Chapter Text
part I.
2010
Shane waits for Ilya in the dark, cramped hotel room, with the curtains closed and the bed made neatly. It calms Shane down to mess up the comforters, disarrange the pillows, and then put it all in order again. So far, he’s done it four times in the past hour.
To distract himself from the pain in his chest, he stands to do it again, grabbing at the corner of the white blanket. Just as he goes to lift it from the bed, he hears a quiet knock.
Finally. Ilya barely has the door shut completely before Shane is embracing him and tightening his arms around his waist. It slows his breath, eases the ache in his bones that has been present for two years, and only lessened at their game today, and now, here, in Shane’s hotel room.
Ilya’s shaking hands draw up and down, from Shane’s shoulder blades to the bottom of his spine, touching gently and then pressing, feeling, warming Shane’s skin when he slips them underneath his thin shirt.
He only pulls away once Ilya does, taking a final squeeze of his waist, near desperate to pull him in again, to settle his nervous system. But the touching, the scent of him, the sound of his breath, it’s only a necessity. Not a want. A need.
Shane goes for the small notepad on the desk that’s sitting on top of his phone. He clicks the pen. He should’ve had something prepared, but he was too anxious.
Did you figure anything out?? Shane writes, and flips the page around with urgency for Ilya to read it.
His eyes track the words slowly, narrowing. Then, he makes a give it motion with his right hand, taking both the notepad and Shane’s pen.
Wont like the answer, Ilya’s written, in his quick hand, the letters all jumbled together and misaligned. Shane takes care to read them over, though, so Ilya doesn’t have to rewrite it slowly, getting annoyed that Shane can’t read Russian for the hundredth time.
So he doesn’t have to take the pen back, Shane just shrugs. What?
Ilya raises his eyebrows at him, and then sits down at the desk for a steady surface to explain. Shane reads over his shoulder as he notes it all down.
3 things
1 its curse. if true we can break it
2 its spell. if true we can break it
3 we are soulmates. if true we are fucked
“No,” Shane mutters, before he can stop himself. Immediately, he slams a hand over his mouth.
Ilya’s hands go up in anger, and then he quickly pens down, SHUT UP.
Shane points at him. You shut up.
Ilya points at himself. Me?
Shane nods.
Ilya rolls his eyes. Say something else see how it works out 4 us when u in montreal and i in florida. We will collapse and die
Shane, and there’s no other way to explain it, snatches the notepad from Ilya. Sorry for being in shock.
Ilya flips him off.
I can cross out one of those options. Shane shows him the page, and Ilya’s eyebrows furrow as Shane sighs, and goes to point at the word soulmates.
How do we track down someone who cursed us in Suskat Saskatcha REGINA
Ilya smirks at the misspellings, and Shane turns around so he doesn’t have to see it. Even when they can’t directly talk to each other, he somehow manages to still be an asshole.
You are in canada i am in boston you deal with that.
Shane shakes his head. You’re there all the time.
I went to talk to crazy witch then you can do this.
To show how annoyed he is, Shane rips the page out. I hope there’s pictures of you talking to her everywhere tomorrow.
Ilya considers putting down his own reply for a moment, the pen hovering over a blank page. Then, he sets it down on the desk. Part of why they’ve been dealing with this for over two years now is because Ilya finds it better to just not talk then try to end the overwhelming pain that they feel when they’re separated. Because, you don’t need to talk to fuck.
Not exactly a lie, but they still let words slip through occasionally, and pay the price of it. Every new word spoken to each other, or about each other, adds to the pain of being without the other. Their proximity to ease the ache gets shorter and shorter with every journalists’ questions for them about their rivalry, with every accidental fuck or gasp of the other’s name.
The simple solution is to stop meeting up. They say they’ll do it, and then . . . well, it doesn’t end up happening. And then they add to their problem. Shane’s trying to finally move forward, stop sitting in the denial that it doesn’t hurt, and all Ilya wants to do is say, It’s simple. That’s what he wrote when Shane was freaking out the last time, when all the tension of his headache went away with a simple brush of Ilya’s fingers at the back of his neck. It’s simple. No talking. That is all.
