Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Magical Realism, Truth Spells, Fluff and Angst, Magic

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-21 Words: 4,059 Chapters: 2/2

be careful the lies you believe about me

Summary

Lily:
I want to see you tonight.

Oh, that was safe. A classic really. Ilya went to type something deeply horny as a followup to get Shane riled up before he got to the hotel room, but he blinked and saw he had already sent a second text.

Lily:
I want to hold you close, and find out if you have any new freckles. I need to know, so next time I picture you, I do it right.

Ilya throws his phone across the room. It hits the wall, where it falls to the floor and lays face-up, screen dark. Oh, this was bad.

 

---------
Ilya gets truth spelled. What secrets could possibly slip out?

Notes

I love the few magical realism fics I have seen(big shoutout to 'cloche' by thathastu, its iconic) that just add curses and spells to the HR universe. Something so hilarious about magic being real and our main characters are millionaires for hitting pucks with sticks. Don't take the magic too seriously, I'm not.

This is set loosely somewhere in the timeline shortly before Tunagate. Ilya has caught down-badism and it's fatal, but he has not yet started googling tuna melt recipes and inviting Shane over.

title is from 'kill me for always' by Michael Clifford and Porter Robinson <3

Chapter 1: I won't tell anyone but there will be signs

The first sign something isn’t right happens just as they head off the ice. It had been a good game, with a solid win over the Metros. Ilya knew he would be seeing Shane again tonight, and high off the win, he was in a very good mood.

The Raiders shuffled past him, bumping gloves with Ilya as they left. Ilya gave each his normal post-win walkoff acknowledgement.

“I love you, I love you, I love you-”

Marleau approaches from the end of the line with his hand raised for the fistbump.

“Marleau, you are the closest thing I have to true family. I wish you were my real brother. I love you.”

Marleau blinked at Ilya. Ilya blinked back at Marleau, hand still up for a fistbump.

“Fuck, man.” Marleau grabbed Ilya’s hand and pulled him into a bro hug that ended with a solid thump to Ilya’s back that actually hurt quite a bit. “Roz, buddy, you know you’re a brother to me too.”

He pulled back, looking surprisingly choked up. “I’m always here for you if you need anything, ok?”

Ilya stared at him. “Ok.”

—---------------------------------

So that was weird. But, he was having a good day, and Alexei had been pissing him off recently, so Ilya guessed it had just been on his mind and slipped out as he was congratulating Marleau on the win. Right. Right?

There wasn’t time to think about it too hard, as he was immediately pulled into a press interview to have a microphone shoved in his face while he was still sweaty and shirtless.

“Rozanov,” The journalist from some sports news outlet, honestly they all ran together for Ilya since they posted the same fucking quotes, leaned into him wearing a tight, insincere smile. “You’re having quite the season, but your next game is up against the Cinicinnati Mallards, who have been killing it in the rink recently. Any concerns or strategies as you think about your next game?”

Ilya wiped a sweaty curl away from his face and gave his normal answer about beating anyone they needed to beat, no problem.

“No, I am not worried at all. Peterson is a terrible captain and their goalie would not know how to block a puck if it told him it was coming a week before I hit it. We will destroy them.”

See? He was fine.

Ilya continued, “Also, Peterson is a homophobic asshole with bad chirps and worse breath. I can smell it during face-off. I would like him to use his too large salary to buy mouthwash. Please print that.”

—---------------------------------

Ok, so maybe the second part is not something he would have normally said to the press, even if it all was very true. He didn’t care about the comments about Peterson’s breath, if it got the asshole to brush his teeth then it really all was worth it. But he wasn’t sure how those back in Russia would feel about him calling out homophobes. It felt like a blurry line, in the same way that Ilya often felt like he was walking on a swaying tightrope when it came to not crossing Russia’s homosexual propaganda laws.

Ilya’s phone lit up with a call from his agent, who was Russian himself. Ilya did not want to deal with this right now, he wanted to take a shower, get Shane’s hotel number, and then gorge himself on Shane enough that he wouldn’t feel too much like he was starving for the next few months.

He let the call ring out and let a sigh out into the quiet when it stopped.

