Chapter Text
"Rose Landry is my fairy godmother."
Shane practices saying it in the bathroom mirror, over and over. He pushes the words out of his mouth with different intonations and studies his own expression, hoping some combination of earnest eyebrows and a set mouth will make it seem like he's not a crazy man or playing a practical joke.
Nothing really works.
It turns out Ilya is the type to get jealous jealous. After the umpteenth time at the cottage that Ilya makes a joke about Shane not being too gay to fuck Rose Landry or calling Rose Landry more than he calls his mom, Shane admits to himself that he can't keep pretending he hasn't noticed what Ilya is trying to bring up, in his own avoidant, passive aggressive way. The jealousy was kind of hot at first, a sexy reveal that Ilya cares about him, but now it's starting to get a little awkward.
But Shane's a coward, and when he practiced telling the truth to the bathroom mirror he still looked like he was attempting the world's lamest stand up joke. So he tells Ilya half the truth.
"We're friends," Shane assures him with a sigh as he gathers up the card deck they've just finished with. "Rose and I are just good friends. I told you, she helped me realize I'm gay. So, like, by definition, we are never going to have sex."
"Again," Ilya says curtly, playing with a stray joker card. It twirls around and around on his fingertip.
"What do you mean?" Shane asks, intent on his shuffling. He hates when a deck still has runs from last time when you take it back out. Better to shuffle before and after. He learned that from his dad.
"You mean you two are never going to have sex again. Because you did already have sex with her once, right? Or… twice?" He hands over the joker and looks at Shane. Shane fights to keep the guilty look off his face. "Three times? Fuck, really, Shane? How much testing did you have to do? You are sure you are gay?"
"Very gay," Shane assures him. "Or, I mean… normal gay," he corrects, ducking his head, but Ilya's already got a slow grin of delight spreading across his face. "Look, I know it's kinda weird? But isn't it like, a good sign to stay friends with your ex?"
"Stay friends. You know what this means? Means like, you text sometimes, you see them with mutual friends. You are literally stopping game with me for weekly zoom session with your ex! Will she be on zoom call in swimsuit she wore on cover of Sports Illustrated last week?"
"I told you, we mostly talk about our careers! She's great at manifestations and goal setting and stuff. You should try it actually, it's really – what are you doing?" Because Ilya has now dropped to his knees on the concrete patio and is more or less pawing at Shane's shorts.
"Making sure you cannot get hard during zoom with Sexiest Woman Alive."
Shane looks down Ilya's efforts with some chagrin. "Uh, fuck. I wish we could, but I only have five minutes before I have to be on the call."
Ilya whines, and the sound goes straight to Shane's dick, which makes a betraying little pulse that's visible even through the fabric of his shorts. Ilya raises his eyebrows and glances back up at Shane.
"I think five minutes is enough," Ilya says, easing Shane's shorts down and palming his dick. "Oh, look, he agrees."
"It's a new month," the pixilated Rose says from the laptop. "So let's start with your new manifestations."
Shane nods, relieved she remembered his request that she not say wishes. Especially not with Ilya somewhere in the house. Hopefully not listening.
"The first?" she prompts.
"To stay physically healthy and very good at hockey. This includes avoiding CTE and long term injuries," Shane intones. He's very, very careful not to say to keep being the best, lest Rose decide that someone else is playing better than Shane. Especially since the most likely rival candidate for "best" is someone Shane has recently realized he's in love with.
"Shane," Rose says, sounding exasperated. "Is that really still number one?"
"Yes," he says flatly. "It's not going to change, I've told you."
She sighs, then prompts, "Number two?"
"To give back to my community in meaningful ways. Expand the sport, do some good, that kind of thing," he says. He rubs the back of his neck. "Maybe… I don't know, this part isn't a manifestation yet, but maybe like, some mental health stuff?" This is a new one for him, still percolating, inspired by the last sports biography he read and the talk with Ilya by the fire the other night.