That is, most definitely, not all.
But Ilya reaches a limit on how long he’ll deal with Shane’s theories or ideas before he gives up. And Shane, always so quick to say yes to him, at least in a quiet hotel room, gives up, too. The witch here in Boston was a long shot, and Shane made the promise of shower sex for Ilya to go see her. Not any trouble for Shane, but he made it seem like it was so annoying, just so Ilya would finally listen to his plans for once.
But, touching Ilya doesn’t sound so bad right now. So Shane goes with his plan for the rest of the night, his mouth covered by Ilya’s large hand, his eyes looking into his to communicate yes, yes, more, and they are really fucking good by now at talking without their voices.
Ilya doesn’t wake him up before he leaves, but Shane hears the door click, feels the wetness on his cheek from where Ilya had kissed it just seconds before. His hand hits a piece of paper as he stretches, and he holds it out in front of bleary eyes.
try not to talk about me. i know it is hard.
—lily
There are pictures of Ilya all over the magazines getting his tarot cards read. Shane almost wants to frame one and send it to him. He just looks so out of place, and uncomfortable, standing in the middle of the street in front of the witch’s table, his arms crossed as she talks to him.
He has shades and his hoodie on, but it’s very obviously him. Because he was wearing a Boston Bears fucking hoodie.
So much for being down-low, the way he said he’d be when texting with Shane before they played against each other.
Shane:
You think the witch will do an interview?
Ilya responds back to Shane’s text as he is walking the steps to his apartment, getting an extra workout in whenever possible.
Lily:
Shut up.
And all for useless info. Go to Regina
Shane:
So you’re giving up? You want to solve this?
Lily:
Yes. I want to hear you beg for me
Shane deletes the message as soon as he reads it, his face heating.
Shane:
I wouldn’t.
Lily:
I think you would.
You would do it now
Right now
He’s in his bedroom for no reason at all, keeping the lights off, biting his lip, unzipping his jacket, all for no reason at all.
Shane:
Gonna have to try harder than that.
Lily:
Because you would like me to make you beg?
Shane needs him here. To take the cramps from his ribs, to kiss him, to be able to say all of this in his lovely accent, in spoken words. There is nothing, no one else that can help him other than the one person on Earth he should be hating. It’s horrible, it’s addictive, and Shane can’t get enough of it.
Shane:
Yes.
Please.
Lily:
Fuck.
Imagine that out loud
Would be worth the pain.
Shane:
Maybe to you
Lily:
No, to you too.
Listen
Wouldn’t you like to hear me say how good you are?
He would. It’d be everything in the moment, and then hurt him when Ilya was gone.
Shane:
I’d like to break this curse.
Not because of that!
Lily:
Yes, okay.
Shane:
Fuck you
Lily:
Yes, okay.
There are covens in most larger cities of the world, and to the best of Shane’s knowledge, they can’t pull off actual world-ending spells, or life-altering curses, or jinxes strong enough to injure. They are just powerful enough, though, to cast annoying as shit curses such as, two people feel more pain the farther away they are from each other and the more they talk to each other.
It was a mouthful. And for the life of him, Shane couldn’t imagine why someone would have done this to him and Ilya before they’d even been drafted into the NHL. This was their burden from the first time Shane had introduced himself to Ilya.
If anyone was going to know something, it was Pearl Langston. Shane didn’t know where else to go with this if she didn’t have answers, being a part of the closest coven to Regina and fairly popular around the area for her ability to heal small illnesses and light pains, as well as having a wealth of knowledge after thirty years studying and practicing magic.
Shane orders himself a ginger tea and Pearl a black coffee while he waits for her to meet him. He’s in a booth closest to the wall, furthest from the wide windows of the diner. This place was out of the way of the city, a roadside stop only people on long trips stopped at for a quick bite before they resumed their drives.
Shane hoped no one would notice him because of this, everyone here being in some kind of rush, from the truckers with drop-off dates to the waitresses who had full tables.
Before Pearl gets there, he sends Ilya an update.
