In Every Universe

1. Zacky

ONE

ZACKY

Zacky didn’t have to open his eyes to know two things: One) his head was fucking killing him, and two) his husband wasn’t in bed with him anymore. Cameron was barred from sneaking out of bed, unless it was just to pee. If he woke up first and didn’t want to wait to get up until Zacky got out of bed, he had to wake Zacky up to tell him that.

Yes, maybe Zacky was clingy, but Cameron was his other half.

His brain went through a few more thoughts. It must be early if his alarm hadn’t woken him up yet. He couldn’t remember what day of the week it was, which was weird. Could he sleep in, or did he need to get ready for another rousing day of dodgeball and floor hockey with elementary kids? He moved to stretch out his stiff neck, and a thud of dull pain raked across the back of his head. He reached back to touch the spot. Tender. What the hell happened?

Opening his eyes provided no more clarity. He was in a strange room. White-painted walls, boring furniture. It was messy, clothes on the floor everywhere, nothing on the walls. It looked lived in and lifeless at the same time. On the side table, there was a photo of his family—a selfie his mom took the last time they went to Hawaii as a family. Weird that it was in this strange room. Weirder that Cameron wasn’t in it.

He picked the frame up and looked at the photo more closely. He’d seen this picture a thousand times. It was hanging in the living room of his house. He was one hundred percent sure his husband was supposed to be in this photo. His mom took it on the first family trip after he and Cameron got engaged, and she had made a big deal over making sure the whole family was in it. Okay. Head injury. Maybe there was a version his mom took with Cameron before she took this one. It had been a while ago. He’d probably been tipsy. They were on the beach, after all.

He winced as he got up and took a deep breath. If Cameron wasn’t in bed with him, he’d better be making him breakfast. Zacky went to explore.

The apartment looked like whoever lived there wasn’t super committed to being there for long. But Cameron was in the kitchen, and Zacky let out a sigh of relief. Everything was weird, but there was his rock.

“You’re awake!” Cameron said, that beautiful dimply smile on his face that had made Zacky fall in love with him. Cameron kept his voice low, which meant he knew Zacky was rocking some kind of head injury. Cameron’s hair was buzzed, which Zacky didn’t remember him doing. He hadn’t had a buzz in a while. Absently, his thumb reached for the silicone wedding band he wore and worried as a nervous tic. It was gone. The platinum band on Cameron’s hand was missing, too. They never took their rings off.

“Head hurts. I feel weird,” Zacky said, taking a seat at the breakfast bar to watch Cameron cook in this strange kitchen. He squinted against the bright lights, and Cameron immediately flicked them off and handed Zacky a pair of sunglasses that had been sitting on the breakfast bar close to him. “Thanks, babe.”

Cameron looked at him weird, but it was probably because he was injured.

“Doctor said you might be nauseated when you woke up, so I tried to make you something that isn’t super smelly.” There were pancakes on the griddle, and while Zacky wasn’t hungry, he loved Cameron’s pancakes. “We have bacon if you want it, though.”

“No. Just the pancakes. Maybe no butter. Maybe no syrup. What happened? Did a fourth grader knock me out during dodgeball or something?”

The confused V of Cameron’s eyebrows deepened.

“Also, when did we stop wearing our rings?” Zacky held his hand up as evidence. Somehow, his ring tan was even gone.

“What rings?” Cameron asked. “What fourth graders?”

“Our wedding rings…?” Zacky said, slowly drawing out the obvious answer. “The fourth graders in my gym classes…?”

“Oh boy. You hit your head a lot harder than I thought you did.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means your helmet flew off mid-fight against the Reapers last night, your skates slipped out from under you, and you smacked your head pretty good on the ice.”

“The New York Reapers?” Zacky had never been more confused in his life. “I haven’t played a hockey game in years.” His eyes tracked down to Cameron’s chest, where his shirt loudly proclaimed YELLOWJACKETS across it. Zacky had the same on his own. It wasn’t the same shirt—Cameron’s was black and Zacky’s was light gray—but his had a Jackets logo on it as well. He remembered getting drafted…and then he remembered quitting when Cameron got injured. “Cameron, what the hell is going on?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”Cameron pulled out the chair next to Zacky and took his phone out to open up Wikipedia. “You’re not allowed to look at screens right now, so you’ll have to trust what I’m about to read to you. Hopefully, it’ll jog your memory.”

Zacky took a bite of his pancakes as Cameron read his Wikipedia to him. Zachary Porter, twenty-four, from Newmarket, Ontario. Drafted to the Texas YellowJackets in 2018. Okay. That all made sense.

What followed…didn’t.

Cameron read him articles about his career. His stats. His contract. The fact that he and Cameron had their names engraved on the Stanley Cup.

Clearly, he was dreaming.Cameron pointed into the living room to a photo of the two of them holding the Cup together. His dimples were popping with how wide his smile was, and?—

“Fuck, when did you lose your tooth?” Zacky asked, his hands on Cameron’s face familiar and tender, until he noticed that Cameron was uncomfortable. He dropped his hands. “Are we not…”

“Not…?”

“Um. Romantic?”

“Oh. Wedding rings. Right. No, we’re not.”

Zacky’s heart sunk. He couldn’t imagine a world where he didn’t get to kiss Cameron. Where he didn’t come home to Cameron cooking dinner, getting pressed against the counter to make out for a while before grabbing beers and pulling out plates.

This Cameron still cooked for him, though.

This Cameron. This Cameron. This Cameron wasn’t his Cameron.

“Do you want to call the doctor? You seemed pretty out of it last night, but not this much. Do you remember anything about last night?”

“I’m not out of it. I’m…I don’t know. I don’t remember last night. I don’t know what the fuck is happening.”

“You have a pretty severe concussion, dude. I’m sorry you’re so confused, but it’s going to heal. You’ll be back on the ice in no time.”

“More worried about my husband and my job than a game I quit three years ago.”

“This is a lot to unpack.” Cameron had his worried face on, and it usually made Zacky want to smooth the furrow from his brow and try to figure out a solution. Comfort him. He didn’t know how to work this Cameron, though.

Instead, Zacky dropped his head to his hands, taking the sunglasses off and then tossing them on the bar. He covered his eyes with his hands. Cameron rubbed his back, and Zacky wanted to melt into him, this man who looked so fucking familiar—who looked like his person—but was a stranger.

“Do you want some Advil?” Cameron asked. Zacky grunted an affirmative , and Cameron set him up on the couch with a pillow and a blanket, mother henning him the same way his husband would when he was sick.

Zacky swallowed his pills and realized he was still missing a tooth, his tongue finding the empty space in the bottom row. It made him feel like he was still twenty-one. He did not miss his hockey smile. He liked having all of his teeth now as an adult, even if he had liked the locker room cred he had in Allen, TX, when he was still in the AHL. He liked eating normally.

“You want a podcast on or something?” Cameron asked.

“Just quiet, I think.”

“Okay.” Cameron didn’t seem to know what to do with himself.

“You can do whatever you’d normally do. You’re not going to bother me.”

“All right,” Cameron said. Zacky closed his eyes and listened to Cameron washing the dishes. He was trying to be so quiet. Zacky could tell. Then he disappeared into a different bedroom than Zacky woke up in and came back out in gym clothes, the Jackets logo top to bottom.

“I need to go to practice. Are you going to be okay?”

Zacky forced himself to smile through his pain. “Yeah, just going to nap,” he said. Cameron nodded and closed the door quietly as he headed out. It was easier to fall asleep than Zacky would have thought.