Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Fluff and Angst, Magic is real in this fic for some reason, It was all a dream but also not really, Not Beta Read, Crack Treated Seriously

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-05 Words: 3,251 Chapters: 1/1

Ilya Rozanov Hires an Etsy Witch

Summary

Ilya knows he needs to move on from Shane Hollander. He can't keep spending all his time scrolling through social media as fans gush about Shane and Rose Landry's newfound romance. What he needs is a way to fast forward to the future where he'll obviously be married to an absolute babe and over Hollander. Fifteen dollars doesn't feel like too much to spend for a spell that'll let him learn about his future spouse.

Notes

Note: This takes place between episodes 4 and 5. In the book I think this is in the middle of part three? I’m not going to look it up, because I’m lazy. Whether I’m following show or book cannon is pure chaos. The time jump forward is post-The Long Game. As always, I know nothing about hockey.

Also, I’m aware that Etsy Witches weren’t a trendy thing in 2017, but I’m going to be anachronistic about it because I want to. Don’t ask questions, the whole thing will fall apart. This is load-bearing nonsense.

• Translation into Русский available: Илья Розанов нанимает ведьму с Etsy by Overs

 

January 2017

 

Ilya was drunk, which was not normally a state he allowed himself to make decisions in, but he was trying something different. After all, it was sober-Ilya who’d gotten him into this mess in the first place. Sober-Ilya had gone to the gym in the middle of the night and fallen hard for a man with freckles and a weak back hand. Sober-Ilya had flirted with Shane Hollander until he’d gotten him into bed. The vast majority of Ilya’s pursuit of Hollander over the next nine years had happened while stone-cold sober, so in a way Ilya’s current state of hiding in bed under a pile of sheets with a box of tissues and a bottle of vodka could be laid squarely at the feet of not making decisions while drunk.

Someone Like You ended and Ilya hit the button on his phone to repeat the song again. He could not remember how many times he’d listened to it, and he hoped the app he was using wasn’t keeping count.

The problem with decisions, Ilya considered with the sort of clarity of thought only having a quarter liter of vodka sloshing through his system could bring, was that the line between good decisions and bad decisions wobbled too much. Decisions that appeared to have only good consequences for years (getting to fuck Shane Hollander) turned out to be catastrophically bad decisions only after Shane Hollander left you for a movie star and took his smiles and freckles and weak backhand with him.

Ilya replayed the song again. He refreshed his Twitter feed. (Hashtag Hollandry, the stupidest ship name Ilya had ever heard.) A new post popped up. It was a picture Ilya had already seen of Hollander walking down a street hand-in-hand with Rose Landry. The fan had reposted it with “Engagement when????”

His thumb hovered over the “Report offensive content” button. He closed the app instead, because he wasn’t quite that drunk.

Anyway, it wasn’t like he cared. Let Hollander marry a movie star. What of it? Any day now Ilya expected he would meet and marry an absolute smoke show with the kind of name that would make a really good Twitter ship hashtag. If anything, Hollander had been distracting Ilya from that goal. And what did it matter that Ilya had never met anyone else he wanted as badly as he wanted Hollander? Ilya would probably have phenomenal sex with this hypothetical super model athlete and in a few years time he’d be like, “Shane Hollander who? That guy who retired after I beat him so badly in the Stanley Cup finals?”

Fuck. Why the hell did that thought have sharp edges?

Focus on the hypothetical future spouse, Ilya reminded himself. The supermodel athlete astronaut with the exciting personality. Ilya revised the personality part immediately, because when he thought about it for more than two seconds he’d really prefer someone who grounded him. Someone more like… Ilya opened Twitter then closed it again. He replayed Someone Like You. He opened Etsy.

Cliff had mentioned buying a spell on Etsy to make sure Boston won the Stanley Cup this season. It didn’t appear to be working very well, but maybe Cliff had bought the wrong spell and accidentally cursed Ilya’s love life instead. Ilya scrolled through the advertised spells and stopped when one caught his eye. Glimpse into the future. Yes. That was what he needed. To look into the future and see his successful career and the perfect ten he married and then he’d be able to forget all about Hollander.

It was probably a scam. He’d wasted fifteen dollars on worse things.

