Archive of Our Own

Shane had been in Vegas for thirty-six hours and had already smiled in front of one hundred and fourteen cameras, accepted a ceremonial poker chip the size of a dinner plate, and pretended he knew how to describe the mouthfeel of a nonalcoholic tequila sponsor’s "botanical finish."

He was still wearing the suit from the NHL awards dinner, though he had removed the jacket and draped it carefully over the back of a chair. The pants were a dark green that his stylist had called "moody fern" and Ilya had called "rich elf."

He had texted as much at 8:11 p.m.

Why are you dressed like rich elf

And again after Shane didn’t respond because he was being photographed beside a retired defenseman from Tennessee who kept calling him Shawny:

you look overpriced and annoying

Shane had read it in the green room and done the embarrassing thing where he smiled at his phone in public. His mother had noticed and made a soft noise at the back of her throat. He had looked up too quickly and said, "Rose sent me something stupid," which was a silly lie considering Rose mostly sent him adorable pictures of her dog wearing seasonal hats and links to articles about the dangers of seed oils.

Now it was 1:43 a.m. His room was high enough in the tower that the city looked pixelated and somewhat unserious below him, all neon lights and black glass and women shouting in egregiously high heels. He wanted a shower, six almonds, and for Ilya Rozanov to stop existing in his bloodstream.

The minibar made a clicking sound. Shane froze with one hand on his tie.

There were many things he hated about hotels, but especially the way they made every ordinary object seem accusatory. The bedspread accused him of being lonely. The silk robe accused him of enjoying luxury more than he wanted to admit. The minibar accused him of having paid twenty-two dollars for cashews in New York last season and then panicking for three hours about whether the team accountant had seen the receipt.

It clicked again.

"What the hell?" Shane said.

This was his first instinct in nearly all unusual situations, though not due to cowardice. He had blocked shots with the inside of his ankle and once given a post-game interview while bleeding into his own eye, but the social category of an event mattered. A puck to the talus was simple. A clicking minibar at 1:43 in the morning? That belonged to the category of things that could make him seem mentally unwell.

He opened it anyway.

The light blinked on. Inside were three tiny bottles of vodka, a row of tonics, a bag of gummy bears, two cans of coke, a dubai chocolate bar, and a ceramic bottle shaped like an oversized blueberry.

The blueberry was smoking.

"What the fuck?" Shane said.

The smoke curled upward, lavender and shimmering, then gathered itself into the vague outline of a tiny man sitting crosslegged on the minibar shelf between the tonics and the gummy bears. He was about six inches tall and wore a lavender linen suit. His beard was spectacular and braided with grey ribbon. His expression suggested that he had spent several thousand years waiting for someone with better manners.

"Shane Hollander," the genie said.

Shane shut the minibar door.

For four seconds, he stood in the middle of the hotel room kitchenette and breathed carefully through his nose. Then he opened the minibar again.

The genie glared up at him.

"A bit rude, no?"

"Sorry," Shane said automatically, and then hated himself for apologizing to a hotel demon.

"Excuse me?" The miniature man said, affronted. He bowed, one arm crossing his waist. "I am Eliseus. A genie, not a demon, though I’ll forgive you for the casual stereotyping."

"Okay. Great. Cool." Shane crouched in front of the minibar, which was not how he had imagined meeting an immortal being, though he had never imagined it with much discipline, to be fair. "Why are you in there?"

"Brand partnership," said the genie.

Shane blinked.

Eliseus sighed. "I’m kidding. People are so grim these days. Nobody used to believe me, but at least they screamed with feeling."

"I’m not screaming."

"Yes, most impressive. Are you sure you’re not screaming internally? I’ve been told I can be quite intimidating."

Shane sat back on his heels. "What do you want?"

The genie unfolded himself, rose, and somehow stepped out of the minibar fully sized, still in the linen suit, still smoking faintly at the shoulders. His loafers touched the carpet soundlessly. Shane, despite everything, admired them. They were a beautiful soft brown suede, hand stitched, probably Italian. Maybe not Italian, actually. The genie seemed to predate Italy. Shane wondered if that, too, was offensive.