Shane:
Waiting on someone from a coven close to Regina. We have a game against each other in two months. Probably we could break whatever curse/spell this is then.
Shane takes a sip of his tea, waiting for him to respond. He could be at practice, or with someone else, or sleeping, or he doesn’t care, or—
Lily:
Ok. Look forward to see all about it in the magazines
Shane:
She’s nice. She won’t tell anyone.
Lily:
Right.
And with that, Shane puts his phone away.
She arrives twenty minutes late. Shane wanted to be at the gym by twelve, but the tingling in his hands kept him waiting. He wants this to end. Not only was it a nuisance when he was trying to play or do any of his other day-to-day activities, but if either of them let another couple words out for the other, they were going to be in unbearable pain, to the point where they couldn’t even play if they weren’t in the same arena.
Pearl, true to her name, has shiny, white hair that goes down to her waist. Ten or twelve necklaces swing as she goes to sit, and tangle with her crocheted shirt. Her eyes crinkle as she smiles politely. “Hello, Shane. It’s great to meet you. You’re very anxious.”
“I . . .” Shane draws out the word, surprised at her bluntness. Then, “I mean, sort of. I just have a lot of questions.”
“And hopefully I have the answers. Before, though, can I ask if you really want them?”
Her nails tap a ringing song on her mug, and Shane tries to not let it get to him, the incessant repetition. “I do. Course I do.”
“If you say so. What’s your first question?”
Shane takes his mini notebook out where he has everything written down, notes on the side as follow-ups to keep himself on track. He trails his finger over the first, having put them in order of importance.
“Well, I wanted to ask you about curses? I read about this one, put on this guy from Arkansas? Every time he’d step outside, it’d start to rain. He stayed in for the majority of, like, two years I think. It only broke when he went to find his ex-wife and she was ordered by her new coven to undo it.”
She nods slowly. “Yes. That’s all true. What’s the question in there, Shane?”
“Oh,” he mutters, going back to his notes. “Okay. So. I mean, after that, I read some more. And all these curses—the powerful ones at least—were cast by people who were wronged by the other. They’re all personal. So can a curse that affects you long-term be put on you by someone you don’t know? And if it can, then can it be put on two people?”
Pearl worries her lip, tapping again, looking down at Shane’s list. “These questions are not just for you, then?”
“They’re . . . they are for me. Mostly me.”
“Okay,” Pearl softly says. She glances at Shane, into his eyes, looking for something more. “To answer: any curse that lasts longer than six months has to have emotion behind it. And you can’t get real, true anger and passion in your curse without personalization.”
Shane’s stomach drops. Another dead end. But there has to be more. They’re not out of ways to go with this.
“Okay, so—what about a spell?”
“No, a spell cannot be evil, Shane. Not in its intention. A spell can have negative consequences later, but in its formation, when it’s cast, it has to be from purity. Is your curse, or spell, something harmful? Something bad?”
Shane shrugs, to not show her just how deep the ache is at his sternum right now without Ilya.
“Oh,” Pearl gasps.
Shane’s eyes fly to hers. “What? What is it?”
“Shane,” she whispers, and drags his hands into hers, her long fingers reaching almost to his wrists. “There is someone else at stake here. That explains why the pain is so intense. Still, I need you to try and tell me about it.”
Witches scare Shane. Honestly. In their power, in their mystery, but for the most part, in how easily they can read a person. Shane feels like Pearl is staring into his soul, seeing the transparency of his true identity, waiting for Shane to say it aloud so she can fully pick it apart, what it means to him to hide it and what it’d mean if he didn’t.
“It’s . . . I don’t know how it is. For the other person. But to me, it’s this low, thrumming ache. Not always in the same place, not always so sharp, but it is always there. Unless I’m with them. And if I talk to them, or-or talk about them, then it gets worse. I have to be closer to them, or I think my bones are gonna break apart.”
“You said it fades with them. And when you don’t see them for a long time?”
“Yeah. W-well.” Shane sighs. “I can’t. It’ll hurt them.”
“Not if I don’t know who they are. And not if you don’t say their name. I promise.”
