Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Underage Sex

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov/Sasha | Ilya Rozanov's Coach's Son

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Sasha | Ilya Rozanov's Coach's Son

Additional Tags:

Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Pre-Canon, Ilya Rozanov is Obsessed With Shane Hollander, sex as a coping mechanism, Underage Sex between Ilya and Sasha, Implied/Referenced Suicide, (We're looking at Ilya's childhood and how he copes with Irina's death baby), Whump, Podfic Available

Language:

English

Series:

Part 8 of [challenge] Heated Rivalry Febuwhump 2026

Collections:

febuwhump 2026

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-08 Words: 1,342 Chapters: 1/1

broken shards

Summary

Some days, Ilya feels carved open.

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Not all coping mechanisms are healthy. But sometimes, they just have to get you through.

Notes

Day 8: Hunger

Heed the tags on this one, folks!

Some days, Ilya feels carved open.

He’s a cavity, an abyss; a body someone took a knife to and sliced open, took out all the parts that made him human, and stitched him back together but poorly so that anyone who looks at him can see, clear as day, there’s something wrong with this boy. It’s leaking out of him, slow and steady most days, through gaps that are nearly but never entirely invisible, and like a torrent on others, pouring out until he’s empty and then some.

It leaves behind a gaping lack, a gnawing hunger that makes short work of whatever is left, until he is a husk, hollowed out and fragile. On those days, a single gust of wind might shatter what was left of his heart after his mother died, or so it feels, the brittle scaffolding he’s erected around it crumbling to dust.

He learns early that there isn’t much that helps.

Ilya is broken; broken open, yes, but maybe also just fundamentally broken in a way that says wrong. A bowl that cracked when he found his mother’s lifeless form aged twelve, and that now can no longer hold happiness in any meaningful form.

He can hold snatches, before they drip from his fingers: an unlikely goal that gets his heart racing and his blood pumping, a pretty girl’s smile, a rare word of praise from his coach. They are fleeting, but he is good at chasing them, scores more than anyone expected from him because he only shot up after his mother was gone, like he’s had to grow to make space for two souls in his body; learns how to flirt with girls to make them laugh and lean in close rather than roll their eyes and whisper as they walk away; gets the trophy for his team and yet stays serious on the ice, even though the ice is still the only place his body sings.

The summer before his first Prospect Cup, he learns that there is something else that fills that void in his chest, however briefly: the heavy weight of a cock on his tongue, the velvety, hot skin sliding past his lips, the choked off moans that are on the verge of being too loud in the cramped room.

Sasha stares at him after, his cheeks flushed and hair mussed and chest still rising and falling rapidly, as Ilya sits back and lets his cock slip from his mouth, licking his lips for effect more than because he needs it. “Fuck,” Sasha breathes, “Ilyusha –”

They don’t kiss, because kissing would turn this into something that it isn’t, even after Ilya has swallowed Sasha’s release, but Sasha jerks him off with an intensity to his gaze that is almost too much. Ilya buries his face in Sasha’s neck and gasps into his skin until he comes, and to his disappointment, the hunger creeps back in before the sweat has cooled on their skin.

Over the course of that fall, he and Sasha try other things: 69, which looks more fun than it turns out to be, because they’re not of a height and it’s hard to focus on your own pleasure while sucking another dick; simple frontage, where Ilya learns that doing this face-to-face is intimate in a way that isn’t fun; with Ilya fucking Sasha, which is very much fun; and once, with Sasha fucking Ilya, where Ilya learns that the only thing worse than every day life carving his chest open is the comedown after getting fucked, because it’s intense and so much it fills Ilya to overflowing, and when it’s over, the emptiness returns with a vengeance that has him locking himself in the bathroom and standing under the hot spray until it runs cold, Sasha’s complaints be damned, because at least that way, no one will be able to tell whether he cries or not. Ilya never again offers to bottom, and Sasha doesn’t ask, and when the Prospect Cup rolls around, Sasha leans in to kiss Ilya, slow and with tongue, because he’s leaving for school in Paris after this, and they both know what they won’t see each other again any time soon.

In Regina, Saskatchewan, Ilya meets Shane Hollander, and while it would be cliché to say his life reorients itself, he does take notice. Shane Hollander is Ilya’s age but thrice as awkward, speaks perfect English and probably perfect French – Sasha would be able to judge, but Sasha isn’t here, because he’s on his way to fucking France – and is woefully alone on a team who can’t keep up with him. Ilya can relate, but unfortunately for Shane Hollander, Ilya is actually able to carry his team, and so they beat the Canadians to take home gold.

In the handshake line, Hollander’s grip is strong and familiar, and it helps keep Ilya full all the way until they touch back down in Russia.

He bleeds out again slowly over the next weeks, until Ilya goes back to finding willing bodies at clubs he’s technically too young to go to, but who cares? It does put a dent in the maelstrom that’s taken up residence in his chest with every day they get closer to the draft, every day they get closer to his future.

The draft lottery happens in the middle of the night for him, but he still watches it on a shitty stream on a site he found, waits with baited breath to learn who will get the rights to his body, to his hockey: Edmonton gets third pick, this year, then Montreal, and finally Boston.

He doesn’t know anything about them, can’t get himself to open the search engine he used earlier to find out. He should be happy. Excited. Instead he’s empty once again, because he’s about to leave Russia to be bought by a club like kettle, to earn money he already can feel Alexei’s slimy fingers all over, to pay back his father for raising him.

Ilya swallows, and reminds himself that the draft will bring Shane Hollander, and that maybe, he will see Hollander’s pretty frown as he comes second again. No – not maybe: definitely, because there can be only one number one, and Ilya knows he’s the best, knows he’s what Hollander wishes to be.

It’s only when they’re smiling at the camera, Hollander a tense, unhappy presence next to him who’s probably grimacing in something that two lives ago resembled happiness, that he admits to himself that maybe, neither Hollander nor him actually want to be him, even if he’s the first overall draft pick of their class.

Hours later still, on the floor at the hotel gym, panting across from Hollander, he also admits that Hollander is what he wants – what he wants to own, maybe; what he needs to stuff the holes in his chest, the gaps between his ribs. He tells himself no, even has Hollander follows his directions so prettily.

He tells himself no, even as he knows that he will not make it without getting a taste of him, without getting to claim him at least for a night. Maybe, if Hollander didn’t look at him with those large eyes, his mouth falling open a little; maybe, if Hollander didn’t get goosebumps from a simple brush of fingers; maybe, if Hollander didn’t hold his gaze while chugging Ilya’s water – maybe then, he’d move on.

But Hollander does all those things, and Ilya is only a thin veneer of humanity wrapped around a perpetually hungry soul, and he already knows he will cave. Doesn’t believe in lying to himself about it, either.

Hollander is good in a way Ilya has never been, the polite, awkward, prodigal Canadian you hear of when you think hockey, and Ilya wants – to corrupt, to claim, to compromise that unfailing goodness, because Ilya is broken, and sometimes, broken shards crave company.

And Hollander, he thinks as he watches him leave the hotel gym like he’s moving against a stretching rope, would be terrific company.

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