"I am here," the genie explained, "to offer you one wish."

Shane laughed once, too loud, and stood up.

The genie waited.

"Sorry," Shane said. "That’s, uh. That’s very… nice? But I don’t really do wishes."

"Everyone does wishes."

"Not me. I do goals."

"So a wish with force. Congratulations, how novel a concept."

Shane took one step back. He was taller than the genie by two inches and still felt outmanned. "I’m serious. I’m very grateful, obviously. Huge fan of the concept. But I’m good."

The genie glanced around the room. At the suit jacket placed carefully on the chair, at the phone lying face up on the bed, the screen now dark but still warm from Shane persistently waking it. At the running shoes lined just so beside the dresser, toes aligned perfectly with the baseboards.

"I don’t believe you." the genie said.

Shane flashed his public smile, humble and strangely laminated. Rose called it his uncanny valley face. "I’m fine."

"Yes," said the genie. "So you say."

Shane looked toward the window, where a helicopter moved over the Strip, blinking red in the dark. His tie was still around his neck. The knot felt tight and childish suddenly, like something his mother had dressed him in before a school concert.

"How does it work?" he asked, because curiosity had always been the crack in his discipline. Well. Curiosity and Ilya’s hands.

"The wish?"

"No, the hotel points system," he rolled his eyes. "Yes, the wish."

The genie smiled slightly. "I do not grant wishes. That is the simple version. I locate a universe in which the desired condition is already true and simply move you there."

Shane stared at him, uncomprehending.

"The multiverse is infinite," the genie continued. "Or close enough that nobody has successfully complained. Most wishes are easy. Money. Youth. Revenge. The affection of someone unsuitable or unattainable. Perhaps a different nose. A dead relative made alive again, though people are rarely prepared for the consequences." He buffed his nails against his pocket square. "Perhaps a Stanley Cup."

Shane’s mouth went dry. His hand went to his tie and tightened it by mistake. The knot was already too tight, but he gave it one neat, useless tug before he realized what he was doing and dropped his hand.

The genie noticed. Everyone in Shane’s life seemed to notice things for a living but most people were clumsy about it. Coaches noticed effort. Reporters noticed weakness. Ilya noticed everything and pretended he’d noticed nothing, which was worse and fucking annoying and also why Shane loved him.

"I didn’t say I wanted the Cup," Shane said.

"It’s a safe assumption," said the genie with a shrug.

Shane rubbed the back of his neck. He thought of the Cup because everyone thought of the Cup, because he had built his entire adult life around trying not to think of the Cup too directly. Desire had rules. You could want it in practice, in training, in the dying seconds of a penalty kill when your lungs became wet paper bags. But you couldn’t want it alone in a hotel room at night, where it became suffocating.

"So I could wish for a universe where Montreal wins next year?"

"Yes."

"And you would move me there?"

"If it exists."

Shane scoffed. "It definitely exists."

The genie winked. "Many times over."

Shane sat on the edge of the bed. His hands felt oddly unfastened from the rest of him. "And what happens to me?"

"Which one?"

"This one. Me. Here."

"You continue from your own consciousness and the world adjusts around you. You remember the old version, unless you request otherwise, which I strongly discourage. Memory is painful but useful. Forgetting tends to make people sloppy."

"What about the other me? The one in the universe you move me to." His thumb had found the seam of his trouser pocket and was worrying it loose.

The genie looked pleased. "Very good. Usually it takes people longer to ask."

"Great, I’m spiritually advanced and having a nervous breakdown."

"You merge. No murder is involved, if that is your concern."

"That was definitely one of my concerns."

"Very good of you, though I’d expect nothing less."

