Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

Gen

Fandom:

Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationship:

Shane Hollander & Rose Landry

Characters:

Rose Landry, Shane Hollander

Additional Tags:

Magical Realism, Shane Hollander & Rose Landry Friendship, clearsighted rose landry, magic as an inheritance, that thing where you meet your soon-to-be best friend at a bar and immediately recognize that he's been cursed, POV Rose Landry, Non-Linear Narrative, honey you (montreal) have got a big storm coming

Language:

English

Series:

Part 29 of heated rivalry masterlist, Part 7 of ghostly ghouls get game

Stats:

Published: 2026-07-11 Words: 2,106 Chapters: 1/1

it ain't up to you to make it out

Summary

But magic—pejorative, treacherous magic—is woven into her blood, into her cells. 

It sits in the hollows of her collarbones, coils in the soles of her feet. It lingers in the twitch of her fingers, unspoken and unneeded, for all that it drags people in. 

OR: Rose isn't a witch. She's just... gifted.

Notes

Rose doesn't like talking about it, but her grandmother was a wellwitch; her fingers knotted like the rustling branches that whispered outside of her cottage, her eyes the same mix of verdant green and muck brown as the pond her ramshackle home sat on. 

She was a pillar of the community, a woman with love coming up from so deep within her very being that people often said she glowed.

Rose isn't ashamed of her roots, not really. She can't be, not when it's got her here, not when the tiny town of South Branch has been so good to their family—accepting of the wellmagic her grandmother worked with, none of the superstition that plagues other small towns, smattered across the Midwest. 

It's just—it's a little embarrassing to think about. 

So many of her Hollywood acquaintances grew up on the outskirts of luxury, if not fully enmeshed in the highbrow culture that nepotism got them, and her roots were pretty plain; revealing, a little, to go from the bone-deep rituals of her grandmother, the ones her mom didn't even recognize as abnormal, and then find herself accidentally rich and moderately famous. 

And it's not the whole abjuration thing that her family's got going on—spoonfuls of honey set out of the front steps, salt over the shoulder on every blue moon, bluebells woven into braids—it's the fact that no one will fucking admit that it's magic, just a little. 

Oh, that’s just how we always do it, her mom says, whenever she brings up anything odd that they do, which at this point is basically everything. Your Grandma was set in her ways, sweetheart. And now, I guess, well. It’s just easier, ain’t it? To follow her little ways. Been doin’ it my whole life, haven’t I? And lookie here, I’ve got myself a successful, beautiful daughter, don’t I? 

She’s never gotten the careful warnings that Rose has tried to coax into her words, the delicate framing of, but isn’t it a little bit strange? No, her mother was her mother, who in turn was her mother, and yes, Rose was aware that their whole family had been linked to the very land they were standing on for as long as the settlers from England had been coming to America. 

An actual shameful piece of their history, she thinks, because no matter how kind they argued themselves to be, they absolutely were not in those early days, when blood was the only way to foster a connection to the shades of magic, when devilry and witchcraft were distinct, separate things, far from the near-synonymous meanings they have today. 

But magic—pejorative, treacherous magic—is woven into her blood, into her cells. 

It sits in the hollows of her collarbones, coils in the soles of her feet. It lingers in the twitch of her fingers, unspoken and unneeded, for all that it drags people in. 

She cannot say I think you have been bewitched when people’s eyes follow her for longer than needed at casting calls. More importantly, she will not. 

Her roots are her roots; it just so happens that they’re just as useful as those of someone who’s born into wealth. 

They’re not the only thing her grandmother has left her with, though. 

***

Shane Hollander, when he slides into the booth across from her, rings with cheerful bells as soon as she meets his eyes. The accompanying low horns that sound in her mind tell a tale of a man pushed far enough to make an important choice, one that will change the entire trajectory of his life. 

She blinks at him. 

He blinks back. 

“You’re Shane Hollander,” she says. A wind chime trills in the background, and oh, she’s missed that sound. She nudges her basket of fries into the center of the table. “Have a snack.” 

He blinks at her again before a realization crashes through his face. “You’re Rose Landry,” he says, and there is something knowing in his tone, an edge that his voice can’t quite escape from, even with only a few short words. “How the hell do you know who I am?” 

Rose grins at him, sharp-toothed hunger laced through her teeth. “I’m a Detroit girl through and through,” she says, and watches as he brightens. She nudges the fries closer to him. “You sure you’re not hungry?” 

He shakes his head. “Not for food,” he mutters, and then blanches as if he’s realized just how sleazy he sounds. “Or—that—I just meant—” 

It doesn’t matter what he meant; Rose is already laughing, bright and open and real. 

***

The thing about her grandmother, the piece that they don’t really talk about—as in, even less than they talk about the other stuff—is how intense she could get about doing things a certain way. She'd never go so far as to pitch a fit, but her voice would grow until it was the only possibility, until her suggestion was the only way out. 

Rose is good at listening to those instincts; she only ever got The Voice used on her once, when she tried to make a perfectly legal left-hand turn on an empty stretch of road. 

Her grandmother had, all at once, intoned STOP with such relentless expectation that Rose had slammed her foot on the brakes immediately. 

Two seconds later, the wind caught the branches of a tree, strong enough to shatter it against the asphalt, right where they could've been. 

It's a gift Rose is unashamedly glad she doesn't know the flavor of. 

***

Shane is witty and kind and a genuinely good soul. 

It's the other stuff she's not a fan of. 