Ilya’s phone rang again, and groaning, he decided to just bite the bullet to shut up his agent and accepted the call.

“Ilya-” His father’s thick Russian accent rolled out of the phone.

Ilya cut him off, speaking so fast he felt out of breath, but he couldn’t stop to inhale while there were still words to say. “All I have ever wanted was for you to see me, for you to respect me, for you to love me. When Mama died-”

Ilya hung up the call, heart pounding. His phone lit up again, his father’s number.

Ilya turned his phone off, then turned it back on, and blocked Alexei and his father just to be safe. What the fuck. What the fuck.

He ran for the cursebreaker’s office.

—--------------

Russell, the Raider’s chief hexologist and cursebreaker, looked at him with a concerned expression from across his desk, which was scattered with various arcane looking instruments, and a distressing amount of paperwork. Russell himself was mustachioed, wearing a Raiders branded polo shirt, and from what Ilya remembered of speaking to him during the team’s regular health and magical properties check ups, was a good natured man who had studied the arcane arts somewhere in the Midwest. He and the other few hexologists on the Raiders’ payroll generally kept up the wards during games, checked for magical interference or boosters on the players, and when needed, broke curses which made it through the wards or hit players when they were unprotected off the ice.

“So you’re saying you’re feeling a compulsion to speak more than you normally would, and to say things you normally wouldn’t say out loud? What exactly happened to make you think this is a curse?”

“There have been signs.”

Russell started, “But what-”

Ilya cut him off, stating firmly. “There have been signs.”

Ilya bit his tongue to keep the itching need to say more from crawling up and out of his mouth as he stared at Russell, expressionless. Russell tried to stare him down as well, but few Americans can beat a Russian in a staring competition, so he quickly gave up.

“Ok, I guess I’ll do a diagnostic spell.” Ilya was expecting, honestly hoping a little bit, that this would involve some chanting, maybe some candles, but instead Russell simply pulled a compass out from his desk and pressed a button on the top. He whistled, impressed, as the arrow immediately jerked to Ilya and glowed an acidic green.

“Hoo boy, yeah, that is a pretty strong truth spell on you.”

Ilya felt a trickle of panic down his spine. “Truth spell?”

“Yeah, normally they don’t have a compulsion to speak component, but it seems like someone really wanted you to blurt out something you wouldn’t normally otherwise.”

Ilya squinted at the compass, then down at his hands, and then back at Russell. “Why? Why would someone pay for me to speak too much like idiot?”

“If I had to guess? They probably cursed you while you were on the ice as soon as the game stopped and the wards dropped, in the hopes that you would say something bad during your interview with the press. I bet they were hoping you would talk about some weakness in the team, or say you were worried about the team’s odds but…”

There was a silence in the room for a second as Ilya and Russell quietly acknowledged the fact that Ilya’s cockiness was well-earned, and very real.

“Ok, ok, that is the why,” Ilya waved his hand dismissively. “How do I get rid of it?”

Russell fiddled with the compass, then with his mustache. “Well, for a non-harmful spell like this, I need to submit the Non-Emergency Magical Procedure forms with HR and that will take at least a day or two.”

“Not harmful?” Ilya scowled. “It is harmful, I am being harmed.”

“Well, you’re not being physically or spiritually harmed, so for liability reasons I am unable to-”

Ilya lost his patience with this whole situation, “When does it stop?”

“Oh!” Russell looked at the compass again and said, “If I had to guess, probably around 24 hours. These kinds of spells normally only last one rotation of the Earth, it’s a whole thing.”

Ilya took a deep breath and stood up and left the office, ignoring Russell saying something else about required documentation behind him. Only one day, he could do this.

—-----

He was not sure he could do this.

In the locker room, he told Hammersmith he needed to break up with his girlfriend, because it has sounded for months like she was cheating on him and she was also just kind of a bitch. Marleau gave him a look, but thankfully the rest of the Raiders had quickly jumped in and agreed. Connors came up to Ilya after and said, “That was good of you to just tell him. We all have been trying to figure out how to break the news to him for a while.”

Ilya stared back at him with a tense jaw and forced a smile, “Yes. That is me. Good friend.”