Shane rubbed his eyes. Behind his eyelids, he saw Ilya at the awards show three tables away, laughing at something some winger from Florida had said. Ilya had worn black. He always wore black to these things, as if mourning everyone else’s poor taste. His hair had been longer than usual, curling near his collar, and a makeup artist must have gotten to him because his skin had looked almost radiant under the ballroom lights. He hadn’t looked at Shane very much. This was one of the ways Shane knew he was upset.

They had fought earlier in the evening, in a hallway behind the private lounge while a woman with a clipboard repeatedly passed them and pretended not to understand English. It was a stupid fight, which was nothing new, and each one had trapdoors underneath.

Ilya had said, "You could try not flirting with women."

Shane had said, "I was talking about youth hockey."

"The problem is your face, not your cute little summer camp."

"Fuck you, your jealousy is what isn’t cute."

The woman in question was a host from ESPN wearing a backless dress and the eager helplessness of a golden retriever in a silk slip. Shane had not been flirting. Shane was almost certain he hadn’t been flirting. He had been performing friendliness, which was different, except from a distance the gestures probably had the same skeleton. Touch the elbow. Laugh with your chin down. Make the other person feel, for thirty seconds, as if they’re the only significant person in a room full of significant people.

"You’re being unfair," Shane had said, adjusting his cuff as the woman with the clipboard passed by once again.

Ilya’s face had done very little, which was the danger of it. Its stillness made Shane theatrical in contrast.

"I’m being discreet," Ilya had said. "This is what you want."

Shane had stared at him. "That’s not fair either."

"Isn’t it."

"You know why it’s complicated."

"Sure."

"I’m not asking you to hide."

"No," Ilya had said, softly enough that it was almost cruel. "You are very good boy. You ask for nothing."

That was when Shane had looked away, because the woman with the clipboard was coming back and because he had the sudden juvenile urge to cry in a hallway beside a tower of branded sparkling water.

Afterward, Ilya had gone to his table and Shane had gone to his and for three hours, the room kept clapping around them.

Now the genie was watching him with bright, ancient eyes.

"No," Shane said.

The genie lifted a brow.

"No Stanley Cup. That’s lazy."

"You could wish for privacy."

Shane laughed again, quieter this time. "That’s grim."

"You are quite famous."

"I chose that."

"Did you? Hockey or fame? Humans are always shocked when one choice changes the shape of their entire lives."

Shane looked at his phone. No new messages. He wondered where Ilya was. Three floors down, probably. Or at some terrible party with Russian and Swedish defensemen and women with long glossy hair. He had a way of vanishing into public spaces when hurt, becoming more available to everyone except the person who actually had any claim on him.

Claim. Is that what Shane had?

"Can I test it?" Shane asked.

The genie frowned. "How so?"

"Like make a small wish."

"Do I look like a vending machine?"

"You said one wish and I haven’t wished yet. I’m just gathering information."

"I believe it’s called stalling."

"On the ice, we call it assessment."

The genie sat in the desk chair, crossed one leg over the other, and examined the hem of his trousers. "Fine. A small wish. Nonbinding."

Shane thought about it and his mind leapt immediately to terrible things, then to noble things, then to stupid ones. He could wish for his father’s knee to stop hurting him. For his mother to stop pretending she didn’t obsessively read every article ever published about him. For a version of himself who didn’t care what strangers thought about his preferences. For a version of Ilya who could walk into this room without having to check the hallway first.

Instead, because he was starving and afraid, he said, "I wish the minibar had Greek yoghurt."

The genie closed his eyes.

There was a click.

Shane opened the minibar. The gummy bears were gone. In their place sat a glass jar of Greek yoghurt with honey in a separate compartment and a tiny wooden spoon taped to the lid.

Shane stared at it, offended by how moved he was.

"This universe has very nice amenities," the genie said.

"Did anything else change?"

"Several minor geopolitical differences. Nothing you would notice before breakfast."

"Funny."

"I may not be Robin Williams, but I do try."

Shane grabbed the yoghurt and unscrewed the lid. It was his favorite brand and the honey was dark and slightly crystallized.

"Okay," he said. "So this is insane."