Cymbals clash when he talks about Montreal, about pressure, about the crown that he carefully doesn't call a crown. 

It's strange to meet him, in the same way Rose thinks it would be strange to meet her; there's a restlessness under his skin, a crooning piece of warning, a—not quite a monster—but a presence lurking around him. 

He's not haunted, so much as imprinted with echoes of something. 

The something is cruel and big and too much, and only ever relents when Shane accidentally mentions his supposed friend. Otherwise, it lingers in the eaves, breathless with an odd sort of hunger, an anticipation of consuming all of Shane. 

Rose can read between the lines, even as she scoops up his hand to drag a finger down his palm, tracing over his life line. Around then, Rose ignores the ebb and flow of attention, the searching gazes of Shane's teammates, the wide-eyed glances of strangers. Even her coworkers have been more attentive to her than usual, though she can't blame them; Shane is unfairly gorgeous. 

“You're not what I expected,” she says, and Shane snorts, his nose crinkling up. 

“Yeah,” he murmurs as the wind chime sounds again. “I get that a lot.”

***

Rose, for all that she worries about the cost, is also bad at refusing the family magic. It calls to her, seductive and volatile, gorgeously lush and green. 

She's lucky, she knows. She has enough to be blessed, enough to not know how tart the price is; she has enough to also have none. 

It's a balance one can only be born into, where there is enough magic in her for her to be called to her roots, letting her be full of familiar, sweet sap. She's got just enough to not be a tempting body for the studios, has enough for it to be noted down as a heritage, one that warns executives of her inability to be hollowed out by shitty contract after shitty contract.

It helps, too, that she is good at what she does. 

Magic—her roots—can never be enough for her to rely on it singularly.

***

She ends her night with Shane bundled up on his couch, tucked under a giant fuzzy blanket, her eyes wide as she traces the Montreal skyline with her eyes. 

The wound of Shane's thorny crown has relented in the safety of his apartment as he accepts a call from his friend, and she gets to hear him laugh with weighty joy in his throat; a smooth reveal of just how important the voice at the other end is. 

“Tell your friend I say hi,” she hisses, as horns croon in her ear and wind chimes ring out, beautiful peals of potential singing. “And that they've got a good one.” 

Shane meets her eyes, his mouth quirking up, mischief unfolding from the corner of his lips. He looks boyish and happy in the shadows, the amber shade of his dimmed overhead lights washing over him. 

“Rose Landry says hi,” he murmurs, before he tosses his head back and laughs. “I'm serious—yes, she's in my apartment now. No—oh my god, hang on—Rose, are you okay with the fact that I'm not going to sleep with you?”

She laughs, her mouth curling up into an answering smile of delight. “Are you okay with the fact that I don't want to sleep with you?” 

“It's a huge blow to my mountainous ego,” Shane says, his eyes twinkling at her, before he drops his gaze, listening to the voice on the other end. 

He's met her eyes under ten times tonight, though, she's fairly certain it's not because he's shy. 

He's a different person in his apartment, unbound from the weight of expectations. She knows—and she's positive he knows—that there are going to be a gazillion articles about the two of them. Oddly, she's okay with that, or she never would've accepted his quiet offer of tea back at his. 

It's my friends, he'd murmured, one hand carefully settled on the small of her back, his face turned forward, as if he could avoid the rapid-fire mutterings that had started up as soon as they'd moved toward the front together. So if it's shit, that's on—that's on them. 

I'll take it under advisement, she'd muttered back. But if it isn't up to snuff, I'm judging you for your friend's shit taste in tea. 

The offerings had been good in the end—one of her favorite blends of white tea tucked in amongst the rest—and she'd let Shane know that his friend was approved; bold for all that she’d just met him. 

She blinks at the wall across from her, yanking herself out of her swirling thoughts as her eyes catch on the pictures scattered across the bookshelves. 

Beside her, Shane laughs again, a quiet, soft thing, and wind rattles at her ear again, a song of potential crooning between them. 

We're going to be friends. Good ones, the very best, she said, back at the restaurant, almost too bold as Shane had blinked at her. The smell of her beer had filled her nose, and the taste of salt was on her tongue. She’d felt as in control as she was at auditions, which had always been more in control than most casting directors wanted. She isn’t in the habit of flinching. I can just tell. 

He hadn’t flinched from it either, though, had just leaned back ever so slightly and regarded her with the same gaze that she'd seen directed at hundreds of other men; an ode to the brilliance he was known for. 

Okay, he'd said, and something had snapped tight between them, vicious and fierce and proud. You're right. 

She reaches up, pressing a soft fingertip to the bow of her lips, and listens to Shane’s laughter, the hum of a voice on the other end; deep inside, the frantic itch of hunger simmers, shifting into something more manageable. 

She grins at nothing and closes her eyes as she soaks it all in, the embers of contentment smoldering away. 

***

“You got anything big on the horizon?” her mom asks, the dull thuds of a knife chopping away a familiar backdrop to her words. “Any new plans?” 

Rose shakes her head, her mouth settling into something almost self-satisfied as she glances away from her laptop screen to her text thread with Shane.

"No," she says, and it doesn't even taste like a lie. She sort of feels like Shane's always been in her orbit, a warm, buttery pool of sunshine she can nap in, the gentle chime of happiness wavering in her ear. "Making some new friends, expanding my horizons, you know how it is."

Her mom hums in faint agreement. Rose's phone buzzes, Shane's text popping up on screen.

And distantly, so distantly she can almost pretend she doesn't hear it, horns blare, a reckoning building in the dawn.