Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov, Grigori Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Sasha | Ilya Rozanov's Coach's Son, Svetlana Vetrova

Additional Tags:

Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Verse, Omega/Omega, Omega Ilya Rozanov, Omega Shane Hollander, Trauma, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Family Dynamics, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Protective Ilya Rozanov, ilya rozanov/others (not endgame), consent issues (not between hollanov), Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Top Ilya Rozanov, ilya bottoms w others prior to shane and does not like it

Language:

English

Series:

Part 8 of all dwk heated rivalry fics

Collections:

Hollanov ABO

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-04 Updated: 2026-02-10 Words: 4,403 Chapters: 2/?

birds of a feather

Summary

He doesn’t know how he ends up in the downstairs coat closet.

No memory exists of moving, of going down the staircase and shedding his ruined clothing until he’s only in his underwear, or opening the door and ripping all of Mama’s coats down to the floor. Vaguely, he recalls trembling in the cloud of her scent, stale and unhappy under the haze of old cigarettes.

What he remembers is flashes. Alexei, furious tears in his eyes, telling Papa he’d found Ilya. Papa, scowling down at him, snapping, “Ilya, get out of this closet right now.” One of Papa’s cop friends, saying, “Jesus, Grika, look at him. He’s in h—” and Papa replying coldly, “Not another word.”

Papa, kneeling in front of the closet, saying in an uncomfortable, painfully false, soft voice, “Synok, come out now. You cannot nest here.”

Notes

I love omega/omega hollanov!!!! 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️

once again I have a vague idea of what I want to do with this fic. I was inspired by a tumblr post that talked about how ilya is not sexually aggressive with shane... possibly because he has experienced that with other people. to give you an idea of where this is going.

the tags (and probably the rating) will def end up getting updated as I figure out more of what's coming next. I'll put additional warnings at the top of each chapter!

this is set in the same verse as my other o/o hollanov fic, pre-game, but you don't need to read that one to understand this one

warnings for chapter 1 (spoilers!)

- irina's death. happens off screen and nothing is graphically described but it's a major plot point
- lot of non-graphic vomit
- ilya goes into heat at 12 years old. nothing sexual happens. he doesn't understand what's happening so even things that would be sexual (like him slicking) are only confusing & upsetting to him
- grigori thinks of ilya and irina in derogatory terms
- shitty family dynamics
- victim blaming (canon typical)

please let me know if I've missed anything thank you!

and lastly, thank you to melkor for helping me with russian details!! :smek:

• Inspired by [Restricted Work] by dottiedoesotherfandoms (dottie_wan_kenobi)

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

synok = slightly diminutive form of "son"

Ilya throws up after he finds Mama. 

Well, no. That’s not quite true.

It goes more like this: he finds Mama, eyes open on the ground and completely devoid of scent. Then he starts screaming. Papa and Alexei come running in. Papa takes only a second to understand what has happened before he drags Ilya off of the carpet and throws both boys into the hallway, screaming at Alexei to take Ilya away. Alexei demands, “What is going on?” and Ilya screams, “Mama is dead,” and then he throws up. All over the carpet and Alexei’s new shoes that he was so proud of. All over himself, too. 

Alexei doesn’t seem to know how to react. While Ilya is kneeling in his own sick, hyperventilating, and trying not to throw up again, he just blinks at his brother in shock. 

Then, because the Mama part of it is too much, he latches onto what he can and shouts, “How could you make such a mess! Ilya, you idiot! Disgusting!”

He looks down at the mess, at his ruined shoes, and starts gagging. He runs off to the bathroom, shivering in revulsion, muttering curse words.

Ilya doesn’t quite remember any of this, later. It’s too much, too big, too traumatic. But in the moment, sitting there alone, his father’s muffled voice through the wall and the memory of his beloved Mama laying down dead, something explodes inside of him. 

After that, well.