"Yes."

"And I still remember the gummy bears?"

"A tragic burden, to be sure."

Shane ate a spoonful. His stomach accepted it with embarrassing gratitude.

The genie watched him. "You know your wish."

"I really don’t."

"Dishonesty’s a bad look on you."

"I have a lot of wishes."

"Yes. But only one is making you chew through yoghurt like a frightened horse."

Shane lowered the spoon. His reflection in the window looked sweaty and pale. Across the room, his phone lit up.

He lunged for it, then stopped himself, which was humiliating because no one else was there to see it except an immortal being, which somehow felt like the eyes of all human history bearing witness to his desperation.

The text said: you up?

Shane typed, No.

Deleted it.

Typed, Why?

Deleted that too.

Typed, Are you drunk?

Deleted it because that one felt slightly petty.

The genie made a small impatient motion. "This is painful to watch."

"You live in a blueberry."

"Not exclusively."

Shane set the phone down without answering. His heart was behaving badly. He could feel it everywhere, even in his hands.

"I wish," he started, then stopped.

The genie sat up.

Shane laughed but nothing in him found anything funny. "This is so stupid."

"The most honest things are often undignified at first."

"I wish there was a universe," Shane said carefully, because wording mattered, "where he could love me openly, without losing anything. His career, family, safety, whatever. And where I could keep him without feeling like I’m taking something from him."

The room went quiet. The Strip kept glittering beyond the glass, but for a second the whole city looked flat and unplugged.

The genie did not move.

Shane’s mouth went dry again. "What?"

The genie’s face changed in increments, like ancient machinery encountering a coin it couldn’t sort. His beard had been moving faintly since he appeared, the braided ends stirring in the lavender smoke around him, but now even they went still. He looked at Shane for a long second, then down at his own palm, as if the answer had already arrived there and he disliked its shape.

"What?" Shane asked again.

The genie lifted his hand and the air above his palm began to glow. The room filled with small points of light, hundreds and then thousands of them. They spread across the ceiling, down the walls, through the mirrors, and reflected in the floor to ceiling windows until the skyline disappeared behind them.

Shane stood very still.

"Infinite universes," Eliseus said, and the lights moved. Some flared. Some disappeared. Some gathered into threads so bright Shane had to squint.

"There is a universe where he never leaves Russia," the genie said. "There is one where he leaves at seventeen and pursues medicine. There is one where he becomes a tennis player, though not a very good one. There is one where you teach math in Vancouver and he sells expensive real estate in New York City. There is one where the two of you meet on a delayed flight and argue for six hours over the armrest. There is one where you are both women and much more sensible, though still not sensible enough."

Shane swallowed.

"There are universes where he is out. Many of them. There are universes where you are too. There are universes where no one cares and there are universes where everyone cares and you survive it anyway. There are universes where one of you is less famous, less afraid, less stubborn, less beautiful, which appears to help."

Shane made a sound. It was supposed to be a laugh. The genie’s eyes followed the dancing lights.

"There are universes where he loves you and tells you early. There are universes where he loves you and tells you not at all. There are universes where he does not tell you until you are forty-seven and standing in a grocery store arguing about bananas. There are universes where you leave him first and there are universes where he never forgives you for it. There are universes where he forgives you before you ask."

The lights flickered faster. Shane felt sick.

"But?" he asked.

The genie closed his hand and the lights vanished.

"But I cannot find one where love costs nothing."

Shane looked down at the yoghurt on the nightstand, at the honey that had slid into the white in a golden seam.

"That’s bleak."

"That is the first result."

"There are infinite universes."

"Yes."

"But not one?"

"Not one I can move you to."

Shane sat down on the bed because his knees had become abstract. His phone lit again.

do not be dramatic
i know you are awake

A moment later: Shane

He loved when Ilya used his name and hated that he loved it. In texts it looked oddly formal, almost bureaucratic. Shane. As if Ilya were addressing a memo to the head of the department of his self control.