"Oh," Rose says, sounding surprised. "That's… I like that."
"You do?"
"Yeah, I can definitely help with that one," she says. He watches the pink fuzz on the top of her pen jump in and out of frame as she jots something down.
"And the third?" Her eyes look so kind, so gentle, even through the blurry little screen.
Shane's heart constricts as he thinks about the man sitting somewhere in this house. About how many of his impossible-to-imagine wishes have already come true.
"Um, I think… I just want to know if Ilya loves me too. Obviously I know you can't, like, make him if he doesn't. Or, please don't, even if you can. But I just want to know if he feels the same way…" he swallows. "I don't think I can say it first. Every time I try, I just can't get it out."
"Hmm," Rose says, looking down at her notebook. He hears a few little taps of the pen tip pen on paper and watches the pink fuzz on its end dance around the bottom of the screen a bit more, as Rose writes some things down about his list.
"Or is that… is that too much?" he asks. "I don't want it if he only would blurt it out during a any trip to the ER or over my deathbed or something."
"Oh, honey," Rose says gently, looking up into the camera. "It's not too much at all. I keep telling you, you need to dream bigger. We're not stopping till you get your happily ever after."
Shane eyes her nervously, but Rose is already looking back down, humming to herself as she moves the pen around.
"Don't marry Svetlana," Shane finds himself having to say later that evening. He fixes his gaze across the couch at Ilya. "Just don't." He swallows hard.
Fuck, why could his manifestation call not have been tomorrow? Why did he waste this month's third wish on something so stupid? He has to call Rose, ask if it's too late to change the third wish. But, what if he does ask, and Rose decides the only way to accomplish it is like, incapacitate Svetlana, or Ilya, or something else horrible?
"We can figure something else out, okay?" Shane adds.
"Okay," Ilya whispers, looking fondly at Shane. Shane wiggles his toes against Ilya's, taking in his curls, how he looks in the flannel he "borrowed" from Shane, and the softness in his eyes, so much more relaxed out of season. Three words are at the tip of Shane's tongue, practically choking his airway with how badly they need to get out.
He looks away. "Shit, sorry. I just remembered, I have to call Rose about something." He pushes off the blanket and grabs for his phone, then swings his feet around and hastily pushes himself off the couch.
"Hollander," Ilya says, turning his head to watch him go, "what the fuck?"
That night, Shane has a dream.
He's teaching a little kid with curly hair how to skate and play hockey. They do some drills, with and without sticks. It's Ilya, of course; dream-Shane knows this and feels a softness every time he looks down at him. Every time he looks back up and around the rink, a woman is sitting in his line of sight, watching. She looks so beautiful, but so sad.
He wants to help her, but whenever he turns away from kid-Ilya to skate closer and check on her, kid-Ilya gives a yelp and falls down. Each time he helps kid-Ilya back up, he's a little bigger, a little older, until he's full grown and then suddenly he's the one pulling Shane along. Only grown-Ilya's not wearing the black and gold of the Raiders. His sweater is black and red, instead, and he's pulling Shane along the edge of the arena, and he's laughing when he looks back, mouth spreading into that rare wide smile of his, making them skate faster and faster and faster.
Shane glances up again to check on the woman, but she's gone. He does a quick 360 on his skates, shifting his hands around as he does so to keep Ilya's hand in one of his own the whole time, but he doesn't see her anywhere. When Shane looks back down, Ilya is in kid-form again, now basically swimming in grown-Ilya's giant jersey. He says, in the cutest little Russian accent, "Thank you for helping me practice. My mom used to do it, but now I have you."
Shane wakes with a start. He sits up and thinks about the dream a bit. He should keep the idea for tomorrow and bring a fully-formed plan to Ilya at a time that is not two am. But the idea stirs in him, won't let him wait, won't let him go back to sleep. He switches on the light.
"I have another idea," he says as he shakes Ilya awake.
"What idea, what is happening?" Ilya says, voice thick with sleep.