He doesn’t know how he ends up in the downstairs coat closet. No memory exists of moving, of going down the staircase and shedding his ruined clothing until he’s only in his underwear, or opening the door and ripping all of Mama’s coats down to the floor. Vaguely, he recalls trembling in the cloud of her scent, stale and unhappy under the haze of old cigarettes. 

What he remembers is flashes. Alexei, furious tears in his eyes, telling Papa he’d found Ilya. Papa, scowling down at him, snapping, “Ilya, get out of this closet right now.” One of Papa’s cop friends, saying, “Jesus, Grika, look at him. He’s in h—” and Papa replying coldly, “Not another word.”

Papa, kneeling in front of the closet, saying in an uncomfortable, painfully false, soft voice, “Synok, come out now. You cannot nest here.”

Before that, Papa had never called Ilya synok. He knows with hindsight that Papa is trying to comfort him. Coax him out. But instead, all that Ilya sees is the man who makes Mama sad, all he hears is a new layer in his voice he’s never felt so strongly—a command. 

He does not come out; he only sinks further into the closet. 

He is safe here, his mind says feverishly. It’s small and dark, and Mama is here. Mama wore these clothes and he needs to have them. He cannot leave.

But Papa makes him leave. He gets fed up when Ilya refuses to move, drags him out of the closet kicking and screaming, and doesn’t let go even when, halfway up the stairs, Ilya’s whole body goes limp. His head pounds and his body is too hot and he is so, so nauseous. Every touch hurts, in ways he doesn’t understand. It’s a relief when Papa sets him on his bed. But then he just stands there, huffing, his scent leaking angrily into the room. 

“How dare you embarrass me like this,” he rumbles finally, the extra edge to his voice sending shivers through Ilya’s body. “I do not have time for this. I do not want an omega son.”

The words mean nothing to Ilya just then. Of course he knows what an omega is—that’s what Mama is. He has just learned about heats in the barest of terms, since they aren’t expected to start presenting for another year at least. It doesn’t click in his head that he is an omega, that a heat is what’s happening right now.

What he understands is the rejection. Mama is dead, but she is also downstairs, and Ilya cannot have her either way. Papa is here but he is angry and does not want him. 

A keen spills out of his mouth before he can stop it. He is out of control, his body moving without permission. Falling off the bed, he crawls to his father and whines, guttural and begging, hardly able to breathe through the tears. 

Grigori scoffs, staring down at him as if he’s never seen him before. 

His pathetic wife has just killed herself, and left him with two equally pathetic boys.

“Ilya,” he snaps, putting his Voice into it. Ilya straightens up quickly, kneeling at Grigori’s feet in only his boxers, distressed and weak but attentive like a good omega should be. He looks so much like Irina at that moment that it sends pangs through Grigori’s chest. He has the same glazed look in his eyes.

A poisonous thought occurs to Grigori, then. 

Ilya has inherited so much from Irina, even her second gender now. He will probably be a whore, just like his mother. 

“I am not dealing with this,” he declares. He has never helped an omega through a first heat, and he won’t start now. Not when he has fellow cops trawling through his house, his wife’s dead body to deal with, and another whiny, annoying child to handle. It’s not out of kindness that he says, “I will give you this one cycle to act like a pathetic omega, do you understand? This will not happen again.”

Ilya, in that moment, is willing to say or do anything that will make Papa help him. He doesn’t know what’s going on but Papa does. “I understand,” he chokes out. 

When Papa starts to walk away, Ilya doesn’t think. His body tells him what to do, so he crawls after him.

There is disgust written all over Papa’s face when he kicks Ilya away.

It hurts, more than usual. His skin tingles as if it’s on fire. Under normal circumstances, Ilya knows to back off, but now his brain is melting and all he can think is that he does not want to be alone. He wants Mama, but he cannot have Mama; Papa is here but Papa does not want him. 

He doesn’t see when Papa leaves. His eyes are too blurry. But he hears the door when it shuts with a heavy thump. 

Keys rattle on the other side, then a click. Ilya knows—Papa has locked him inside.