He is so tense for the rest of his time in the locker room that he almost feels like if someone asks him about his Montreal girl, he won’t blurt out something so much as he will just snap like a dog at the person who asked.

In the end, the worst that happens is that Marleau nudges him with a knowing grin as they exit the locker room and says, “Bet you’ve been looking forward to tonight, right?”

The words spill out before he can bite his tongue, “I have thought about tonight every day for the past two months.”

Marleau’s brow lifts, and he grins at Ilya. “Roz, you dog! Hope you have fun.”

Ilya’s smile is more of a pained twitch than a real expression.

On the way out of the building, he stops the physical therapist who helped him with his sprained ACL two summers ago, and asks her how her dog Marshmallow is doing, and he really would like to see pictures of Marshmallow, it had been awhile. He loses a solid 15 minutes, and also some of his reputation as the mean Russian, when he finds out she has since gotten a second dog, a ridiculously small Pomeranian puppy named Tinkerbell. He actually coos at her phone before he snaps out of it, thanks Rebecca, and hurries away.

Earlier, it had felt like he had control over this in Russell’s office once he was aware of the compulsion to speak. But in the past hour it feels like it has grown stronger, and his mouth tastes of blood from trying to bite his tongue just to keep from spilling his guts to everyone nearby.

His phone dings, and he holds back a flinch through the power of a lifetime of experience as he checks to see if it is his father again. It’s a text. From Jane.

Jane:
Same hotel as normal?

Ilya types without thinking about it.

Lily:
I want to see you tonight.

Oh, that was safe. A classic really. Ilya went to type something deeply horny as a followup to get Shane riled up before he got to the hotel room, but he blinked and saw he had already sent a second text.

Lily:
I want to hold you close, and find out if you have any new freckles. I need to know, so next time I picture you, I do it right.

Ilya throws his phone across the room. It hits the wall, where it falls to the floor and lays face-up, screen dark. Oh, this was bad.

He stared at the phone like it was a wild animal about to bite him, and jumped a little when the screen lit up again. He strode across the room hurriedly to check what Shane had sent.

Jane:
Fuck off Rozanov

Ilya felt like he had narrowly dodged a bullet. His phone buzzes again, another text.

Jane:
1752

Now, the smart thing to do would be to call this off and say he wasn’t coming. But it was that point in the season where Ilya’s next chance to see Shane was months away. He had been looking forward to this for the past two months, and the time before that had been so brief because of Ilya’s early flight. Surely he could handle it, right? Shane might taste some blood on his lips from Ilya biting them so hard, but Ilya could do it.

Lily:
I will be there as soon as I can.

Chapter 2: Can't you see? We broke the truce and now here come the enemies.

Chapter Notes

The second the door opens to Shane’s hotel room, Ilya knows he has made a mistake. With the Raiders, the compulsion to speak had just felt like being on the ice without skates. A slip could happen at any second, and the spell was standing behind ready to push. With his father, the truth had climbed out before he was even aware of it, forcing out a lifetime of swallowed words at once before he could slam the door shut.

If the illuminating force of the truth spell’s compulsion to tell Marleau and the others was a soft light in Ilya’s lungs making him glow from the inside, then the compulsion to tell Shane everything is the sun. The hotel room door swings open and the truth starts clawing up through Ilya’s neck, a starving animal that has lived in the dark and is desperate to get out.

Shane scowls at Ilya as he closes the door quickly, looking soft and warm in a blue sweater that is just slightly too big on him. “Are you going to be an asshole about winning?”

Ilya can feel every centimeter of space between them.

“No, I would rather see you smile at me than frown. Your smile makes you even prettier.” Shane’s eyebrows shoot up and his eyes go wide.

Ilya struggles to save this, “That color looks very nice on you. It reminds me of sweater you wore the night I first fucked you. That was a very good night. I think of it often.”

Fuck.

Panic is a very small word for what Ilya is feeling right now. He wonders if physical distance will help at all and moves as quickly as he can without outright running across the room to get as far away from Shane as possible. He realizes too late that puts him on the opposite side of the room, right next to the king size bed, instead of by the door which is really where he should be because he needs to leave this room and preferably Boston, immediately.

