Chapter Text
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.