It’s far from the first time it’s happened, so he shouldn’t be scared. He has a bathroom and has learned over the years of his life what foods can be safely hidden in dresser drawers. He’s not without, he is fine. This is what happens when he is bad.

But Ilya is not in his right mind, and though he’d never cry about being punished—he’s learned better—he cries this time. He can’t calm down, because every time he tries, he remembers finding Mama, or he remembers the pile of coats downstairs that he wants so badly, or Papa and Alexei looking at him with disgust. 

He cries and cries until he can hardly breathe, until his head is a white sheet of pain, until he passes out right there on the floor.

When he wakes, he drags himself to his feet and goes to his bathroom. His legs almost won’t hold him up, the way they do after he’s gone too hard on the ice. It should worry him, but there’s no space in his head for anything but how hot he is. 

He’s never felt like this before. Hockey has always made him sweat a lot, even in the cold of winter. Ilya is used to feeling overheated, but this is a thousand times worse, as if there is a fire under his skin. It kindles in his belly, a bonfire that makes him feel like he’s melting. 

Turning on the shower takes a pathetically long time. Ilya has to pause to throw up twice, but at least this time, he can catch it in the toilet instead of the expensive rug. 

When he takes off his boxers, he’s horrified to find them wet. The sight of it sends a rush through his body, his head going light. Ilya isn’t supposed to—he’s going to be an alpha, he can’t—what is this and why—

Ilya throws up again. Then he gets in the shower, turned ice cold, and sits on the floor with his aching head in his hands. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees Mama, so he keeps them open and lets them sting as the water flows over his face.

After, he doesn’t bother to towel off or put on new underwear. The cold water has done nothing but make him shake and feel even more sick.

Standing, swaying, in the doorway, Ilya looks at his room. The bed calls to him, begs him to make a space there with the blankets and pillows and Mama’s coats.

“There are no coats,” he whispers to himself, then more harshly, suddenly angry, “there is nothing.”

He does not lay on his bed. No, he crawls under it.

His first heat lasts several days. Most of it is spent curled up underneath his bed, staring at the door and listening through a fog as people move about outside. Not many people do, though voices rise from downstairs. They must take Mama’s body downstairs so that they can say their goodbyes. Other than Papa and Alexei, no one is allowed upstairs.

No one is allowed to know that Ilya—who should have been an alpha, who was going to be Grigori’s pride—is sweating through a fever he will never outrun.

It’s terribly lonely. Ilya doesn’t like being alone and spends all of his time with Mama or Svetlana, so he has no defense against this kind of pain. If he had more energy, he would claw at the door until he could get free. 

There is a moment where Alexei stands outside the door, and Ilya’s heart soars, so relieved to have another person there that he doesn’t even care that it’s Alexei. He would take anyone so long as they didn’t leave him alone anymore.

He tries to move out from under the bed, but it’s slow going, his limbs aching and his body weak. Whatever food he has, he hasn’t eaten much of—it makes him feel too sick. And water, he drinks in the shower or from the tap.

Alexei sighs audibly from the other side, pacing around. More to himself, he complains, “Everyone is asking about you. Where is Ilyusha? Why is Ilyusha not here? Father is angry, and it’s your fault! It’s Mother’s fault! But he’s acting angry with me! Even though I didn’t do anything, I am the one in trouble. I hate you both.” 

Alexei has said this many times to Ilya, so it shouldn’t be surprising. But it is—Alexei has not presented, but Ilya can still feel him like a tether in his head, a family bond built by proximity and survival. Those words send a twitch through it, pulling painfully at Ilya’s insides. 

“Mama died a-accidentally and now you are being so dramatic and ruining her funeral. You’re a stupid omega. I’m so embarrassed, all of my friends are going to tease me now. Couldn’t you have waited? Now I have to go through all of this fucking shit alone.” He hisses the last part, not wanting Papa to hear. 

As if Ilya wants to be here, starving and thirsty, his body turning itself inside out, leaking, overheated, melting his brain until all he can think about is being held or how Mama is gone and never coming back. As if Ilya chose this.