His phone buzzed again, this time with an incoming call.

ILYA

Shane stared at it until the second ring. Then the third.

"You should answer it," said the genie.

"Don’t tell me what to do."

Eliseus rolled his eyes. "I am not granting this as a wish."

On the fourth ring, Shane picked up.

For a second there was only breathing. The faint echo of an empty hallway, maybe. A door closing.

"So you are awake," Ilya said.

"So are you."

"I’m in the hallway."

Shane closed his eyes. "Why?"

"Because I came to your room and then thought maybe you’d tell me to go away."

"You came to my room?"

"Almost."

Shane stood so quickly he nearly knocked over the yoghurt. "Are you still here?" He headed for the door.

"No. I went back to the elevator. I got out and stood around looking stupid. So I left. And now I stand by the ice machine."

Shane could picture it too clearly, Ilya in black dress pants and a half unbuttoned shirt, holding his phone beside a machine coughing out hotel ice with grim persistence. Ilya, who could score from an angle no one else could calculate, defeated by a public hallway.

"Ilya."

"Hm?"

"Come here."

It was quiet for a moment. "You are sure?" Ilya asked softly.

Shane glanced at the genie, who had had become very interested in the room service menu.

"No," Shane said. "But come here anyway."

There was a breath on the other end. A small shift, and Shane could hear movement.

"Okay," Ilya said.

The call ended.

Shane stood there holding the phone. The room had become aggressively itself again, the bed, the lamp, the chair, the suit jacket, the yoghurt, Las Vegas pretending to be an alien planet outside the window.

"I stumped you," Shane said.

"Yes," said the genie.

"I don’t know if that makes me feel better."

"It should not."

"Great."

"But it may make you feel less cheated by fate."

Shane rubbed at one freckled cheek, then dropped his hand. He became aware of his face, suddenly. His hair, the tie still noosed around his neck. He went to the mirror and began fixing himself, then stopped halfway through tightening the knot.

"Oh, this is insane," he said as he pulled the tie off completely and let it fall.

The genie watched approvingly.

"Could you not look so smug?" Shane asked, annoyed.

"Sir, I have assisted kings, saints, murderers, and several Nobel laureates. None have been so anxious about the shape of their collar."

"I’m a public figure."

"What you are is a man in love."

"That’s actually worse."

"Indeed. It often is."

A knock came at the door.

Shane looked through the peephole nervously. Ilya stood in the hallway, one hand in his pocket, head slightly bowed, as if his own height had become inconvenient. His curls were a mess. He had lost his tie. The severe beauty of him looked less arranged than usual, almost bruised by travel and fluorescent light.

Shane opened the door.

For a moment, neither of them said anything. This was usually where Shane made a joke because silence made demands he wasn’t ready to answer for. But Ilya looked at him with such tired concentration that Shane forgot the joke before it formed.

"You ignored my text," Ilya said.

"I was busy."

"With what?"

Shane glanced over his shoulder. The genie was gone. The overgrown blueberry sat on the desk beside the pot of yoghurt, harmless and blue and no longer smoking. Shane could almost feel it listening.

"Yoghurt," Shane said.

Ilya looked past him. "You ignored me for yoghurt."

"I know how it sounds."

Ilya’s brows knitted together. "You are okay?"

Shane leaned against the door. There were cameras out in the world. Agents. Owners. Fans. Commentators who had learned the word optics and now carried it around like an expectation. There were children in Russia with Ilya’s poster on their walls. There were sponsors who loved courage only after it had become profitable. There were Shane’s parents, who wanted him to be happy and still sometimes looked frightened by the methods finding it required of him. There were the Metros, the Raiders, the standings, the playoffs, the season after that, the whole roaring machine of the NHL.

There was also Ilya in the hallway, wearing a shirt with two open buttons too many, smelling faintly of smoke and beer and hotel soap. Ilya’s face gave nothing away except, unfortunately, everything.

"I don’t think I am, actually." Shane said.