"What if you played in Ottawa? You'd be closer, and maybe we can start to change the narrative, a bit."
Back in November, after their second disastrous fuck but before Shane knew Rose had magic powers or whatever, they had sat on Shane's couch and split a bottle of rosé left behind once by Jackie that Rose had found buried in his pantry, and they'd both talked about their exes. Kind of.
"I get the sense you're not always 100% with me, when we… you know," she said, gesturing back at the bedroom. "Is there sometimes someone else on your mind?"
This was normally a topic that would send Shane into lockdown mode, but the rosé was helping everything with sharp scary edges look a bit softer, so he just shrugged and popped his hoodie string in his mouth.
"Let me guess," Rose said, placing her own glass back down on the coffee table and pulling her legs up a little closer underneath her as she looked at him. "Bad breakup? Long relationship, maybe?"
"Yeah," he said, around the string of his hoodie. "Basically."
"Hmm," she said. "But you think you're over them?"
"Course." He spat out the hoodie string and reached for his glass of wine. "Sooo over it. I wish they – she could see us together. I'm not trying to like, use you or anything," he said quickly, realizing how this sounded, and was relieved to see that Rose was just looking at him with amusement. "But she had this really hot ex who she fucked the whole time, and we weren't exclusive, I mean, she even asked me about other girls, and it was just… fuck, that sounds so messy. I'm a terrible person. You must hate me."
"No," she laughed. "Not at all. I've been there. I hope your wish comes true. I do!" she had said, louder, when he gave her a look. "Really, I bet it will. What will you give me if it does?"
"One bottle of wine," he said, smiling shyly at her as he took her proffered handshake. Maybe having a girlfriend wasn't so bad. The sleepover part was fun.
A week later, he had seen Ilya on the dance floor at a club in Montreal. And Ilya had seen him, with Rose.
A wish come true, technically.
Shane feels like he's gone to heaven the morning after he and Ilya first say I love you. He realizes all of this month's wishes came true overnight, even the one he scratched to make room for the emergency wish.
He and Ilya bask in the glow of the sunrise, then fuck each other into a sex-drunk haze. They lay together, touching, breathing their new-found words into each others necks. They can't stop saying them, over and over, quiet and loud, after every other sentence, every time they touch – ya tebya lyublyu. I love you. Ya tebya lyublyu. I love you.
Ilya asks Shane again about what he plans to tell his parents, while they're getting ready to go swimming. He brings it up under the guise of asking what Yuna would think of the camps, but he looks so hopeful as he says it.
Before he can answer, Shane's phone rings from the living room. It's the third time this morning, and Shane sighs and goes to retrieve it. Ilya's closer, and he darts out the door of the bedroom ahead of Shane. He's scowling when he returns.
"It's Rose," he says darkly, holding up the phone so Shane can see the screen.
"Oh!" Shane said. "I forgot we had a… manifestation check in. Sorry, this will just take a sec."
"Hollander. Seriously?"
"I – sorry, I just –" Shane looks helplessly between the still-ringing phone and a frowning Ilya. How can he explain what this is? He has to let Rose know that the wishes worked.
"Fine," Ilya grumbles. "I call Svetlana, I guess. Then swimming?"
"I am sorry your parents found out like that," Ilya says that night. He says it right as he spits out his toothpaste, like he'd been thinking about it the whole time he was brushing and had to get it out the second he was able. Shane looks up at him from where he's sitting on the edge of the tub, brushing his own teeth. He hopes Ilya didn't cut short his own toothbrushing time for this apology.
"You should have been been able to come out yourself, when you wanted," Ilya continues. He looks so sad, blue eyes earnest as they dart back and forth between Shane's. Shane's own toothbrush is still in his mouth, because it's electric and it hasn't done it's final beep yet, so he says nothing.
By the time Shane spits, Ilya's already back in the bedroom. Shane hears the swoosh of clothes being thrown in the hamper, followed by the crinkle of the comforter being thrown back from the bed and a large body thudding onto the mattress.