He’s never had to explain this before. But it excites him, he thinks, to finally be able to, to get closer to an answer, and to fix things. “If we’re apart, but I’m thinking of them, and nothing else, the pain will mostly settle. But the more I try to take my mind off it—off of them . . .”
“The more it hurts,” Pearl says.
Shane nods. “And it has to be a curse. I mean, right? There’s no upside to it. We can’t even speak to each other. We probably wouldn’t have even known each other without this thing.”
It took Shane six and a half months to contend with the fact that he was tied to Ilya by this curse. For Ilya, Shane is pretty sure he’s still in the acceptance stage.
“Maybe there’s something there with that, then. Curses, spells, jinxes, magic—you know where it comes from, right? There’s two sides at work. There’s the human one, the emotional drive behind the force of how powerful any of the magic is, and then you have the other side.”
“Comes from the Earth, right?” Shane had done his reading. (A lot of reading.)
“Exactly.” Pearl smiles. “That’s how your magic is going to stay grounded. Controlled. The Earth knows how much strength it can handle from the human side, because the Earth is connected to every one of us. But, sometimes, both of these sides go haywire, and it’s with the same kind of emotion that they do.”
She pauses, and Shane nods, following, forgetting his tea. His hands are still in hers, and, miraculously, they ease Shane’s hurt. “It’s . . .?”
“Love,” Pearl says. “Not exactly the final answer of love, but all those paths to it. Infatuation, admiration, desire. All of that, if it’s strong enough, and if two can’t communicate to the Earth what all of it is to them, then wires are crossed, and a bond is formed.”
Shane thinks back. Before, before he’d even met Ilya, he wanted to play him on the ice, to pick his brain about hockey. Here was a boy who loved the sport as much as Shane did. Who could keep up with him, and was his age, all at the same time. Shane was so excited to go out and talk to him, to finally, hopefully, know him.
It had come at the same moment Shane realized how beautiful Ilya was, with his shocking blue eyes. At the same time as his irritation with Ilya smoking in a no-smoking area and the way he’d brushed Shane off. At the same time disappointment had flooded in that Shane had fucked up another chance at friendship.
All of it. All of it at once, in the span of a minute, had hit Shane in the face.
“Are you saying . . .”
“I think so,” Pearl finishes his thought for him once again, continuing, “I think you and this person are soulmates, Shane. I’m sorry that’s not what you wanted to hear. It’s such a rare and beautiful thing to have.”
Someone else can have it, Shane thinks. Please. And if Shane has to wait until retirement to take it back, that’s better, because he wants a soulmate, but it can’t be—it has to be anyone other than Ilya Rozanov. Anyone.
“No,” Shane says. “You don’t understand, we—me and them, we couldn’t be together. It’d be a disaster.”
“Would it?” Pearl leans in. “Shane. There are forces out there, in the atmosphere that we can’t even see. And they are drawn to you. You and your soulmate. This is something you want to get rid of, I know—but there is almost nothing that—“
“So there is something?” Shane asks desperately. “There’s something that we can do to get rid of it?”
Sadly, Pearl frowns, her eyes teary. “If I even told you, it would break your heart, Shane.”
Shane can take it. What he can’t take is the inevitable death he’s going to have all because of being separate from one person. He has a career to build, a reputation to uphold, people he’s made promises to. It can’t all be ruined by him following Ilya around like a puppy. He won’t let that happen. Shane needs his life to be his life.
He’s been working for this since he can remember. It won’t be taken away.
“Just tell me. Please.”
Pearl hesitates, and Shane holds her hand stronger. “Okay,” she whispers. “There’s only one thing you can do. And if you did, the effects of the power would fade, but your conscience, Shane, your heart—“
“Pearl.” He shakes his head. This is a mistake, this is how it has to be. “C’mon. Please.”
“Your soulmate—they would have to die, Shane. You would have to kill them.”
It happens in a second. Shane is thinking of-of holding something, a knife, a gun, a weapon, or—and then he’s crying out, clutching his chest, an agony radiating from the center of his sternum and up his throat.
“I’m sorry. Take your mind off it—“
“How?” Shane grits out, tearing at the back of his scalp.
