the hotel dining room, players and families and people Ilya doesn’t recognize, shouting “Rozy! Hollzy! Rozy! Hollzy!” and Shane slipping his hand into Ilya’s and squeezing it (and this is pretty long and detailed for a dream).

Marly appears and shoves a cup of coffee into Ilya’s hand and asks them if they got any sleep with a wink and a leer, then ushers them over to the buffet line, warding off people wanting to congratulate them, saying “the heroes need their sustenance.”

Shane’s laughing and joking with Ilya’s teammates as he loads his plate with things Ilya’s pretty sure Shane’s told him he’d never eat (but this is Ilya’s dream), and then someone’s calling them over and it’s a pair of middle aged people Ilya’s are pretty sure are Shane’s parents, both wearing Bear’s jerseys and looking incredibly happy.

Why the fuck not?

“Your faces are everywhere,” Shane’s mother gushes. “I kept wanted to brag to people ‘those are my sons!’”

‘My sons?’ Ilya repeats in his head. (This was supposed to be a sex dream.)

“We’re so proud of you,” Shane’s dad agrees, looking back and forth between the two of them, his eyes a little teary.

Ilya downs his whole cup of coffee, then looks around. Teammates are eating with their families, or chatting with each other. Some of them are drinking already (already? Ilya has no idea what time it is). The cup is standing in pride of place in the center of the room, people taking selfies with it.

“Ilya, you’ve been quiet,” Shane’s mother says.

“Oh,” Ilya replies, surprised. “Ah, I’m…” he searches for something to say that’s not ‘incredibly confused’. “Overwhelmed.”

“It is a lot,” Shane agreed, slipping his hand into Ilya’s and squeezing it. “We’ve already been invited to the White House, and they’re already talking about the parade.”

And Shane Fucking Hollander is apparently on my team and we’re in a public relationship, Ilya thinks but does not say, instead nodded and looking around if there’s some kind of waiting staff or if he has to get up to fill his coffee cup himself.

“And you’ve been partying non-stop since the win, I know,” Shane’s mother adds, with a small, tolerant smile.

“We’ll get back to training soon,” Shane tells her, “I think we’re going to go to the Cottage, and then to Moscow… It doesn’t have to be in that order, of course. And we have to figure out our Cup days. I think I’d like to do mine in Ottawa? Ilya, you want Moscow?”

“Yes,” Ilya says. “Of course.”

“A packed summer,” Shane’s mother observes. “Don’t forget about your…”

“I know, I know,” Shane says, with a smile even though Ilya gets the sense he’s just tolerating his mother’s managing. “We’ve got sponsorship obligations to fulfill. The campaigns we’re doing together should be fun at least, right?” he asks Ilya, squeezing Ilya’s hand again.

“Yes,” Ilya says. “I’m… I need more coffee.” He pulls his hand away from Shane’s and stands.

“Oh, we can flag a waiter…” Shane’s mother begins, but Ilya’s already away from the table, hand digging in his pocket for his phone.

He makes it outside without being stopped by anyone, miraculously, and finds a corner behind a large potted plant to lurk in while he scrolls his contacts, finally picking Sveta.

“Finally sober?” she teases, when she answers. “Honestly I thought you were going to spend like a week in bed with Hollzy; so surprised he let you escape so soon…”

“What the fuck is going on?” Ilya demands. It feels so good to finally get those words out.

Sveta is quiet for a moment. “What?” she asks. “You won the cup. I told you you would.”

“I’m sleeping with Hollander,” Ilya says. “Hollander is a Bear.”

“Uh, yeah,” Sveta says. “You’ve been sleeping together since, like, he got traded?”

“How did Hollander get traded to Boston?” Ilya demands.

“You mean why did Monteal trade him away? We still don’t know; it’s an enduring mystery. But… why are you surprised? It’s been five years.”

Five years?

“I thought this was a dream,” Ilya says, sitting down beside the potted plant, his back against the rough surface of the building. “I woke up and Hollander was there and I thought I was dreaming. But it’s all too real to be a dream.”

Sveta takes a long time to answer. “I don’t understand,” she says.

“When I went to sleep I had won the cup, but Hollander was still with Montreal.”

“You won it by yourself?” she asks, skeptically.

“Hey!” he protests. “I did! And we… Hollander and I were… not together.”

“Ilya,” Sveta says, slowly. “Are you okay? That hit you took was hard…”

“I do not have a concussion!” Ilya exclaims, far louder than he meant to. He modulates his voice.“I woke up in a different world than I went to sleep in.”

