Chapter Text
Ilya Rozanov woke up weirdly.
Firstly, he had drunk enough true Russian vodka that he should have some semblance of a headache. Fuck that. His brain should be gravel. His mouth should be dry, his limbs heavy, his tolerance for humanity nonexistent. Instead, he felt well-rested?
The second thing that struck him as even odder was someone had delicately shoved him awake. He did not recall leaving the club with anyone at all. So who the hell was waking him up?He blinked, and rubbed at his eyes. The view that came into focus was not his bedroom. Where the fuck was he? He rolled over, and felt his heart plummet to his stomach.
“H-Hollander?” why did he not sound Russian? He had loathed his accent and the way he sounded like a cartoon villain when he spoke English since before his rookie season. Why all of a sudden did he sound passably Canadian? Had he drunk himself into this?
He must have. He must have drank so much he’d forgotten he was Russian, and that he hooked up with Hollander? How could he forget meeting up with Hollander who he had missed so much his damn body ached? And why was Hollander staring at him as if he had ten heads.
“Your phone has been buzzing for the last twenty minutes,” Hollander sat on a bed across from him tying up his trainers. He did not sound panicked or alarmed about any of this.
Okay. Okay. He had clearly blacked out. That was the only explanation. He had gotten drunk enough to forget an entire series of decisions, which, while rare, was not impossible. He must have flown out. That had to be it. The Metros were in the playoffs, Shane would be traveling. Ilya must have missed him enough to do something insane, like get on a plane mid-bender.Yes. That tracked. He had missed him. Enough that his chest ached sometimes, sharp and inconvenient. He turned back to his sheets wondering if it was Papa or Andrei calling him. He was not sure who would be worse. Papa with his failing mind or Andrei with his demands for money.
He looked down at his hands. They were smaller? There was a faded scar along the left thumb, pale and crescent-shaped, like it had once been deep.Ilya didn’t remember getting that.Because he hadn’t. What? He was distracted momentarily by the vibrations of his phone. Answer phone Rozanov. In the back of his mind there was always the fear that it might be about Papa dying. He found the phone, except, when did he have a bright red phone case?
“You gonna answer?” Shane said somewhere behind him.
Right. Answer phone. Ilya’s new fingers shook slightly as he answered the call, “hello?” He still did not sound Russian.
“Please tell me this is Rozanov,” it was the most polite Ilya had ever heard his own voice. Why was he hearing his own accented voice on the phone? The voice repeated itself, “Rozanov?”
“Yes?”he said cautiously, forcing the word out, trying not to let the panic bleed through.
“Oh thank fucking god. It's Hayden Pike,”
Ilya could not help but scoff. Why was Hayden Pike calling him? Since when did the Metros’ fifteenth best hockey player even have his number?
“What do you want Pike?”
“You haven’t gone to the bathroom yet have you?”
“What the fuck? Why are you asking me about my bathroom habits?” Ilya forced himself off the bed. Why did Hollander suddenly seem to about his height? That was not right. Hollander was shorter than him. Not by much, but enough that Ilya had always, privately, smugly appreciated it.Maybe the vodka had been bad. Spiked. Laced with something deeply illegal and deeply stupid. That had to be it. Hallucinations. A very elaborate, very vivid hallucination.
“I’m not…,” Hayden who still sounded like him whined, “you haven’t looked in a mirror have you?”
“No,”
“You might want to,”
Ilya’s eyes found the hotel room bathroom door, “you finally appreciate how handsome I am?”
“No dude just go look you egomaniac,”
Ilya found that his feet were in socks. He never wore socks to bed. They made his feet too warm. Why was nothing at all adding up? He shuffled to the bathroom, squinting in the bright lights and when he caught his reflection, he wanted to scream but no sound came out of his mouth. Staring back at him in the mirror was the face of Hayden fucking Pike. Pale Hayden Pike with his straight hair, slightly tasseled by sleep. Hayden Pike’s bright blue eyes stared back at him in alarm. He ran his fingers over Hayden Pike’s boylike cheeks. There was none of his own chiseled jaw bone to feel. What the fuck?
Slowly, mechanically, he brought the phone back up to his ear,“…Pike,” he said, voice thin and disbelieving, “explain.”