“Think of them. Them smiling, them laughing, how it feels to hold their hand, to reconnect.”
He groans. Ilya, Ilya, Ilya, looming over him in bed, a smirk on his face as he leans in to give him a kiss, as he trails them from Shane’s neck to his stomach, as he reminds Shane with a squeeze of his hand to tap him if he needs to stop.
The one who knows him so well, and hasn’t spoken to him at all. The one Shane was lit up by in the freezing cold, the one, the one the universe had chosen for him.
“I shouldn’t have—“ Shane breathes deeply, catching the air back into his lungs. “Please don’t ever—don’t let me ask about that again. I can’t, I-I won’t, I promise, I won’t—“
“Okay. Okay. I won’t. I promise, Shane.” She helps ease away the rest of the burning at Shane’s lower back, transferring her ability to subtly heal from her hands into Shane’s skin. “You are going to have to love them,” Pearl tells him. “Maybe you don’t now. But you will. You will feel it, and the second you do, you confess it. And all the pain will go away. The same goes for your soulmate. That’s the only way to settle with this.”
All of Shane’s can’ts and won’ts go out the window. It is the worst, most terrorizing pain to even imagine physically hurting him. Shane doesn’t want to think of how it would be if he actually did it.
But the only answer continues with a harder question—How the hell is he going to make Ilya love him back?
Two months, and Shane can’t wait until they’re on the ice warming up to be close to Ilya. It stings, the yearning in his heart, sharper now that he knows he’s within walking distance of Ilya. His pulse rings quickly, anxiety buzzing light at his skin as he clenches his hands around the porcelain of the hotel sink.
Just one hour. One hour until he can get to the arena, escape to an empty room or bathroom, and hold Ilya until the hurt wanes.
Pearl’s words about soulmates circle around Shane’s mind. And then Ilya’s words. If they’re soulmates, they’re fucked.
Ilya doesn’t want it, either. Ilya barely entertains the fact that magic exists. When Shane tried to explain how it injured him to drive and fly far away from him, Ilya hadn’t taken it seriously. And then the discovery that speaking made the time away worse came, and with that, at least, had Ilya given in to Shane’s ‘crazy theories.’
Shane wondered how he was feeling now. If it healed him, too, to let him consume his thoughts, if it finally let him sleep to imagine Shane in bed with him. He wondered if Ilya was tempted to run to him right now the same way Shane was.
Fifty-five minutes.
Shane:
There’s an empty office upstairs to the left of the elevator.
He’s locked the door of the room, rolled up his sleeves with how the desperation is heating his temperature up. It always gets like this the seconds before they’re near each other, that blinding anticipation that distracted Shane from every responsibility he was meant to be following through on. All his inhibitions lowered and the only thing that mattered was being with Ilya once more.
Lily:
2 minutes.
That’s it. Just two. Shane sinks down to a crouch, holding the table he almost kneels in front of, his legs shaking. Any more than Ilya’s promised two and Shane was going buckle and fall.
Shane:
Please.
Lily:
I know.
With a rapid knock on the door, Shane curses himself for locking it. But if someone had walked in on him close to tears, losing his breath, they would’ve started questioning if Shane needed to sit out the game tonight. That is the last thing he needs to do. He needs to be as close to Ilya for as long as possible.
He crawls at first to the door, getting his footing with support on the wall, and then yanks Ilya inside fast.
It’s so quick to draw him in that Shane doesn’t even see Ilya’s eyes first, he doesn’t even slap his shoulder for his mouth opening, on the precarious fringe of saying hello, or thank God, or finally.
Shane breathes him in. That woody, naturalistic smell of after-rain on his skin, at his neck, whispering against Shane’s skin from his soft hair. Suddenly, Shane is in his arms, his legs lifted up and secured at Ilya’s waist, and Ilya’s mouth is on his before he can gasp.
A surprising moan is drawn from Ilya’s throat, against Shane’s fingertips, the rumble of it vibrating through Shane’s blood, making him want more but knowing better than to ask. Instead, he kisses down Ilya’s neck with fervor, groaning at the relief of it being real and not in his dreams.