"It's okay," Shane calls back as he reaches for his oil cleanser. "It wasn't your fault. And it worked out, right?"
"It is my fault," Ilya says, his voice just loud enough to make out the bitterness in it. Shane's heart breaks; he wishes he could confess the ways that this is really all his own fault. The serendipity of his dad's visit could only have been explained by one of his wishes gone awry. Maybe the magic thought Shane's parents knowing about them was essential for Shane's emergency wish swap. Probably because Yuna would be so useful for the plan.
He pauses, dries his hands on a washcloth, and grabs his phone off the bathroom counter. Need emergency session tomorrow, he texts Rose. Big updates this afternoon. He turns back to his skincare, working his second cleanser up to a foam.
Earlier, he had turned the phone ringer to high in anticipation of his parents calling a warning before tomorrow's visit. So Rose's answering texts come through as three too-loud dings, echoing through the en-suite and into the bedroom.
"Is that your parents?" Ilya calls from the bedroom. Shane can practically see the pregnant pause at the end of the question.
"Um, no," Shane admits. "It's Rose. Just, uh… some stories from her shoot today." He dips his head again to splash water on his face.
"Oh," Ilya says, and even from the next room Shane can tell his voice is hard, tone too flat. "Okay."
Shane looks up at himself in the mirror, face damp, hair held back by a little headband with bunny-ears that Ilya had express ordered and presented to him on only his third day at the cabin.
"She's my fairy godmother," Shane says, loud enough for Ilya to hear, as he stares at himself in the mirror.
There's a long, long pause. Then Ilya laughs loudly, a genuine burst of surprise that reverberates off the doorway. "Very funny, Hollander. And you are my cute little house elf. What does that make me?" His voice has the tease of sexiness to it, which Shane recognizes as an olive branch. He sighs and decides to take it, ignoring the internal voice that calls him a coward.
Just saying it was obviously not going to work. He needs some way to prove it to Ilya.
His first thought is to lay it all out to Ilya while they're at the cottage, then have him give Shane a wish – something specific and unlikely, but doable – which Shane can then relay to Rose as one of his wishes. Then, when it happens, Rozanov will be all, "wow, incredible, Hollander, you were telling the truth all along! I believe you and am no longer mad or jealous!"
But he only gets three wishes a month, and he's used this month's. They'll be leaving the cottage before they reset, so he needs another way to get Ilya to believe it.
Of course, Shane hadn't initially believed Rose either.
At a Montreal restaurant in November, after Shane had admitted he preferred being the hole and he and Rose had agreed to break up, Rose had offered that they could stay friends, or she could become his fairy godmother and grant him three wishes per month.
"I mean, I can't like, start or end wars or anything," Rose had explained, eyes dancing with amusement over her cocktail. "But yeah, anything like, specific or small scale, I would be able to do for you."
"Right," he said slowly. "Like… no, sorry. I'm going to need an example."
What he really needed was more time to decide if it fell under his duty as her newly minted ex-boyfriend to have her committed if she was having a mental breakdown. She was American – would the Canadian hospital even take her? He was pretty sure they should, her work permit surely couldn't be that different from what the American teams had when they played in Montreal, and they always got hospitalized when needed. But maybe it was different for psychotic breaks?
"I'm particularly good with nudges," she said.
"Nudges," he intoned.
"Yeah. Like… well, maybe, if someone just needs the perfect scenario to come out to someone for the first time." She looked meaningfully at him, and he flushed a little at the reminder.
"Sure. But that's like, charisma or whatever. Right?"
"I'm flattered," she said, still smiling her gentle smile like they were talking about her dress or her lipstick and not her alleged magic powers.
"Sorry. I did appreciate you being so nice, and encouraging, and all that, but it doesn't feel very – I don't think I get it."
"Hmm," she said. "I can't really show you without you agreeing to the contract with me. But maybe we can do another mini contract, as like a one off."