She doesn’t answer for so long he thinks she’s hung up until finally: “you know that’s impossible.”

“I thought it was impossible and then it happened,” Ilya protests.

“Okay,” Sveta says. “Okay.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m in Russia right now, but I’ll do some research, okay?”

Russia, Ilya things. “Sveta,” he says. “In Russia… I think Hollander and I are publicly in a relationship. Is it… in Russia, is that okay?”

“Of course it’s okay,” she replies, confused. “Why wouldn’t it be okay?”

“Where I’m from… last night…” he shakes his head— this is all too much, and he still has a lingering hangover pounding in the back of his brain. “It was not okay to be gay in Russia. People got imprisoned or disappeared if they were too public about it. Even here, I always thought if I were out people would… hate me for it. But that’s not true?”

“Of course not,” she says, sounding horrified. “Why would anyone…? Yes, everyone knows about you and Hollander, but no one cares. What about all the others?”

“All the others?” Ilya repeats.

“Yeah,” Sveta says. “Lots of players are gay and play together. It’s actually kind of a problem sometimes, people trying to keep from getting traded away from each other in their contracts, rumors about marriages of convenience, that kind of thing.”

Marriages of convenience? Ilya feels like the floor has been pulled out from underneath him. His head is whirling, he feels like he might be sick.

“So my family is okay with it?” he asks.

“Well,” Sveta says. “Not really? But not because Hollzy’s a man, but because he’s Canadian and your father is afraid that you’ll stop coming back to Russia and your brother is afraid you’ll stop giving him money, which really you should, his gambling is only going to get worse, it’s not good for his family…”

Ilya tips his head back and looks up at the building he’s sitting against. How is this possible? It’s… everything he dreamed of? Playing with Shane, being able to be with him, publically… But it’s not real. It can’t be real, right?

“Ilya?” Shane’s voice cuts through his thoughts and Sveta’s ramblings.

“I have to go,” Ilya says.

“Okay, I’ll talk to you later. Love you.”

“Love you,” Ilya agrees, and hangs up, then emerges from behind the shrubbery.

Shane frowns at him. “What were you doing there?”

“Talking to Sveta,” Ilya answers.

Shane smiles and steps forward to kiss him. “I hope you said ‘hi’ to her for me.”

Ilya nods, mouth dry.

“Come on,” Shane says, “the Governor’s going to be here any minute.”

He takes Ilya’s hand and pulls him to the door.

.

Shane lives in Ilya’s house, apparently. His medals are mixed in with Ilya’s (Ilya apparently still didn’t place in the Olympics, but the change was enough, somehow, to get Shane gold). Shane’s clothes take up half of Ilya’s closet, and aren’t as boring as Ilya remembers. Maybe they go clothes shopping together. Maybe Ilya has veto power over Shane’s choices. But then, Ilya reflects, noticing he’s missing a few beloved pieces, maybe Shane has veto power over Ilya’s too.

“What are you up to?” Shane asks, wandering in the room, yawning. They probably haven’t gotten much sleep since the cup win. Shane’s parents, thankfully, are staying at a hotel closer to the center of the city. Shane’s mom is… a lot. Really nice and supportive and enthusiastic and a lot.

“Looking for something,” Ilya says and can’t help smiling at Shane, who’s wandering about in a towel, moving things around, adjusting the picture frames and knicknacks that litter the shelves that have also appeared.

Ilya had been trying to live a minimalist life, always thinking of how much he’d have to transport in the inevitable event that he moved back to Russia, but Shane clearly doesn’t have the same qualms. Or maybe having Shane around has loosened Ilya up. A number of the things seem more like things Ilya would have collected rather than Shane. He touches a set of matroshka dolls painted like the Bears, first Ilya, then Shane, then Burly…

“I’m going to tuck in early tonight, eh?” Shane says. He’s only wearing loose sweatpants and when he stretches, lifting his arms up to the ceiling and arching his back, Ilya’s mouth goes dry.

“Maybe I go to bed too,” Ilya suggests, walking over to Shane and putting his hands on Shane’s waist, slipping his fingertips into Shane’s waistline.

“I was going to actually sleep,” Shane complains, but leans into Ilya’s touch anyway.

.