His soulmate. This is real, palpable, Shane can feel how his body becomes lighter against Ilya’s, how his fears turn their volume down and his two months of uneasiness settles into pleasure.
Shane tries to back away, just a little to take the notepad from his back pocket, but Ilya grabs the hand he had reached for it with and kisses at his palm, looking into Shane’s eyes. Then, he trails down his arm with his lips, closing in on more sensitive areas the closer he gets to Shane’s throat. It’s never enough, Shane thinks.
The initial fire is stoked into a slow burn with a long-lasting hug, hands under shirts and Ilya’s cross necklace making an indent at Shane’s chest. Finally, Ilya lets him pull the notepad out and a pen.
Worse this time, Shane timidly writes, hoping and dreading at the same time that Ilya agrees.
Yes. But only two months apart. Did you have to talk about me?
Shane shakes his head. Any insults towards Ilya from his teammates given on the flight, Shane ignored. He’s getting better at it, shrugging, nodding, anything to not have to speak on it to save himself the pain. His team just thinks at this point that Ilya has gotten under his skin so much that he gets annoyed solely at his name. It’s something like that, anyway.
No. Did you?
Ilya shakes his head no.
Shane has to tell him the truth. He realizes, as he thinks back to their six months apart, that not even that was as bad as this. The only real difference here is that Pearl had helped Shane to learn what the connection between him and Ilya really is.
There was really bad day, Ilya jots down, and Shane looks over his shoulder to read. When u met with witch. Had to leave practice. Did she try to break curse/whatever the fuck for us?
He deserves to know. But as soon as he does, Shane isn’t sure how he’ll react. Will he call bullshit and storm off? Laugh in Shane’s face? Look for other solutions that will only waste more of their time? Surely he won’t smile and kiss Shane and miraculously be bursting with affection for him and heal their bond.
Any path they go down, this is a complicated mess that is, most likely, going to reach debilitating levels before they can fix it.
It’s not a curse. Or a spell. And there it is, marked down for Ilya to take in. His expression dances from confusion, to denial, to a despair that curls his lips down. Shane’s heart is jumping, asking for release, and with a shaky hand, he goes to give Ilya the pen.
But he shoves it back against Shane’s chest. And, slowly, he shakes his head, looking at Shane with what can only be described as a consuming pain and disgust.
Shane’s lips part, choking back an apology before he fully says it. His eyes burn, but no emotion comes out, not before a game, not at this, not at a rejection from someone he should never have wanted in the first place.
I’m sorry, Shane thinks, trying to communicate it, shrugging miserably because he has no other answer. This is where they are.
And Ilya isn’t meeting his eyes. The only way Shane can talk to him without a pen and paper, without his phone, and Ilya’s blocking him out. Shane slaps his chest, cups his face with both hands, begging for him to look at him, just one more time. Shane’s vision darts all over his withdrawn expression, lost amongst Ilya’s raging sea that Shane can usually navigate with enough patience.
He knows it’s a mistake. He knows it’s stupid, the worst thing he can do, but after he kisses him, open-mouthed and begging, Shane whispers, “Please.”
Ilya shoves him back. He breathes heavily onto Shane’s face, his lip trembling with every fast and harsh emotion, the betrayal of Shane’s voice directed at him, the truth of being Shane’s soulmate. And worse, worst of all, is that it makes sense.
He’s on the cusp of saying something back. Shane almost wants him to. If all he feels for the rest of time because of Ilya is pain, then maybe it’s right, at least it’s something from him.
Before Shane can say it again, before he can ask and plead and fall at Ilya’s mercy for something neither of them can control, Ilya pulls him into a kiss.
His teeth are rough at Shane’s bottom lip, nipping until it’s numb and close to releasing blood. Shane falters for a second, just to ask himself if this is okay, if this is the best way to live with this, ignoring it for the sake of keeping their connection brutal and electric instead of easy and calm.
But if he loses Ilya all together, if what breaks them is that they are more than hook-ups and secret passion, Shane will never forgive himself for being the one to end it, even if it is wrong and leaves him aching to reach for more.