Ilya’s mouth shifted. "Okay."

"I had a weird night."

"You are in Vegas. Weird is included with resort fee."

"Weirder."

"Did a mascot come to your room? This happened to me once in Nashville."

"No. What? No."

"Good. I really hate that fucking bucktoothed cat. I would fight it for you."

Shane’s heart stuttered in his chest. "It wasn’t a cat."

Ilya waited.

Shane stepped back to let him in.

The door closed behind them and for a second Shane stood with his hand still on the handle, as if he might open it again and shove the whole night back out into the hallway. Ilya moved past him slowly, not touching him, though his shoulder came close enough that Shane felt the heat of him through his shirt.

Ilya crossed the room and picked up the yoghurt. He turned it in one hand and studied the label with an expression of grave suspicion. "You eat minibar dairy now?"

"It’s Greek."

"Ah." Ilya lifted the tiny wooden spoon and tapped a short rhythm against the glass rim. "An exotic hazard. Your favorite flavor."

Shane laughed once, then put both hands over his face because the sound had come out wrong. Too high. Too honest.

When he lowered them, Ilya was no longer looking at the yoghurt. He was looking at Shane’s tie, which Shane had dropped on the carpet in a little ruined knot. Then at the blueberry on the desk. Then at Shane. "What’s going on with you?"

Shane went to the tie and picked it up because it was easier than standing there empty handed. "I asked a genie to find a universe where my existence doesn’t cost you your entire life."

He hadn’t meant to phrase it that way, or at all. He had meant to be clever first. To make the situation manageable with nonsense. To build a little bridge of jokes and cross it without getting his feet wet.

But the AC turned off and the room lost its background hum and Shane felt exposed. He looked at the blueberry, then at the yoghurt. Then at Ilya, who had lost his tie somewhere between the awards show and the ice machine and was standing in Shane’s hotel room as if he belonged there and was trying very hard not to be grateful for it.

Ilya sat down on the edge of the bed heavily, as if the mattress had appeared under him by accident. The movement was small, but Shane felt it as a collapse. The yoghurt remained in Ilya’s hand.

Shane gestured at it. "You’re going to spill it all over your pants."

Ilya glanced down, loosened his grip, and set the jar carefully on the nightstand. His fingers stayed on the rim for another second. "I see," he said.

"No, you don’t." Shane folded the tie once, badly. "I mean, maybe you do? I don’t know. But there was a genie."

Ilya blinked.

"I know, okay?" Shane said. "I know I sound insane."

"Was it in the minibar?"

Shane stared at him.

Ilya shrugged but it didn’t quite finish. "It is Vegas. Where else would it be?"

In an attempt to knock loose his sanity, Shane turned toward the wall and thumped his forehead against the plaster once, then again, gentler the second time. The paint was cool and unpleasantly textured.

"He couldn’t find one," Shane said to the wall. "That’s the point. I mean, I think that was the point. Which is fucking rude."

Behind him, the bed creaked. Ilya stood and Shane heard him cross the room before he felt him. One step, then another, then the pause of Ilya deciding whether he was allowed. One hand came to rest between Shane’s shoulder blades, and the other between his forehead and the wall.

Shane closed his eyes.

"Come here," Ilya said.

"I’m standing right here."

"No," Ilya’s thumb moved once against his scapula. "Come with me."

Shane turned. Ilya held out his hand.

For some reason, taking it felt more embarrassing than saying the thing about the genie had, but Shane did it anyway. Ilya pulled him in and spun just enough to make the back of Shane’s knees touch the edge of the bed, and they went down in a tangle of limbs, Ilya’s hands on his waist steadying him, fingers catching in his belt loops. Ilya didn’t kiss Shane right away, he only touched him, which was more dangerous. His hands were always a language he spoke better than English. Maybe better than Russian too.

Here.
Stay.
Eat.
Sleep.
I notice.
I remember.
I’m afraid.
I’m here anyway.

"We aren’t free," Ilya said.