Ilya wakes up again with the heavy weight of Shane on top of him. It’s so different to everyone else he’s ever woken up with, all of them so much smaller than Ilya— even Shasha was thin, though he was tall. Shane is a substantial mass, heavy with muscle, hard to shift. He blinks awake when Ilya tries to free himself, his sleepy face so similar to his sex drunk face Ilya feels himself getting hard.

Ilya kisses him and manages to wriggle free, slipping out of the bed even though Shane pouts up at him.

He kisses Shane’s forehead again and pulls on a pair of sweatpants, heading into the kitchen.

The cupboards are full where they weren’t before; Shane’s foods, Shane’s dishes, strange cooking devices Ilya’s never seen before.

Fortunately, though, his coffeemaker is still there, and his favorite coffee brand, and he makes a cup then brings it outside, sitting on a chair that hadn’t been there before, staring out at the backyard, which is unchanged.

Ilya tries to clear his mind, tries to think. He doesn’t know what to do, whether whatever has happened will keep happening or if at some point it will revert, if one day, maybe tomorrow, he’ll wake up in this house alone, Shane still his rival, still someone he ghosted, still someone he longs for but cannot have. The longer he’s here, with Shane in his bed, and everyone in the world miraculously fine with it, the more, he thinks, it will kill him if it ever reverts.

There’s a chiming sound and Ilya looks up to see three small bells hanging from the edge of the roof, one glass, one metal, one ceramic, each with a tiny bit of paper attached.

He has to play along, right? What else can he do? If he never went back, and he tanked his relationship with Shane, he’d never forgive himself.

The sound of the door sliding open behind Ilya makes him turn and Shane comes out with a large mug of what smells like tea, perching on the arm of Ilya’s chair.

“You’re quiet,” he says.

“I was alone,” Ilya replies.

“No,” Shane says. “I guess I mean yesterday, and last night you’ve been quiet.”

“Hungover,” Ilya says, which isn’t exactly a lie.

Shane puts his arm around Ilya’s shoulders and stares out at the lawn. “We really should do something about that,” he says. The way he says it makes Ilya think it’s been a long running topic of conversation.

How is Ilya supposed to do this? Successfully navigate a relationship he doesn’t remember? There must be so many long running topics of conversations and arguments and so many things Shane’s told Ilya and Ilya’s told Shane. He should have pretended to have memory loss or something. He could claim to have a concussion. Shane will notice something’s different about Ilya eventually— he has to, right? And then what will Ilya say?

You could tell him the truth, a voice in Ilya’s head says. It sounds like Sveta’s.

The thought is horrifying. Terrible. Ilya leans his head against Shane’s side and closes his eyes.

.

Fortunately, their days are packed. Everyone wants to celebrate them, to throw a party with them, to buy them drinks, and give them things, and there isn’t much time for anyone to notice anything.

Fortunately, it’s socially acceptable for Ilya to spend much of the days drunk, and because of that it’s forgivable when he lapses, when he doesn’t remember Shane’s favorite food or his cousins names or the first place they went on a holiday.

At night Ilya slinks out of bed to do research. He finds all the old articles about them he can, looking for paparazzi photos of them on trips, selfies with fans. He reads his text threads with Shane and with Shane’s parents, watches ESPN and CBC specials, whatever old videos he can find.

He finds Shane putting on his new Raiders jersey, babyfaced and confused by the trade, the first celly they had together, Ilya slamming into him, then kissing him on the side of his helmet, the first articles posting pictures of the two of them being seen around Boston and the cities they travelled to, wondering if they’re dating, their Twitter relationship reveal.

It hurts to have missed all of this, their first date, the announcement of their relationship. He feels a bizarre surge of jealousy, looking at all the pictures of his other self with Shane, all the things Ilya, the actual Ilya, hadn’t been allowed.

“What are you doing?” Shane asks, one evening, yawning, eyes half-open, when he finds Ilya in a pool of light in the living room, going through Shane’s old Instagram. He sits down on the arm of Ilya’s chair (did they only buy chairs that could support this habit of Shane’s or did Shane keep breaking chairs until he found ones with arms that could support his weight?) and peers down at his screen.

“Oh,” Shane says, smiling a little. “That’s that cannoli place everyone always says you have to go to. You took me my first week in Boston, remember? I refused to eat it because it wasn’t on my diet but you told me if I didn’t I couldn’t be part of the team. God, it was probably the most unhealthy thing I’d eaten for years.”

He cups the side of Ilya’s head, scratches Ilya’s hair, and if Ilya could purr he would.

“Why are you looking at this?” Shane asks.