"Okay," he said, his insides now feeling slightly squirmy as he thought about having to coerce her to get help. Because she was very good at getting what she wanted, even Shane had noticed that, so how was he going to get her to agree to want a psych assessment? Maybe he could just get her agent's number and have them handle it. "Wait, another contract? What was our first?"
"Don't worry about it. What will you give me if your wish comes true?"
"Umm…" he looked around blankly. Seeing nothing that was his to give, he fished through his pockets. He pulled out one of the hundred dollar bills he kept accessible for tipping.
"No," she said. "I can't take money. And it works best if it's something more personal. Like, something you value."
He raised his eyebrows at her but said nothing. He shifted his hand to his jacket and began skimming through those pockets, dumping two carefully folded receipts on the table before –
"Ohh," Rose had said, looking at his just-extracted hand, clenched tight. "What's that?"
Shane opened his hand to show her the pull-tab of a soda can.
"That will work," she said, eyeing it appraisingly. "Definitely."
"Um," Shane said, looking between his ex-girlfriend and the loose silver tab in his palm. He closed his fingers around it, once, then opened his hand again, holding it out between them. "Sure. Alright, then. I guess… I wish… for Gretsky to walk through those doors."
"When?" she said, eyes still trained on his palm. She looked a little hungry.
"Um, like, now?"
Rose made a little tsk sound with her tongue and sucked in her breath. "Can't do teleportation. Sorry. I can have him here by, like, tomorrow? I told you, it's more nudge-y."
"By tomorrow you may have just called him and called in a favor. Like, just asked him nicely, or paid him," Shane pointed out. And I'll have to worry about if you're crazy all night.
"You're more likely to be able to call in a favor with Gretsky than I am," Rose noted, laughing easily. She downed the last of her cocktail. "Why don't you just think of something that's around here, that wouldn't normally happen, but that would definitely prove it."
"Fine," Shane said, again looking around and catching sight of a waiter bringing an order to another table. "I want… ten orders of poutine in the next ten minutes."
"Fine." Rose's eyes flitted back to Shane's palm.
"But you can't order them," he clarified.
She rolled her eyes. "Obviously." She put out her own hand. Hesitantly, he shifted the pull tab to his left hand and extended his right.
They shook.
"Can I order a cocktail, at least?" she asked, looking pointedly down at her own empty glass.
"I'll order it," Shane said quickly. Paying for another round was probably the least he could do for her during the middle of a breakup and mental breakdown.
"Another old fashioned," Rose said. While Shane raised his hand to flag down a waiter, she started rummaging through her purse. After a moment of concentrated rustling and some suspiciously loud noises emanating from inside the purse, she pulled out a neon pink pen with a fluffy bit of fuzz at the end.
Shane watched, mystified, as Rose raised the fuzzy pen and begun waving the fuzzy end in the air, muttering to herself as she dragged it in patterns. Every few seconds, she aimed it behind her, in the direction of the kitchen, and then thrust it forward sharply, like she was pulling something over her shoulder.
Shane looked around the restaurant and out the dark windows, praying he wouldn't need to worry about any paparazzi witnessing him bodily haul Rose into a car and shouting for the driver to take them to l'hôpital général.
Five minutes later, Rose was sipping her cocktail when she, without turning, raised her right hand and pointed over her shoulder in the direction of the kitchen doors.
"Holy shit," Shane said, watching a waiter weave toward them. He was bearing a tray laden with poutine.
"Hope you're hungry," Rose said, watching him.
Shane gawked at her as the waiter came over and explained in French that he was so sorry, but they had accidentally made too many poutines in kitchen, and would they be so kind as to help eat some? Rose sipped at her drink as Shane bumbled through an acceptance of the food. After the waiter left, she put out her hand.
Reluctantly, he handed over the tab from the ginger ale he had drunk at Ilya's house before he ran out the door, which he had been fingering in his jacket pocket like a pathetic talisman for the last five weeks.