“Fuck you, Alyosha,” Ilya croaks, just loud enough to be heard. He would give anything to be downstairs, to get to say goodbye to Mama and to make all of this go away. Like it never happened, like he’s not an omega.

“What did you say?” Alexei demands.

Ilya doesn’t have the energy to scream it back the way he wants to. He can only slap his palm on the floor uselessly, his eyes stinging with tears and a rage building up white-hot inside of him.

“That’s what I thought, lazy asshole. Mama must be so ashamed to have you as a son. Can’t even stand up for yourself—”

The doorknob rattles, and it turns out that Ilya can stand, does have energy, if he feels like he’s being threatened. Papa has to come and take Alexei away, scolding them both for making a scene when such important people have come to pay their respects. 

By the time his heat runs its course—a miserably long four days—Ilya knows that his life will never be the same. He will never be the same. Everything has fallen apart so quickly, yet it doesn’t feel like less than a week has passed since Mama died. No, it feels like years. Eons since he found her. Millenia spent locked away.

And he is so, so angry.

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

chapter warnings:

- sexist comments
- grief/mourning
- trauma around taking pills
- minor (canon typical) gaslighting

pls lmk if I'm missing any, thank you!

-

the more I wrote this chapter the more my brain started buzzing with omegaverse worldbuilding and all the angst I can inflict -evil laugh- anywayyyy hope you enjoy!

Silence, Ilya finds, can be very loud.

After his heat ends, after he’s eaten so much it almost made him sick and Alexei’s threatened him not to throw up again, Ilya goes back to the downstairs closet. His head isn’t fuzzy in the same way anymore but he still feels drawn there, his heart thumping. 

She was here, just a few days ago. He still had her here.

But the closet is empty when he checks it. Everything is gone, only leaving the scent of an air freshener so strong it makes Ilya’s eyes water. 

Exhaling shakily, Ilya shuts his eyes and understands that this is done. He will not come back to this closet. 

They don’t acknowledge it. They don’t acknowledge anything.

No one talks about Mama after that. Her body is gone; Ilya missed everything. He tries to ask Papa about it, but his father gets furiously angry if she’s brought up, and Alexei follows, grief turning to hatred in his heart until it’s only Ilya who truly mourns her.

It’s difficult, though, so difficult when every trace of her is removed from their home. No more pictures, no more magazines in the living room, no more pretty clothes in the hamper. Her bedroom door is locked shut. 

Every trace of her scent is gone, too. It's like she was never here at all.

Losing Mama is like a skate blade in his chest. Freezing and sharp and killing him, but the shock is too much—paradoxically, he can sometimes forget it’s there, because it's just too big. Then he looks at it—at the blade, at the closet or her bedroom door or every spot in the house where she ever stood—and is reminded all over again that something terrible has happened.

Ilya learns fast how to take everything that's happening and everything he's feeling, and squeeze it into a box in the back of his mind. There, it can’t do anything to him. He can ignore it—ignore the heat and the silence and the fact that Mama is gone.

It's like she's just on a trip. Of course he doesn't believe that, but thinking of it that way is less crushingly painful. He doesn't have to face that he will never see her, or speak to her, or smell her or be held by her or any of it, ever again. 

At least, that's what he tells himself.

Sometimes, late at night when he can't sleep, he thinks he feels her there. A presence in the room that makes his skin prickle and his eyes go hot. 

Part of him aches to speak, to beg her to answer him. 

But the larger part is angry, so devastated it can only come out as rage. On those nights, he wants to throw things, hurt her the way she's hurt them. But it would wake Papa, so Ilya only roughly flips over, ignoring it with his teeth gritted and eyes wet, until the feeling of being watched slips away from him and he can finally sleep.

So much has changed so quickly. 

It’s a nightmare, one that Ilya can do nothing but force himself through, because there is no other choice. Svetlana, when he sees her, says that time keeps moving and so should he. 

Someday, she says, he will be eighteen and he’ll be able to get out of that house.