“Can’t sleep,” Ilya says. “Thinking about team.”

“I guess the win makes you do that, eh?” Shane agrees. “God, I was just thinking about when I got traded. I was so… bewildered I guess. I’d thought I was going to be with Montreal for life and then out of the blue…” He sighs, then laughs. “And I didn’t know how I was going to share a locker room with you after what happened at ASG. I don’t know what I thought was going to happen, just that I’d end up staring at you in the showers again, maybe.

“And then you were so nice to me, inviting me to stay with you until I got a place and introducing me to everyone and showing me around everywhere and… well, I know you were just trying to get into my pants again, but…” he sighs. “You always made me feel like I belonged there.” He pauses and then grins. “In the team, I mean. Not in your pants. Or, not only in your pants.”

“Of course you belong,” Ilya replies, upset on Shane’s behalf. “You are best part of team.”

“Yeah,” Shane agrees, “but I usually feel like I’m out of step, you know. You told me what it’s like being somewhere where everyone speaks English, remember? Like you’re still translating while everyone else is already laughing. I always felt like that until I joined the Bears, and then it was different because you were there beside me.”

Ilya’s heart clenches and he puts the laptop on the floor so he can pull Shane into his lap, grunting at Shane’s weight and wondering if they tested their chairs out for this too, before they bought them.

Shane laughs and clutches at Ilya’s shoulders and squirms a little until he’s balanced. “You belong beside me,” Ilya says and kisses him because if he doesn’t he’ll think about Shane feeling out of place everywhere he goes and then maybe he’ll start crying.

.

So Ilya manages to keep everything together through the parties and the parades and the Dropkick Murphys show, and then they’re flying to Ottawa, hardly making it to the flight on time because everyone in Logan airport wants their autograph, then driving to the cottage Ilya, the other Ilya, and Shane had built together.

Ilya had watched the CBC special on it over and over again, memorized the features Shane had pointed out, glowing with pride, the shots of Shane and Ilya kicking around a ball in the backyard, bickering while cooking dinner, Ilya showing off the artwork he’d collected, the hideous sculpture he pretended to be proud of, but clearly only had bought because of how much Shane hated it (and pretended not to).

Ilya had mapped out the cottage in his head, had found the blueprints from the architect on Shane’s computer, had asked Shane questions about it when he thought he was too drunk to remember.

Or you could just tell him, Sveta’s voice reminds him. Ilya bats it away.

.

The cottage is even more lovely than it had been in the pictures and CBC clip. Ilya brings their luggage to the master bedroom while Shane puts away the groceries and takes the opportunity to snoop. There’s a ring box at the back of one of Ilya’s drawers and he opens it up and swallows hard when he sees the ring, gold with a thin line of platinum running down the center that makes Ilya think of the hard look in Shane’s eyes when he’s determined about something.

He hears footsteps and puts it away, quickly, turns to see Shane lingering in the doorway, smiling at Ilya.

“What do you want to do first?” Shane asks.

“Swimming,” Ilya says, immediately. “I still smell like drinking.”

Shane raises his eyebrows and laughs. “You’ve been drinking for like a week straight,” he says.

Ilya shrugs. “Not worst bender of my life.” He remembers getting back to Russia after his first season, remembers not coming up for air for weeks, not knowing what he’d done or to whom. Had that happened in this universe, he wonders.

“Maybe the best?” Shane asks, almost shyly and Ilya has to laugh and wrap his arms around him, kissing him with a loud smack before grabbing his swim trunks from the drawer where they’d found them.

“I just want to lie around in the sunshine,” Shane says, pulling out his own swim trunks. “Detox.”

“Detox,” Ilya scoffs. He tries not to oogle Shane when Shane strips and bends down to pull on his swim trunks and then remembers he can oogle all he wants. He reaches out to wrap a hand around Shane’s ass, or as far around Shane’s ass as it will go.

“Do you want to go swimming or do something else?” Shane asks, winking, as he stands up.

“Swimming,” Ilya says, reluctantly letting go. “Or we could do both?”

He wiggles his eyebrows.

Shane huffs a laugh. “Yeah, because that worked out so well last time.”

And there’s another thing Ilya should have known. There’s an ocean of things Ilya should know. Sometimes Ilya feels like it will wash him away.

Instead he goes and swims for a bit, then splashes Shane where he’s lying on an inflatable raft, sunglasses on and a thick layer of sunscreen greasing up his skin.