“You think I have an explanation for this fuckery?” Pike sounded angry. Or maybe it was because he now had the accent that made him sound like a cartoon villain, “I woke up in this nightmare too,”
“Nightmare?” Ilya scoffed, “you woke up the MHL’s best and most sexiest player,”
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Hayden exploded.
Ilya winced slightly, pulling the phone a fraction away from his ear.
“I am in your body,” Hayden continued, voice climbing, words tripping over each other in agitation. “Do you understand that? I can feel….” he cut himself off abruptly, like he’d almost said something he shouldn’t. “Everything is wrong. Your apartment is terrifying, your fridge has nothing but, like, three condiments and something that might be meat, and—”
“That is meat,” Ilya cut in defensively.
“I don’t know that!” Hayden shot back. “It looks like it could be from war times, Rozanov, I’m not eating it!”
Ilya pressed his fingers harder into his temple, pacing once across the bathroom tile, then back again. The movement still felt off. Too light. Too loose. There was a soft knock on the door.
Ilya didn’t answer right away. He pressed his lips together, dragging in a breath, and then covered the receiver with his hand, turning just enough to face the doorway, opening it a smidge.
“Yeah,” he said, forcing his tone into something lighter—something that felt vaguely Hayden-ish, even if it made his skin crawl. “I’m just peachy keen!”
The words left his mouth and Ilya immediately regretted every life choice that had led him here.Shane blinked at him.
“…Okay,” he said slowly, like he wasn’t entirely convinced but didn’t know what else to do with that. “You, uh… sure?”
“I am fantastic,” Ilya added, doubling down for reasons he couldn’t explain, flashing what he hoped resembled Hayden’s easy grin.
It probably looked unhinged.Shane studied him for another second, clearly trying to decide if this was a problem he needed to solve or one he could safely ignore.
“…Right,” he said finally. “I’m going for a run.”
“Have fun,” Ilya chirped.
Chirped.God.Shane hesitated like he almost said something else, then thought better of it. A second later, Ilya heard the soft click of the hotel room door opening… and then closing.Ilya stayed perfectly still for a beat, listening to the quiet settle, making absolutely certain Shane was gone.Then he slowly lowered his hand from the phone.
“Peachy keen?” Pike exploded immediately.
Ilya winced, pulling the phone away from his ear as Hayden’s outrage blasted through the speaker.
“Peachy keen?” Hayden repeated, louder this time. “What am I, a eighty-year-old southern grandma? Who says that?!”
“Sounds like thing golden boy Hayden Pike would say,”
“Fuck you,” Hayden retorted, “you know nothing about me,”
Ilya stared down at his new body, “I feel like I might get to know you reasonably well soon. One might say intimately well,”
“NOPE. No. Absolutely not,” Hayden said, voice jumping an octave in pure, immediate horror. “We are not framing it like that. We are not doing that.”
“I hate to tell you this,” Ilya said, and now he was enjoying himself just a little bit, because if the universe was going to hand him this level of chaos, he was at least going to use it, “I will need to use the toilet eventually,”
“Rozanov. Can we be serious for a second please? We are in each other’s bodies….what do we even do?”
Ilya glanced back at the mirror, at Hayden Pike staring back at him like a slightly haunted version of himself, and for a moment, just a moment, the humor slipped.Because Hayden was right.This wasn’t just inconvenient.This was—
“…Complicated,” Ilya admitted.
“Complicated?” Hayden echoed. “That’s the word you’re going with? Not catastrophic? Not deeply, profoundly messed up?”
Ilya shrugged, the motion still feeling wrong in this body. “Panicking will not fix it.”
“I’m not panicking,” Hayden snapped.
“You are absolutely panicking.”
“I am problem-solving loudly.”
“Ah,” Ilya said. “Of course.”
There was a beat where Hayden very clearly considered hanging up on him.
“…Okay,” Hayden said finally, forcing himself back on track. “Okay. Think. Think. There has to be…something. Did you eat anything weird last night? Drink something? Talk to someone? Did you, like, piss off a witch or something?”
Ilya scoffed. “I do not believe in….”