The thought is a relief, even though Ilya knows he’ll never be really free—he doesn’t think much about his new second gender, but when he does, he can only imagine a future tied down to an alpha like Papa. Will he be like Mama? Will he be forced to give some cold, cruel woman a few children before his use runs out? 

Will he, too, die ‘accidentally’? 

He doesn’t like to think about it. So he throws himself into hockey.

But hockey is not the relief it once was. He’s been gone too long, and though his coaches know his Mama passed, it’s not enough—only once they’ve sniffed the air and caught his new scent do they seem to understand.

Coach Borisovich and Coach Petrovna call Papa in. Ilya is forced to sit silently and listen as these two people who have done so much for him, who have been a home away from home, tell Papa things like:

“You know omegas are not allowed in the league.”

“It’s not that they ‘aren’t allowed’, but that there has never been an omega in the KHL.”

“Ilyusha is good, of course, but that is a lot of pressure, isn’t it? To be the first?”

“If only there was an omega league he could join.”

“But there isn’t,” Papa says tightly. “Are you saying you’ll remove him?”

“We’re saying,” says Coach Petrovna bluntly, “that he will be an omega on a team of beta and alpha boys. His body will change and become weaker the older he gets, plus his hormones… you know what will happen. So it doesn’t matter how good he is now. There has never been an omega player on any professional level, and for good reason. You need to do the smart thing and remove him yourself.”

It takes everything in Ilya not to burst out with heated denials—to not say fuck you, I’ll prove you wrong, I’ll show you that nothing has changed and I can be the best no matter what my stupid second gender is. 

He has always been the best of everyone around him—that's not going to change just because he presented wrong.

Papa glares at him for even shifting forward in his seat. An ice-cold hollowness creeps up on Ilya, and he sits back with his mouth shut and his eyes staring daggers into Coach Borisovich. 

“Two weeks ago, you told me that Ilyusha could make it all the way to the American league.” Papa’s words are slow, pointed. There’s no pride for Ilya coloring them, no defense of him. Just a ruthless correction. “Now you want me to take him out? No. I will not do it.”

“You have no choice,” says Coach Borisovich, who doesn’t seem fazed at all by their rising anger.

Papa clenches his fists in his lap. Standing abruptly, he spits, “We will see about that. Come, Ilyusha.”

Within the week, strings are pulled. Papa tells him not to ask any questions, to be grateful to have a father who cares so much about his future, even if he had to go and almost ruin it by being an omega. Leaving Alexei at home, Papa takes him to a doctor who doesn’t seem concerned that Ilya presented early or as a result of such a shock.

“Of course, finding his mother would’ve been enough to speed up the process,” the doctor tells Papa.

Grimacing, Papa says, “Get on with it.”

So Ilya is given a bottle of pills called suppressants and told to take one each morning. Only one. No more than that or he could get sick.

Ilya doesn’t want to take them, his stomach cramping as he remembers Mama—on the floor, a bottle in her hand, little pills spilled everywhere. They don’t look the same as these at all, these are big and a different color, but they are still the same. 

He tries, very quietly, to ask for something else. Isn’t there a liquid he can take? Liquid is for babies, and he's practically an adult already, now that he's presented, but… he really, really does not want to take them.

Papa shuts it down, tells him this is the only way he will make something of himself, and if he doesn’t want to be an embarrassment, he will take the suppressants.

There’s no other choice. Ilya does take them, clutching them in the car on the way back. He nearly cries the first time he tries, chokes and spits it out and almost loses it down the drain of his sink. But he tells himself this is how he can keep hockey. The only way he can keep hockey.

He can take one at a time and it won’t make him sick. Right? That's what the doctor said.

So he forces the first one down, staring at himself in the mirror. 

Of course, there are side effects. The first few days, Ilya feels lightheaded and dizzy, his mood plummeting so far and so fast until he’s almost physically fighting with Alexei at the dinner table. 