Shane murmurs a vague protest, and Ilya wishes he could climb on the raft, lie down next to Shane and nap with him, but it is clearly too small to hold both of them. Instead he balances his arm on the float and stares out across the lake. He wonders if they know their neighbors. He wonders what the nearest town is like. He wonders how long he can keep this up.

.

On the third day Sveta finally calls. “I asked my father,” she says.

“Asked your father what?” Ilya asks, confused.

“About the cup, if he knows about strange things happening,” Sveta answers in the voice she uses when she’s nonchalantly inspecting her nails.

“And?” Ilya prompts even though he knows there’s no hurrying her up.

“Dad said that he never experienced it, but Cox, you know Patrick Cox?”

“Of course I know who Patrick Cox is!” Ilya exclaims.

“Calm down,” Sveta says. “Patrick Cox once got drunk with my dad and he told him that there was this rumor that if you made a wish when you won the cup it would come true. So of course my dad asked him what kind of wish and Cox said it could be anything. He said he knew a guy who wished his wife was there to celebrate with him— but I guess she was dead— and when he woke up the next morning she was there and no one else remembered she’d been dead.”

“Sveta, that’s… absurd.”

“You said you woke up and a whole relationship that had never had happened had happened,” Sveta reminds him. “Cox said that one of the cup winners wished he hadn’t hurt his knee in the final and when he woke up he was fine and there wasn’t any record of the hit that did it to him, nothing on tape, no one remembered it.”

“Cox never won the cup,” Ilya says.

“No,” Sveta says. “Neither did my dad.”

“Do you think he spent his whole life trying to win it to wish for something?” Ilya asks.

“I think he spent his whole life trying to win it to win it,” Sveta says, dryly.

“But if it can do this, it can do anything,” Ilya says. “It could… it could bring back my mother! I could have brought back my mother and instead I…”

“Made both hockey and Russia safe for queer people?”

Ilya sighs.

“Ilya, you didn’t know,” Sveta says softly and of course she’s right.

“No one ever talks about this.” Ilya sighs. “Wouldn’t they talk about it?”

“Maybe it only works if you don’t know?” Sveta suggests thoughtfully.

Ilya considers this. “But it never changed back?”

“What doesn’t?” Sveta asks.

“His wife stayed alive?”

“Hmm…” there’s a tapping in the background. “It looks like she’s still alive today.”

“Do you think he ever told her?” Ilya wonders.

“I don’t know how long she was supposed to be dead for,” Sveta says. “Maybe it was only a little bit and he could smooth over the cracks, unlike you, who are pretending to know everything about a five year relationship you didn’t participate in.”

“I’m getting away with it.”

Sveta snorts. “You think you are. That boy is not stupid. Tell him. You idiot.”

Shane wanders into the bedroom then, smiling at Ilya. “Hi, Sveta!” he calls, opening his closet door to pull out a hoodie. “I’m making lunch— do you want pasta salad?”

“Yes, please,” Ilya says, holding his face up for a kiss.

“Remind him not to put olives in,” Sveta says.

“Don’t put in olives,” Ilya passes along to Shane.

Shane laughs. “That was once!” he says, leaving the room.

“See?” Sveta says. “Years of inside jokes, of shared memories. You’ve been playing together for years. Do you really think you’ll get on the ice together and he won’t notice?”

“You said maybe wishing on the cup won’t work if he knows. What if we win the cup again and he misses out?”

Ilya can practically hear Sveta roll her eyes. “You think he would care about that when he probably thinks you’re falling out of love with him or have brain damage or something?”

Ilya opens his mouth, but she’s right of course. She’s always right.

.

When he walks into the kitchen a few minutes later Shane’s in the middle of making the pasta salad, a big pot boiling on the stove, slicing vegetables methodically. Ilya loves him. Ilya had sex with him three times, spent two years sporadically texting with him, spent the last few weeks with him, and he loves him like his heart is going to escape his chest. How much more must his other self have felt?

(If his other self had existed at all, which wasn’t a train of thought he really wanted to get into).

Sveta is right.

“I need to tell you something,” Ilya says, the words spilling out without him even really meaning to.

Shane pauses, minutely, then starts chopping again.

“It will sound impossible,” Ilya continues, “but you have to listen, okay?”

Shane puts down the knife. “Okay,” he says, sounding like he’s desperately trying to maintain his calm.

Ilya’s mind spun, trying to figure out where to begin.

“When I won the cup,” he finally settles on, “a reporter asked me if I had everything I wanted—”