Shane looks like he is desperately trying to catch up with Ilya in this conversation. Ilya can see the gears turning behind Shane’s eyes, and a part of him is aware of how difficult this must be for Shane who prefers extremely clear communication whenever possible. Unfortunately, Ilya also has no idea what to say or do here, and he doesn’t want to give any more chances for the spell to crack his ribs open for Shane to peek inside, so he bites his tongue so hard he tastes blood and stares at Shane.

Enough time passes that he can see Shane give up on Ilya saying he likes his smile, and instead squints between Ilya and the bed. He’s clearly chosen to focus instead on Ilya practically running to the bed after talking about the night he first fucked Shane. There is a clear horny explanation to be drawn from Ilya talking about fucking Shane.

At least, Shane probably thinks Ilya was talking about the fucking that night, which he does think of often, but not as much as he thinks about the curve of Shane’s lips as he looked up at Ilya in that stairwell after the best kiss Ilya has ever had. Though that is only true of kisses he has shared. The kiss Shane placed on his forehead while Ilya laid on his chest that night is the one he thinks about more. It was so good he had to run, had to get out, before he could possibly want more.

Which is also what he needs to do here, but Shane is blocking his escape route to the door. And Shane is moving closer. Fuck.

“Ok, fine, we can just jump right in if you want-” Ilya feels the clawing of the truth at his throat increase as Shane gets closer, and he jolts back like Shane had lunged toward him. There is a moment where Shane steps forward in alarm, and Ilya moves back in unison, like they are performing some kind of strange dance.

Shane is clearly losing his patience here. “Why do you keep trying to move away from me?”

Oh, the truth starts to scream. Ilya can’t hold it back anymore.

“I think if I touch you, I will never want to stop. When I leave tonight, I will still want to be touching you-” With effort, he forces the most damning part of the truth into Russian, where it is safely hidden away still. “-And the leaving will hurt worse. It always does.”

Ilya thanks whatever cruel god exists that he uses Russian in bed enough that Shane probably assumes whatever he just said was some type of horny filth rather than Ilya holding out his heart in shaking hands for Shane to carve open.

“...So you don’t want to touch me, but you actually really do?” Shane was clearly struggling to process everything happening right now. It’s ok, Ilya was too.

Ilya was glancing desperately toward the door and trying to figure out if he should make a dash for it when Shane spoke next. “Why did you even come here tonight if you don’t know if you want to touch me or not?”

Oh, there is no way he can say this in English.

“I am not strong enough to stop running to you as soon as I can. You are the worst thing in my life, and the best thing. The only thing which makes me feel like I would give up everything if I thought you would care. I didn’t want before you and now I want so much I can never have and it’s killing me because I think I know what it means, but it doesn’t make any difference at all if I really do love you or not. That is why I came here tonight even though this was a stupid, idiotic fucking idea!”

Ilya struggles to catch his breath after shouting the last sentence. When he had raised his voice, Shane had flinched and darted his eyes to the door.

Ilya guessed he was worried that someone would start banging on it to complain about the loud angry Russian coming from inside. It is funny that after all the years of trying to keep the noises of sex quiet, the noise complaint that might end them is because of Ilya spilling his guts out onto the floor verbally. Well, it isn’t funny at all when Ilya thinks of it like that.

Shane’s voice was clearly trying to be more confident than he really felt when he says, “Why are you acting like this right now?”

Maybe Ilya grew too comfortable with forcing the truth into Russian, or maybe the truth spell was just waiting for its opportunity to strike because his next words come out in English.

“I am terrified of you, Shane Hollander.”

“Wha- what?” Shane stutters, “Why?”

Ilya’s shoulders drop. His throat feels like it’s in shreds and his mouth is full of blood. There’s no way out of this. Even if there was, admitting the truth to himself in Russian almost feels just as brutal as saying the next words in English.

“I am terrified of what you mean to me, and what we could be if you wanted it.”

Shane looks like Ilya just punched him in the face. First, his eyes went wide, and Ilya swore he saw a glimmer in them. Then his face twitched, his brows furrowed, and Ilya thought he saw fifty emotions cross his face before Shane finally hit his absolute limit on this situation and said, “What is going on right now?!”