“You literally woke up in my body,” Hayden cut in. “Now is not the time to draw the line at witches.”
Ilya paused, “…Fine,” he conceded. “No witches that I am aware of.”
“Great. Love that,” Hayden muttered. “Super helpful.”
“Why is it something that I did?” Ilya spat back, “what is American expression? It takes two to mango? Why are you blaming me?”
“It's tango Rozanov,” Pike said, “and I didn’t do anything last night. I came back from practice. Shane and I watched a nature documentary. Well he pretended to while he texted his Boston Li-....texted someone,”
He was going to say Boston Lily. Ilya did not know that Hayden Pike knew about Boston Lily. And suddenly, he felt his heart drop again.
“Do not text Jane,”
Pike had been rambling on about something probably still blaming Ilya for their predicament and he cut himself off with a confused, “what?”
“Do not text my Jane,” Ilya repeated.
“You have a girlfriend Rozanov?” Pike said, “or is this just one of your fuck buddies?”
He dragged his teeth over his tongue, buying himself a second,just one,to think.Jane is Shane. Your best friend. Who will quite literally combust if you find out about us.
“…I ask one favor of you, Pike,” Ilya cut in sharply, steamrolling right over the question before Hayden could dig himself any deeper. “While you get to live it up as Ilya Rozanov—”
“I do not want to be Ilya Rozanov,” Hayden interrupted immediately.
“You will not text Jane,” Ilya finished, ignoring him completely.
“Rozanov—”
“Do not call. Do not text. Do not even open the messages,” Ilya continued, voice tightening. “You see the name, you pretend you are illiterate.”
“That is not how phones work—”
“I do not care how phones work,” Ilya snapped. “You leave it alone.”
“…This is so suspicious,” Hayden said slowly.
“Good,” Ilya said flatly. “Be suspicious. Stay away.”
“Wow,” Hayden huffed. “So it is someone important.”
Ilya didn’t respond to that, “Bylat,” he muttered under his breath, the curse sounding deeply wrong in Hayden Pike’s voice. Too clean. Not enough weight behind it. It made his own skin itch.
He forced himself back on track.
“Listen,” Ilya said, sharper now. “Montreal Metros, when are you in Boston?”
“We play the Minutemen in about four weeks,”
Four weeks was not ideal. Not at all. But maybe it would resolve itself before then?
“Okay so when you come to play the Minute maids we meet up,”
“So our plan is to wait a month? Hayden asked.
“I am open to other suggestions,” Ilya told him.
“Okay, but in the meantime—” Hayden pressed, “what do we do? Just… cosplay are each other?”
Ilya glanced back at the mirror.At Hayden Pike staring back at him.Wrong posture. Wrong expression. Wrong everything.
“…Yes,” Ilya said finally.
There was a long pause.
“You’re kidding,” Hayden said, “you’re going to play hockey as me? Go out and practice with my team? Hell with Shane?”
That sounded ideal. Ilya had always wanted to play with Hollander. As much fun as it was to compete with him and to slam him into boards, he wondered how unstoppable they’d be on the ice together. He was dreaming about it as Pike was threatening him.
“I swear to god if you hurt Shane-
“Relax. I will not hurt Hollander. Together Hollander and I will play so well and whole media will be so surprised at Pike not being the worst player-
“You’re unbelievable,” Hayden snapped. “You’ve been in my body for, what, ten minutes, and you’re already insulting me while wearing my face?”
“It is not insult if it is true.”
“Oh my God.”
“And you should be thanking me,” Ilya went on. “I will raise your reputation.”
“Raise…..” Hayden choked. “Raise my…Rozanov, if you embarrass me in front of my team, I will—”
“You will what?” Ilya interrupted, amused. “You are me now. You will sit in my apartment and not text Jane.”
“And what about it?”
Ilya’s expression shifted instantly, whatever lingering amusement he’d been clinging to draining out of it. His grip on the phone tightened, thumb pressing a little too hard against the edge of the case.For a second, he didn’t answer.
“What about Russia?”
“Aren’t you going back soon?” Hayden asked, “I do not have any desire to go to the USSR, no offense buddy,”
“You are ignorant Pike. It is the Russian Federation now,”