The instructions felt like an embarrassment instead of magic, but luckily he had his own room so none of his teammates would ever find out he printed out a pdf of a spell description and put it under his pillow to “let his dreaming mind glimpse the future while he slept.” There’d been a customization bit where he’d decided how far into the future to look, and he’d decided on six years. Surely that was long enough that Ilya would be married, winning championships, and over Shane Hollander.

 

Ilya blinked in the glare of lights on ice. Hockey practice, he thought, but it wasn’t Boston’s arena. He looked around. If he didn’t know better, he’d say this was Ottawa. Mostly because of the giant OTTAWA sign. That was impossible though, because he couldn’t be in Ottawa. He was… asleep? The Etsy spell. Ilya had never had a lucid dream before, and it baffled him that he could remember clearly that he was dreaming of six years in the future while feeling like he was awake. Wherever he was, it didn’t have any of the foggy, constantly changing details of a dream. It felt like reality. The ice was solid and cold under his feet. He was wearing an Ottawa Centaur’s practice jersey, which was not a thing even his asleep mind would ever have put him in.

He played for Ottawa in the future? Why? So much for his successful hockey career. At least there was a C on his uniform, making him the captain of the worst team in the league.

Then again, the team looked surprisingly good as they ran drills. Ilya only vaguely recognized some of their names. This spell dream seemed unfortunately interactive, so he’d have to bluff his way through not knowing his own team.

Someone skated up to him. Ilya’s entire body went rigid. He didn’t want to turn his head to look and confirm what he already knew. How did he know? The cadence of skates against the ice? A cologne he couldn’t possibly be close enough to detect? A fucking gravity field?

He turned, inevitably, and saw Shane Hollander standing beside him. Two thoughts went through Ilya’s head at once. One: This was his worst fucking nightmare. Two: Apparently the Ottawa Centaurs were a fantastic team in the future. The only word that managed to come out of his mouth was, “No.”

“Yes,” Hollander said, apparently just to be contrary. “Luca needs to practice passing to the left. He’s weak on that side.”

“I’m the team captain,” Ilya said.

Hollander rolled his eyes. “For now.” He skated away, and Ilya had to go join the team for drills and act like he wasn’t losing his entire mind. If it wasn’t absolute torture, Ilya would have said it was fun practicing hockey with Hollander. No one in Boston had been able to keep up with Ilya, not really, and Hollander could. And then there was the fact that Ilya genuinely liked Hollander. So Hollander would crack a joke, Ilya would smile like a moron, then he’d think that’s Rose Landry’s husband and his heart would shatter all over again. Future Ilya was a masochist. There was no other explanation for it.

Practice began wrapping up. The team’s social media guy (Ilya hadn’t caught his name) appeared with a box of donuts. “Bribes for anyone who will film a quick reel,” he called out.

Troy Barrett laughed from where he was finishing his stretches, skated over to the social media guy, and kissed him on the mouth.

Ilya froze. There were no openly gay players in the MHL, and Ilya didn’t imagine that would have changed in six years. Hockey culture could be cruel. He made a split second decision to intervene and stop any slurs that were about to be thrown out, but nothing happened. None of the players even acted surprised. Apparently, the world had changed more than Ilya expected in six years.

Ilya’s gaze drifted back to Hollander. Nope, still beautiful. It was fucking unfair, was what it was. Wyatt Hayes was in the goal and Hollander was lining up a shot because he apparently had no concept of when he should quit practicing. Wyatt was going to block it, Ilya thought, watching the clean movements of Hollander’s stick work. Except the move wasn’t just a feint, it was the specific kind of feint Ilya had invented that commenters had taken to calling The Rozanov.

The puck hit the net and Wyatt sighed. “That’s enough for today.”

“Hey,” Ilya said stupidly. “Hey.” Had he taught Hollander that move? Why the fuck would he have done that?

Hollander shot him a grin. “First your move, then your C, captain,” he said, in Russian.

Ilya stared. The intelligent part of his mind short circuited and all that was left was his dick suggesting the next correct action was to drag Hollander down to the ice and fuck him senseless. This was the middle of a hockey practice, he reminded it. That was Rose Landry’s husband. Ilya could not, in that moment, entirely remember his own name.

“Someone reboot Roz,” Boodram yelled. There were a few scattered laughs, then Wyatt poked at Ilya playfully with his hockey stick as he skated past. Ilya’s brain came back online. He tried to think of a defense for his actions, failed, then headed to the locker room to get changed.