—-------------------

Shane had his face buried in his hands and had kept it there for the past five minutes. Ilya wasn’t sure why he was hiding his face because Ilya had been staring persistently at the door for the entire explanation of the truth spell and what Russell had told him about it. Maybe if he stared hard enough, he could teleport out of this room, this conversation, and this entire day.

A breath shuddered out of Shane, and he peeked his head out from his hands slightly like he wasn’t sure if it was safe yet to emerge. “You’re saying that you got cursed to tell the truth?”

“Yes.” Ilya had read about the fire escape routes posted on the door six times now, but it was important to know these things in case of an emergency so he started reading the sign again.

“And you’re like, forced to say things even when people don’t ask? Or say way more than they asked for?”

Ilya grimaced, “Sometimes. Sometimes no.”

Shane waved his hands a little desperately. “What does that mean?”

Ilya broke eye contact with the door to inhale deeply and move his eyes up to the ceiling. “I am not sure. It feels like some people it is only a little need to talk, just to not lie. But I think for others…” He really didn’t want to say this next part, but the truth spell had not cared thus far if Ilya wanted to say any of what he had said today.

Shane made a face at Ilya and waved his hand in a ‘move it along’ gesture.

Ilya groaned and met Shane’s eyes. “For others I need to talk more because there is more. More secrets, more feelings, more years spent not saying it. The truth wants it out and it does not care if I don’t want it out.”

Shane looks a little stunned and the two stared at each other for a few moments before he quietly says, “So that means… For me….”

Ilya threw up his hands, so fucking tired of this conversation. He thought he was going to get laid tonight, not expose every disgusting, embarrassing feeling he had had for Shane in the last 7 years. “Yes, Hollander! It means I have many things I did not tell you, many emotions I did not say! And now I am here, saying them!”

Shane spoke slowly, “...In Russian.”

Ilya froze, feeling like an animal who had just realized it had stepped into a trap, but tried to recover by speaking as casually as he could, “And in English.”

Shane opens his mouth then closes it after a second. He looks like he is trying to make a decision but is unsure which choice he will regret less in the long game. After a minute, in which Ilya reluctantly maintains eye contact with Shane, and not his old friend the door, or his newer friend, the ceiling, Shane finally seems to get enough courage to say, “And what did you tell me in Russian?”

Ilya picked his words carefully, once more walking on a tightrope where falling had consequences he didn’t want to imagine. “I told you why I came here tonight even though I knew it was a bad idea. I told you how I feel about you.”

Shane stilled, then said softly, far more gentle than Ilya deserved or than either of them would ever get from the world, “And what do you feel about me?”

Ilya’s voice came out choked, and he felt his eyes burn and grow wet, but he didn’t break eye contact with Shane as he said, “Shane… Shane, I am so scared that I might be in love with you. It is killing me, and I have no idea if it’s killing you too.” The tears spilled over, and he felt one trickle down his cheek.

Shane’s hand stopped it before it could travel far. His eyes were wet too, and his voice also shook as he said, “...Ilya, I’m scared too. Of the same thing.”

Both of them stared at each other for a moment, absolutely terrified but together in the fear and uncertainty. Then Ilya’s heart cracked open for the fifth time that day, and he rushed to kiss Shane, grabbing his shoulders and holding onto him as tightly as he could. At the same time, Shane pulled him in, holding on just as hard.

Chapter End Notes

In this timeline, Shane and Ilya skip Tunagate, Rose, and the concussion and get together about a year earlier than in canon. Ilya takes the next day off (which he forces Russell to sign off on for all the paperwork since he was practically useless, sorry Russell) and Shane and him spend the whole day crafting their Ottawa charity plans and figuring out what it is like to decide to be together.

It’s still scary, it’s still hard, but in this timeline they are a lot more honest with themselves and each other. Also, I like to imagine that Ilya comes out to Marleau earlier in this one because of their conversation in chapter 1. I just love Marleau and want him to be there for Ilya like he promised to be! Also yes, Ilya really does love every single Raider, and also I would like to leave you with the thought of how much Ilya has wanted to see pictures of Marshmallow and ask how he was doing for the last two years that the truth spell compelled him to literally stop Rebecca and ask about her dog.