It’s not his fault! Alexei is older but hasn’t presented yet, so he’s jealous, and he’s not good at anything the way Ilya is good at hockey, so Papa has never had to step in to help him, and his jealousy makes him mean, when Ilya is already fucking sad enough—

“Enough! Both of you, go to your rooms!”

Ilya stomps upstairs, steaming so bad he even dares to slam his door. 

In the morning, Papa glares and sighs at him. Guilt and rage war inside of him, going nowhere.

Papa says, with the certainty of someone who is not ever disobeyed, “You will not do that again. I will not have you acting so emotional. You're lucky I haven't thrown you out.”

Ilya takes the scolding on the chin, biting the inside of his cheek until all of his anger sinks uneasily below the surface. Then Alexei meets his eyes across the table and sticks his tongue out, pleased because he didn't get in trouble even though this is all his fault.

If he could, Ilya would jump across the table and punch Alexei in his stupid face.

But Papa clears his throat, and Ilya thinks, I can't lose hockey, I can't, on repeat until he's able to look at his brother without wanting to kill him.

He gets back on the ice after the suppressants have had time to ‘kick in’.

Ilya doesn't feel different, really. Eventually the sickness fades. The anger comes and goes in waves, made worse by Alexei. His brother takes every chance to pick on him—to remind him he's so emotional and girly now, that if he doesn't behave he'll be taken out of hockey, that he's one wrong move away from being completely and utterly useless.

Papa does nothing about it, but gets angry if Ilya tries to fight with him. The only place Ilya can let the aggression out is on the ice. 

The other boys aren't supposed to know that Ilya is an omega. Papa doesn't want people to know, so Ilya tells no one and denies it when asked outright. But it spreads anyway, maybe the coaches or maybe their parents gossiping.

At first, once they find out, the other boys start going easy on him. 

“We don't want to hurt the little omega,” coos Pavel, laughing along with all of his friends. They're older than Ilya but play on the same level—they've all presented already. Alphas, every last one of them.

Ilya chews a few holes through his mouthguard and says nothing. Once the whistle is blown, though, he's off, sometimes scoring so quickly it makes their heads spin, and other times slamming them into the boards so hard it makes the whole ring shake. He’s still shorter than them, but he still has a lot of growing to do, and it feels good to throw himself around like this.

It’s not enough. 

He’s bent over for a face-off when the beta across from him says, “I like you like this, Ilyukha. It’s where an omega like you belongs.”

Somehow, Ilya thinks he doesn’t mean on the ice. Dangerously, he answers, “Winning?”, because he’s the only one who’s scored here.

Maksim ignores him, only wanting to finish his joke. Looking side to side at his friends, he smirks. “It could only be better if you were on your knees, little dog.”

The others around them laugh, but Ilya doesn’t find it funny. He bares his teeth and jumps on him. 

He gets in several good hits, enough to be proud of. Breaks Maksim’s nose and gives him a black eye that doesn’t go away for days.

It doesn't matter to him that Coach Petrovna drags him off of the other boy with bloody knuckles and a manic gleam in his eye, benching him immediately. It doesn’t matter to him that Papa is upset, scolding him for hours that night, or that the other boy’s parents complain and Papa has to pull more strings to keep Ilya from being removed, again.

In that moment, his future spread out in front of him, as clear as glass. 

It happens again and again, every time they make a comment, every time the coaches look at him and see a liability rather than their best player.

He knows, with poisonous certainty, that he will always be seen as an omega before anything else. They will never see the boy they knew before—his second gender will overshadow everything he does from now on.

That doesn't mean he has to lean into it or let it happen. Fuck that.

It takes several more brawls—all of which he comes out victorious, if bruised and bloody—before the other boys finally realize. 

Do not fuck with Ilya Rozanov.

Chapter End Notes

just wanna warn now that, while I don't really have this fic plotted out, I am going to touch on the fact that ilya started having sex at 14. it will NOT be very explicit but,,, I wanna explore the emotions around that! plus, the sasha of it all.....

also there will be more svetlana <3