Ilya carefully ignored Hollander and focused on removing his own gear. He was still wearing his mother’s cross under his shirt, at least, but there was something else on the chain. Ilya watched it spin and catch the light. A wedding ring. He was married. Apparently his future self had done one thing right. His feelings churned in a confusing mix in his gut. Maybe in the future he really was over Hollander, and that was why he could stand to play on a team with him. He just needed to meet this unknown spouse and then everything would make sense.

The social media guy (Harris, he’d heard someone call him) was chatting with Hollander and Ilya caught the tail end of the conversation. “…still trying to decide if we want to have an engagement party,” Harris was saying.

Ilya, determined to stop letting his messy feelings get to him and execute a solid chirp, plastered on a smile. “You should have a party,” Ilya said. “Ask for gifts. It’ll be your consolation prize for settling for Troy Barrett.”

“Roz!” Barrett protested.

Ilya clapped Barrett on the shoulder. “You are a nine at best. But Harris will have to carry on somehow. Not everyone gets to marry an absolute smoke show like I did. There are only a handful of perfect tens in the world, and I had to lock down one for myself.”

Hollander dropped the shoulder pad in his hands and flushed. Ilya looked away quickly before the sight could distract him.

A couple of the guys booed and threw their empty water bottles and towels at Ilya. “Why are you booing me for telling the truth?” Ilya asked. To be fair, he had no idea who he’d married and what they actually looked like, but he couldn’t imagine he’d settled for anyone less pretty than… well. “Ah, I see, you’re jealous,” Ilya continued. “You can’t relate to being married to a total babe with a tight-”

“Ilya.”

The sound of Hollander saying his first name sideswiped Ilya hard enough that he actually shut his mouth.

“Sorry, Harris,” Hollander said. “What he was trying to say was that we’d love to attend your engagement party if you decide to have one. I swear he’s housebroken.”

Harris laughed good-naturedly and slipped away with Troy. The word we jammed itself into Ilya’s head and tried to grow into a question Ilya couldn’t allow himself to ask. Instead he watched out of the corner of his eye as Hollander picked up his phone and began typing something, a smile twitching at the corner of his lips. Probably texting Rose Landry. Jealousy soured whatever had been attempting to take root inside Ilya and he turned away. His phone dinged. His elusive spouse, maybe?

Ilya picked it up and discovered a whole new source of disquiet. The contact name read Shane. Not Jane, as it had been for years. They were teammates, Ilya reminded himself. They had a reason to talk now. And their texts were likely innocuous these days.

Shane: Relatable. I also married a perfect ten

What the fuck. Was Hollander bragging to him about marrying Rose Landry?

Ilya: Wow. Must be terrible for you

Shane: It’s ridiculous. The sex is phenomenal, though

Why was this happening to him. Had he kicked an entire basket of puppies in a past life?

“Hey, no sexting in the locker room,” Wyatt said. “We made a rule, remember?”

“Hollander doesn’t know how to sext,” Ilya said absently. Shit, he probably shouldn’t have said that. Maybe everyone would assume it was just classic Rozanov trash talking. A quick glance around showed that it hadn’t so much as raised anyone’s eyebrows.

Then Ilya’s phone dinged again and he looked down and nearly dropped it.

Shane: Take me home and fuck me. Good enough?

Yes, Ilya thought. To his horror, he felt his cheeks burn with a blush.

Ilya: At least offer to supplement your macrobiotic diet with cum

Shane: Nah

Shane: But I’ll take my socks off if you ask nicely enough

This should not be working on him. Also, future Ilya was definitely fucking Shane behind Rose Landry’s back. Ilya set down his phone like it was a live grenade and tried to focus on getting cleaned up and changed. Ilya managed to get showered and dressed before Shane and slipped out for a brief but extremely necessary phone call.

“Sveta,” he said as soon as she picked up. “Are we married?” He didn’t want to believe any version of himself would cheat on his best friend, but he felt like he didn’t comprehend anything anymore.

Svetlana burst into laughter. “Are we what? I’m telling your husband you asked me that.”

A wave of relief hit Ilya, and then the word husband slammed into him right after. He made his excuses and hung up right as Shane appeared with a set of car keys. “I’ll drive,” Shane said, and Ilya didn’t protest because he couldn’t even have recognized which car was his. He got into the passenger seat of Shane Hollander’s car and Shane seemed completely unbothered by this. Not a word about people could see.