Shane closed his eyes. "I know."

"No," Ilya reached for Shane’s gnarled tie, took it from his hand, and folded it properly over one thigh. His own hands were careful with it, which made Shane’s throat hurt. "You think you buy me something I do not want. Very Shane way of thinking. Expensive and wrong."

Shane let out a weak laugh and leaned forward until his forehead found Ilya’s collarbone. "Be nice to me, I’m having a crisis."

"You are always having crisis. You can organize them by color."

"Great. I’ll file this one under minibar purple."

"Shane." Ilya laughed against his hair. "It costs, yes," Ilya said, his hand a warm and comforting presence at the nape of Shane’s neck. "But so does nothing."

Shane pulled back enough to look at him.

Ilya’s face was serious now, and younger for it. There were faint shadows under his eyes. A small shaving nick near his jaw. Errant curls falling over his forehead in a way Shane wanted to both fix and ruin.

"I love you," Ilya said. "And I’m tired of making sure I lose only the things I choose. It is not possible. I lose anyway." He leaned forward and pressed his lips to Shane’s forehead. "Let the genie ask me, and I choose you every time."

Shane’s chest throbbed. "I’m not asking you to choose me over everything," he said.

"I did it anyway."

"I don’t want to push."

"You never have."

"I love you and it scares me."

This made Ilya smile, only barely. "Finally, something normal."

Shane shoved him lightly. Ilya caught his wrist and kissed the inside of it. Shane had been kissed by Ilya in hotel rooms, rental houses, cars, an equipment hallway in Boston, a women’s bathroom at a charity gala while someone’s wife fixed her lipstick two sinks away. He still hadn’t developed immunity.

"You are scared," Ilya said. "I am scared. Genie is scared because he meets you and sees how many lotions are in the bathroom."

"Leave my skincare routine alone."

"Never."

Shane looked toward the desk. The blueberry sat there with the faint air of having done enough for one evening.

"I don’t know what we do," Shane said.

Ilya nodded. "Good."

"Good?"

"If you know, I worry."

"That’s because you think plans are controlling and you hate them."

"I hate your plans. My plans are beautiful. Romantic even."

"Your plans usually involve lying to management."

"Worth it, for you."

Shane smiled despite himself and Ilya watched it happen. There was something indecent about being observed this closely by someone who pretended to be careless.

"Maybe," Ilya said, "we do one thing."

"What?"

"Tonight, I stay."

Shane’s smile faded.

"Tomorrow," Ilya continued, "we have coffee. You complain about how bitter it is. I say something stupid about your face. We fight maybe. Then later, one more thing."

"One more thing."

"Yes. This is how normal people live, I think."

Shane raised an eyebrow. "You think?"

"I’ve been busy learning how."

The laugh came out of Shane before he could dress it up. Ilya genuinely smiled then and Shane felt a terrible tenderness move through him, too large for his ribs, too inconvenient for language.

There were infinite universes, apparently. In one, maybe Shane had more courage. In one, Ilya was easier to handle. In another, they were women, which the genie had implied was an improvement but not a cure. In one, a version of Shane had answered the first text and saved everyone twenty minutes. In another, he had wished for the Cup and become unbearable. In one, there were still gummy bears in the minibar.

But in this one, love cost them something. It would cost them tomorrow too, and probably after that. Sleep, privacy, clean exits, the small cowardices that had once passed for protection. Shane understood that now. He knew it with Ilya warm beneath him, with Ilya’s hands on his skin and the ridiculous blueberry watching from the desk. There was no universe where they got away clean. There was only this one, where Ilya had come anyway, and Shane had opened the door.

Shane reached up and fixed the curls on Ilya’s forehead.

Ilya let him.

And because Shane was still himself and because the universe had not repaired him into someone less ridiculous, he said, "Your shirt’s kinda slutty."

Ilya looked down at it. "Is that a compliment?"

Shane considered it for a moment. "Yes."

"Good," he said, and pulled Shane closer. "I wore it for you."