Ilya Rozanov was good at putting puzzle pieces together. Always had been. He could acknowledge to himself that the only thing causing him to struggle with completing this particular puzzle was denial.

As Shane drove, Ilya pulled up his contacts list on his phone to search for any other person who could possibly be his husband. Shane was starred at the top as his emergency contact, and that was not a thing Ilya had ever expected to see in his phone. Svetlana was also listed in his favorite contacts, along with his coach and Yuna and David Hollander. Feeling numb, Ilya swiped to his text messages. There was a group chat with the Centaurs. A thread with Cliff Marlow, who Ilya appeared to have maintained a friendship with. He had a text chain with Rose fucking Landry for some reason. Ilya opened it. The last message was from a few months ago.

Tell Shane to get some rest and feel better soon!

It was not the kind of text a wife would need to send to her husband’s teammate. If Ilya had been looking for evidence that Shane wasn’t married to Rose, this was it.

Ilya opened the Centaur group chat. He scrolled back up through it, his palms beginning to sweat. He’d posted to it two weeks ago. The face you make when your husband scores a sexy goal. With a picture of Shane sitting on the bench clearly cropped out of some kind of broadcast of a hockey game.

Shane: Stop trying to turn me into a meme

Ilya: No

Troy: You know, there are other people in this group chat

“Ilya? Are you okay?”

The car had stopped in the driveway of a cozy suburban home. Ilya lived in suburbia. He looked over at Shane’s face, lightly scrunched with concern. Ilya lived in suburbia with his husband Shane Hollander.

“Perfect,” Ilya said faintly.

Shane got out of the car and Ilya followed him in a haze. It was clear what had happened now. Ilya had been so focused on Shane that the spell had gone sideways and sent him here, some wish fulfillment version of the future where he got to-

Ilya gave up thinking altogether, pulled Shane to him, and kissed him. He acknowledged with a sudden bitterness that he’d wasted fifteen dollars. He didn’t need a spell to tell him that being married to Shane would feel like happily ever after. He’d known that the last time he’d held Shane in his arms in his apartment in Boston, right before Shane had walked out the door.

 

Ilya woke up slowly. The drunken stupor he’d fallen asleep in had turned into a nasty hangover. He groaned and yanked the printed spell instructions out from under his pillow. His eyes ached, but he re-read the paper anyway. There, at the bottom in fine print, was a note that if you wanted to forget what you’d seen, tearing up the paper would rid you of the memories. Ilya only hesitated for a moment before he began ripping the paper to shreds. There would be no moving forward for him if he had to live with the knowledge of what could have been. His memory of the dream tattered and dissolved, leaving Ilya back at square fucking zero. Turned out, drunk Ilya wasn’t any better at making decisions than sober Ilya.

The spell must not have worked if he’d torn the paper up. He should have known not to hire an Etsy witch.

 

Six Years Later

 

“…still trying to decide if we want to have an engagement party,” Harris said.

Ilya blinked and looked over at where Harris and Shane were chatting. “You ever get deja vu?” Ilya asked.

Shane contemplated the question with his usual level of seriousness then said, “No.”

“I do, sometimes,” Harris said. “I saw a show once that said it’s caused by ghosts.”

Shane looked like his politeness was at war with his need to say that ghosts weren’t real.

“Could be ghosts,” Ilya said just to deepen Shane’s distress even further.

“Fuck off,” Shane said, because Ilya was not in Shane’s must be polite to circle.

The odd feeling of having lived this moment before was already drifting away. It hadn’t been much in the first place, just a distant memory of… fear? What would Ilya have to be afraid of here? He was with his team, playing the game he loved and about to win the Stanley Cup for the second year in a row with the love of his life by his side. When he tried to pinpoint where the fear was from, all he felt was the long-faded echo of a closing door.

“…we’d love to attend your engagement party if you decide to have one.”

“Shane.” Ilya crossed the space between them and kissed his husband, just because he could.

Boos erupted from the rest of the locker room immediately.

“Stop booing us,” Ilya said when he pulled back from the kiss. “You never boo Troy and Harris.”

“That’s because Troy and Harris are adorable,” Wyatt said.

“We’re better at kissing than they are,” Ilya said.

“Boo,” Shane said, a smile fighting the edges of his lips.

Ilya shoved him back against the locker and kissed him again.

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